“So, you’re saying your head is larger than mine?”
“Yes. No- what I mean is, they have big awkward heads, or are believed to have had big awkward heads, large for their body. Then, there is also the hair.”
“Hair?”
“Yes, hair. It is hypothesized that red hair-” I gestured to my crazy-town curls, “comes from Neanderthal inter-breading with earliest humans.”
“So, Neanderthals and humans did breed?”
“Yes. Female humans and male Neanderthals may have bred successfully- which, if you think about it, isn’t so far-fetched as big headed men and small- er, normal headed woman still breed quite often today. But, currently, scientists believe that the male humans who mated with female Neanderthals created sterile offspring. They believe this because there is a lack of Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA present in modern humans. So, as you can see and if you reflect on it, awkward headed-females mating with beautifully normal headed-males is a bad idea.”
He blinked at me once, frowned, then turned his attention to his coffee. Unbearable silence lay like a thick blanket of soot around us. I figured he was regretting his decision to invite me to breakfast. I thought about comparing myself to a donkey and him to a horse but instead bit my lip to keep from speaking.
I noted his cheeks, neck, and the bridge of his nose were tinged with a faint shade of pink, likely due to annoyance with my fumbled conversation. I searched my brain for anything which would distract him. An abrupt thought came to me and, for lack of a better strategy, I decided to resort to a parlor trick which usually either amazed or endeared me to people. It would also be an excellent demonstration of my freakishness but I didn’t really have anything to lose.
I licked my lips before speaking, “So, uh, want to see a trick?”
He shrugged his shoulders, his tone flat, “Sure.”
I turned in my seat to face him, resting my elbow and arm along the counter. “Give me any two numbers and I can give you their value in addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.”
He turned toward me, met my gaze with a disbelieving one of his own, “What- in your giant brain?”
I noted that he sounded interested, which I felt was an improvement, but chose to ignore his giant brain comment. “Yes. In my brain. No paper.”
His mouth hooked to the side just barely, “Any two numbers?”
I nodded once, “Try me.”
He turned his body to me completely and I tried to ignore how his legs bumped into me, one of his knees settling between mine as we faced each other. “Hmmm...” his gaze narrowed speculatively, “Ok, 400 and 700.”
I wrinkled my nose, “Addition: 1100, subtraction: negative 300, multiplication: 210000, division: .57 yada yada yada. Ok, give me a hard one now.”
He blinked at me, his mouth slightly open, then he smiled; it was a small albeit real smile and rubbed his hands on his thighs, “Fine. A hard one then: 21 and 5124.”
I let out a breath of relief, our earlier unpleasantness seemingly forgotten. “5145, 5103, 107604, and... .004 yada yada yada. That wasn’t a hard one.”
He half laughed half sighed, “How do you do that?”
I shrugged, “I don’t know. I’ve just always been able to. It comes in handy on Thursdays.”
“What happens on Thursdays?”
“I tutor at the Kid’s Club on Thursday afternoons in math and science. Sometimes, if I can’t get them to focus, I distract them with my ‘freakishness’.” I used air quotes for the word ‘freakishness’ then frowned. I hated it when people used air quotes. It was like when someone says ‘we’ instead of ‘I’. As in ‘We would be so delighted… we just did the laundry… we have a yeast infection.’
“Why did they downsize you? It seems like you would make an incredible accountant.”
“I don’t know that either. My friend Kat- she still works there- she was going to try to find out but hasn’t been able to find the reason.”
He took a sip of his coffee then said, “Has anyone else been let go?”
“No. I’m the only one. But you have to admit, I’m pretty strange. Maybe they were just looking for an excuse to get rid of me. I have a tendency to make people uncomfortable with- you know- trivial facts.” I was about to air quote ‘freakishness’ again but successfully suppressed the urge.
“Hm.” His clear blue eyes narrowed as they studied me. “Are you-” he set his cup down and leaned a little closer, “Do you have a photographic memory?”
I laughed despite myself, mostly due to nervousness caused by his proximity, “No, God no. I’d forget my name if it weren’t on my driver’s license.” Then I frowned at the inaccuracy of my statement, “Actually, I don’t have a driver’s license since I moved to the City, but my name is on my credit card and my state ID.”