I only applied to one school, and that was Princeton. They rejected me. Then I had to put in a late application to K.U.; that was a guaranteed acceptance. I didn't want to go to school in the town where I lived, but it would have to do. I was off-balance for a while. My mother had been right: being good at what I liked, and having good test scores, hadn't been enough to get me into the school of my choice. But I was stubborn. I decided I was going there anyway. I applied during my freshman year and was turned down again. Then my proof of the prime number theorem was published, and I sent the journal along with my application. That did the trick. The proof was something new: a combination of analytic and elementary techniques. I was more than accepted. I was given a scholarship. And I'd gotten in on my own terms.

Attending Princeton was like the first time I drove on the highway. I was accustomed to thirty miles an hour, not sixty. I had ability, but now everyone else did, and they had the advantage of being accustomed to the speed. Those who hadn't achieved more than me, could. I would have to pick up the pace. I would have to drive faster. I was no longer the high-school prodigy, or the University department darling, to be exhibited to visiting scholars.

I think each of us has a way of seeing herself that shapes her sensibility. The fundamental theorem of one's self. I have always wanted to be accepted, and felt that I wasn't. So my core is deracination. If I can't have love, admiration will do. I adorn myself with achievements. Now, those achievements would require more work.

In addition to making me panic, Princeton charmed me: old, and famous, and beautiful, and more mathematicians than I could count. World-class minds operating at race car speeds. I chose not to be cowed; I chose to be exhilarated. The school was there to serve me, not the other way round. I had a lot to master, and not much time. I made a two-year plan and posted it above my desk.

I studied too hard and grew stale. I wasn't functioning the way I should have. Sometimes I got stuck on easy problems, so I added exercise to my schedule, an hour in the gym four times a week. I used the stationary bike, so I could read as I pedaled.

I kept a record of the problems I couldn't solve, and how I got unstuck, but that was a long-term solution. It would only avoid repeated mistakes. I needed to be sharper from the start. I found study partners. I thought about difficult problems when I was going to sleep, and sometimes I'd have the answers when I woke. I continued neglecting the subjects that didn't interest me. I simply thought about math all the time.

I learned to be patient. I learned to inspect a problem, and to play with it, before jumping into a proof. I added skills to my arsenal. Those that were weak or missing I fixed. I learned to ask the right questions. I learned not to start on a problem until I'd identified my assumptions, and often thrown them out. I learned to inventory the material I had to work with, and to look for similarities to other problems. My mathematical intuition had always been strong, and I had relied on it too much. I trained myself to do math the way a chess player thinks: analytically.

I posted inspirational quotes around my room. My favorite was: "It is still an unending source of surprise for me how a few scribbles on a blackboard or a piece of paper can change the course of human affairs" (S. Ulam). I was determined to be the author of at least one of those scribbles. All I had to do was exert myself. This was the chance I'd wanted, and waited for, and worked for, and I wasn't going to waste it.

There were distractions, most obviously the boys. Their attentions were annoying. Any math department is mostly male. The few undergraduate women often wear men's shirts, jeans, and sneakers. I wore sweaters and slacks. I wouldn't have worn sneakers to a picnic. So the boys were always hitting on me. I brushed them off until I realized they could help me. But even geeks know when they're being used, and most of them didn't stick around. There were always replacements. The supply was endless, even after I earned a reputation for being a user. Every new boy thought he would be the one to get me. Every one of them was wrong.

Everything I did, I did to improve my skill. I learned to think in pure abstractions: no words, no images, no sensory corollaries. To describe such lines of reasoning to do math, not to explain the subject to the uninitiated -- the process itself is lost, and the subject matter resists simplification, by its very nature. The first time I found myself thinking without clutter, and noticed it, I was so startled I couldn't get my concentration back for half an hour.

My second semester I was filling a gap, auditing a class in discrete mathematics. Samuel was the teaching assistant. I thought he was the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. It was a cool day but he was wearing a short-sleeved shirt. His thin muscular arms and forearms showed. The veins showed in those forearms, and on the backs of his hands. His fingers were long and strong and rectangular.

He didn't say a word, simply walked in, picked up the chalk, which looked smaller in his hand, and drew a dense grid of lines on the green slate. He marked two points and turned to the class and said,

"Give me an algorithm to get from one of these points to the other without any trig and without any real numbers. Nothing but arithmetic and integers. Move only on the lines and points."

I wanted to impress him, so I concentrated. I had the answer in under ten seconds and raised my hand.

"Yes." He pointed at me.

I said, "Trivially, any path is always the same length if you move in the correct directions on the x and y axes and don't go outside the rectangle defined by the start and end points. But I assume you're asking for an algorithm that approximates a straight line as closely as possible."

"Correct." He held out the chalk, inviting me to use it.

I ignored the offer. "Then figure the delta x and the delta y. Set your movement factor equal to the larger value and move in that direction one step. Subtract the number that represents the difference in the other axis. If the result is greater than zero, continue to move in the original direction, subtracting as you go. As soon as the result is zero or less, move on the other axis and add the original amount to the current value of the movement factor. Continue moving in the x or y axes depending on whether the movement factor is greater than zero or not, adding and subtracting as you go, until you reach the destination." I thought I might not be clear yet. I added, "You add the greater delta and subtract the smaller, always performing the operation for the delta of the other axis than the one you've just moved on. By the way, this would be a good algorithm for a large simulation that needed its computational intensity reduced. Also, I don't think this algorithm generalizes to a coordinate system with more than two axes, or polar coordinates."

"Prove the validity in the Cartesian plane, then."

It was hardly worth the effort, but I took the chalk and wrote a five-line proof on the board.

"You've seen this problem before," he said.

"No." I put the chalk back in the tray instead of in his outstretched hand.

I watched him the rest of the hour, thinking that he was even more beautiful than he'd seemed at first: more than six feet tall, heavy glossy black hair, long eyelashes, liquid dark eyes, smooth olive skin. I wondered what his ancestry was -- his features were European, but his skin was halfway to Indian, or Middle Eastern, though smoother than theirs generally are. He had no facial hair or five-o'clock shadow. He slouched when he moved. Everything about him was interesting, but contradictory. His accent was like none I'd ever heard. His speech was tentative, but when he wrote on the board he was forceful, twice breaking the chalk.

After the second class he asked me to stay. He sat with his rear end half on the desk, one foot on the floor and the other dangling in the air. He looked past me.

"Why are you taking this class?"

"I haven't had any discrete."

"You should be taking more advanced subjects."

I was annoyed that he would question my decision. "I'm taking three hours of 300-level math, six of 400-level, and three of 500-level. Plus seven hours of other classes. I'm only auditing your class."

He glanced at my face and away, and folded his arms across his stomach. He didn't speak for perhaps five seconds. Then he said, "You could learn this from a book."

"The class keeps me on a schedule. I do the homework. I'll take the tests, if you let me. That way I know I'll learn the subject."

"All right, then," he said. He unparked himself from the desk. "You know what you're doing. You can take the tests. I'll even grade them for you, although it will still be an audit."

My annoyance evaporated. I thought about him on my way to the next class. Samuel. He didn't go by "Sam". He seemed clean, not just soap-and-water, but crisp. His shirt and trousers were pressed and his shoes were polished. His hair was neat and well-cut. His watch was a Movado with a black crocodile strap. For a T. A. he was unusual. First, his taste was good. Second, there didn't seem to be anything attached to him; he came to class coatless and carrying not a single piece of paper or a book, not even the text. I imagined him living in a bare apartment with shiny hardwood floors. No car. A bicycle in the corner of the big living room. A studio in an old warehouse. Vast empty space. Everything reduced to the lowest common denominator, so he could manage and comprehend it at a glance.

I'd never pursued anyone -- the opposite: I'd brushed off my suitors. I didn't know how to be the aggressor. Melody could have given me some pointers; she was usually chasing someone. But she was in California, we didn't know where. We didn't have her phone or address.

I didn't want him to think I wanted him, so I didn't attend the other class he taught. But I overheard him on his cell phone one day, mentioning that he liked a certain coffeehouse. I started studying there, but never saw him.

I was trying to solve every problem in the text. One had me stumped. It was an excuse to ask him for help. I suggested we meet at the coffeehouse.

I was early, but he was already there, reading a book. He looked the way he always did: unhurried. I sat in the chair across the table.

"Have you read any of these?" he asked. He held the book so I could see the front cover. One of the Brother Cadfael mysteries.

"No, but my mother likes them."

"Do you read fiction?" he asked. His accent was delicious. I would have liked it in a bowl, with whipped cream on top.

"Not much."

"What's the problem?"

"I don't understand it."

"Which one?"

"Any of them."

"I doubt that. You're doing very well."

"Oh. I thought you were asking about fiction."

He smiled. What teeth! I'd never seen them so close. He said, "No. The problem in the book."

I opened the text and showed him.

He glanced at it and said, "Look at problems 4 and 9."

He was right. I'd already solved them, and this one would yield to the same techniques. I blushed.

"Don't be embarrassed. We all miss the obvious now and then."

"Where did you grow up?" I wanted to retract the question, because he didn't answer. "I mean your accent," I said. "I can't place it. I'm good with accents, but I've never heard one like yours."

"Guess."

"Well, there's some Scots. Edinburgh?"

"Very good."

"And some New Zealand? Or Australia?"

He smiled. "I'm impressed. New Zealand."

"But there's something else. Somewhere I can't identify."

"Give up?"

"Yes."

"Austria."

"You grew up in all those places?"

"Born in Edinburgh. Childhood there and Wellington. Youth in Vienna. University in Boston."

"Which school?"

"M.I.T. I thought I wanted to be an engineer. I found that I hated it."

"So. Math. Why?"

"I think you know."

It was my turn to smile. I had a place to start, at last. "Solving puzzles," I said.

"Knowing things."

"And all you need is paper and pencil. No messy labs."

He laughed. "Kindred spirits," he said.

A guitarist was hooking up his instrument to an amp on the stage. He strummed a chord and said "testing" into the microphone.

Samuel sighed. "The music nights. That's what I hate about this place." He looked at the guitarist, then turned to me. "Do you need anything else?"

"More time," I wanted to say, but didn't. "No."

"I'll be going, then." He stood.

"Can you give me a ride?"

"I walked."

"Can you see me home?" I gestured at the gloom outside the window.

"Of course."

He didn't talk, and I didn't have anything to say, until we passed a diner. "I'm hungry," I said. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes, but here?" he asked, looking dismayed.

This was unfamiliar territory. I was supposed to be the picky one. I was supposed to make the decisions. I always had, but somehow he'd trumped me.

"I shouldn't do this," he said, "but there's a place I know."

We walked to his house and took his car, an old Morgan, not a spot of rust on it, the leather seats in perfect condition, immaculate inside and out. Not what I'd expected.

Even his driving was unhurried. But he continually drifted out of his lane. Maybe it was the right-hand drive; the car was English, not built for American roads.

"I don't drive much," he said. "I'm making you nervous, aren't I?"

"Oh, no. You're fine."

"No I'm not. Your foot is pressing the floor."

I didn't say anything. I'd been bracing my arm against the dash, too. Now I folded my hands in my lap.

"I'm a rotten driver," he said. "Do you want to take the wheel?"

I didn't say anything.

"I'd feel better if you did," he said. "I hate driving."

So I drove and he navigated. He was as good at that as he was bad at driving. He told me which lane to get in, and how far the next turn was, and how the sign would read, and what the interchange would look like. But I had trouble with the wheel being on the wrong side. I had to watch carefully to stay in the lane, or I would have drifted left, too.

I'd been driving for twenty minutes and he hadn't said a word, except to give occasional directions. We were heading toward Philadelphia. I said, "My mother's a Quaker, and my father lives in Manhattan, but I've never been to Philadelphia."

"I'm surprised. Arch Street should be your -- 'Mecca' isn't quite the right word, is it?"

"I'm not a Quaker. I don't go to Meeting."

"Why?"

"Sittin in silence for an hour is a boring waste of time."

He made a brief humming noise.

That detached quality that had intrigued me was making me nervous now.

He stared out his window. "Turn right at the next stoplight and park in the middle of the block."

I stopped outside a storefront. A sign in the window said "Genoa".

"A friend of mine owns this. Do you like northern Italian cooking?"

"It's one of my favorites," I lied. I'd only had it once.

The room was small, with only six tables, each with four chairs. He ordered wine without looking at the list. When the waitress had gone, I leaned toward him and whispered, "I won't be twenty-one until next month."

"Then we'll have to approximate. Your delta can be neglected."

It was a weak joke, but I laughed. I wanted him to know that I thought he was charming.

The food was astonishing: fresh ingredients, attractive presentation, interesting combinations of flavors and textures and temperatures. Seven small courses, imaginative and careful. I had the sea bass with clam sauce. By the end of the meal all my feelings were cheerful; all worry and upset had been banished to some remote domain where they would never trouble me again. Samuel called for the check and paid with a platinum card. I caught a glimpse of the total. Three figures, but he gave the slip of paper only a quick glance before he signed.

"Thank you," I said. "That was the best meal I've ever eaten."

"Yes. I'd come here more, except that I'd have to drive."

We didn't become lovers until the next semester. I think he was waiting so he couldn't get in trouble with the University for violating the ban on student-teacher sex. I was commuting to my summer classes from New York. I was staying with my father and he was letting me use his car.

Samuel invited me to dinner at his house. "I'll cook," he said.

I would have eaten a Big Mac if that was his plan. I told my father I intended to spend the weekend with a friend and he said not to worry: "Keep the car."

I packed an overnight bag and stowed it in the trunk. I'd gone on the pill a month before. I thought I was ready. After my last class I killed time studying at Fine Hall until 6:50.

Samuel met me at the door. The house was clean, the lights low, candles on the table, faint smells of incense and food.

"Right on time," he said, and kissed me on the cheek. It was the first time he'd touched me.

I knew what was coming, although the details were vague. I'd always avoided this sort of thing. Now I was hopeful. I wanted to have sex with him, but I was very nervous. I was a virgin, but I thought I had to sleep with him. I thought sex was part of being together. I wasn't sure I'd like it. Some people craved it, but I'd never wanted to try. It was offputting: comical and messy. I'd watched part of a porn movie, and it had seemed gross. I knew my mother and stepfather enjoyed sex because I'd listened outside their door many a time. Her cries were strangely thrilling and disturbing. They certainly kept each other happy. They were always touching each other. They were so demonstrative I sometimes would leave the room.

The food Samuel served reminded me of Genoa, and I said so, and asked, "You cooked this? Really?"

"Actually, no. My friend catered it."

The wine was as good as the food, and I drank too much, almost a bottle, though he had only a glass. After the last course he took the dishes to the kitchen and then we sat at the table, staring at the candles. This went on much too long. They burned almost another inch while the silence grew. I was ready to flee.

"Do you have a boyfriend?" he asked.

I was so astonished I stared at him.

"Do you have a boyfriend?"

"No."

"I see you on campus with certain boys," he said. "I thought perhaps one of them -- ". He stopped.

"No. We study, or we do things together. We're friends." I didn't tell him that most of them were gay. I like gay men. They're attentive and nonthreatening. "Do you have a girlfriend?"

"Not at the moment."

What did that mean? Girlfriends were disposable? "I should go," I said. "My father worries."

"Oh. I thought -- can't you stay a bit longer?"

"I shouldn't." I was angry. I needed him to know what he was doing, because I was inexperienced. I needed him to be confident, because I wasn't. I needed him to know what I needed.

He sat next to me and leaned over and kissed me, gently but definitely. He knew what he wanted after all, and what I needed, and they were the same.

"Samuel," I said.

"Yes?"

"Samuel."

"Clover," he said. "You're the one with the beautiful name. Beautiful name. Beautiful girl."

I had to stop myself from laughing. This was all too predictable. I'd never seduced or been seduced, but I knew now how it worked. I knew what to say and do. Everything was strange and familiar at once. I was looking on and laughing at us, and falling in love with him at the same moment. I was calculating what to do and say, and yet I felt spontaneous and genuine. I stroked his cheek, and it was soft, and said his name again.

"Won't you stay?" he asked.

"I don't know yet," I said.

He kissed me again. This time he opened his mouth and touched my lips with his tongue. I drew away.

He leaned further and kissed me again, but with his mouth closed. I kissed him back, and we sat for a long time that way, simply kissing. He cupped the back of my head in his hand. The candle must have burned another half inch.

"Clover?" he said.

I didn't want him to stop. I'd completely forgotten myself until he broke the kiss and spoke. I felt different between my legs. I knew I was getting wet. I'd heard about this, read about this. I could even smell it, a little.

"Clover," he said again.

"Shut up." I unbuttoned my blouse and put his hand on my breast. I'd gone bra-less, something I never did because the sensation was too free.

"God," he said. "God." He thumbed the nipple, then kneaded it.

"Your mouth," I said. "Use your mouth."

If I'd thought his fingers were too much, now I was about to lose track of every distinction that made me a separate, conscious, self-aware being. I was exploding out of my skin. I wanted to scream. I needed to move in some way I couldn't, and didn't know how to. My bones were melting. I didn't dare budge, or breathe. I didn't want to disturb what he was doing. My entire body tingled.

"Eh." Someone whimpered.

He took his mouth away and started to speak.

"No," I said, and pulled him back to my breast.

His hand was creeping up my leg, under my skirt. I was ashamed. I didn't want him to know I was soaking wet, but I couldn't move, except to continue holding him to my breast.

He moved his mouth to mine and I opened mine and he put his tongue in and licked my lips. I broke away.

"No?" he asked.

"It was, it was too good." I kissed him and did the same thing to him, and then our tongues touched. I was trying to stop but I couldn't. I felt his thumb and forefinger pressing my labia together. I leaned back and thrust my hips forward. Who was this woman in my body? Why was she doing these things? Why did my face burn?

He stood and I opened my eyes and looked at him. Why had he stopped? Oh. He took my hand in his. In slow motion I saw and felt him pull me up from the chair. My fear returned. I sat back down from a half-standing posture. He looked puzzled.

"Samuel, I'm afraid. I've never done this."

"Don't worry. I won't hurt you."

In his bed, after the awkward moments of removing our clothes, he kissed me, and played with my breasts, and touched me between the legs, but the abandoned feeling wouldn't come back. I lay there, watching him do all the work. I couldn't respond. I felt sorry for him, and sorry for me.

"Samuel, I'm not ready. I can't do this yet. Maybe I'm frigid."

"No. You're definitely not frigid." He lay on his side, next to me, his head on his hand. I couldn't look at him. He said, "What do you want to do?"

"Will you hold me? Until I fall asleep?"

He exhaled noisily.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I want to do this. I don't know why I can't."

He held me despite himself and after a while I fell asleep.

In the morning I woke before he did. I lifted the sheet and inspected his body, smooth and perfect. No fat, no body hair. Everything about him was smooth and clean. He woke while I was looking at his penis. Immediately it started to rise. I kissed his mouth, and moments later all my feelings were like they'd been the night before, when we'd kissed at the table. I was helpless and unafraid.

He rolled over and positioned himself above me. Having this tall man on top of me, holding himself up on his arms so his weight wouldn't press on me, was intimidating and comforting. He grasped his penis and slid right in. He stopped when he was pressed all the way against me, and I was astonished at the feeling. The snugness of us. The fit. I wiggled around a bit, adjusting for comfort. When I stopped moving, he started pulling out and pushing in. I didn't move at first, and then found myself moving up and down in response. After what seemed like an hour, or a minute, he removed himself and lay on his back.

"Come here." He pulled me over on top.

I straddled him and lifted up. I didn't want to hurt him, or it. I was very careful not to bend the penis. The position felt different from the first way. I knew how to do this. I always had. I started to move. He put his hands behind his head and smiled.

"Is it safe to come?" he asked.

I nodded yes.

We spent most of the weekend in bed, except for dinner at Genoa, and a walk around the lake near his house. We watched a kung-fu movie from bed, imitating the screams and shouts. That led to a wrestling match. We didn't see the end of the movie. We were in the middle of having sex when the tape reached its end and the television switched to a broadcast channel. He fumbled for the remote and we laughed so hard that he fell out of me and we had to begin again.

We fooled around a dozen different ways, and I wondered how I'd been so lucky. I'd never been nice to anyone, and now I had this tender beautiful man, this perfect man, who was so kind to me, and so gentle. There was no way I could have lucked into this. I deserved this, but I didn't have the right skills or personality. It was beyond believing.

I moved in with him at the start of the fall semester. We were married the next summer, on the anniversary of our first night together. We moved to Berkeley, where I went to grad school and he had a tenure-track teaching position. Three years after that he found someone he liked better, and he tried to divorce me. She was a classical violinist, Korean, only twenty years old. She was a bigger trophy than me, and she wouldn't be better than him at math, as I was. Also, since we were on the same campus, I was nearby all the time, and I kept an eye on him. He didn't like that. She traveled, so he could have affairs while she was gone. That was the way he started with her; she was one of his women on the side, during his marriage to me.

I'd seen letters from lawyers in his office in-box, and I recorded the phone calls from our house. He was checking around, trying to find a way to divorce me without giving me anything. He couldn't meet the residency requirements anywhere else, even New Jersey. Nevada didn't work for him, either, partly because he would have had to establish residency. He started looking into foreign countries.

I hired a detective, and gave him the names of the women I knew about. When I had enough information, I went to the best lawyer I thought I could afford. The divorce papers caught Samuel unprepared.

California is a community property state, but the community property in this case was our house and our salaries. My only leverage was the names of the women, some of them his students. I threatened to ruin his career. I said that I'd tell Ms. Park about the other women. We settled on a million dollars, a quarter of which went to my lawyer. Then Uncle Sam got his tithe. But I was happy to take thirty per cent of Samuel's net worth. The money was consolation for the way he hurt me. I used it to buy a house, not near and not like the one we'd lived in.

He and his little violinist moved when he was offered a job at U. of Chicago. He probably wanted to get away from me. At least I don't have to run into him on campus now. He's banished, and I'm glad. I won.