The Department of Hate - A Love Story by Anthony O'connor Page B

breathes, calming himself as best he could. These people weren’t even worth pissing on.
     
    He looked around anxiously. Someone was following him - watching him. This wasn’t the first time. But he couldn’t make out who it was. It was infuriating. He shook his head and continued looking for the restaurant. Finally he saw it - a large golden sign just a dozen meters ahead - 'the Golden Cat'. He rushed towards it, fumbled with the door - managing eventually to get it open and move on inside. There were people everywhere. The noise was overwhelming - but at least it was warm. Robert had said to meet him upstairs. Jarrod looked around for the stairway. There it was, at the back! He had to push his way through the crowd around the bar in order to get there. He made his way up the stairs, around to the left, down the corridor. He passed several largish rooms, all crowded, none of them containing Robert and party. Finally in the room at the end of the corridor he saw Robert and Wendy. The room was as crowded as the others - at least a dozen other people. Sitting across the table from them there was an unknown female, presumably Caroline. She was a little short and frumpy, rather large looking, short black hair, thick glasses. Even at first glance though she did seem quite bright! She was already staring at him with an obvious sense of expectation. Jarrod sighed, thinking to himself
    ' Oh yes, this was going to be just fucking great.'
     
    Robert greeted him warmly, helped him with his coat - placing it on the rack behind them. He responded, shook Robert's hand, nodded to Wendy and then very self-consciously took his seat across from Caroline. Robert was quick to make the introductions.
    "Jarrod, you know Wendy, this is Caroline Lerner. She's a mathematician at King's College.  Caroline this is Jarrod, Jarrod Bennett - one of my wayward colleagues." Caroline held out her hand
    "Hello Jarrod ." Jarrod shook it quickly, replying
    "Hello." Jarrod and Wendy exchanged greetings. Then there was an awkward pause.  There was already a jug of beer on the table. Robert poured a glass for Jarrod and handed it to him. Jarrod took a sip. Robert looked over at Caroline
    "Why don't you tell Jarrod about your work?" Caroline took a breathe
    "Well, as I was just saying, my Topology group is looking at a new way of trying to classify three dimensional manifolds." Jarrod was not uninterested. He asked
    "Wasn't that done by Perelman a few years ago - one of the millennium problems?" Caroline seemed pleased that he knew something about it.
    "No, Perelman showed that the only compact simply connected three manifolds were three spheres. A fantastic result! But he did this without any kind of classification. That remains unsolved." Jarrod replied simply
    "Oh!" Caroline was eager to complete her thoughts, she rushed on. "It's trivial to classify one and two dimensions - four and above have been done in the last few decades. Three has always been too hard. But I think we're making a lot of progress. We might even do it!" Her enthusiasm was quite evident, and Jarrod was impressed.
     
    The waiter arrived to take their orders. The others had already decided - Jarrod had to quickly scan the menu. He asked for steak and chips. Robert ordered another jug of beer - everyone seemed happy with that.  Wendy caught Caroline's attention.
    " Jarrod's been doing some work on the philosophy of mathematics." Caroline looked a bit dubious. She asked abruptly
    "What!" Jarrod was amused, he smiled.
    "Don't be like that. Maybe if you knew exactly what it was you were actually doing you might be able to do it better ." He realised that this had come out a bit more harshly than he intended but Caroline didn’t seem to care. She just shrugged
    "Maybe. Not very likely. What are you looking at?" Jarrod spoke carefully
    "The influence of phenomenology on early intuitionism - Brouwer especially."
    Caroline could hardly hide her distaste, she blurted out
    "Intuitionism!" But