The Last Equation of Isaac Severy
Nova Jacobs
For Jeremy
An intelligence that, at a given instant, could comprehend all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective situation of the beings that make it up, if moreover it were vast enough to submit these data to analysis . . . For such an intelligence, nothing would be uncertain, and the future, like the past, would be open to its eyes.
—PIERRE-SIMON LAPLACE,
A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY ON PROBABILITIES, 1814
Prologue
On the morning he was to die, the old man woke early and set about making breakfast. He put eggs to boil, bread to toast, tea to steep, and as he did so, felt he understood why prisoners on death row request such commonplace meals on the eves of their executions. They didn’t crave elaborate spreads of coq au vin, foie gras, octopus salad, oysters on ice. These poor souls longed for burgers, fried chicken, pizza, ice cream. Whenever he would come across reports of these ill-fated last suppers, it was the childlike ones that got to him most: the strawberry shortcake eaten by Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy before his lethal injection; or that kid in Texas, Jeffrey Allen Barney, who said he was very sorry for what he had done to that woman, and asked only for a carton of milk and two boxes of Frosted Flakes.
The old man, too, had simple tastes. Though he was by nearly all standards a man of culture, his culinary preferences were aggressively ordinary. He had enjoyed a variation on the same breakfast for as long as he could remember. Why stop now that someone was coming for him?
He did, however, prepare two of everything, arranging twin cups and saucers, and two egg spoons on the breakfast tray. Animals escaping the flood, he thought, as he placed two brown, soft-boiled eggs side by side. He had always been a generous host, and he would be one to the last. Besides, it was early, and his visitor would no doubt be hungry. And how about some music to make the proceedings more pleasant? He selected a well-loved classical CD and pressed play on the living room stereo.
Sunrise was still an hour away when, with only ambient light from the kitchen to guide him, he carried the tray to his usual spot at the far end of the yard. A café table sat ready with two chairs beside a Jacuzzi platform. He arranged the sets of plates, napkins, and cutlery, and took a seat on the side of the table facing the yard, his back to the fence. He poured Earl Grey from a pot into one of the teacups and glanced at his watch. The phosphorescent face read 5:35. He still had time to escape, to get in his old Cadillac and drive somewhere far from here, but he was done being afraid. He was ready to die. All he had to do now was wait.
PART 1
* * *
–?1?–
The Merchant
The Resurrection Cemetery sounded to Hazel Severy more like a threat than a place of peace and final repose, but as far as she could tell, it was shaping up to be a lovely service. Her grandfather’s casket, draped in white roses and gold embroidery, positively glowed in the Southern California sun. If there had been any doubts that Isaac Severy, a Catholic suicide, would receive a proper send-off with the full regalia, those doubts were now dispelled.
From her seat among the chairs arranged on the vast mortuary lawn, Hazel glanced around at mourners’ faces both familiar and strange. Her hand went to the pocket of her dress trousers, into which she had slipped an unopened envelope not an hour before. It had arrived that morning inside an overnight FedEx packet mailed from her store. Assuming it was a bill or some other piece of bad news, Hazel had groaned when she saw the package with her name sitting on her brother’s breakfast table. But when she tore open the sleeve, she found a small blue envelope with a sticky note from her sole employee:
This came for you the day you left.—Chet
It wasn’t a bill or an eviction notice. It was a letter from her grandfather; more precisely, her adoptive grandfather, the man whose body now lay in that attractive walnut box. The envelope was one of those candy-striped airmail types, a nostalgic indulgence of his. Isaac’s name appeared nowhere on the envelope, but the address of her Seattle bookstore was written in his shaky hand. The postmark read October 16. On October 17, he would be dead.
She stared at the winged “Par Avion,” at a stamp featuring a sunflower, and felt increasingly light-headed. It was too much to take in, this unexpected missive from the dead, so she slipped it into her pocket unopened. In fact, she thought she might let the reading of it forever remain a future possibility. As long as the envelope was sealed, she would have one last communication waiting from Isaac.
She had brought the letter with her to the funeral as an odd sort of comfort, but as she sat in the unusually blistering October sun, watching her grandfather’s casket warp and buckle behind her own tears, she pushed a corner of the envelope deep under a fingernail until it stung.
The call had come a week ago. She had been pacing her Pioneer Square bookstore, hatching a desperate scheme to abandon her life, one that involved either disappearing into a country of exotic coordinates or landing in debtor’s prison. She loved Seattle, and she loved her store—in a mostly unstable life, books had been the only reliable refuge she had known—but she now owed a figure so large she was certain there must be a corresponding digital ticker somewhere, climbing upward daily like the national debt.
The bleat of her store phone had interrupted her thoughts. She picked up the receiver, mustering her usual bright greeting, “The Guttersnipe, can I help you find a book?” After a pause, the halting voice of her brother, Gregory, told her that their beloved Isaac had been found dead in his backyard. By his own hand. The housekeeper had chanced upon him that morning in his Jacuzzi, a set of live Christmas lights coiled in the water with him, one of its bulbs crushed.