The Rule of Four

room and offering to help him unpack-was living in a single room down the hall. Thinking nothing could be worse than being alone, Charlie was always on the prowl for new friends.

Paul immediately had misgivings about this wild, imposing character who never stopped pounding at his door with new adventures in mind. Something about Charlie's athletic build seemed to conjure a spell of fear in him, as if he' d been tortured by a bully of that description as a child. For my part, I was surprised that Charlie hadn't gotten tired of us, sedate as we were. Most of that first semester, I was convinced that he would abandon us for companions more like himself. I pegged him for a wealthy minority jock-the kind who had a neuro-surgeon mother and an executive father, who eased through a regional prep school with more tutors than trouble, and who arrived at Princeton with nothing particular in mind except to have some fun and graduate in the solid middle of the class.

That all seems funny now. The truth was, Charlie grew up in the heart of Philadelphia, riding with the volunteer ambulance squad through the worst crime districts in the city. He was a middle-class kid from a public school, whose father was a regional sales rep for an East Coast chemical manufacturer, and whose mother taught seventh-grade science. When he applied to college, his parents made it clear that anything beyond in-state tuition was a burden he would shoulder himself. The day Charlie arrived on campus, he'd taken on more student loans, and was more deeply in debt, than the rest of us would be when we graduated. Even Paul, who came from less, had been given a full scholarship because his need was so great.

Maybe that was why, other than Paul during his month of insomnia as thesis deadlines approached, none of us did more and slept less than Charlie. He expected great things for his money, and to justify his sacrifice, he sacrificed even more. It wasn't an easy thing to maintain a sense of identity at a school where only one in fifteen students was black, and only half of those were men. But identity for Charlie never ran along completely conventional lines anyway. He had a world-beating personality and an irresistible sense of purpose, and from the beginning I felt it was his world we were living in, not ours.

Of course, we didn't know all that on the late October night, only six weeks after we first met him, when he came to Paul's door with his most daring plan to date. Since roughly the Civil War, students at Princeton had been in the habit of stealing the clapper from the bell atop Nassau Hall, the oldest building on campus. The original idea was that if the bell couldn't toll the beginning of a new academic year, then the new academic year couldn't begin. Whether anyone actually believed that, I don't know, but I do know that stealing the clapper became a tradition, and that students tried everything from picking locks to scaling walls to do it. After more than a hundred years, the administration got so tired of the stunt, and so worried about a lawsuit, that it finally announced the clapper had been removed. Only, Charlie had information to the contrary. The removal was a hoax, he said; the clapper was intact. And tonight, with our help, he was going to steal it.

I don't need to explain that breaking into a historic landmark with a set of stolen keys and then fleeing from proctors on my bad leg, all in the name of a worthless bell clapper and fifteen minutes of campus fame, didn't strike me as a world-class idea. But the longer Charlie argued his case, the more I saw his point: if juniors and seniors have their research papers and theses, and sophomores choose their majors and eating clubs, then all that's left for freshmen is to take risks or get caught trying. The deans will never be more forgiving, he argued, than they will now. And when Charlie insisted it would take three people-no fewer-he and I decided that the only fair way to resolve things was to take a vote. In a reassuring test of democracy, we held a slim majority over Paul, and Paul, never being one to rock the boat, gave in. We agreed to be lookouts for Charlie, and after planning our course of attack, the three of us assembled what we could in the way of black clothing and set out for Nassau Hall at midnight.

Now, I've said before that the new Tom-the one who survived the terrible car wreck and lived to fight another day-was made of braver, more adventurous stuff than the shrinking violet who was old Tom. But let's be clear. Old or new, Evel Knievel I am not. For an hour after we arrived at Nassau Hall, I stood at my post in a tense sweat, fearing every shadow and twitching at every sound. Then, shortly after one o'clock, it happened. As the first of the eating clubs closed their taprooms for the night, a westward migration began of students and security officers retreating to campus. Charlie had promised that we would be well clear of Nassau Hall by then, but now he was nowhere to be seen.

I turned and hissed at Paul, What's taking so long?

But there was no response.

Taking a step toward the darkness, I called out again, squinting into the shadows.

What's he doing up there?

But when I peered around the corner, there was no sign of Paul. The front door to tine building was ajar.

I ran to the entrance. Sticking my head inside, I could make out Paul and Charlie in a distant conversation. It's not up there, Charlie was saying. Hurry up! I said. They're coming.

Suddenly a voice rose from the darkness behind me. Campus police! Stop right there!

I turned in terror. Charlie's voice choked into silence. I must have misheard, because I thought Paul swore.

Put your hands on your hips, came the voice again. My mind fogged up. I imagined probation; dean's warnings; expulsion. Put your hands on your hips, the voice repeated, louder now. I obeyed.

For a moment there was silence. I strained to make out the proctor in the darkness, but I could see nothing. The next sound I heard was his laughter. Now shake it, baby. Dance.

The figure who emerged from the shadows was a student. He laughed again and did a tipsy rumba thrust as he approached. He was about halfway between my height and Charlie's, with dark hair that fell over his face. His tailored black blazer covered a starched white shirt with too many buttons undone.

Charlie and Paul crept warily from the building behind me, empty-handed.

The young man walked up to them, smiling. So it's true? he said. What is? Charlie growled, glaring at me.

The young man pointed at the bell tower. The clapper. They really took it out?

Charlie said nothing, but Paul nodded, still full of adventure. Our new friend thought for a second. But you got up there? I began to see where this was leading. Well, you can't just leave, he said.

Mischief danced in his eyes. Charlie was liking him better by the second. Before long I was back at my post, guarding the east door, as all three of them vanished into the building.

When they returned fifteen minutes later, they weren't wearing pants.

What are you doing? I said.

They came toward me, arm in arm, doing a little jig in their boxers. Looking up toward the cupola, I could make out six pant legs flapping from the weather vane.

I stammered that we had to get home, but they looked at each other and booed me. The stranger insisted that we go back to one of the eating clubs to celebrate. Time for a few toasts at Ivy, he said, knowing that at this hour on Prospect Avenue, pants would be optional. And Charlie was happy to agree.

As we walked east toward Ivy, then, our new friend told us stories of his own pranks in high school: dyeing the pool red for Valentine's Day; releasing cockroaches in English class when the freshmen were reading Kafka; scandalizing the drama department by inflating a giant penis above the theater roof on opening night of Titus Andronicus. You had to be impressed. He, too, as it happened, was a freshman. A graduate of Exeter, he said, by the name of Preston Gilmore Rankin.

But, he added, as I remember to this day, call me Gil.

Gil was different from the rest of us, of course. In retrospect, I think he arrived at Princeton so used to the affluence of Exeter that wealth and the distinctions it imposed on life had become invisible to him. The only meaningful yardstick in his eyes was character, and maybe that was why, during our first semester, Gil was drawn immediately to Charlie, and through Charlie, to us. His charm always managed to smooth over the differences, and I couldn't help but feel that to be with Gil was to be in the thick of things.

At meals and parties he always reserved a place for us, and while Paul and Charlie quickly decided that his idea of a social life wasn't exactly like theirs, I found that I enjoyed Gil's company most when we were sitting