“No.”

“You will soon. Everybody will. Local markets can’t really compete. Where was I? Oh, yes. Internet codes. I have a good book about that at home as well. Want to borrow it? We could stop by there.”

Nina had been lulled into such a scholarly daze by Mick’s disquisition that she almost didn’t notice that he had made his move. Maybe she didn’t want to notice, erect defenses, analyze, think it through. “I would,” she said. “I could take it to read on the plane.”

“Let’s go, then. Maybe you should call your son and say you’ll be a little late.”

“Good idea.” Nina called Bob and said she’d be a little late. She wasn’t hungry. The B & B warmed in her stomach. She was on the trail of something intellectually challenging. Mick was a fount, a real fount. He was holding her hand as they emerged into the parking lot.

Okay, be honest, she was on a trail all right, but the trail had just forked, and his hand was confident.

He went on talking during the short trip to his place in the Tahoe Keys, and Nina leaned back in the passenger seat, allowing herself to be fed information as if he were spooning ice cream into her mouth. Up the stairs they went into his dark cabin. He didn’t turn on the lights. He opened the door to his stove-fireplace and a blast of heat came out and flames flickered into action.

“Let me show you something,” he said. He drew her to the window. Outside sparkled one of the canals that led to the lake. The stars shone down.

It didn’t surprise her when he began to undress her. “Ssh, ssh,” he said. “Let’s get comfortable and I’ll show you the books. It’s getting hot in here.”

She had heard that line in a bad rap song, but somehow she was in her slip, and his hands caressed her. “Right in here,” he said, drawing her over the threshold into his bedroom, where a large bookcase took up half the wall. The bed took up the rest of the room, though, and hardly had they entered when Mick engineered her to the bed and said, “Relax, I’ll get it in a second.”

She sat on the bed, tired all of a sudden and acutely aware of Mick kneeling in front of her, sliding his hand up her thigh. In the dark she only sensed his head below her. She took a handful of his hair, ready for the ride.

“This’ll only take a minute,” he said. “You’re really going to like this book, sweetheart. It’s full of details about logs that make you want to be close to somebody who understands. Like I’m close to you right now, touching you. Mmm, you are absolutely luscious. You’re hot, baby. And now I’m going to show you a log, a natural log, you’re gonna get this right away…”

He went on like that, and he did have some books, though she didn’t get back home with them for another hour and a half.

As for the sheets being in a grid pattern, she didn’t have time to look.

22

HER SILVER-TONGUED MATHEMATICIAN DUMPED HER the next day, via a cell-phone call Nina missed on her way to the Reno airport. While she and Bob waited for the hop to San Francisco to be called, she found it after a last-minute message from Sandy.

Hi. Maybe it’s better this way. You know that job offer in L.A.? They need me right away, so I won’t be here when you get back. I loved every minute and I think you’re sweet. And please don’t be mad-remember, I never lied to you. Bye, and good luck cracking the primes.

She didn’t return the call-what would she say? Another watershed of single life spread before her-the hookup followed by the cheerful phone message. Apparently he hadn’t “caught feelings,” as the alternateens say. She glanced over at Bob, who read Rolling Stone magazine in the seat beside her, and realized he was the wrong person to confide in.

She examined herself. Emotional trauma?

She felt ruffled, yes.

Damage to her vanity, then?

Some. Mick should have found her so irresistible that he changed his plans, changed his circumstances, changed his very personality now that she had lit up his life. Then she would have decided at her leisure what to do with him.

Regret? Some. Mick had been fun, but then again, the fun wouldn’t have lasted. The main regret was that she had lost her math expert.

She hadn’t caught feelings either, then. It seemed that she would survive handily. Mick would go on his way, a very lonely way, finding women at every stop, staying with none of them. He hadn’t harmed her, and she was a big girl.

Well, then, could she just enjoy the memory, and not analyze it into smithereens?

No way; analysis was always necessary, at least after the fact.

What lesson had she learned?

Math is sexy, she thought. Who knew? Then she thought, like giving herself a slap, You’re starting to sleep around. She would have to think about that.

The loudspeaker blared and she shrugged, slung her bag onto her shoulder, and said, “That’s us, bud.”

They flew to Frankfurt on a crowded Lufthansa flight from San Francisco.

On long flights, a devolution occurs in the passengers. They begin polite, tidy, and optimistic. Toward the end of the flight, it’s like an aerial Animal House. Debris slops all over the cabin, the kids jump around, the bathrooms are not to be trusted, and the adults sprawl in their seats trying to achieve blottohood with liquor or sleep.

Bob slept all night, his head on her shoulder or parked at a strange angle against the seat, drooling a little, shifting, muttering incoherently. He woke up cranky but pulled the bags down from the overhead compartment with the energy of the well-rested.

Kurt waited just past the customs booth. He put a hand on Bob’s shoulder and as Bob spun around, he smiled broadly, reaching out so that Bob was enveloped in a long tight hug.

“Hey,” Bob said, and Nina thought with a start, Does he call him Dad, or what? He had spent much more time with Kurt than she had, and they had never all spent time together.

“How was your trip?” He turned to her and she found herself hugging him. He stepped back then, as though he was afraid he had come too near her too soon, but she really didn’t care, she was tired and glad to see him.

“Long.”

“All your baggage arrived?”

“Just what we’re carrying.”

“Good. Let’s get out of here. It’s raining, sorry. November in Germany isn’t our prettiest season. Put on your jackets.” He kept a hand on Bob’s shoulder as he marshaled them to the next line. The doors to the street opened with a whoosh, leaving all the stale air inside.

Diesel fumes and shouts mingled in the narrow street they crossed on their way to the parking structure, which looked just like the one in San Francisco. The wind whipped under the stout black umbrella Kurt deployed to protect them, and they were all dripping and gasping as they walked into the dimness.

“Here we are.” It was the smallest car Nina had ever sat in, a yellow Citroën from the seventies, a minicar that belonged in a cartoon.

“My baby,” Kurt said. Getting older suited him; his smooth face had some rugged lines now that she liked, and she even saw a smattering of gray at his temples. He wore a black sweater and jeans, just as he always had. He looked happy to see them, but unsure how to treat them.

“It’s cute,” Nina said.

“It’s the future. Tiny cars and pedestrian malls. Like it, Bob?”

“Is there room for all our stuff?” Bob asked dubiously. He snaked into the back area and drew in his duffel. Nina sat up front, her bags tucked at her feet and on her lap. The car enclosed them like a neat yellow envelope. They drove out into a sky of blue overlaid by a dense gray cover above, rain still spattering now and then across the autobahn. Kurt stayed right as the Mercedes and BMWs zoomed past in the faster lanes. A silence fell upon them, the silence of adjustment to a new situation.