A Doubter's Almanac (2 page)

Professor Gamble

Nunquam Cede

Scrivener’s Errors

Conjecture

The Tristate Singularity

Flatland

A Marrow Lover’s Feast

A Nonconforming Interval

The Reluctant Cartesian

The Real Are Almost All Irrational

Thomson’s Lamp

Disciplina in Civitatem

Molly and Sally

Summation

Salads

Non-Brownian Gray

Analysis Situs

Proof

Drunkard’s Walk

Alpha

A Topologist’s Apology

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

Theodicy

The Expected Teaches Nothing

Easy Does It

The Truth at Last

Brompton’s Mixture

The Sum of Infinitesimals

The Witch of Agnesi

A Unifying Conjecture

Contra Deum

The Lord’s Daughter

Proof by Exhaustion

4656534

The Curse of Knowledge

Mysterium Cosmographicum

Drake

The Battle of Trafalgar

Epigraph

Dedication

By Ethan Canin

About the Author

A Late Arrival

F
ROM THE KITCHEN
window, Milo Andret watched the bridge over the creek, and when he saw Earl Biettermann’s white Citroën race across the span he hurried out the door and picked up a short hoe. Biettermann was driving too fast.
Reckless
was the word for it—but that’s the way he’d always been. Arrogant. Heedless. Lucky to stumble onto the right roads, the right career, the right woman. Lucky even to be alive. For any other driver, the route from the bridge to the cabin would take five minutes: Andret figured it would take Biettermann three.