The Rule of Four

I hadn't told him about the accident yet, but it was exactly the wrong thing to say.

You don't know anything about him.

I do. I have copies of all of his work.

Listen to me-

I even found his dissertation…

He's not a book. You can't just read him.

But it was as if he couldn't hear.

The Rome of Raphael, 1974. Ficino and the Rebirth of Plato, 1979. The Men of Santa Croce, 1985.

He began counting them on his fingers.

The HypnerotomachiaPoliphili and the Hieroglyphics of Horapollo.' In Renaissance Quarterly, June of '87. 'Leonardo's Doctor.' In Journal of Medical History, 1989.

Chronological, without a hitch.

'The Breeches-Maker.' Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 1991.

You forgot the BARS article, I said.

The Bulletin of the American Renaissance Society.

That was in '92.

It was in '91.

He frowned. 'Ninety-two was the first year they accepted articles from non-members. It was sophomore year of high school. Remember? That fall.

There was silence. For a second he seemed worried. Not that he was wrong, but that I was.

Maybe he wrote it in '91, Paul said. They only published it in '92. Is that what you meant?

I nodded.

Then it was '91. You were right. He pulled out the book he'd been carrying with him. And then there's this.

A first edition of The Belladonna Document.

He weighed it deferentially. His best work so far. You were there when he found it? The letter about Colonna?

Yes.

I wish I could've seen it. It must've been amazing.

I looked over his shoulder, out a window on the far wall. The leaves were red. It had started to rain.

It was, I said.

Paul shook his head. You're very lucky.

His fingers fanned the pages of my father's book, gently.

He died two years ago, I said. We were in a car accident.

What?

He died right after he wrote that.

The window behind him was fogging up at the corners. A man walked by with a newspaper over his head, trying to keep dry.

Someone hit you?

No. My father lost control of the car.

Paul rubbed his finger against the image on the book's dust jacket. A single emblem, a dolphin with an anchor. The symbol of the Aldine Press in Venice.

I didn't know… he said.

It's okay.

The silence at that moment was the longest there has ever been between us.

My father died when I was four, he said. He had a heart attack.

I'm sorry.

Thanks.

What does your mother do? I asked.

He found a crease in the dust jacket and began to smooth it out between his fingers. She died a year later.

I tried to tell him something, but all the words I was used to hearing felt wrong in my mouth.

Paul tried to smile. I'm like Oliver, he continued, forming a bowl with his hands. Please, sir, I want some more.

I scraped out a laugh, unsure if he wanted one.

I just wanted you to know what I meant, he said. About your dad…

I understand.

I only said it because-

Umbrellas bobbed past the bottom of the window like horseshoe crabs q the tide. The murmur in the coffee shop was louder now. Paul began talking, trying to mend things. He told me how, after his parents died, he'd been raised at a parochial school that boarded orphans and runaways. How, after spending most of high school in the company of books, he'd come to college determined to make something better of his life. How he was looking for friends who could talk back. Finally he fell quiet, an embarrassed look on his face, sensing that he'd killed the conversation.

So what dorm do you live in? I asked him, knowing how he felt.

Holder. Same as you.

He pulled out a copy of the freshman face-book and showed me the log-eared page.

How long have you been looking for me? I asked.

I just found your name.

I looked out the window. A single red umbrella floated past. It paused at he coffee shop window and seemed to hover there before going on.

I turned back to Paul. Want another cup?

Sure. Thanks.

And so it began.

What a strange thing, to build a castle in the air. We made a friendship out of nothing, because nothing was the heart of what we shared. After that night it seemed more and more natural, talking to Paul. Before long I even started to feel the way he did about my father: that maybe we shared him too.

You know what he used to say? I asked him one night in his bedroom when we talked about the accident.

What?

The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong,

Paul smiled.

There was an old Princeton basketball coach who used to say that, I told him. Freshman year in high school, I tried out for basketball. My dad would pick me up from practice every day, and when I would complain about how much shorter I was than everybody else, he would say, 'It doesn't matter how big they are, Tom. Remember: The strong take from the weak, but the smart take from the strong.' Always the same thing. I shook my head. God, I got sick of that.

Do you think it's true?

That the smart take from the strong?.

Yeah.

I laughed. You've never seen me play basketball.

Well, I believe it, he said. I definitely do.

You're kidding…”

He'd been stuffed in more lockers and browbeaten by more bullies during high school than anyone I'd ever