The Cinderella Theorem (18 page)

But
it was all for a good cause, the ends justify the means. Having Ella reach
Happy by being normal was considerably greater than any conscience pricking.

~~~

I
was quiet as I went through the cubicles. I didn’t know where Calo’s nap room
was, and I didn’t want to wake him up. I didn’t need (or want) any Calo
questions about where I had been or what I’d been up to.

But
I canceled out all of my previous quietness by shouting, “Sweet Pythagoras!” at
the stranger sitting at Calo’s desk. “Who are you?”

“I
apologize for frightening you, Princess.” He stood up. “I’m Thomas, the miller.
Calo’s older brother,” he went on, when it was clear that
Thomas, the miller
hadn’t cleared things up for me.

“Oh,”
I said, breathing more slowly.

He
smiled. “When do you expect Calo to return?”

“I
don’t know. He’s taking a nap.”

Thomas
raised his eyebrows, “Taking a nap?”

I
nodded, “He’s got to make a night visit. Sleeping Beauty can’t sleep.”

“Of
course,” Thomas nodded in understanding. “I’ll leave a message for him, then.”
He looked around, “Do you have a pad of paper or—”

I
grabbed a pencil and pad off my desk, “Here.”

“Thank
you.” He sat down at Calo’s desk to write.

I
sat at my own desk and began updating my Cinderella Theorem file. Thomas
finished, said goodbye, and left. I counted by threes to ninety-nine, then got
up to read the note.

Calo,

Swing
by the mill when you get a chance. I found something that I think you should
see. It’s pretty important.

Thomas

I
wondered what could be so important. I mentally searched my Calo data and
remembered that Calo was the second of the three miller’s sons in
Puss-in-Boots
.
Thomas got the mill, the younger brother got the talking cat, and Calo got an
old coat and hat and made his way in the world.

Mills
don’t exactly equal places of great mystery and intrigue. What, other than
grain, could you find at a mill? And why should Calo see it?

Calo
never directly mentioned the mill mystery, but I caught him reading the note a
few times on Wednesday while we processed the outcome of his visit with Okera.
Calo managed to raise her one level, but that was all. She was sleeping, but
still Less than Less than Happy.

“Maybe,”
I suggested quietly, “her insomnia wasn’t the cause of her unhappiness.”

“Maybe,”
Calo shocked me by agreeing.

Then
I noticed he was reading the note again. He wasn’t paying attention to our
debate.

“Maybe,”
I tried again, “you only treated a symptom of the unhappiness, and not the
actual
cause of the unhappiness.” There. That was practically a blatant accusation.
That would get the usual Calo response.

“Maybe,”
Calo stared blankly at the wall behind me.

Wow.
I’d never seen him like this. The mill thing was obviously a big deal. I wasn’t
balancing my equation properly. I’d left out a huge factor.

“Oh,
by the way, your brother, Thomas, stopped in yesterday. He couldn’t wait, so he
just left you a note. Did you find it?”

Calo’s
head turned sharply. He shoved the note into his pocket. “Yes, I found it.” He
looked down at his desk. “What were we talking about?”

I
just looked at him. The mill issue was becoming a larger factor by the minute.
“Okera.”

Calo
nodded and began to shuffle papers around his desk.

I
took a deep breath. (Deep breaths = the extra courage and strength needed to do
something that you wouldn’t ordinarily, normally do or that you would
ordinarily, normally realize was a mistake.) “Calo, is there anything wrong?
You seem a little…off today. You didn’t even argue with me when I suggested you
should have considered a more long-term goal with Okera.”

“For
the love of Rumplestiltskin’s beard, Lily!” Calo jumped up; his anger towered
over me. “Okera’s case is mine and
I
will manage it.”

I
moved my head back an inch.

“And
for your information, nothing is wrong. Oh wait, could I possibly be tired
after staying up to help Okera sleep? Could I be wondering how I will get my
nap before going to Okera’s
and
get to the mill to talk to Thomas about
whatever it is he has found?”

I
didn’t answer Calo. I was 85% confident he didn’t really want an answer.
Rhetorical questions are completely unmathematical. In a nice, orderly
mathematical world, one asked question leads to one answered question. When a
person goes around throwing out rhetorical questions, all you have is one asked
question leads to nothing. And people who ask questions, to which they do not
in fact expect answers, are often annoyed when you (quite mathematically and
normally) answer them. Judging from Calo’s exaggerated hand motions and red
face, I placed him on the
Doesn’t Really Want an Answer
side of my
rhetorical question chart. I kept my eyes on my own desk and sat quietly.

“I’m
taking the rest of the day off,” Calo stomped out of the cubicle.

He
wasn’t himself on Thursday either. When I came in, he was on the floor, staring
at the ceiling with his arms folded behind his head.

“Calo?”
I asked, cautiously. “What’re you doing?”

He
turned his head–the better to see me with, I guess. “I’m lying here wondering.”

When
he didn’t offer any more data, I asked a clarifying question. “Wondering about
anything in particular?”

“Sure,”
he smiled oddly. “About everything, about nothing.”

I
just looked at him. “Okay,” I whispered slowly. “Are we going to work today, or
just keep on wondering?”

“Work,
of course,” Calo sprang up, surprised I would even suggest otherwise.

I
noticed the levels in Calo’s monitor had dropped slightly. Perhaps only a
millimeter, but enough for a mathematician to notice. I looked at Calo. He
seemed to be busy, but a far off look was in his eyes. Probability of him actually
comprehending anything he was reading: 15%. Those are not good odds.

“Calo,
listen. I, uh, want to apologize for everything that happened yesterday. I
didn’t realize you were so upset.”

He
looked up. “That’s alright, Lily. I have rather low expectations regarding your
people skills anyway, so I didn’t take offense.” He smiled.

I
scowled back at him, already regretting my reluctant apology.

“I
do apologize for yelling though. Thomas and I so rarely talk that I was
concerned about the seriousness of his situation.”

“Oh,”
I subtracted the warnings in my head and asked anyway: “Did you visit him, then?
Is everything okay at the mill?”

Calo
looked like he was thinking very hard for a moment, or focusing all of his
energy on something. It’s the way Corrie looks when she’s trying to understand
math. “Let’s look at the briefing I wrote up about Okera, shall we?” He pointed
with his pencil to a manila folder on my desk. “I made a copy for you.” This
time his eyes were clearly there, daring me to ask another question about
Thomas.

“Sure.”
I sat down and opened the folder.

~~~

On
Thursday night, my father showed me how to mail a letter using the magical mail
network. It was pretty simple. You just place the letter in the cabinet under the
bathroom sink. (“Of course, Lily, this only goes for our mailbox. Everyone’s
got a different one: Jack uses a leaf of his beanstalk, so does the giant, for
that matter; Robin Hood and the Merry Men have a hollowed out oak tree that
they use–you get the picture.”) Once you have closed the door, you say:

Magical Mailbox, under my sink,

Please mail my letter before I blink.

Then you blink, and check to
make sure the letter is gone.

I
had two logical questions about that. “Okay, number one. Why do you have to
blink if the rhyme asks for the letter to be gone
before
you blink?”

My
dad considered the question. “I don’t know, Lily. I haven’t really thought
about it.” He sat on the edge of the tub. “I guess if you don’t blink, the
magic will know you aren’t being serious.”

“‘The
magic will know you aren’t being serious?’” I repeated.

“Yep,”
he stood up. “Now, what’s your second question?”

I
blinked in surprise. “How did you know I had a second question?”

My
dad smiled. “You said number one. Why point out your first question without
having a second one? If you only had one question, you would have just said, ‘I
have a question.’” He bounced happily on his heels ever so slightly.

He
might not have been able to satisfy the mathematical equation of
Father
,
but he surprised me with his logic sometimes. He was refreshing after Mom for
fifteen years. Mom would never have thought to ask what my second question was;
Mom could only be counted on to answer the first question about 50% of the
time.

I
smiled. “Two: does everyone have the same rhyme? It doesn’t make a lot of sense
for the bird and the happy friends to be rhyming about sinks when they drop
their letters into the oak tree.”

Dad
looked puzzled for a moment. “The bird and the happy friends,” he repeated.
“The bird and the happy friends,” he tilted his head, “Oh! You mean
Robin
Hood
.”

“Right.
Isn’t that what I said?”

My
father stood there for a moment, then shrugged, “Exactly. To answer your second
question: no, everyone does not have the same rhyme. Whenever you set up your
mailbox you have to create and register your rhyme. Your mother wrote ours,
because she’s a—”

“Writer,”
we finished together, laughing.

Before
I went to bed that night, I wrote a letter and carried it to the bathroom.
After I had said the rhyme (and
then
blinked),
[45]
I sat on the edge of the tub, with my chin resting on my hand.

I
had no doubt my letter would get to Cinderella and that she would say it was
indeed fine for me to come over for a visit on Saturday. I had no doubt she
would be happier, because she had something to occupy her time and was surely
closer to being normal. So why did I feel guilty?

~~~

When
I arrived at HEA on Friday, Calo was spinning around in his desk chair,
muttering something that sounded like, “I’m a hot head.”

“No
argument here, Spinning Boy,” I muttered as I sat down.

Calo
grabbed the edge of his desk to stop the spinning. “Lily, I have a brilliant
idea.”

He
seemed much happier than he had previously. I checked his monitor, expecting it
to be higher. It wasn’t. He’d dropped another millimeter and was just under
Could Be Happier–the point at which HEA becomes concerned. The point at which Happiologists
are sent out. Do Happiologists even
have
Happiologists?

Calo
went on, without waiting for me to be curious about his brilliant idea, “Ice
cream! We should have ice cream. Go see Tybalt at Once Upon a Tine and get
some.”

“Tybalt?”

“It’s
Puss’ real name.” Calo started spinning again. “No one wants to go through life
with a generic name like Puss or Prince Charming.”

“Huh.
I’ve been calling him Puss all this time,” I said to myself. “Calo, have you
seen your monitor today?” I decided to employ a very mathematical technique–
appearing incapable. Appearing incapable will often bring about a desired
result if the person you’re dealing with is an ego maniac like Calo who likes
to be a bossy know-it-all. “I might not be reading it right, but it looks like
you’re at Could be Happier.”

“Why
do you think I need the ice cream?” He stopped spinning. “A dish of cherry vanilla
will make everything better.”

I
stared at him. I did not, for one microsecond, believe that ice cream would fix
this. But that was the Calo method: give them something they want and ignore
the actual problem. “Fine, one dish of cherry vanilla coming up.”

I
went to get the ice cream, because I needed to make sure Calo stayed unvanished
long enough to deal with the actual problem.

As I
left the maze of cubicles, pure mathematical genius struck me. Grimm. I would
tell Grimm about Calo’s strange behavior. Grimm would be able to fix it. I
smiled and maneuvered back through the maze to his office.

I
stopped at his door, or rather, his door stopped me. It was closed. Grimm very
rarely closed his office door. It was usually open, a literal “my door is
always open” kind of thing. A
Do Not Disturb
sign now hung from the
knob. I flipped the sign over to see if there was any additional information: a
time that he would be available, the cause of this closed door, etc. But
nothing was written on the back, and the sign accidentally fell off from my
flipping. I picked it up, hung it back on the knob and gasped.

The
doorknob was greasy–
Levi
greasy.

~~~

I
quickly put my ear to the door. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I
could tell that Grimm was nearly shouting and that Levi was laughing. That
sycophant.

Frustrated
with the results of my eavesdropping, I decided I’d better go get Calo’s ice
cream. I biked around to Once Upon a Tine, analyzing the reasons I was glad to
get out of HEA–if only a few minutes.

(1)
Calo. His behavior was starting to worry me, but I didn’t know what to do about
it. Talking to Grimm was still an option. Could I go to the mill and ask
Thomas? That might work, if I could come up with a plausible story for why I
needed to know what he showed Calo, and if Calo never found out I’d gone behind
his back.

(2)
Levi. Why was Levi here? Was he trying to vanish Grimm? Was Grimm arresting
him?
Could
Grimm arrest him?

I
had no answers there, either.

(3)
Ella. I was particularly glad to get to Once Upon a Tine to talk to Tybalt (whose
name is not Puss) about the Cinderella Theorem. Had Ella shown him any of her
paintings? Had she seemed happier?

When
I went inside, the lyrics of yet another Bremen Town Musician Song assaulted
me. This time, however, they were live and in person, rehearsing on the stage
at the left end of the restaurant. The rooster moved the mike stand around a
lot, bouncing it between his wings.

Mirror, Mirror

On the wall,

Who’s the evilest

Of them all?

She poisoned that apple–oh yeah.

She poisoned that apple–oh yeah.

Just one juicy bite, my dear.

Just one, there’s nothing to fear.

She poisoned that apple–oh yeah.