The Mathematician by Mike Bozart - HTML preview

Late Saturday afternoon, December 14, 2019 in east Charlotte. A typical late-fall temperature of 55.4° Fahrenheit (13° Celsius) under partly cloudy skies. After watching the 120th Army – Navy (American football) game (Midshipmen 31-7 Black Knights) with the 61-year-old, Caucasian American visual artist known as Kat Da’dy at his Kilborne in the Woods condo, I moseyed my 55-year-old, back-aching frame over to single-family-residential, mature-tree-canopied Falmouth Road to check in with 62-year-old, Amerasian Mortimer, who was often referred to as Mort the mathematician. And once after a slip of the tongue, Math the mortician.

I knocked twice on his modest, 61-year-old, brick-veneer house’s slate-blue front door. A granite-gray-haired, thin, flannel-shirted man opened it and led me in to the knotty-pine-walled den. This looks like the original wall covering. Wonder if there are any notes in the void.

“Have a seat, Tryke. [my art name] Want anything to drink?”

“Nah, I’m fine, Mort. But, thanks anyway.” Damn, this couch is so soft. Feel like I’m going to sink into the floor. Or the next multiverse.

“Not even a cup of oolong tea? It’s a good cut.” A good cut?

“Ok, you sold me,” I acceded. Wonder if it’s synaptically spiked. Would old Mort still do that?

“So, tell me, how has your day been so far?” Mort asked in a decidedly nonchalant manner.

“Well, after finally being allowed to pass through a CMPD [Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department] street-closure roadblock …”

“I noticed that, too,” Mortimer quickly interjected. “Do you know what happened?”

“It seems that a 24-year-old, drunk-as-a-frunken-skunk Latino, one Jesus Lopez, crashed his over-speeding Ford F-150 pickup truck into a brick pillar and power pole near Sudbury [Road] – at 11:45 AM! Dude was already completely sauced before noon. You know what they say: Liquor is quicker.” To jail or the grave.

“Starting early and ending early. Hope no innocents were injured.”

“His buddy got the worst of it,” I informed. “He’s in the hospital, and may not make it. Pacing yourself is the key. I had three pints [1.42 Litres] of porter spread out over three hours at Karl’s pad. It took Kat Da’dy two hours to drink the one that I gave him. He’s not a fan of dark beer, Mort. He kept grimacing as he sipped at it. I could ‘hear’ him thinking: This beer is so damn bitter! When I opened his fridge, I saw that he was a Coors-in-bottles man. Now I know what to bring to the next banquet.” Banquet? Tryke’s such an odd duck.

Mortimer chuckled. “How is Kat Da’dy doing?” That skittish feline in Karl’s bathroom. Maybe it was the tone of my voice. Or my sulfuric breath.

“Pretty good it would seem. No more flirting with female bartenders via dart-flinging. By the way, he said that that incident [at the now-long-gone Pat’s Tavern in NoDa (northeast Charlotte)] was blown way out of proportion; the dull dart was lightly tossed and bounced off her jeans – it was not sticking in Mandy’s left buttock.” What in the world!

Mortimer sighed. “Well, that’s good to know.”

“Anyway, he’s doing knife paintings now.” What?!

“Oh, is he painting droplets of blood on his pocketknife?” Mortimer seemed genuinely confused.

“No, he’s using an X-ACTO® knife as a brush. We traded paintings. I tendered one that had 26 of those craft-store eyes glued to it. [title: The Eyes Have It] He offered up this cool, abstract, diminutive piece titled Allegory in the Cave. On a real-property note, he still has his condo; I lost mine in the crash of ’08. Well, the crash combined with a string of deadbeat, ‘Oh, I’ll have the money for you next week, Mike’ tenants. I’m too much of a softie, Mort; I accepted all excuses, even the one about the dog eating the six C-notes.” [hundred-dollar bills] Wonder where her Fido crapped.

“I could never be a landlord, Tryke.”

“I’ll never be one again,” I replied.

“Well, what did Kat Da’dy have to say?” Mortimer asked as he scratched the left side of his hardly-a-wrinkle tan face.

“We got into this conversation about some artwork hanging above the bar in his kitchen. They were a pair of small, unframed, oil-on-canvas landscape paintings by a local artist named Donald Lee Baldwin, who passed away in 2017 at the age of 61.”

“What was the cause of death?” Mortimer promptly enquired.

“Lung cancer,” I blurted. “Karl said that he smoked like a chimney his whole life. Well, anyway, Karl informs me that Donald went to Garinger High School [in east Charlotte] in the early ‘70s. That would be the same time that the late Dwight Clark attended.”

“Dwight Clark?” Mortimer was drawing a blank.

“The San Francisco 49ers wide receiver who made ‘the catch’ in that [January 10, 1982] NFC Championship Game.”

“Ah, yes. Continue.”

“Donald and Dwight probably ran in different circles, but they must have passed each other in the hallways. Did they fancy the same girl? Were their locker numbers both multiples of four? Did they ever wonder what lay ahead? Just what-if stuff like that.” Multiples of 4?

“You didn’t talk about Gary Weiss [the late Agent 86] living in a heat-less shed in the neighborhood behind Garinger?” Is that where the shed was?

“No, I didn’t mention that this time, Mort. But, you would like this: the golden ratio [1.618] came up. I then mentioned that it’s almost equal to the number of kilometers in a mile [1.609] – an American land mile, that is. And then we wondered what would happen if one mile was reset to equal 1.618 kilometers.” I bet they were both sailing on Sylvester’s serum.

“You mean, would a mile grow longer, or would a kilometer get shorter?” Huh?

“If a statute mile was fixed at 5,280 feet …”

“A kilometer would shrink by about 17½ feet to 3,263 and some change,” the mathematician quickly calculated.

“I don’t think France would like that,” I added and then chuckled.

“Probably not. But, did you guys realize that in such case there would be .618 miles in a kilometer?”

“Oh, really? Wow! No, we didn’t think about that, Mort.”

“Yep, 1.618 and 0.618. Easy to remember, eh?” Is he part Canadian?

“No doubt. Mort, does it bother you that pi is irrational? I mean, why couldn’t it be exactly 22/7?”

“Irrational numbers are a conduit to another realm. The constant e, [the base of the natural logarithm, approximately 2.71828], pi, [approximately 3.14159] and the square root of 2; [approximately 1.41421] are gems.” Spoken like a true mathematician. Wonder how he did in college.

“The Euler identity equation [eiπ + 1 = 0] is something else, is it not?” I posited.

“Old Leonhard was in the zone, as they say, on that day,” Mort stated.

“Indeed he was,” I concurred.

“Well, I think the tea is ready. I’ll be right back.”

While Mortimer was in the kitchen, I glanced at the olive-green walls. There was what appeared to be a filtered outer-space photograph with a faint, three-digit number mysteriously floating between the star clusters. Must ask Mort about this.

“Here’s your extra-spatial tea, Mr. van Tryke,” Mortimer announced as he handed me the white porcelain, gold-rimmed cup and saucer. Let’s not drop this.

“Extra-spatial? You stole that from my playbook, Mort.”

He chuckled. “Oh, do you own that hyphenated word now?” Has he been reading my stories? Should I ask him? Nah, let the mystery live.

Mortimer then sat on a plush, green-padded armchair that looked like it was out of the House of Windsor. That’s quite a knock-off. Looks genuinely regal. Wonder where they scored that.

I took my first sip. “Thanks for the tea. It tastes great. Say, Mort, why is the number 137 on that astral artwork over there?”

“One hundred thirty-seven is the hot number these days,” Mortimer declared.

“Is it prime?” I asked. 1 + 3 + 7 = 11; thus, it’s not a multiple of 3. What is that trick for checking multiples of 7? Damn! I forgot.

“Yes, it’s a prime number; in fact, it’s an Eisenstein prime.” Not Einstein?

“One hundred less is prime, too: 37,” I remarked.

“Correct, but one hundred thirty-seven is also the fine structure constant, which is a big deal to physicists. Some think it may be the quantum number – the ultimate unifying number.”

“Man oh man, this oolong tea is the best I’ve had in some time, Mort. Where did you procure it?” A neuronic [sic] blend?

“At a little Vietnamese grocery store on Central, [Avenue] down in the dip. The Briar Creek or Veterans Branch dip?

“Oh, I think I know the place.” I coughed and cleared my throat. “So, where’s Rose?” [Mortimer’s Hawaiian wife] I asked.

“She’s on a Viking River Cruise, somewhere on the Danube. [River] I believe she said today’s stop is Melk.” [Austria] Melk for the milk?

“She went alone?” I asked, somewhat surprised.

No, she went with a few of her female friends. She’ll be back on Friday, I think.” He thinks?

“Mort, should we start a movement to change a minute to 137 seconds?” What an insane idea. Has he been sniffing glue again? Though, if a week had 137 hours instead of 168 … Hmmm … I’ll have to do the math later. [Each day would be 19 hours, 34 minutes, 17 seconds.]

“Don’t think so, Tryke. People like numbers with many factors – not just itself and one. A prime number would be maddening for most, I think. Plus, I tend to think that most people generally don’t like odd numbers.”

“Probably so. It’s the asymmetry of odd numbers. Most people like to believe that this world is orderly, bilateral, and even-steven.” Who was that Steven? Steven Griffin? Wonder where he is now. So much time scattered from the powder horn.

“Even Steven would agree.” Low-hanging fruit, but he struck it cleanly. Flush with finesse.

“Ballersburg!” I exclaimed. “Good one, Mort.” I then chortled for a few seconds. What a silly loon.

Mortimer just smiled, lost in thought somewhere. I could make it as a comedian if everyone laughed as easily as Tryke does at my japes.

Suddenly, a wall-mounted cuckoo clock went coo-coo. A little wooden bluebird came out of the tunnel above the 12, did a semi-pirouette, and then quickly retreated. It was now 5:30 PM EST.

“That’s quite a clock, Mort. I’ve seen and possessed quite a few cuckoo clocks in my time, but never one where the bird does a 180 [half circle] on the plank. There must be some intricate gearing.”

“It does a whole 360 [full circle] on the hour; one for each hour, and back and forth if it isn’t one o’clock.” 22 out of 24.

“Well, that’s quite a curio there, Mort.” Curio? Who says curio anymore? Tryke’s a curio.

“Speaking of the gearing, I’ve had to repair the darn thing four times now,” Mort divulged. “The issue is just about always in the tiny axial gears. They don’t like to stay in close contact with each other.” Aint that an enduring truth.

“In a 3n + 1 over 2 fashion?” I lobbed onto the mindfield. [sic]

Mortimer chuckled for a few seconds. “Ah, the maddening Collatz conjecture – the hailstone sequence. [of positive integers] Talk about a fool’s errand. Even the most wanderlust-consumed rabbit will eventually return to its hole one would think. Though, what if one number is a never-to-go-subterranean wild hare.” A wild hair on a wild hare.

“Yeah, you never know, Mort. Maybe 137 figures into the mix somewhere on some seldom-traversed strand.” 

“Well, we would have to do some reverse-engineering – some operational backtracking, Tryke. Let’s see … How would one arrive at 137? It would have to be a third of 136, which is 45.33. Thus, it looks like 137 escapes [Stanislaw] Ulam’s net.”

“Could a higher string of whole numbers descend to 137, Mort?” Oh, yes; even if no number could ascend to 137, some number sequence might drop to it. Ah, my brain is so old now. Ancient. Fossilized.

“Maybe so, Tryke, but that immediate number would have to be 274. But then, the question is: How did we arrive at 274? I don’t think we have that long.” I know I don’t.

“But, couldn’t we just arbitrarily start at 137, Mort?” Eureka!

“Ok, sure. My neural circuits just aint what they were, Tryke.”

“Hey, mine aren’t either.”

Mortimer now had a small calculator in his left hand. “Let’s see … We start at 137. It’s odd, so we multiply by 3 to get 411, and then we add 1 to get 412, which is even, so we divide by 2 to get 206, which we divide in half again to get 103, which we then triple to get 309. We add 1 to arrive at 310. It’s even, so we divide by 2 to get 155, which we multiply by 3 to get 465. We then add 1 to land on 466. Half it, and we’re at 233, and then triple it to get 699. We tack on 1 to arise at an even 700. Then back down we go to 350, and then down to 175. Then up to 526. Then down to 263. Then up to 790. And back down to 395. Then up to four-digit land for the first time at 1,186. Whew. Our lofty hailstone sure is getting some lift; it may bounce around for quite a while in the troposphere. So, how much time do you have, Tryke?” Too much and not enough.

“That’s good enough. Mort. Let’s just call it a draw.”

“More of an incomplete.”

I then glanced over at the couch. There was a two-foot-long (.6096 meters in length) paper airplane resting on a brown aviator jacket. “Nice airplane, Mort. Looks like it could soar a country mile.” Is a country mile 1.618% longer than an urban mile?

“Tryke, are you familiar with the disc golf course in Kilborne Park?” Mort asked as he picked up the surprisingly rigid newsprint plane. Mort must have treated the paper with some kind of hardener. Spray starch? Oh, wow! There’s a spring-loaded, perfectly petite nose cone. Guess that it takes the collision shock and prevents crumpling.

“Yes, my friends and I played it many times, mostly during the decade between 1993 and 2003.” R-I-P Peck. [Agent 107]

“You remember the 4th hole? [Length: 375’ (114 meters)] It was a dogleg left.”

“Yeah, vaguely. I think 3 was my best-ever score on that one.” 

“Its tee – runway in my case – is very near the Falmouth [Road] footpath entrance. I play that ‘hole’ sometimes with this paper airplane. I have never come close to acing it as I don’t have the arm strength, but I once landed it in the basket in just four tosses. An eastern breeze got the assist.” Wonder how fast the wind was blowing on that day. 61.8 km/h? [38.4 MPH]

“Very impressive, Mort.”

<chirp> A new text message on my cell phone from Monique (aka Agent 32).

Dinner is almost ready, my dear kano. [Filipino slang for American]

 “Well, that’s my whistle, Mort. It’s been delightfully informative as always. Got to get back to the wife. Here’s to a longer life.”

“Tryke, do you know what Mort means in French?” [Mort means death in French.] More, more, more …

“With a silent t, right?” Silent tea.

He solemnly nodded. Does he have something terminal?

I opened the front door and said goodbye. For a final time?

Scratched on the front rim of galvanized steel basket no. 4:

137

<chirp> Another text message.

Bana, [husband in Cebuano] where are you?