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The great Kurt Gödel, a twentieth-century logician and friend of Albert Einstein, believed that a continuous trajectory of “light cones” toward the future meant that one could always return to the same point in space-time. It is Aldo Damiani’s essential thesis that these cones travel methodically, perhaps even predictably, along hexagonal paths.
The problem and the thrill of abstract algebra was that Aldo had been studying it in depth for over seven years, and he could study it for seven million more and still understand almost nothing. He could spend infinite lifetimes studying the mathematical basis of the universe and the universe would still not make sense.
Masso asked the universe how much salt to boil in the water, or whether this vine or that one would provide the sweetest fruit. He knew when the pasta was done without looking, probably because of the universe. Masso had the gift of certainty and did not require any superstition.
except maybe her mother, who considered the top of a liberal arts program to be the equivalent of being, say, the winner of a dog show.
“Jackson Pollock was highly influenced by Navajo sand painting,” Regan said, her own gaze still affixed to the painting. “With sand,” she explained, “the process is just as important as the finished product; in fact, more so. Sand can blow away at any moment. It can disappear in a matter of hours, minutes, seconds, so the process is about the moment of catharsis. The reverence is in making art—in being part of its creation, but then leaving it open to destruction. What Native Americans did with sand, Jackson Pollock did with paint, which is perhaps an empty rendition of it. In fact, he never
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The art is always different up close, isn’t it? she thought about saying, but didn’t. Now that he knew she was a bitch, he wouldn’t bother pretending to listen.
Look how warped the medieval works are, she wanted to say, because there’s no perspective; because once upon a time, men looked at the world, took in all its beauty, and still only saw it flat. Not much has changed, Regan thought to assure the girl. They see you closer than you are, but you’re further from reach than either you or they can imagine.
Buzz. Bees. The honeybee’s wings flapped 11,400 times per minute, which was what created the buzzing sound.
He had a number of favorite places within the hive of the city, and typically bounded around between them.
11,400 beats per minute was really something. He closed his eyes and let his mind wander, settling into the buzz of his thoughts.
Eventually she’d space hours between, making a point to direct her thoughts elsewhere. If others were forced to wait for her time, she thought, then she would not have to owe so much of herself to them. Now, Regan is so very talented at being completely unreliable that people have started to call it a weakness. She takes some pride in their misconceptions; it means people can always be fooled.
If they tired of each other, they simply didn’t speak. They were good at occupying each other’s spaces. She often thought of him as an accessory that matched with everything; some sort of magical mood ring that adapted to whatever persona she had currently filled.
Eventually she would marry him, and then everything she was would vanish into his name. She’d attend parties as Mrs. Marcus Waite, and no one would ever have to know a thing about her. She could shrug him on like some kind of cloak of invisibility and vanish entirely from sight.
She was the center of attention when she wished to be, quick-witted and charming and impeccably dressed, but those types of girls grew dull when there were no eccentricities or blemishes. The world loved to take a beautiful woman and exclaim at the charm of her single imperfection; Marilyn Monroe’s mole, or Audrey Hepburn’s malnutrition.
They always got along, because getting along required the least of their energy. Marc would consider a fight to be a poor use of his time. He liked to smile at Regan when she argued, preferring to let her tire herself out.
Regan’s phone had contained two voicemails: one from her psychiatrist asking if she could come to her session an hour earlier (she hadn’t received it and had come at her usually scheduled time, it was fine, nobody died), and one from her sister, earlier that evening.
and a velvet dress whose washing instructions demanded dry cleaning; not simply “dry clean,” which was the best method, but “dry clean only,” which was the exclusive method, and which was a distinction that Madeline Easton, née Regan, would know.
In Regan’s opinion, marriage was very easy to do if you simply operated in totally separate spheres. If she were to chart her parents as a Venn diagram, the only three things in the center would be money, Madeline’s achievements, and what should be done about Regan.
Her parents hated him, but not in a fun way, and certainly not from a place of concern.
Taken too late at night, her dreams were so vivid she woke without any concept of where she was. She usually grimaced at the bottle before finally conceding to open it, placing the pills on her tongue and swallowing with a gulp of flat champagne.
THE NARRATOR: Regan believes there are two ways to manipulate a man: either to let him pursue you or to let him pursue you in a way that makes him feel he’s the pursuit. Marc is the latter, and he loves her the same way she loves art, which Regan considers a pleasing form of irony. Because even when you know everything about how a piece is made, you’re still only seeing the surface.
The armory contained red walls, unlike the neutral tones of the other rooms, and featured a bodiless knight in the center, frozen in time as Regan and everything else continued around it.
When you learn a new word, you suddenly see it everywhere. The mind comforts itself by believing this to be coincidence but it isn’t—it’s ignorance falling away. Your future self will always see what your present self is blind to. This is the problem with mortality, which is in fact a problem of time.
“Because I like it here,” he repeated. “I can think in here.” “It gets crowded,” she pointed out. “Noisy.” “Yes, but it’s the right kind of noise.”
“Bye,” said his mouth,
She found it interesting, which was certainly the highest praise she could offer anyone.
Curiosity was unspeakably worse and far more addicting than sexual attraction.
Not that he spared much consideration for the imprecision of statistics (truly, the con artist of math) but as a matter of probability, it wasn’t inconceivable their paths might cross a second time. They’d already established that their lives intersected in at least one place: the art museum.
“I was wondering when you were going to turn up again,” Regan said. She had tucked her hair neatly behind one ear, angling herself toward him as he approached her. She had a way of doing that, Aldo thought; of inviting him into the geography of the conversation. He wondered how quickly in life she had learned that people wanted to be invited in.
“Excuse me,” interrupted someone on his left, “is this the area for the Impressionism tour?” “Yes,” Regan and Aldo said in unison. Regan gave him a silencing look.
Eventually, they transition to feeding the larvae nectar. But if they choose to feed one of the larvae more of the bee proteins, it eventually becomes the queen. It develops more,” he explained, “and can make more worker bees.” “So who chooses the queen?” “The hive. The worker bees. They usually do it when the current queen dies, or if she seems to be getting weaker.” “So they choose the next queen,” Regan said, and then corrected herself. “No—they make her?”
You gave yourself an impossible problem so you’d never be able to stop thinking about it.
The thing about women and clothes was, in Regan’s mind, that nothing was ever a permanent expression; it wasn’t any sort of commitment to being this type of girl or that one, but purely today, I am. It was just whichever version of herself she wanted to project for the time being.
The relief of Catholicism was that very little ever changed—geographically, temporally, or otherwise.
very On Brand, papally speaking. Bronze cathedral doors boasted a tree of life; from afar, a suspended crucifix sobered the brazenness of luxury.
Churches were their own kinds of museums—with their devotion to ritual, at least, if not to God—and to exist inside of one was to dwarf oneself with inequity.
She understood the compulsion to seek out more space. To lessen to a speck of nothingness.
She’d noticed he had a different set of expressions for thinking and for routine, and this one came with a notable blankness.
She reached out, tentatively, and every inch of him went still. He was skittish, she realized, half-charmed, and she considered retracting her hand, only she’d never been the ease-in sort of person.
They were touching from hip to knee, a straight line of joint conjecture.
She wondered how often he let other people in, considering for a moment that perhaps she was not the first, but then she dismissed it nearly as quickly. She knew, after all, which of his motions looked practiced and which of them did not. He wasn’t accustomed to someone being this close to him. This was visibly unrehearsed.
Shuffling out once the priest had gone was the most mundanely halted process. Regan felt mortal again; sapped of reverence, drained of any magnitude.
The lack of four doors and a steel frame around her altered her perception of her environment, freeing a new-old restlessness the further it and she began to blend.
Her feet hit the pavement with disappointment, bemoaning the indignity of being made to walk.
(was anything more needlessly palatial than a diner?)
The act of choosing it felt luxurious, extravagant in a reassuring way, and Regan slid down in the booth with satisfaction, her knee bumping into Aldo’s. “Good?” he asked. “Divine,” she said, leaning her head against the booth’s vinyl cushion as she slouched down in a state of limp-limbed ecstasy, both legs fully outstretched.
He let her in, holding the door open for her, and she crept in quietly, carefully, as if she might disturb something. Don’t worry, you’ll fit perfectly, he thought. Don’t worry, there’s nothing here for you to break.
She was constantly in the midst of an underpainting, imagining things as they could be before steadily making them true.
He’d once asked his father what it had felt like to meet his mother. “Like jumping off a cliff,” Masso had said, and not in a way that invited further questioning.
“I think,” he said, “that the inside of your head must require a specific set of keys.” “A whole set of them?” “Oh, almost definitely,” he replied. “I think that, for someone to get close to you, you must have to give them one key at a time. And even then, only one level can be opened at once.”
