The Rule of Four

Curry turns the book in his hands again. His eyes have become cold and distant.

Richard, I have to return the diary to Bill tomorrow, Paul says. I'll read through it tonight. Maybe it can get me through the final section of the Hypnerotomachia.

Curry shakes himself back to the present. You haven't finished your work?

Paul's voice fills with anxiety. The last section isn't like the others.

But what about the deadline tomorrow?

When Paul says nothing, Curry runs his hand over the diary's cover, then relinquishes it. Finish. Don't compromise what you've earned. There's too much at stake.

I won't. I think I've almost found it. I'm very close.

If you need anything, just say so. An excavation permit. Surveyors. If it's there, we'll find it.

I glance at Paul, wondering what Curry means.

Paul smiles nervously. I don't need anything more. I'll find it on my own, now that I have the diary.

Just don't let it out of your sight. No one has done something like this before. Remember Browning. 'What many dream of, all their lives.'

Sir, comes a voice from behind us.

We turn to find a curator stepping in our direction.

Mr. Curry, the trustees' meeting is beginning soon. Could we ask you to move to the upstairs deck?

We'll talk about this more later, Curry says, reorienting himself. I don't know how long this meeting will be.

He pats Paul on the arm, shakes my hand, and then walks toward the stairs. When he ascends, we find ourselves alone with the guards.

I shouldn't have let him see it, Paul says, almost to himself, as we turn toward the door.

He pauses to take in the series of images one more time, forming a memory he can return to when the museum is closed. Then we find our way back outside.

Why would Bill lie about where he got the diary? I ask once we're in the snow again.

I don't think he would, Paul says.

Then what was Curry talking about?

If he knew more, he would've told us.

Maybe he didn't want to tell you while I was there.

Paul ignores me. There's a pretense he likes to keep up, that we are equals in Curry's eyes.

What did he mean when he said he'd help you get excavation permits? I ask.

Paul looks over his shoulder nervously at a student who has fallen in behind us. Not here, Tom.

I know better than to push him. After a long silence I say, Can you tell me why all the paintings had to do with Joseph?

Paul's expression lightens. Genesis thirty-seven. He pauses to call it up. Now Jacob loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age. And he made him a coat of many colors.

It takes me a second to understand. The gift of colors. The love of an aging father for his favorite son.

He's proud of you, I say.

Paul nods, But I'm not done. The work isn't finished.

It's not about that, I tell him.

Paul smiles thinly. Of course it is.

We make our way back to the dorm, and I notice an unpleasant quality to the sky: it's dark, but not perfectly black. The whole roof of it is shot with snow clouds from horizon to horizon, and they are a heavy, luminous gray. There isn't a star to be seen.

At the rear door to Dod, I realize we have no way in. Paul flags down a senior from upstairs, who gives us an odd look before lending us his ID card. A small pad registers its proximity with a beep, then unlocks the door with a sound like a shotgun being shucked. In the basement, two junior women are folding clothes on an open table, wearing T-shirts and tiny boxer shorts in the swelter of the laundry room. It never fails: walking through the laundry room in winter is like entering a desert mirage, air shivering with heat, bodies fantastic. When it's snowing outside, the sight of bare shoulders and legs is better than a shot of whiskey to get the blood pumping again. We're nowhere near Holder, but it feels like we've stumbled onto the waiting room for the Nude Olympics.

I climb to the first floor and head toward the north flank of the building, where our room is the final quad. Paul trails behind me, silent. The closer we get, the more I find myself thinking of the two letters on the coffee table again. Even Bill's discovery isn't enough to distract me. For weeks I've fallen asleep to the thought of what a person could do with forty-three thousand dollars a year. Fitzgerald wrote a short story once about a diamond the size of the Ritz, and in the moments before I doze off, when the proportions of things are in flux, I can imagine buying a ring with that diamond in it, for a woman just on the other side of the dream. Some nights I think of buying enchanted items, the way children do in games they play, like a car that would never crash, or a leg that would always heal. Charlie keeps me honest when I get carried away. He says I ought to buy a collection of very expensive platform shoes, or put a down payment on a house with low ceilings.

What are they doing? Paul says, pointing down the hall.

Standing side by side at the end of the corridor are Charlie and Gil. They're looking into the open doorway of our room, where someone is pacing inside. A second glance tells me everything: the campus police are here. Someone must've seen us coming out of the tunnels.

What's going on? Paul says, quickening his steps.

I hurry to follow him.

The proctor is sizing up something on our floor. I can hear Charlie and Gil arguing, but can't make out the words. Just as I start to prepare excuses for what we've done, Gil sees us coming and says, It's okay. Nothing was taken.

What?

He points toward the doorway. The room, I see now, is in disarray. Couch cushions are on the floor; books are thrown off shelves. In the bedroom I share with Paul, dresser drawers hang open.

Oh God… Paul whispers, pushing between Charlie and me.

Someone broke in, Gil explains.

Someone walked in, Charlie corrects. The door was unlocked.

I turn to Gil, the last one out. For the past month Paul has asked us to keep the room tight while he finished his thesis. Gil is the only one who forgets.

Look, he says defensively, pointing at the window across the room. They came in through there. Not through the door.

A puddle of water has formed beneath a window by the north face of the common room. Its sash is thrown wide, and snow is gathering on the sill, swimming on the back of the wind. There are three huge slashes through the screen.

I step forward into my bedroom with Paul. His eyes are running along the edge of his desk drawers, rising toward the library books mounted on a wall shelf Charlie built him. The books are gone. His head shifts back and forth, searching. His breathing is loud. For an instant we're back in the tunnels; nothing is familiar but the voices.

It doesn't matter, Charlie. That's not how they got in.

It doesn't matter to you, because they didn't take anything of yours.

The proctor is still pacing through the common room.

Someone must've known… Paul mumbles to himself.

Look down here, I say, pointing at the lower mattress on the bunk.

Paul turns. The books are safe. Hands shaking, he begins to check the titles.

I pad through my own belongings, finding almost everything untouched. The dust has hardly been disturbed. Someone rifled through my papers, but only a framed reproduction of the Hypnerotomachia's title page, a gift from my father, has been taken off the wall and