locilre

One day at the beginning of this period, we were sitting
together on the floor of John’s one-room apartment.
He was knitting himself a sweater and I was reading
Fermat’s Last Theorem. Every now and then, I’d interrupt
his knitting to read him passages from my book.

“Did you ever hear of amicable numbers? They’re like
perfect numbers, but instead of being the sum of their
own divisors, they’re the sum of each others divisors.
In the Middle Ages people used to carve amicable numbers
into pieces of fruit. They’d eat the first piece themselves
and then feed the other one to their lover. It was a
mathematical aphrodisiac. I love that – a mathematical
aphrodisiac.” John showed little interest. He doesn’t
like math much. Not like I do. It was one more reason
for us to be casual.

Christmas fell during this period, and since I hate
to shop, I was glad to be able to cross John off my
shopping list. We were too casual for presents. While
I was shopping for my grandmother, however, I saw a
cryptic crossword puzzle book and bought it for John.
We had always worked on the cryptic crossword puzzles
at the back of The Nation, and for five bucks I figured
I could give it to him.

When Christmas rolled around, I handed John the book
– unwrapped, very casual. He didn’t give me anything
at all. I wasn’t surprised, but my feelings were a little
hurt, even though I wasn’t supposed to care. The next
day, John invited me over to his apartment. “I have
your Christmas present” he said. “Sorry it’s late.”

He handed me an awkwardly wrapped bundle. When I pulled
it open, a rectangle of hand-knit fabric fell on my
lap. I picked it up and looked at it, completely confused.
One side had the number 124,155 knitted into it; the
other side had 100,485. When I looked up at John again,
he was barely able to contain his excitement anymore.
“They’re amicable numbers,” he said. “I wrote a computer
program and let it run for twelve hours. These were
the biggest ones I found, and then I double-knit them
in. It’s a pot holder. I couldn’t give it to you last
night but I still haven’t figured out how to cast off.
It’s kind of geeky, but I thought you might like it.”

After that Christmas, we were a lot of things, but
we weren’t casual anymore. The ancient mathematical
aphrodisiac had worked again.