“Thank you.” Duncan sounded as if Grant had paid him a compliment. “Now we can focus on what you really want.”

“No, I’m good.” Grant felt bad about leaving right after getting what he needed from Duncan, but not that bad. “I’ll send the contract back tomorrow.”

Grant slid into his coat. He slammed the locker shut, picked up his gym bag then waved goodbye.

“No one knows you better than I do. You’ll settle for funding, but that’s not all you want.”

Grant’s soles squeaked on the floor as he turned and with each step away. So much for the graceful exit, not that it mattered. Duncan froze Grant with a single word.

“Tenure.”

Grant knew the scene behind him. A slight smile leavened Duncan’s face. His messenger bag slumped on the floor against a rusty bench leg. Duncan straddled the bench, leaning forward. His hands gripped one end of the bench. His arms braced his torso as if he were about to lift into a handstand. He presented the illusion of being perfectly relaxed while his T-shirt exposed every muscle of his torso.

“Where?”

“With me. Same university.”

Grant turned around. His shoes squeaked again. He forced himself not to wince. Duncan looked as exactly as he imagined.

“Isn’t that overkill?” Grant glared down at Duncan. He had so few chances to do that. “With tenure, how will you get rid of me when you don’t need me anymore?”

Duncan lifted his torso and legs parallel to the bench. His smile faded as his gaze focused onto the bench’s graffiti. “You know, you get older, you realize the first guy you first bounced ideas off of has ruined you for everyone else since. So you change.” His hands thumped against the bench as he walked himself away from Grant. “You become what that first guy wants.”

Duncan straightened into a handstand, lowered his legs, then stood upright on the bench facing one end. He backflipped off the bench landing to one side. The control required to avoid crashing into the lockers was intimidating. His hands spread in front him as if to ask, “Well?”

The day Duncan didn’t look confident was the day the world would end. However, the years had abraded the smugness from his demeanor. His blistering gaze had always been inquisitive, but it now also yearned. Grant had walked away from the smug Duncan, but this one taunted him with possibilities he’d long convinced himself didn’t exist.

Grant pursed his lips. His hands gripped his gym bag. He’d ask for the ridiculous. That ought to cool Duncan’s ardor.

“For a start, the university will matriculate my grad students.”

Not only did he want the university to fund his students, but he wanted enough funding from Duncan’s theorem house that he could buy off his teaching responsibilities. No reason why undergrads should suffer. Grant set down his gym bag and for what felt like minutes detailed his dream job.

“Done.” Duncan unzipped Grant’s gym bag.

“What?” Grant felt sucker punched. “My demands aren’t reasonable.”

“Done.” Duncan teased the manila folder out of Grant’s gym bag then handed it to Grant. “I told you. No one knows you better than I do.”

Grant studied the pages he’d glazed past the first time. They met his conditions term for term.

Duncan had changed, but he hadn’t become what Grant wanted. Life hadn’t taught Duncan any humility. Rather than scaling his self-assurance down to match his achievements, he’d scaled his achievements up to match his self-assurance.

“It’s up to you, Grant.” Duncan walked towards the locker room exit. “Refuse my offer and I’ll never bother you again. I promise.”

Grant stuffed the folder back into his bag. “Tell me this, Duncan. What are you really trying to prove?”

Duncan turned around. His gaze pressed against Grant. He looked as if he were intuiting the right response from how Grant’s bag pressed against his back, how Grant hadn’t tucked in his t-shirt or how off-kilter Grant had knotted his boot laces.

“I should have known you’d see it right away even if I hid the conclusion from my outline.” Duncan shrugged. “But I knew you’d find proving P=NP sexier.”

“You’ve jumped ahead a few steps again. Back it up, Duncan.” For years, saying that might as well have been Grant’s full-time job. If Duncan expected mere humans to understand him, he needed to take it step by step.

This time, Duncan had skipped past surprise and straight to wistful. As he sighed, he seemed to deflate. Grant had never seen him look this mortal before.

“P≠NP. Or maybe I’m wrong.” Duncan took a deep breath. “Rehashing old results in ever more elegant ways has done so well for me, I don’t have to be practical. I can do real math now. You know, throw yourself into unsolvable problems. Get lost in every twist and leap the way young mathematicians say they’ll do until they realize they need to eat. It’s time to tackle the impossible and . . . I just thought you’d want to do that too. With me.” Duncan showed his palms to Grant again. “Like I said, it’s up to you.”

P≠NP meant that computationally intractable problems would always be intractable. The best anyone could do was recognize that then focus on heuristics and other approximate solutions. Mathematicians would care about that result, but no one else. The proof might become the most elegant anyone has ever seen but his theorem house would never sell it. No one, not even Duncan, had a body perfect enough to wear it in public without embarrassing themselves.

They held each other’s gaze for what seemed like days before Duncan turned around. He started towards the door, his motion so perfectly controlled, Grant couldn’t tell how Duncan felt.

“I think when we flesh out your outline, we may find that P=NP is undecidable.” Grant allowed a small smile on his face. Duncan was at least capable of the truth on occasion. That was a start.

Duncan stopped, then pivoted around. Grant made a note to ask Duncan someday how he did that without squeaking.

The puzzled look on Duncan’s face melted into one of realization then resolve. “Perhaps.” He shrugged. “Let’s discuss it over dinner. My treat.”

Wind swept across the parking lot. A hoodie coalesced around Duncan. His giddy smile outshone the stars and the moon. The light poles seemed bunched together, corralled by the encroaching Jersey barriers. Not even the parking lot could contain Duncan tonight.

No wonder he was so happy. Grant had done exactly what Duncan wanted. Maybe Duncan had discovered the virtue of telling Grant the truth. Maybe Duncan had maneuvered Grant here the way he’d maneuvered Grant back onto the runway. Grant only knew one way to find out what was true. Take Duncan on. They’d tumble and swirl around each other until either they covered each other or Grant fell into the trenches of spikes.

Grant suspected he could tumble on the runway forever and never really know. Not everything that’s true had a proof. No consistent formal system was complete. He wouldn’t be a mathematician though if he didn’t want to find out.