His university days were spent conducting budget science experiments, using the few suitable apparatus he could scavenge amid the dank bedsit of her: The Uncommunicative Kabbalist.
She was ever hunched in study over some sacred text, keying equations for God's love. Calculator in one hand, post-its in the other. An impregnable curtain of silk hair parting long enough to reveal a face hinting at Creation, but not so long as to reciprocate Arthur's gaze and consent to gaining some primary evidence over on the soggy couch.
Swearing not to pester, Arthur's presence was tolerated - she confined to the divine; he to the divan, which he left now and then to roam the flat in search of ersatz lab equipment to add to his gas hob bunsen burner and steak knife scalpel.
While she, sleepless and thinning, studied the numbers for origins, Arthur cooked and consumed the share she always declined to eat, and generally went about living - as the eight other students in the house did - without thought of hygiene or the future.
He watched as the sieve, bowls, can opener, spatula, tongues, peeler and various other utensils, piled atop a seldom-glimpsed draining board, forsook their independence to form some sort of super gadget - an all-in-one bound by the chance angles of their various prongs, lattices, hinges and teeth, or at least the binding culture of the many and varied molds and fungi that emerged tentacle-like from the festering sink, anchoring the structure in place.
The mathematical quirk of its being was fashioned and maintained by such a huge degree of chance, that it was hard not to believe it owed its existence to some intelligent design, and wasn't just the result of a procession of people unwilling to take responsibility for the mess of it all.
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