The Grasshopper King by Jordan Ellenberg

she was waiting for me to apologize, or worse, that she had no interest in my apologies. I pushed it aside.
    â€œSaturday’s a good day for housecleaning,” I offered.
    She lifted up a stack of thatch something-covers and a dozen or so insects leaped out, bouncing into far corners and disappearing before I’d gotten a good look.
    â€œYou’ve got crickets?” I asked.
    â€œGrasshoppers,” she said. “They’ve been down here since we moved in. We tried poisoning them.” Then her face closed up. She seemed angry that I had gotten her to speak.
    Later in the day I went upstairs to look around, on the pretext of needing to use the bathroom. I was desperate for something to do. I had picked up, looked over, and set down every slingshot and bridle in the place—some twice. I had made my egg salad sandwich last an hour and a half.
    The above-ground portion of the house, now that I had seen the basement, was stirringly ordinary; although in isolation it might have been a bit unnerving. The light filtering through the poured-glass window was gray and cool, more like March than June, and the house had a shut-in, bookish smell, although there were no books anywhere.In fact, there was not much of anything anywhere. By means of some slow gravity the upstairs was as empty as the basement was full. There were no tables in sight, no coatrack; no chairs, no shelves, not even any lamps. The only furniture I could see was Ellen’s stereo, which squatted at the center of a Stonehenge of speakers, its equalizer lights fluctuating now to the beat of an auto commercial. I’d been in the house eight hours and already it didn’t seem so loud.
    I nearly collided with Ellen in the foyer.
    â€œYes?” she said—hostile, frank.
    â€œThe bathroom . . .”
    She jerked her head leftward at a door I hadn’t noticed.
    The bathroom, unsurprisingly, was bare; but tucked under the lower rim of the mirror there was some minor ornament, miraculously left in place. Looking closer, I saw it was a remote microphone. McTaggett had explained this to me. There was a pick-up in every room but the bedroom, wired to the banks of recorders downstairs. Wherever Higgs decided to hold forth, the apparatus would be ready.
    Even the water was loud. When the toilet flushed it sounded like a jetliner launching through hail.
    Back downstairs, no vehicles for amusement having sprung up in my absence, I suddenly remembered Slotkin’s last piece of advice.
    â€œYou want to play checkers, Professor Higgs?”
    Not even a flicker in return. But I was too bored to be deterred. I found the checkerboard propped up by the sarcophagus.
    â€œWe’re going to play some checkers now, okay?” It comforted me to keep talking. “Here we go . . . I’m setting up the board now. I’m going first.”
    During my preparations Higgs’s gaze had not once deviated from its position; but as soon as I had made my opening move, his eyes snapped down to the board. He moved his man. Within five minutes he had beaten me handily. We played six more games and I lost every one.
    â€œYou’re very good, Professor Higgs,” I said, and although his expression did not, of course, change, I postulated a slow inner smile,imagined him luxuriating in the idea of a new opponent, someone else to teach, slowly and by example, working upward through the levels of strategy, postponing as long as possible the despairing moment when both players’ knowledge of the game was exactly equal. With Slotkin that moment must have been years past.
    When I came home that night there was a lasagna on the bed. It was piled into a stewpot, a little lopsided, and under its weight our sad mattress sagged almost to the floor.
    â€œHi, breadwinner,” Julia said. “What do you think?”
    â€œIt looks great,” I said, a little guiltily; guiltily because my first reaction, when the startling smell of a cooked