Ian Caldwell - The Rule of Four

Gil was right. He is no longer the freshman who let pants fly above Nassau Hall. He's more careful than that, more circumspect. You would see him and think he was world-wise, self-involved. The natural authority in his speech and his body language is more pronounced now, a quality that Ivy has cultivated. The clothes he wears are quieter by a shade, and his hair, which was always just long enough to be noticed, never seems tousled now. There is a science behind it, because you never notice when it's been cut. He's put on a touch of weight, which makes him handsome in a different way, a hint more staid, and the little affectations he brought from Exeter— the ring he wore on his pinky finger, the stud he wore in his ear-have quietly disappeared.

I figure I'll wait until the last minute. I'll decide during graduation— something spontaneous, something unexpected. Maybe become an architect. Maybe get back into sailing.

Here he is, changing into his clothes, taking off his wool pants in front of me, not realizing what a perfect stranger I am, a person this version of himself has never met. I realize I'm probably a stranger to myself, that I've never been able to see the person Katie waited for all night last night, the newest model, the up-to-the-minute me. There is a riddle here somewhere, a paradox. Frogs and wells and the curious case of Tom Sullivan, who looked in a mirror and saw the past.

Man walks into a bar, Gil says, returning to an old standby. Completely naked. And there's a duck sitting on his head. The bartender says, 'Carl, there's something different about you today' The duck shakes his head and says, 'Harry, you wouldn't believe it if I told you.'

I wonder why he chose that joke. Maybe he's been getting at the same point this entire time. We've all been talking to him as if he were someone else. The Saab has been our idea of him, and it was our mistake. Gil himself is something unexpected, something spontaneous. An architect, a sailor, a duck.

You know what I was listening to on the radio the other day? he asks. After Anna and I broke up?

Sinatra. But I know it's wrong.

Samba, he tells me. I was scanning through the stations and WPRB was playing a Latin set. Something instrumental, no voices. Great rhythm. Amazing rhythm.

WPRB. The campus radio station that played Handel's Messiah when women first arrived at Princeton. I remember Gil on the night I first met him, outside the bell tower at Nassau Hall. He came out of the darkness doing a little rumba thrust, saying, Now shake it, baby. Dance. There has always been music about him, the jazz he's been trying to play on the piano since the day we met. Maybe there's something old about the new after all.

I don't miss her, he says, trying for the first time to let me in. She would put this stuff in her hair. Pomade. Her stylist gave it to her. You know how it smells after someone vacuums? Sort of hot and clean?

Sure.

It was like that. She must've blow-dried it until it burned. Every time she would lean her head on me, I would think, you smell like my carpet.

He is everywhere now, free-associating.

You know who else smelled like that? he asks.

Who?

Think back. Freshman year.

Hot and clean. The fireplace in Rockefeller comes immediately to mind.

Lana McKnight, I say.

He nods. I never knew how you guys stayed together as long as you did. The chemistry was so strange. Charlie and I used to make bets about when you two would break up.

He told me he liked Lana.

Remember the girl he dated sophomore year? Gil says, already moving on.

Charlie?

Her name was Sharon, I think?

With the different-colored eyes?

Now, she had great-smelling hair. I remember, she used to sit in our room waiting for Charlie to get back. The whole room would smell like this lotion my mom used to wear. I've never known what it was, but I always loved it.

It occurs to me that Gil has only mentioned stepmothers to me before, never his real mother. The affection gives him away.

You know why they broke up? he says.

Because she dumped him.

Gil shakes his head. Because he got tired of picking up after her. She would leave things in our room-sweaters, purses, anything-and Charlie would have to bring them back. He didn't realize it was just a move. She was giving him a reason to visit her at night. Charlie just thought she was a slob.

I struggle with my tie, trying to knot it between the fangs of the collar. Good old Charlie. Cleanliness next to godliness.

She didn't break up with him, Gil continues. The girls who fall for Charlie never do. He always breaks up with them.

There is a slight suggestion in his voice that this is a fact about Charlie worth bearing in mind, an important character trait, this fault-finding. As if it helps to explain the problems Gil has had with him.

He's a good guy, Gil says, catching himself.

He seems content to leave it at that. For a second there is no sound in the room but the friction of fabric against fabric as I pull off the black tie and begin again. Gil sits down on his mattress and runs his fingers through his hair. He got into that habit back when his hair was longer. His hands still haven't adapted to the change.

At last I manage a knot, a sort of walnut with wings. I look in the mirror

and decide it's good enough. I slip on my jacket. A perfect fit, even better than my own suit.

Gil is still silent, watching himself in the mirror, as if his image were a painting. Here we are, at the end of his presidency. His Ivy farewell. Tomorrow the club will be run by next year's officers, the members he created at bicker, and Gil will become a ghost in his own house. The best of the Princeton he knew is coming to an end.

Hey, I say, walking across the foyer into his bedroom. Try to have a good time tonight.

He doesn't seem to hear me. He places his cell phone on its charger, watching the light pulse. I wish this wasn't the way things turned out, he says.

Charlie'll be okay' I tell him.

But he just eyes his jewelry case, the tiny wooden chest where he keeps his valuables, and runs his palm across the top, brushing off the dust. Everything in Charlie's half of the room is old but spotless: a pair of athletic shoes from freshman year sits at the edge of the closet, laces tucked in; last year's pair is still being broken in on weekends. But everything in Gil's half of the room seems unlived-in, new and dusty at the same time. From inside the box he lifts a silver watch, the one he wears on special occasions. Its hands have stopped moving, so he shakes the casing gently, winding it.

What time you got? he says.

I show him the face of my watch, and he sets his to match.

Outside, night has risen, Gil takes his key ring in his hand, then the phone from its charger. My dad's favorite day of college was the Ivy ball his senior year, he says. He always used to talk about it.

I think of Richard Curry, of the stories he told Paul about Ivy.

He said it was like living a dream, a perfect dream.

Gil places the watch to his ear. He listens to it as if there is something miraculous about the sound, an ocean trapped in a seashell.

Ready? he says, pulling the band around his wrist and fastening the metal.

He focuses on me now, checking the cut of the tux.

Not bad, he says. I think she'll approve.

You okay? I ask.

Gil adjusts his jacket and nods.

I don't think I'll be telling my kids about tonight. But yeah. I'm fine.

At the door we both take one last look before locking up. With the lights out, the room comes to shadows. When I look out the window at the moon one last time, I see Paul in the reflection of my mind's eye, trudging across campus in his worn winter coat, alone.

Gil looks at his watch and says, We should be just on time.