Back to the car, landing in a few more puddles on the way, but somehow that didn't seem like such a big deal anymore. I explained to Charles that the ambulance was on its way and asked what was hurt and what had happened. It didn't really matter: it was a single-car accident, no one was pressing charges and, other than keeping him from moving, there wasn't actually any medical stuff I was authorized to do. But I didn't want him going into shock or nodding off and never waking up again. As long as he was talking, he wasn't doing either of those things.

"My arm. My head," he said distinctly. He seemed to have woken up a bit. "I hit, uhm, the window. And the dashboard. And the steering wheel. I got lost…Meant to go to the air…plane? Airport. To the airport."

"Ok, I'm going to sit in back here and just…make sure you don't move. So that you don't, uh, exacerbate anything." I didn't want to come right out and say that if he moved, he could be paralyzed for life. Hearing that would sure as hell make me move, and fast. Charles didn't seem particularly concerned when I wrenched open the dented door and clambered into the backseat. I had to go in through the other side of the car because the driver's side was so banged up. Once I was behind the driver's seat, I could slide my hands between the seat and the headrest and kind of reach around to stabilize his head. Nowadays, of course, I'd be doing this in a full biohazard suit 'cause of the blood, but back then all they issued were dinky latex gloves—which, of course, I had left in the patrol car.

Bracing his head with one hand, I used the other to fumble through the first-aid kit that I had, miraculously, remembered to bring. Of course, it didn't really include anything that would help in the event of a car crash, no pocket-sized Jaws of Life or anything. But I could at least rip open some of the antiseptic wipes and lean around to wipe up some of the blood. There was nothing I could do about the arm, once I'm made sure it wasn't a compound fracture, and I couldn't tell for sure if the ribs were broken or just bruised.. Calmed us both down, though, my trying as gently as possibly to sop up what I could. Yes, the nose was probably broken, there was a nasty gash on the left side of his forehead, but head wounds bleed a lot and once the blood was gone, things didn't look so bad. In fact, if he grew out his hair, no one would ever notice the forehead thing, anyway. Somehow most of the rear-view mirror was intact, only missing a little sliver, so I could actually see the top half of his face. He had huge eyes, dark like my son's, and long lashes. My sisters are always saying it's such a shame that Jason's lashes are wasted on a boy, but Charles could have given him a run for his money.

Somehow the fact that Charles looked like he could be Jason's older cousin made the fact that I was sitting in the Meadowlands at night with my palms on his jaw and my thumbs supporting the mastoid processes behind his ears seem just a little less weird.

"So, why were you going to the airport?" I asked. Not the best conversational gambit, but good enough. I started to make a crack about how he had so totally missed his flight, but then decided that would not be in the best of taste. Give me a little credit here, ok?

"Going home."

"Home is…California?"

"Yeah, outside LA. With my parents. And my brother, sometimes."

"Well, you're a long way from home." Of course, I already knew, thanks to Mario's records, what Charles was doing in New Jersey. I knew because he'd registered this car as a long-term temporary and the form explained his employment. Most people don't do that, they just wait for us to pull them over for out-of-state tags and then get really pissy. Charles played by the rules, even the obscure ones. Good for him. So what went wrong? Why were we doing waiting on an ambulance in the middle of the night, well off the beaten track?

"I went to school here and my school—my old school—invited me to come back for a semester and teach."

"Hmm, and what do you teach?"

"Math. Applied mathematics."

"Oh." This cut off a lot of my conversational openings because "I was always really bad at math."

He smiled then; I couldn't see it, but I could feel it under my fingers. "I'm sure you're not," he said politely, "not really bad."

I laughed, "Charles, I assure you, and every math teacher I've ever had will tell you, I really, really am."

"Can you calculate the tip when you go out to eat?"

"Well, yeah, that I can do."

"Can you understand the weather report when they give the percentage of rain for the five-day forecast? Or the sports stats in the morning paper?"

"Yes, but that's not really—"

"How about balancing your checkbook? Paying the bills? Figuring out how long until the check actually clears and how much interest is being paid on it in the meantime?"

"Uh, those, too."

"If I told you that I'm giving a talk on Wang's Paradox in two weeks, four days and thirteen hours, can you tell me what time I'll be giving my opening remarks?"

That one took a minute—"August thirteenth, at…1:00 in the afternoon?"

"What day of the week?"

"Friday."

"And since California is six hours behind the East Coast, that means it will be what time here?"

"7:00 in the morning."

"There you go," he said quietly, "You're perfectly good at math. Maybe not, you know, brilliant, but you don't need to be. And certainly not really, really bad. Seems that every math teacher you've ever had was wrong."

"Wow," was all I could say. I had a feeling that applied mathematics, as it was taught at Princeton, was probably was a little more complicated than that, but Charles had managed to get around the whole subject without making me feel patronized. That took talent. "You must be one hell of a professor!"

"Well," he said modestly, "I try really hard." He took a breath, "That sounds dumb, doesn't it? I mean, I've always been, uhm,…I'm pretty good at math, myself, but I try to imagine what it's like to not have that…knack for numbers."

"I guess you guys are out for the summer then, up at Princeton?"

I felt a twitch beneath my fingers again, not a smile this time. More like a flinch. I moved from where I'd been resting my forehead against the back of the driver's seat, hoping to catch Charles's eyes in the mirror, but he was looking out into the darkness.

"I was teaching a summer class. But I have to go home."

"Oh. I hope it's…nothing serious?"

"I don't know."

He was kind of shutting down. Still answering, but shorter sentences, fewer words, longer pauses. Jason used to do that when he was younger, when he got tired, just clam up: go monosyllabic and then completely mute. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder just how long Charles had been out here. I imagined him driving around, lost in the Meadowlands, worried about whatever was going on in California. The frustration of being able to see the airport towers but always running into dead ends and flooded roads. I kind of wished I could just tell him to relax, nod off, that I'd wake him when the ambulance arrived. But of course, I couldn't do that. I had to keep him talking.