“Now you’re calling me names?” said Caddie. “I have to tell you, neoprene suit or not, you’re not doing so well here.”

“Okay,” Brian said. “Let me start over. Would you be interested in getting something to eat and seeing a movie?”

“With you?” asked Caddie.

“With me,” Brian said.

Caddie bit her lip, thinking. Brian watched her, obviously nervous. It was sweet, she thought. And he was cute.

“Okay,” she said. “But you’d better take me somewhere nice.”

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 14

“Have you found the Holy Grail yet?”

Hearing Marty’s voice on the phone, Hudson laughed. “Give me a few more days,” he replied. “Those Knights Templar were clever boys, you know. They hid it pretty well.”

Marty chuckled. “So, how’s Monterey?”

“Interesting,” Hudson told his friend. “It feels strange being here. I’ve just sort of been walking around, taking it all in.”

“Talking to ghosts,” Marty remarked.

“Something like that,” said Hudson. He appreciated that Marty understood. It was difficult to explain his feelings to people who weren’t from the academic world, who had never lived through the singularly lonely and paranoiac experience that was chasing a theory. He liked that he could shorthand his feelings and that Marty would know what he meant.

“How long do you think it will take?” Marty continued.

Hudson sighed. “About ten minutes if I find out I’m wrong,” he said. “But if I’m right, it could be awhile.”

“Well, take your time,” said Marty. “It’s nice having the place to myself.”

Hudson knew he was teasing. Marty hated living alone; whenever Hudson went away for any length of time, he almost immediately reverted to a state of near squalor. Laundry went undone, piling up on the floor around Marty’s bed. Dishes, when he didn’t simply eat straight out of cans, sat unwashed in precarious piles. Showering became a biweekly event.

“Have you turned into Mr. Severin yet?” asked Hudson, a reference to a professor of Marty’s who, failing to turn up for class following one three-week winter break, had been discovered dead in his office at home, surrounded by years-old stacks of mathematics journals and drifts of accumulated filth, his toes half eaten by his three starving cats.

“Not so far,” Marty answered. “But it will be your fault if I do. You shouldn’t have left me.”

“You poor thing,” Hudson teased. “I’m sure you can find some comely undergraduate who needs help with his calculus to take care of you.”

“Speaking of which,” said Marty, “how’s the man action there?”

“One gay bar,” Hudson informed him. “And I understand it’s mainly filled with pool-playing dykes. My sexual drought seems destined to continue unabated.”

Marty feigned a sigh of sympathy, to which Hudson said, “I know you feel my pain.” This was followed by the sound of beeping.

“I’ve got to go,” said Marty. “That’s my dinner.”