Decoded, Avery’s message boils down to this: An impressionist is fucking up our data out of some romantic notion that by doing so, they are helping to foment a revolution—when really all they’re doing is screwing up our count and jeopardizing our jobs. So keep your eyes peeled for typicals who seem to be up to no good, and let’s get the fucker out.
* * *
6.28 months ago, or approximately three weeks before M started dating Marc, I was working in my cubicle when she rose up over our shared partition slowly, her eyes appearing first and then the rest of her face. Her eyes, when those were all I could see, looked like the eyes of a golden cat. As I was staring, transfixed, her whole head bobbed up and she said, “Peekaboo,” and began to laugh, and I laughed, too, and the fact that I was laughing made her laugh more and the fact that she was laughing made me laugh more, and I strove to calculate the exponential effect of mutual laughter because I felt like I was drowning, and a little illustrative math would have grounded me. But our laughter was too much to illustrate. That was the beginning.
M’s boyfriend, Marc, is a typical—a misleading term because, among counters, typicals are atypical and always a minority. At times I’m cheered by the thought that M can’t possibly have as much in common with Marc as she does with me. On the other hand, my parents and sister are typicals, and not only do I love them, but I specifically love the fact that they are typicals! Last month, when I hiked with my sister to a waterfall and we sat side by side on some rocks, I liked knowing that Alison was thinking something as simple as “how beautiful,” rather than trying to calculate the density, speed, distance to the rocks below, and the volume of water falling. But the glow of appreciation that I felt for my sister swerved into torment at the thought that the same glow of appreciation must be what M feels for Marc! She must think, It’s easy and relaxing to be with Marc. She must think, Being with Marc reminds me that there are other ways of seeing the world. She must think, When Marc looks at me, I know that he’s thinking I’m beautiful, rather than trying to count the secondary freckles on my nose.
This succession of thoughts so distressed me that I had to lie down beside the waterfall and curl in a ball.
That was when Alison made the list of my assets.
* * *
Later on the same day that began with our unscheduled Unit Meeting with Avery, I see M eating lunch by herself in the Rock Garden. Normally, she eats her lunch with Marc—in fact, eating lunch together is how their relationship began—so M’s presence alone in the Rock Garden is a rare opportunity for me.
I stare at M through the window in a state of extreme anxiety about how to proceed. If I approach her, there is a 100 percent likelihood that I’ll have to initiate conversation, and of course a significant possibility that this conversation will not be spontaneous or interesting—especially since nervousness, a certainty for me in M’s presence, will diminish by at least 50 percent my ability to speak naturally. But my dad has always said, “Doing anything really interesting requires a leap,” meaning that boldness, by definition, flouts the math that precedes it. And because Dad is a mathematically inclined typical and a “political junkie” deeply involved in the metrics of our cousin Miles Hollander’s bid for state senator, I take his analysis seriously.
The small stones I cross toward M are roughly 35 percent sharp-edged gray shale striated with white and another 25 percent rounded clayish stones. The remaining 40 percent are my favorite: dense, smooth black stones that soak up the sun’s heat. The large furniture-like rocks appear to have solidified from a liquid state just moments before and are said to be meteorites. M is leaning against the largest one, looking up at a sky that is roughly one third fast-moving clouds and two thirds desert blue.
“Hi,” I say.
“Hi,” M says.
Having employed retroactive math on a multitude of my past interactions, I’ve arrived at a predictive formula that has proved infallible so far: If a two-person conversation remains awkward for eight lines of speech—four lines each, not counting salutations—it has an 80 percent chance of remaining awkward, whereas if a conversation becomes natural within those first eight lines of speech, it is likely to remain so, and—surprisingly—to leave an impression of naturalness despite up to ten additional awkward lines! The trouble with this predictive math is that conversation becomes harder to generate when you’re feeling pressured and nervous, and the threat of an irrevocably awkward conversation with a girl you’re in love with is stressful, especially since escaping the conversation will require that you walk away across fifty feet of stones, thereby granting her a prolonged opportunity （while watching your receding back） to reflect on how dumb it is that you crossed the entire Rock Garden to talk to her when you had nothing to say, how you obviously have a crush on her, how this is a shame because while she has enjoyed sharing a partition with you, she doesn’t feel that way about you; how she might have, 6.28 months ago when she rose up over the partition and said “Peekaboo” and you both laughed so unbelievably hard, but after that you acted weird and distant and then Marc came along and she loves him now, and even if, say, 13 percent of her thoughts, as she watches your receding back, involve the fact that you’re in excellent physical shape, in the winner-take-all system that is operative in the choice of a monogamous romantic partner, that 13 percent will wind up being statistically irrelevant.