An Abundance of Katherines: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

In the morning, Colin goes downstairs to find Hollis passed out on the couch and Hassan eating breakfast. Hassan shows Colin a note from Hollis directing them to speed up their interviews by asking only four questions: “Where would you live if you could live anywhere? What would you do for a living if you didn’t work for the factory? When did your people come to the country? and What do you think makes Gutshot special?” She asks them not to wake her because she wrote the note at 5:30 a.m.

Hassan teases Colin about his bedhead and Colin’s insistence that it makes him look like Nikola Tesla. Nonetheless, Hassan shares the eggs he has made with Colin. Colin says Hassan is a good cook, and Hassan says that’s “how Daddy got so fat.” He says he is now going to refer to himself exclusively as “Daddy.” Lindsey interrupts the conversation by coming down the stairs. Colin thinks she looks extra pretty because she is not wearing makeup. He thinks again of Katherine XIX without makeup and reflects that “She was the nexus of all the connections his brain made.”

Colin, Hassan, and Lindsey get out the door and go to interview a bearded man named Hezekiah Wilson Jones. After the interview, Lindsey says she is going to see TOC at the store and asks the boys to pick her up later. Colin thinks that they must be her friends if she trusts them not to rat her out to Hollis. “Almost by accident,” the narrator states, “and in just two days, Colin had made his second-ever friend.” Colin and Hassan continue the interviews without Lindsey. Colin is interested that most of the interviewees say they would still live in Gutshot if they could live anywhere, but he mostly lets Hassan ask the questions so that he can focus on the Theorem. Eventually, he dwells only on the hole in his gut and how much it hurts.

Toward the end of the day, a woman walks into the room where Colin and Hassan are conducting the interviews and says she is the last employee who hasn’t been interviewed. She has heard that one of them is a genius and wants to know why the shower curtain always blows in instead of out. Colin explains that it is because the running water creates a low-pressure area that pulls the curtain in. Even Hassan admits that this is interesting. The woman turns out to be named Katherine. She is attractive and “sexily older” at twenty-two, but Colin is not interested in her because of Katherine XIX.

After the interviews, Colin and Hassan drive around until Colin decides, against Hassan’s protests, to trudge out into a field to call Katherine XIX. He gets her voicemail and leaves a message about how much he loves her. On his way back to the car, she calls back. She has not listened to the message but tells him that she feels their breakup was the right decision. Her mother told her that it always seemed like they were unhealthily attached at the hip. Colin tells her that being attached would be better than this. He claims that “Singleton,” his last name, is the word for someone who is not a conjoined twin. Katherine suggests that they do not talk to each other until the end of summer. After they hang up, Colin lies on the ground and thinks about how much he misses the future he had imagined with Katherine.

Eventually, Hassan, who has left to pick up Lindsey, pulls up with Lindsey in Satan’s Hearse. Both Hassan and Lindsey try to comfort Colin, Lindsey telling him to let it out when he begins to cry. Colin protests that if he begins sobbing, it will sound like a bullfrog’s mating call. All three of them laugh.

In the evening, Colin works on the Theorem but becomes increasingly frustrated as he comes to the conclusion that although he could conceive of the idea, it will take a genius to complete it. Bent on burning his notebook, he goes in search of a match and ends up in Lindsey’s room. He notices that all the pictures of her in the room are from the past couple years. Lindsey looks through Colin’s notebook and asks Colin to explain it. He tells her about the scale he has created going from -5 for a strong Dumpee to +5 for a strong Dumper. Lindsey tells him that she wants the notebook for a few days before he burns it. She says she hates math, but this is a cool way to tell stories. She agrees that they can burn it soon.