The Rule of Four

Chapter 24

The last question the recruiter from Daedalus asked during my job interview was a riddle: If a frog falls down a fifty-foot well and has to climb his way out, making three feet of progress every day, but slipping back two feet every night, in how many days will he escape?

Charlie's answer was that he never escapes, because a frog that falls fifty feet doesn't get back up. Paul's answer had something to do with an ancient philosopher who died by walking into a well while staring up at the stars. Gil's answer was that he'd never heard of a frog climbing wells, and what did all this have to do with developing software in Texas, anyway?

The right answer, I think, is that it takes the frog forty-eight days, or two days less than you might expect. The trick is realizing that the frog climbs one foot per day after all is said and done-but on the forty-eighth day, he climbs three feet and reaches the top of the well before he can slide back again.

I don't know what makes me think of that just now. Maybe this is the sort of moment when riddles have an afterglow of their own, a wisdom that illuminates the edges of experience when nothing else can. In a world where half of the villagers always lie and half of them always tell the truth; where the hare never catches the tortoise because the distance between them shrinks by a never-collapsing infinity of halves; where the fox can never be left on the same bank of the river as the hen, or the hen on the same bank as the grain, because with perfect regularity the one will consume the other, and nothing you can do will prevent it: in that world, everything is sensible but the premise. A riddle is a castle built on air, perfectly habitable if you don't look down. The grand impossibility of what Paul has told me-that an ancient rivalry between a monk and a humanist has left a crypt of treasures beneath a forgotten forest-rests on the much more basic impossibility that a book like the Hypnerotomachia, written in code, impenetrable, ignored by scholars for five centuries, could exist. It couldn't; yet it's as real to me as I am to myself. And if I accept its existence, then the foundation is set, and the impossible castle can be built. The rest is just mortar and stones.

When the elevator doors open, and the library lobby seems weightless in the wintry light, it feels like we've emerged from a tunnel. Every time I think of that Daedalus riddle, I imagine the frog's surprise when, for the first time, on his last day, three steps forward are not followed by two steps back. There is a suddenness at the top of the well, an unexpected quickening of the journey at its end, that I feel now. The riddle I've known since I was a child-the riddle of the Hypnerotomachia—has been solved in less than a day.

We click through the turnstile at the library's front border, and the nip of the wind returns beneath the entrance. Paul presses the door open, and I tighten my coat around me. There is snow everywhere, no stones or walls or shadows, only brilliant tornadoes of white. All around me is Chicago and Texas; graduation; Dod and home. Here I am, suddenly, above ground.

We start south. On the way back to the dorm, a Dumpster has been overturned. Little nests of garbage poke up from mounds of snow, and the squirrels are at them already, pulling out apple cores and near-empty bottles of lotion, passing everything in front of their noses before beginning to eat. They are discriminating little creatures. Experience has taught them that there will always be food here, replenished every day, so everywhere nuts and acorns go unburied. When a vulture-size crow lands on the wheel of the upturned Dumpster, expressing priority, the squirrels just chitter and nibble, ignoring it.

You know what that crow makes me think of? Paul says.

I shake my head, and the bird flies off angrily, spreading its wings to a fantastic length, escaping with a single bag of crumbs.

The eagle that killed Aeschylus by dropping a tortoise on him, Paul says.

I have to glance at him to see that he's serious.

Aeschylus was bald, he continues. The eagle was trying to break the shell open by dropping it on a rock. It couldn't tell the difference.

This reminds me again of the philosopher who fell down the well. Paul's mind is always doing that, tucking the present into the past, making yesterday's bed.

If you could be anywhere right now, I ask him, where would it be?

He looks over at me, amused. Anywhere?

I nod.

In Rome, with a shovel.

A squirrel looks up from a slice of bread he's found, watching us.

Paul turns to me. What about you? Texas?

No.

Chicago?

I don't know.

We pass through the rear courtyard of the art museum, the one separating it from Dod. There are footprints here, back and forth in zigzags.

You know what Charlie told me? he says, staring at the marks in the snow.

What?

If you fire a gun, the bullet falls as fast as if you'd dropped it.

This sounds like something I learned in introductory physics.

You can never outrun gravity, Paul says. No matter how fast you go, you're still falling like a rock. It makes you wonder if horizontal motion is an illusion. If we move just to convince ourselves we're not falling.

Where are you going with this?

The tortoise shell, he says. It was part of a prophecy. An oracle said Aeschylus would die of a blow from heaven.

A blow from heaven, I think. God, laughing.

Aeschylus couldn't escape an oracle, Paul continues. We can't escape gravity. He weaves his fingers together, a dovetail. Heaven and earth, speaking in one voice.

His eyes are wide, trying to take in everything, a kid at the zoo.

You probably say that to all the girls, 1 tell him.

He smiles. Sorry. Sensory overload. I'm all over the place. I don't know why.

I do. There's someone else to worry about the crypt now, someone else to worry about the Hypnerotomachia. Atlas feels lighter without the world on his shoulders.

It's like your question, he says, walking backward in front of me as we head toward the room. If you could be anywhere, where would you be? He opens his palms, and the truth seems to land in his hands. Answer: it doesn't matter, because wherever you go, you're still falling.

He smiles when he says it, as if there's nothing depressing about the idea that we're all just in free-fall. The ultimate equality of going anywhere, doing anything, Paul seems to mean, is that being in Dod with me is as good as being in Rome with a shovel. In his own way, I think, in his own words, what he's saying is that he's happy.

He fishes for his key and slips it into the lock. The room is still when we enter. So much action has circled this place since yesterday, break-ins and proctors and police officers, it's unsettling to see it empty and dark.

Paul wanders into the bedroom to put down his coat. Instinctively, I lift the phone and check our voicemail.

Hey, Tom, Gil's voice begins, through a hiss of static. I'll try to catch up to you guys later but… looks like I won't be able to get back to the hospital after all so… Charlie for me… Tom… black tie. You can borrow… need to.

Black tie. The ball.

By now the second message has begun.

Tom, it's Katie. Just wanted to let you know Tm going to the club to help set up as soon as Fm done here in the darkroom. I think you said you were coming with Gil. A pause. So 1 guess-we'll talk tonight.

There's a hesitation before she hangs up, as if she's unsure she put the right emphasis on those last words, the reminder of unfinished business.

What's going on? Paul calls from the bedroom.

I have to get ready, I say quietly, sensing the turn things are taking.

Paul comes out of the room. For what?

The ball.

He doesn't understand. I never told him what Katie and I talked about in the darkroom. What I've seen today, everything he's told me, has turned the world on its ear. But in the silence that follows, I find myself standing where I've stood before. The ancient mistress, forsworn, has returned to tempt me. There is a cycle here which, until this moment, I've been too engrossed to break. Colonna's book flatters me with visions of perfection, an unreality I can inhabit for the tiny price of my mad devotion, my withdrawal from the world. Francesco, having invented this strange bargain, also invented its name: Hypnerotomachia, the struggle for love in a dream. If ever there were a time to stay grounded, to resist that struggle and its dream-if ever there were a time to remember a love that has devoted itself madly to me, to remember the promise I made to Katie-that time is now.

What's wrong? Paul asks.

I don't know how to tell him. I'm not even sure what to tell him.

Here, I say, extending my arm.

But he doesn't move.

Take the map.

Why? At first he only looks puzzled, still too excited to follow.

I can't do it, Paul. I'm sorry.

His smile fades. What do you mean?

I can't work on this anymore. I place the map in his hand. It's yours.

It's ours, he says, wondering what's come over me.

But it isn't. It doesn't belong to us; from the beginning, we have belonged to the book.

I'm sorry. I can't do it.

Not here; not in Chicago; not in Rome.

You did it, he says. It's done. All we need is the blueprint for the lock.

The certainty of it, though, is already between us. A look is crawling into his eyes, a drowning look, as if the force that once buoyed him up has suddenly let him down, and all the world is topsy-turvy. We have spent so much time together that I can see it without his even having to say a word: the freedom I feel, my emancipation from a chain of events that began before I was born, is mirrored in reverse with him.

It's not either/or, he says, gathering himself up. You could have both if you wanted to.

I don't think so.

Your father did.'

But he knows my father didn't.

You don't need my help, I tell him. You've got what you want.

But I know he doesn't.

A strange silence follows, each of us sensing that the other is tight, but that neither of us is wrong. The math of morality falters. He looks as if he wants to plead with me, to make his case one last time, but it's hopeless and he knows it.

Instead, Paul quietly repeats a joke I've heard a thousand times from Gil. He's got no other words for what he's feeling.

The last man on earth walks into a bar, he murmurs. What does he say?

Paul turns his head toward the window, but doesn't offer the punch line. We both know what the last man on earth says. He looks into his beer, lonely and besotted, and says, Drink, I'd like another bartender.

I'm sorry, I tell him.

Paul is somewhere else now, though. I need to find Richard, he mumbles,

Paul?

He turns. What do you want me to say?

What do you want from Curry?

Remember what I asked you on the way to Firestone? he says. What would've happened if I'd never picked up your dad's book? Remember what you answered?

I said we never would have met.

A thousand delicate accidents have piled up just so that he and I would meet-so that we could be here, now. Destiny, from the shambles of five hundred years, has fashioned a castle in the air so that two college boys could be kings. This, he means, is how I treat it.

When you see Gil, he says, picking up his coat from the floor, tell him he can have the President's Room back. I don't need it anymore.

Thinking of his car, broken down on a side street by the Institute, I imagine him walking through the snow to find Curry.

It's not safe to go alone… I begin.

But alone is how he's always gone. He's already walking out the door.

I might have followed him, had the hospital not called a minute later to relay a message from Charlie.

He's up and talking, the nurse says. And he's asking for you.

I'm already putting on my hat and gloves.

Halfway to the medical center it stops snowing. For a few blocks there's even a sun visible above the horizon. Clouds everywhere take the shape of table settings-tureens and soup bowls and pitchers, a fork rolling by with a spoon-and I realize how hungry I am. I hope Charlie's doing as well as the nurse said. I hope they're feeding him.

I arrive to find the door to the room blocked by the one person who is more physically intimidating than Charlie: his mother. Mrs. Freeman is explaining to a doctor that after taking the first train from Philadelphia to be here, and listening to a man from the dean's office say that Charlie is dangerously close to suspension, and being a nurse practitioner for seventeen years herself before becoming a science teacher, she is in no mood to have a doctor condescend to her about what's wrong with her son. From the color of his scrubs I recognize him as the man who told Paul and me that Charlie was in stable condition. He of the hospital words and canned smiles. He doesn't seem to realize that the smile hasn't been invented yet that will move this mountain.

Just as I turn in toward Charlie's room, Mrs. Freeman spots me.

Thomas, she says, shifting her weight.

There is always a sense around Mrs. Freeman that you are watching a geological effect, that if you aren't careful, you'll be crushed. She knows that my mother is raising me alone, so she takes it upon herself to contribute.

Thomas! she repeats, the only person who calls me that anymore. Come over here.

I inch closer.

What did you get him into? she says.

He was trying to-

She steps forward, trapping me in a shadow. I warned you about this sort of thing. Didn't I? After that other business on the roof of that building?

The clapper. Mrs. Freeman, that was his idea-

Oh, no. Not that again. My Charlie's no genius, Thomas. He's got to be led into temptation.

Mothers. You'd think Charlie couldn't find the wrong side of the tracks if you pushed him off the train. Mrs. Freeman looks at the three of us and sees bad company. Counting my one parent, Paul's none, and Gil's revolving door of steprelations, we don't have as many positive role models among us as Charlie has under one roof. And for some reason, I'm the one with a pitchfork and a tail. If only she knew the truth, I think. Moses had horns too.

Leave him alone, comes a wheezy voice from inside.

Like the world on its axis, Mrs. Freeman turns.

Tom tried to get me out of there, Charlie says, weaker now.

A blip of silence follows. Mrs. Freeman looks at me as if to say, Don't you smile, there's nothing smart about getting my boy out of a predicament you got him into. But when Charlie starts to speak again, she tells me to go in and talk to her son before he wears himself out carrying on like that across the room. She has some business with the doctor.

And, Thomas, she says, before I can get past her, don't go putting any ideas into that boy's head.

I nod. Mrs. Freeman is the only teacher I've ever known who makes ideas sound like a four-letter word.

Charlie is propped up in a hospital cot with a short metal railing on each side, the kind that isn't high enough to keep a big guy from rolling off the bed on a bad night, but is exactly the right height to let an orderly slip a broomstick between the railings and keep you pinned to the bed forever, a permanent convalescent. I've had more hospital nightmares than Scheherazade had stories, and even time hasn't sponged them all from my memory.

Visiting hours end in ten minutes, the nurse says without looking at her watch. A kidney-shaped tray is clamped in one of her hands, a duster in the other.

Charlie watches her shuffle out. In a slow, hoarse voice he says, I think she likes you.

From the neck up he almost looks fine. There's a lick of pink skin jumping out over his collarbone; otherwise he just appears tired. It's his chest where the damage was done. He's wrapped in gauze down to the point where his waist is tucked lightly into the bed, and in places a sweaty pus has seeped to the surface.

You can stick around to help them change me, Charlie says, drawing my attention back north.

His eyes seem jaundiced. There's a wetness around his nose he would probably wipe if he could.

How do you feel? I ask.

How do I look?

Pretty good, considering.

He manages to smile. When he tries to peer down at himself, though, I realize he has no idea how he looks. He is just together enough to know he shouldn't trust his senses.

Anyone else come to see you? I ask.

It takes him awhile to answer. Not Gil, if that's what you mean.

I mean anyone.

Maybe you missed my mom out there. Charlie smiles, and repeats himself without noticing. She's easy to miss,

I look out the doorway again. Mrs. Freeman is still talking to the doctor.

Don't worry, Charlie says, misunderstanding. He'll come.

But by now the nurse has called everyone who might care that Charlie is conscious again. If Gil isn't here already, he's not coming.

Hey, Charlie says, changing the subject. You okay with what happened back there?

When?

You know. What Tart said,

I try to call up the words. We were at the Institute hours ago. It's probably the last thing he remembers.

About your dad. Charlie tries to reposition himself and winces.

I stare at the railing, suddenly pinned. Mrs. Freeman has bullied the doctor enough that he finally leads her into a private room to confer. The two of them disappear behind a distant door, and now the hallway is empty.

Look, Charlie says faintly, don't let someone like that mess with your head.

This is what Charlie does on death's door. He thinks about my problems.

I'm glad you're okay, I tell him.

I know he's about to say something smart, when he feels the pressure I'm putting on his hand and keeps it simple.

Me too.

Charlie smiles at me again, then laughs. ''I'll be damned, he says, and shakes his head. His eyes are focused on something beyond me. I'll be damned, he says again.

He's fading, I think. But when I turn around, Gil is standing in the doorway, a bouquet of flowers in hand.

I stole these from the ball arrangements, he says hesitantly, as if he's not sure he's welcome here. You better like them.

No wine? Charlie's voice is faint.

Gil gives an awkward smile. Only the cheap stuff for you. He walks forward and extends a hand to Charlie.

The nurse told me we've got two minutes, Gil offers. How are you feeling?

Been better, Charlie says. Been worse.

I think your mom's here, Gil replies, still searching for a way to begin.

Charlie's starting to drift, but manages another smile. She's easy to miss.

You're not going to check out on us tonight, are you? Gil asks quietly.

Out of the hospital? Charlie says, too far away now to know how the question was meant.

Yeah.

Maybe, Charlie whispers. The food in here-he exhales-is terrible.

His head falls back onto the pillow just as the leather-faced nurse returns to say our time is up, that Charlie needs his rest.

Sleep tight, chief, Gil says, putting the bouquet on the nightstand.

Charlie doesn't hear him. He's already breathing through his mouth.

As we leave I look back at him, propped up in his bed, swaddled in bandages and guarded by IVs. It reminds me of comic books I used to read as a kid. The fallen giant that medicine rebuilt. The mysterious patient's recovery that amazed local doctors. Darkness falls on Gotham, but the headlines are all the same. Today a superhero wrestled with a force of nature and lived to complain about the food.

He's going to be okay? Gil asks, when we reach the visitor's parking lot. The Saab is sitting alone in the lot, its hood still warm enough to have melted the falling snow.

I think so.

His chest looks pretty bad.

I don't know what rehab is like for burn victims, but getting used to your own skin again can't be easy.

I didn't think you were going to show up, I tell him.

Gil hesitates. I wish I'd been there with you guys.

When?

All day.

Is that a joke?

He turns to me. No. What's that supposed to mean?

We stop just short of the car. I realize I'm angry at him, angry at how hard it was for him to find anything to say to Charlie, angry at the way he seemed afraid to visit Charlie this afternoon.

You were where you wanted to be, I say.

I came as soon as I heard.

You weren't with us.

When? he asks. This morning?

This whole time.

Jesus. Tom…

You know why he's in there? I say.

Because he made the wrong decision.

Because he tried to help. He didn't want us going into Taft's office alone. He didn't want Paul to get hurt in the tunnels.

What do you want, Tom? An apology? Mea culpa. I can't compete with Charlie. That's the way he is. That's the way he's always been.

That's the way you were. You know what Mrs. Freeman said to me in there? The first thing she brought up? Stealing the clapper out of Nassau Hall.

Gil runs his fingers through his hair.

She blames me for that. She always has. You know why?

Because she thinks Charlie's a saint.

Because she can't believe you're the kind of person who ever would've done something like that.

He exhales. So what?

You are the kind of person who would've done something like that. You did do that.

He seems unsure what to say. Does it occur to you that maybe I'd had half a dozen beers that night before I ran into you guys? Maybe I wasn't thinking straight.

Or maybe you were different then.

Yes, Tom. Maybe I was.

Silence falls. The first dimples of snow are forming on the hood of the Saab. Somehow, the words amount to a confession.

Look, he says, I'm sorry.

For what?

I should've gone in to see Charlie the first time. When I saw you and Paul.

Forget it.

I'm stubborn. I've always been stubborn.

He emphasizes always, as if to say, Look, Tom, some things haven't changed.

But everything has changed. In a week, a day, an hour. Charlie, then Paul. Now, suddenly, Gil.

I don't know, I tell him.

You don't know what?

What you've been doing all this time. Why everything is different, Jesus, I don't even know what you're doing next year.

From his hip pocket Gil produces his key fob and unlocks the doors.

Let's go, he says. Before we freeze to death.

We stand in the snow, alone in the hospital parking lot. The sun has nearly slipped off the edge of the sky, introducing darkness, giving everything the texture of ashes.

Get in, he says. Let's talk.