The Rule of Four

didn't have to see him come and go.

As we arrive in front of the door, Paul pops the lock open with his key. Shuffling in behind him, I'm caught by surprise. It's been weeks since I've seen the place. The first thing I remember is how cold it is. Here, in what is effectively the club's cellar, temperatures hover uncomfortably close to freezing. Exclusive or no, the room looks like it's been hit by a hurricane of letters. Books have settled on every surface like mounds of debris: the shelves of Ivy's moldering European and American classics are almost obscured by Paul's reference books, historical journals, nautical maps, and stray blueprint designs.

He closes the door behind us. Beside the desk is a handsome fireplace, and the clutter of papers is so heavy here that some of the titles are bleeding onto the hearth. Still, when Paul scans the room, he seems pleased; everything is as he left it. He walks over and picks up The Poetry of Michelangelo from the floor, brushes some paint chips off the cover, and places it carefully on his desk. Finding a long wooden match atop the mantel, he strikes the head and reaches down into the fireplace, where a blue flame breathes life into old newsprint weighted with logs.

You've done a lot, I tell him, looking at one of the more detailed blueprints unraveled across his desk.

He frowns. That's nothing. I've made a dozen like that, and they're probably all wrong. I do it when I feel like giving up.

What I'm looking at is a drawing of a building Paul invented. The edifice is stitched together from the ruins of buildings mentioned in the Hypnerotomachia: broken arches have been restored; riddled foundations are strong again; columns and capitals, once shattered, now find themselves repaired. There is an entire pile of blueprints beneath it, each one assembled the same way from the odds and ends of Colonna's imagination, each one different. Paul has created a landscape to live in down here, an Italy of his own. On the walls are taped other sketches, some hidden by notes he has affixed over them. In each one the lines are studiously architectural, measured in units I don't understand. A computer could have produced all of them, the proportions are so perfect, the script is so careful. But Paul, who claims to be suspicious of computers, has actually never been able to afford his own, and politely refused Curry's offer to buy him one. Everything here has been drawn by hand.

What are they supposed to be? I ask.

The building Francesco is designing.

I'd almost forgotten Paul's habit of referring to Colonna in the present tense, always using the man's first name.

What building?

Francesco's crypt. The first half of the Hypnerotomachia says he's designing it. Remember?

Of course. You think it looks like these? I ask, gesturing at the drawings.

I don't know. But I'm going to find out.

How? Then I remember what Curry said at the museum. Is that what the surveyors are for? You're going to exhume it?

Maybe.

So you found out why Colonna built it?

This was the pivotal question we came to, just as our work together ended. The text of the Hypnerotomachia alluded mysteriously to a crypt

Colonna was constructing, but Paul and I could never agree about its nature. Paul envisioned it as a Renaissance sarcophagus for the Colonna family, possibly intended to rival papal tombs of the kind Michelangelo designed around the same period. Trying harder to connect the crypt to The Belladonna Document, I imagined the crypt as a final resting place for Colonna's victims, a theory that went further toward explaining the Hypnerotomachia great secrecy about the design. The fact that Colonna never fully described the building, or where it could be found, remained the major gap in Paul's work at the moment I left.

Before he can answer my question, a knock comes at the door.

You moved, Gil says, entering with the club steward.

He stops short, sizing up Paul's room like a man peering into a women's bathroom, sheepish but intrigued. The steward places two settings in cloth napkins on a table, finding patches of space between the books. Between them, they're carrying two plates of Ivy Club china, a pitcher of water, and a basket of bread.

Warm rustic bread, the steward says, putting the basket down.

Steak with peppercorns, Gil says, following suit. Anything else?

We shake our heads, and Gil takes one last look at the room, then returns back upstairs.

The steward pours water into two glasses. Would you like something else to drink?

When we say no, he vanishes too.

Paul serves himself quickly. Watching him eat, I think of the Oliver Twist impression he did the first time we met, the little bowl he made with his hands. Sometimes I wonder if Paul's first memory of childhood is of hunger. At the parochial school where he was raised, he shared the table with six other children, and meals were always first come, first served, until the food ran out. I'm not sure he ever escaped that mentality. One night our freshman year, back when we all took meals together in the dining hall of our residential college, Charlie joked that Paul ate so fast you'd think food was going out of style. Later that night Paul explained why, and none of us joked about it again.

Now Paul extends his arm for a piece of bread, caught up in the joy of eating. The smell of food wrestles with the old mildew stink of books and the smoke of the fire, in a way I might've enjoyed under different circumstances. But here, now, it feels uncomfortable, different memories sewn together. As if he can read my mind, Paul becomes conscious of his reach and looks bashful.

I push the basket toward him. Eat up, I say, scraping at the food.

Behind us, the fire sputters. Over in the corner is an opening in the wall, the size of a large dumbwaiter: the entrance to the steam tunnels, the one Paul prefers.

I can't believe you still crawl through that.

He puts down his fork. It's better than dealing with everyone upstairs.

It feels like a dungeon down here.

It didn't bother you before.

I sense an old argument reviving. Paul quickly wipes his mouth with a napkin. Forget it, he says, putting the diary onto the table between us. This is what matters now. He taps the cover with two fingers, then pushes the little book toward me. We have a chance to finish what we started. Richard thinks this could be the key.

I rub at a stain on the desk. Maybe you should show it to Tart.

Paul gapes at me. Vincent thinks everything I found with you is worthless. He's been pushing me for progress reports twice a week, just to prove I haven't given up. I'm tired of driving to the Institute every time I need his help, and having him say this is derivative work.

'Derivative?

And he threatened to tell the department I'm stalling.

After everything we found?

It doesn't matter, he says. I don't care what Vincent thinks. He taps the diary again. I want to finish.

Your deadline is tomorrow.

We did more together in three months than I did alone in three years. What's one more night? Under his breath, he adds, Besides, the deadline isn't what matters.

I'm surprised to hear him say it, but the jab of Taft's rejection is what lingers. Paul must've known it would. I feel more pride in the work I did on the Hypnerotomachia than in all the work I did on my own thesis.

Taft's out of his mind, I tell him. No one's ever found that much in the book before. Why didn't you request an advisor change?

Paul's hands begin shredding the bread into little pellets, rolling them between his fingers. I've been asking myself the same thing, he says, looking away. Do you know how many times he's bragged to me about ruining the academic career of 'some moron' with his peer reviews or tenure recommendations? He never mentioned your father, but there were others. Remember Professor Macintyre from Classics? Remember his book about Keats's