The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason

Author:Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason [Caldwell, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller
ISBN: 0-385-33711=6
Publisher: The Dial Press
Published: 2004-03-19T05:00:00+00:00

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.

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