John Verdon: Think of a Number

“Ask him to come out here,” he said. “It’s too nice to be indoors.”

“It is, isn’t it?” she said, making the comment sound both poignant and ironic. “By the way, he looks exactly like his picture on the book jacket-even more so.”

“Even more so? What’s that supposed to mean?”

She was already returning to the house and did not answer.

Mark Mellery took long strides through the soft grass. He approached Gurney as if planning to embrace him, but something made him reconsider.

“Davey!” he cried, extending his hand.

Davey? wondered Gurney.

“My God!” Mellery went on. “You look the same! God, it’s good to see you! Great to see you looking the way you do! Davey Gurney! Back at Fordham they used to say you looked like Robert Redford in All the President’s Men . Still do-haven’t changed a bit! If I didn’t know you were forty-seven like me, I’d say you were thirty!”

He clasped Gurney’s hand with both of his as though it were a precious object. “Driving over today, from Peony to Walnut Crossing, I was remembering how calm and collected you always were. An emotional oasis-that’s what you were, an emotional oasis! And you still have that look. Davey Gurney-calm, cool, and collected-plus the sharpest mind in town. How have you been?”

“I’ve been fortunate,” said Gurney, extricating his hand and speaking in a voice as devoid of excitement as Mellery’s was full of it. “I have no complaints.”

“Fortunate…” Mellery enunciated the syllables as if trying to recall the meaning of a foreign word. “It’s a nice place you have here. Very nice.”

“Madeleine has a good eye for these things. Shall we have a seat?” Gurney motioned toward a pair of weathered Adirondack chairs facing each other between the apple tree and a birdbath.

Mellery started in the direction indicated, then stopped. “I had something…”

“Could this be it?” Madeleine was walking toward them from the house, holding in front of her an elegant briefcase. Understated and expensive, it was like everything else in Mellery’s appearance-from the handmade (but comfortably broken in and not too highly polished) English shoes to the beautifully tailored (but gently rumpled) cashmere sport jacket-a look seemingly calculated to say that here stood a man who knew how to use money without letting money use him, a man who had achieved success without worshipping it, a man to whom good fortune came naturally. A harried look about his eyes, however, conveyed a different message.

“Ah, yes, thank you,” said Mellery, accepting the briefcase from Madeleine with obvious relief. “But where…?”

“You laid it on the coffee table.”

“Yes, of course. My brain is kind of scattered today. Thank you!”

“Would you like something to drink?”

“Drink?”

“We have some iced tea already made. Or, if you’d prefer something else…?”

“No, no, iced tea would be fine. Thank you.”

As Gurney observed his old classmate, it suddenly occurred to him what Madeleine had meant when she said that Mellery looked exactly like his book jacket photograph, “only more so.”

The quality most evident in the photograph was a kind of informal perfection-the illusion of a casual, amateur snapshot without the unflattering shadows or awkward composition of an actual amateur snapshot. It was exactly that sense of carefully crafted carelessness-the ego-driven desire to appear ego-free-that Mellery exemplified in person. As usual, Madeleine’s perception had been on target.

“In your e-mail you mentioned a problem,” said Gurney with a get-to-the-point abruptness verging on rudeness.

“Yes,” Mellery answered, but instead of addressing it, he offered a reminiscence that seemed designed to weave another little thread of obligation into the old school tie, recounting a silly debate a classmate of theirs had gotten into with a philosophy professor. During the telling of this tale, Mellery referred to himself, Gurney, and the protagonist as the “Three Musketeers” of the Rose Hill campus, striving to make something sophomoric sound heroic. Gurney found the effort embarrassing and offered his guest no response beyond an expectant stare.

“Well,” said Mellery, turning uncomfortably to the matter at hand, “I’m not sure where to begin.”

If you don’t know where to begin your own story , thought Gurney, why the hell are you here?

Mellery finally opened his briefcase, withdrew two slim softcover books, and handed them, with care, as if they were fragile, to Gurney. They were the books described in the website printouts he had looked at earlier. One was called The Only Thing That Matters and was subtitled The Power of Conscience to Change Lives . The other was called Honestly! and was subtitled The Only Way to Be Happy .

“You may not have heard of these books. They were moderately successful, but not exactly blockbusters.” Mellery smiled with what looked like a well-practiced imitation of humility. “I’m not suggesting you need to read them right now.” He smiled again, as though this were amusing. “However, they may give you some clue to what’s happening, or why it’s happening, once I explain my problem… or perhaps I should say my apparent problem. The whole business has me a bit confused.”

And more than a bit frightened , mused Gurney.

Mellery took a long breath, paused, then began his story like a man walking with fragile determination into a cold surf.

“I should tell you first about the notes I’ve received.” He reached into his briefcase, withdrew two envelopes, opened one, took from it a sheet of white paper with handwriting on one side and a smaller envelope of the size that might be used for an RSVP. He handed the paper to Gurney.

“This was the first communication I received, about three weeks ago.”

Gurney took the paper and settled back in his chair to examine it, noting at once the neatness of the handwriting. The words were precisely, elegantly formed-stirring a sudden recollection of Sister Mary Joseph’s script moving gracefully across a grammar-school blackboard. But even stranger than the painstaking penmanship was the fact that the note had been written with a fountain pen, and in red ink. Red ink? Gurney’s grandfather had had red ink. He had little round bottles of blue, green, and red ink. He remembered so little of his grandfather, but he remembered the ink. Could one still purchase red ink for a fountain pen?

Gurney read the note with a deepening frown, then read it again. There was neither a salutation nor a signature.

Do you believe in Fate? I do, because I thought I’d never see you again – and then one day, there you were. It all came back: how you sound, how you move-most of all, how you think. If someone told you to think of a number, I know what number you’d think of. You don’t believe me? I’ll prove it to you. Think of any number up to a thousand-the first number that comes to your mind. Picture it. Now see how well I know your secrets. Open the little envelope .

Gurney uttered a noncommittal grunt and looked inquiringly at Mellery, who had been staring at him intently as he read. “Do you have any idea who sent you this?”

“None whatever.”

“Any suspicions?”

“None.”

“Hmm. Did you play the game?”

“The game?” Clearly Mellery had not thought of it that way. “If what you mean is, did I think of a number, yes, I did. Under the circumstances it would have been difficult not to.”