Chapter 11
Precisely at eleven-fifteen that morning, Arnold’s little Lexus SUV pulled into the academy’s forecourt. When Colin opened the passenger door, his adviser greeted him with, “You’ve cost me nine holes of golf. You owe me big-time.”
But the man’s cheerfulness was in direct contrast to his words. That was one of the things that had endeared him to Colin. How he was both open and honest with his emotions.
Colin watched the sunlight and the cars and the buildings along the highway.
He had traveled this same road any number of times.
Only today was different. He was entering a new phase.
One defined by liberties he had never known before.
It was like he had grown a new set of eyes, one that saw the world in a completely different manner.
“Not like my old buddy Colin,” Arnold said.
He was dressed in Saturday casual, yellow knit shirt and khakis and loafers.
“The man here can go hours without speaking a word. You’d better not do the silent thing with the dean.
Or the professor. You open that big mouth of yours and you make sounds.
It’s called talking. You should try it more often.
” He lifted one tanned arm from the wheel and waved a fist in the air between them.
“You go quiet on the dean, I’ll make you caddy for me every weekend until you turn thirty. ”
Colin felt a burning urge to tell him what he had planned.
He had shared everything else of importance with Arnold.
Through six long years, Arnold had been the person Colin had trusted with his life.
Celeste remained there in the distance, a strong presence hovering just beyond the academy’s reach.
The two of them had taught him so much, starting with what it meant to trust. And here he was, repaying their gifts with lies.
Arnold glanced over and instantly lost his smile. “What’s wrong?”
Colin swallowed hard, forcing down all the words he dared not speak. “Do you remember the first time we met?”
“Of course I remember. With Celeste ready to beat me to a pulp if I misbehaved. How could I forget.” Another glance. “Why does that make you sad?”
“I never thanked you. I wish I knew the right way to say that. How much …”
Arnold’s gaze softened to a pair of dark wells. He reached over and ruffled Colin’s hair. “You’re my guy. And you always will be.”
Colin took a long breath, easing himself away from the guilt and the sorrow. “I’ve met some nice people at the club. A family. Their daughter teaches my swim class. They want me to come to dinner tonight.”
Arnold’s laugh carried an easy, weekend languor. “So I guess I’m not the only one charmed by your silent ways.”
They didn’t speak again until they entered the vast parking lot adjacent to the Mayfaire Plaza.
Arnold pulled up next to a small square building across from the shopping center and led Colin into the bank.
Colin tried to mimic Arnold’s calm attitude, taking things in stride.
But he had never been in a bank before. The entire episode was thrilling.
Signing the account card, accepting his book of blank checks, then the teller handing him a hundred dollars inside a little envelope stamped with the bank’s logo.
“Your debit card should arrive within a week.”
He waited until they were back in the car and circling around to the shopping center’s far side to ask, “I have a thousand dollars?”
“Counting the hundred in your pocket. I know, it’s crazy. I told them they were nuts, trusting you with that much money.” Arnold’s grin was infectious. “But would they listen to me, your adviser? No, they would not.”
As they crossed the vast parking lot, Colin felt it all begin to release him from the chains of childhood. “Wow.”
“Don’t go running off to Tijuana.”
“I won’t.”
“There is no way I’m going to chase you south of the border.”
“I’m not running anywhere.” As they approached the open-air shopping center he asked, “Will I ever get to meet her?”
“Who?”
“The CEO. My sponsor.”
“Probably not. Your benefactor is a very private person. There’s the lady who runs a major corporation, and there’s the lady who lives a very private life. All this time, I’ve never even spoken with her.”
“How did you get this money?”
“Simple. After you met with Sandrine and me, followed by an hour of listening to the fearsome Fitzgerald moan, I called the woman’s attorney.
You saw him at that first hearing. I said, ‘There’s this guy, you might remember him from six years ago.
He’s a little nuts, but other than that not a bad egg.
’ And the lawyer said, ‘I’ll get back to you.
’ An hour later, he calls back with the cash. ”
Colin followed him across the lot. “I’d like to thank her.”
“Write her a letter. I’ll give it to the attorney.”
“Will she get it?”
Arnold reached for the door. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
First stop was a barbershop, where the people treated Colin in the same manner they showed Arnold in the next chair.
He took careful note of how Arnold spoke, telling them it was Colin’s big day, he needed to look respectful, and heard the man standing behind Colin’s chair reply that respect was big on their list of styles.
The barber’s hands smelled of nothing. Incredibly beautiful music played in the background.
Midway through the cut, Colin asked about what he was hearing.
The man was grey-haired and small and very fit looking. “That’s Benny Goodman. You never heard of the great man?”
“He’s wonderful.”
“Wonderful is the right word. You and I are going to get along just fine.” The barber spent the rest of the trim on a running commentary of the clarinetist and his orchestra.
His work with Gene Krupa. The famous 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall.
When the melody “Sing, Sing, Sing” came on, the barber revealed an amazing tenor, humming the melody and then switching to a harmonic second.
All the other barbers were smiling by the time he whipped the cloth from around Colin’s neck.
He even brushed him down to the song’s tempo.
Colin stepped from the chair and said, “That was the best haircut of my entire life.”
The barber offered him a hand. “Little man, you come back here any time you like. We’ve got a whole world of music to explore, you and me.”
As Arnold led him from the shop, he said, “The kid makes friends everywhere he goes.”
They stopped in the food court for lunch, then headed into Next.
Arnold insisted he buy multiples of shirts, trousers, shorts, underwear, socks.
New sneakers, dark brown loafers, canvas-and-leather belt, gym shorts, and Next T-shirts.
When Colin protested he would soon grow out of everything, Arnold waved it away.
“That’s the fuming Fitzgerald talking. She’s not here.
Hurry up and choose. I’m bored out of my mind.
” He stared over the racks, seeking the exit. “I forgot how much I hate shopping.”
But Colin loved every minute of it. Each choice was another fragment of liberty set into this new definition of his life.
The fabric felt exquisite against his skin and fit better than anything he had ever owned.
And every moment was spiced by the music that still bounced around in his head.
Jazz. He loved the mathematical precision of how the instruments fit together. Flying high, but always in control.
After Next they entered Circuit City, where Arnold bought him a phone with a thousand minutes and a Dell laptop.
It was a modest system with an AMD processor, a thirteen-inch screen, and not enough memory.
Not great, but great just the same. Everything went on Arnold’s card, the clothes and lunch and haircuts and phone.
The hundred dollars made a reassuring lump in Colin’s front pocket.
Not having to spend his own money made the day sweeter still.
As they left the shop, Arnold told him, “Load your phone and get comfortable using it. Take it with you everywhere. There’s no traveling around Wilmington without a lifeline. ”
He left the mall dressed in one set of his new clothes, and carrying so many bags they bumped against his legs with every step. Arnold carried more than he did, including a new backpack. Another first.
When they returned to Highway 74, Arnold reached for the radio and said, “You want music?”
“Jazz.”
“A man after my own heart. Jazz it is.” He hit the second button. “And away we go.”
The UNC Wilmington admission dean’s office was in Kenan Hall.
Arnold pulled into a visitor’s slot and led him up the front stairs, through the main entrance, down a long hall.
“I taught here while I did my graduate work at Chapel Hill. Back before the last ice age. It’s a great place, and getting better.
Wilmington started off as a training school for local companies requiring skilled workers.
It’s grown into a very solid university, and the graduate programs are coming up by leaps and bounds.
” Arnold looked down at him, seemed to find what he sought.
“They need a star on the rise. You may just fit that bill.”
Colin had no idea what he meant, but liked the feeling it gave him.
They entered the dean’s office together.
Arnold positioned his chair slightly behind Colin’s, a reassuring presence who was not entirely connected to the meeting but there just the same.
Dean Sykes was a pleasant enough woman, precisely trimmed silver hair, sweater and skirt of a pearlescent grey, gold watch, keen arctic gaze.
She spoke softly, asked a number of questions, but Colin had the impression it was all perfunctory.
As if the decisions had all been made long before he arrived.
She took no notes. Twenty minutes later it was over.
As he stood, the dean said, “You are far from the first young person to study here. Your age is a curiosity, nothing more. You must show yourself to be worthy of this opportunity. In your studies and in your behavior. Do I make myself clear?”
His meeting with the professor responsible for the UNCW Department of Mathematics and Statistics was something else entirely.
For one thing, Arnold seated himself on a bench that faced onto Lions Gate Drive. “Your meeting is with Professor Fremdt. Room 202.”
“You’re not coming?”
“The dean is one thing. You’ll be meeting this man every week. You need to start like it will continue.” Arnold stretched out his legs and turned his face to the sun, catlike in his relaxed state. “You’ll be fine.”
A Sunday torpor had settled upon the building. Even so, Colin felt eyes on him, heard comments trailing along behind. He tried to tell himself that it was simply more of the same, only coming from older students.
Fremdt was a big man who exuded a restless, almost fierce energy. His office was large enough to hold a long table with a dozen chairs slid around so as to all face the blackboard covering the side wall. Fremdt watched him enter and barked, “Eames, right?”
“Yes, Professor.”
Fremdt had a round face made even bigger by a shock of unruly dark hair, beard, and black oversized glasses.
He spoke with a distinct accent, but clipped off each word, as if he had spent years making sure his students understood him clearly.
“So. This academy, I have heard of it. Every student is gifted, no?”
Colin found himself thinking of the attractive daughter of the major benefactor. “Some are. Others definitely not so much.”
“Who teaches you the math there? Is it Braxos? I know him. Not a bad brain. Not so gifted, though. He teaches you what?” Fremdt directed that last question at the paper he took from a file on his desk.
“So. Advanced algebra. Good, good, maybe you can come teach my first years how to count. Limits, binomial theorem, complex numbers, integrals, you cover all this, yes?”
“I’ve been going a lot further on my own.”
Fremdt flipped to the file’s next page, ignoring the sheets that fell onto the floor. “Nothing is said of this.”
“I didn’t tell him. I haven’t told anyone.”
Fremdt shifted his head up, down, to the left, as if trying to fit Colin into his field of vision. “And why is this?”
“Last year I showed him an equation I didn’t understand. It made him mad.”
“What was this equation?”
“Using algorithms to calculate statistical trends.”
“Yes, I can see Braxos now. Not liking how an almost child is showing what he doesn’t know. And now? Where has this secret brain of yours taken you?”
“Linear and nonlinear differential equations.”
Fremdt fumbled for the chair behind his desk, seated himself while watching Colin. “The equation on the board there to your left. Do you know what it is?”
“Yes.”
“So swift he answers. All right, my young brain. Speak. The professor listens.”
“It shows limits and continuity in a multivariable equation.” Fremdt had become very still, like the energy inside was being compressed further and further.
Tight and powerful, but not dangerous. Colin decided he liked this man.
“There are scalar functions of two variables with points in their domain that give different limits when approached along different paths.”
He nodded. Once. An almost violent up-and-down motion. “You read this, yes? Which book?”
“John Hubbard. Vector Calculus.”
“An old work. Not up to date on many things.”
“It’s all the school had in its library.”
“And what are the variable limits?”
“Approaching zero through y equals kx. But with the origin approached along the parabola, the function value has a limit of plus or minus point five.”
Another birdlike adjustment of his head’s position, then, “There on the shelf to your right. Shifrin’s book, Multivariable Mathematics.
Yes, that one. You take and you read. Term starts next week.
Advanced calculus meets Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, eight o’clock.
All the students who are asleep when they arrive, I wake them up fast. Be on time.
” He waved at the door, almost punching the air with his stubby fingers.
“Now go. I must grade papers of these ones still learning how to count.”