6:55 a.m.

Cal woke with a start, pondering the relationship between bagels and global warming. He crossed his arms beneath his head, stared at the ceiling and started yet another conversation with himself. “Yeast in bagels. Yeast combines with water. Carbon dioxide released. CO2 absorbs electromagnetic energy. Energy raises atmospheric temperatures.” Ditto croissants and white bread. “Awesome.”

Cal yawned, stretched and sauntered, across the expanse of his loft to the corner that served as his kitchen. He wasn’t hungry but knew he had to eat. His 142 pounds — 99.99 percent of it manic muscle — were already too thinly stretched across his 5’11” frame.

“I burn more calories than I ingest,” he had complained to JJ the week before.      

She had rolled her eyes. “Do you know how many women would love to have your problem?”

Cal guesstimated two-thirds of approximately 155 million, which was the female population of the U.S., although, you didn’t need a Ph.D. in computer science and a certificate from the Culinary Institute of America to know you never talked to women about weight.

Three eggs, a carbon-dioxide producing bagel and a couple bowls of cereal — maybe some ice cream. That would hold him until lunch. Cal sat, spooned and pondered again, this time about JJ. He fought the urge to call her. She’d be sleeping anyway.

Cereal bowl in hand, Cal crossed the loft to his work area. JJ’s computer lay autopsied on the counter. It had died the week before, and he had volunteered to fix it. JJ insisted on paying him $50, which was 100 times more than the dinosaur was worth. Luckily, JJ didn’t know RAM from sheep, so he could gut and replace its innards with a quad-core processor, 4GB of DIMMs, an L3 cache, five firewire ports and an 18x superdrive CD/DVD-RW. He would also upgrade her software. And, of course, he’d install Vacuum Boy, the computer game he had invented when he was 14. He wouldn’t tell her about that, however, at least not yet.

Cal had most of the parts he needed but would have to do some jerry rigging to cram everything into the casing. The key was to make the computer look as beat up as it did when JJ handed it over. She didn’t take kindly to people doing things for her, and the last thing he wanted was to tick her off.

Cal finished his cereal, crossed the loft again and sat at his own computer to check his horoscope. He didn’t believe in astrology, but these days he needed direction wherever he could get it. Sagittarius: “Your financial stars are aligned. Wealth is on its way.”

“Just my luck,” he grumbled and clicked to another astrology site. No sooner had the page loaded than a message popped onto his screen. Nikki. It was 4:20 a.m., California time. Crap.

“Are you there, Cal?” she wrote. “I know you’re there, YOU PRICK.”

Cal stared at the screen.

“Why did you walk out on me? I don’t deserve thIS kind of treatment!!!!”

Cal imagined Nikki’s angry eyes holding his, refusing to let him look away, to get away without an answer.

“Please, Cal, please come back,” she wrote. “I promise to give you your space, or whatever else you need.“

Cal sat on his hands, to keep his fingers from reaching his keyboard.

A few moments later, a final message: “I love you, Vacuum Boy.”

“I love you, too,” Cal whispered. But things were different now that JJ had entered his life.

Cal heard the IND screeching from several blocks away — metal wheels on metal track as the elevated train headed toward Manhattan. He walked to the window and watched it lumber across the Williamsburg Bridge. She — Cal always thought of bridges as she’s — wasn’t as beautiful as the Brooklyn Bridge to her south, but she deserved respect nonetheless. He had read somewhere that back in 1903, or was it ‘04? — no, it had to be ’03 because that was the year Maurice Garin won the first Tour de France — yes, back in 1903, the Williamsburg was the longest suspension bridge on earth, which, in essence, made her the longest suspension bridge in the universe. The known universe, of course.

Even from a distance, Cal could make out the silhouettes of commuters heading to work, and he envied them. Unemployment sucked. Too much time, too little to do. Biking, writing Wikipedia articles, taking up ballroom dancing — they were getting old, and no matter how much he crammed into his days, the emptiness crept in.

Cal leaned his head against the window and thought about JJ. Red hair. Green eyes. A light dusting of freckles on her nose. Full lips he had yet to see smile. Was it ennui or cynicism that made JJ so stubborn? A genetically programmed distrust New Yorkers shared?

Cal washed up and thought about shaving. There wasn’t much to shave, however. Twenty-four years old and he still couldn’t grow a beard, let alone half a mustache. But at least he was cute, or so People magazine claimed in its spread on nerdy millionnaires, although he would have preferred the older-sounding “good looking.”

JJ. Her midterm was on Friday and if the “D” on her latest quiz grade was any indication, she would fail astronomy. Cal couldn’t let that happen. That’s why he had volunteered — or was it lobbied? — to tutor her. She wasn’t a willing pupil, however. No matter how much he waxed poetic about quasars, gravitational pulls and the Big Bang Theory, he couldn’t engage her. Maybe it wasn’t the material but him, his enthusiasm. Why did he have to love astronomy as much as oceanography, gothic architecture, post-impressionism, the spread of American populism and any other person, place, thing or idea that had ever existed?

“So tell me, Cal,” JJ had asked shortly after they met, “are you one of those Mensa types who know everything about everything?”

“Yes,” he said, and turned away. He wasn’t trying to impress her. His words just slipped out, as did all other words that wandered too close to his lips. When at last he dared to turn back, he found her studying him.

“It’s not a crime, you know,” she said. And for a moment it wasn’t.

Cal put on his biking shoes and racing jersey, grabbed his helmet and 24-speed bike, and took his loft’s freight elevator to the street. The heat index would be 98; surely, it was that hot already. All the more reason to head out to Coney Island. He would sit on the boardwalk, maybe walk along the beach.

As Cal pedaled, he thought again of JJ. She was wrong about his knowing everything. There was, in fact, something he didn’t know, even though he had spent countless sleepless nights pondering it. Something far more important than bagels and global warming. Something more challenging than ballroom dancing: Cal didn’t know how to tell JJ he loved her, with every 67 beats of his aching heart.