The Rule of Four

No. When we got back to the States, everything reverted. He and Vincent never spoke. The woman he'd been seeing broke it off. Richard started coming back to campus, trying to remember the fire he'd had when he and your father studied with McBee. Since then, he's been living more and more in the past. Vincent tried to get me to stay away from him, but this year it's Vincent I've been staying away from, trying to avoid the Institute, trying to work at Ivy whenever I could. I didn't want to tell him what we found until I had to.

That's when Vincent started forcing me to show him my conclusions, asking for weekly progress reports. Maybe he thought it was his only shot at getting the Hypnerotomachia back. Paul runs a hand through his hair. I should've known better. I should've written a B-grade thesis, then gotten the hell out of here. It is the greatest homes and the tallest trees that the gods bring low with bolts and thunder. For the gods love to thwart whatever is greater than the rest. They do not suffer pride in anyone but themselves. Herodotus wrote that. I must've read those lines fifty times and never gave them a second thought. It was Vincent who pointed them out to me. He knew what they meant.

You don't believe that.

I don't know what I believe anymore. I should've been watching Vincent and Bill more closely. If I hadn't been paying so much attention to myself, I could've seen this coming.

I stare at the light beneath the door. The piano down the hall has fallen silent.

Paul rises and begins moving toward the entrance. Let's get out of here, he says.

Chapter 15

We hardly speak as we leave Woolworth. Paul walks slightly in front of me, creating enough space for us to keep to ourselves, and in the distance I can make out the tower of the chapel. Police cars squat at its feet like toads beneath an oak, weathering out a storm. Lines of police tape rock in the dying wind. Bill Stein's snow angel must be gone by now, not even a dimple in the white.

We arrive at Dod to find Charlie awake but preparing for bed once again. He's been cleaning up the common room, ordering stray papers and arranging unopened mail into piles, trying to shake off what he saw in the ambulance. After checking his watch, he looks at us disapprovingly but is too tired to make much of it. I stand by and listen as Paul explains what we saw at the museum, knowing that Charlie will insist we call the police. After I explain that we were going through Stein's belongings when we found the letters, though, even Charlie seems to think better of it.

Paul and I retreat into the bedroom and change clothes wordlessly, then go to our separate bunks. As I lie there, recalling the emotion in his voice as he described Curry, something occurs to me that I've never understood before. There was, if only briefly, a quiet perfection to their relationship. Curry had never succeeded in understanding the Hypnerotomachia, until Paul came into his life and solved what Curry couldn't, so they could share it together. And Paul had always wanted for so much, until Richard Curry came into his life and showed him what he'd never had, so they could share it together. Like Delia and James in the old O. Henry story-James who sold his gold watch to buy Delia combs for her hair, and Delia who sold her hair to buy James a chain for his watch-their gifts and sacrifices match perfectly. But this time there's a happy twist. The only thing one had to give was all the other needed.

I can't hold it against Paul that he's had this kind of luck. If anyone deserves it, he's the one. Paul never had a family, a face in a picture frame, a voice on the other end of the line. Even after my father died I had all of those things, imperfect as they might be. Yet there's something larger at stake here. The portmaster's diary may prove that my father was right about the Hypnerotomachia—that he saw it for what it was, past the dust and the ages, through the forest of dead languages and woodcuts. I disbelieved him, thinking it was ridiculous and vain and shortsighted, the whole idea that there could be anything special about such a tired old book. And all that time, while I accused him of an error of perspective, the only error of perspective was mine.

Don't do it to yourself, Tom, Paul says unexpectedly from above, so quiet that I barely hear him.

Do what?

Feel sorry for yourself.

I was thinking about my dad.

I know. Try to think of something else.

Like what?

I don't know. Like us.

I don't understand.

The four of us. Try to be grateful for what you have. He hesitates. What about next year? Which way are you leaning?

I don't know.

Texas?

Maybe. But Katie will still be back here.

His sheets rustle as he repositions himself. What if I told you I might be in Chicago?

What do you mean?

For a Ph.D. I got my letter the day after you did.

Tin stunned.

Where did you think I was going next year? he asks.

To work with Pinto at Yale. Why Chicago?

Pinto's retiring this year. And Chicago's a better program anyway. Melotti is still there.

Melotti. One of the few other Hypnerotomachia scholars I actually remember my father mentioning.

Besides, Paul adds, if it was good enough for your dad, then it's good enough for me, right?

The same idea occurred to me before applying, but what I'd meant by it was, if my father could get in, then so could I.

I guess.

So what do you think?

About you going to Chicago?

He hesitates again. I've missed the point.

About us going to Chicago.

Floorboards creak above us, movement in another world.

Why didn't you tell me?

I didn't know how you'd feel, he says.

You'd be doing the same program he did.

As much as I could.

I'm not sure I could take it, being dogged by my father for five more years. I would see him in Paul's shadow even more than I do now.

Is that your first choice?

It's a long time before he responds.

Taft and Melotti are the only two left.

Hypnerotomachia scholars, I realize he means.

I could always work with a nonspecialist on campus here, he says. Batali or Todesco.

But writing a Hypnerotomachia dissertation for a nonspecialist would be like writing music for the deaf.

You should go to Chicago, I say, trying to sound like my heart's in it. And maybe it is.

Does that mean you're going to Texas?

I haven't made up my mind.

You know, it doesn't always have to be about him.

It's not.

Well, Paul says, deciding not to press, I guess we've got the same deadline.