Ian Caldwell - The Rule of Four

Katie puzzles over what I'm getting at. You want to open the box, she says at last, sitting on the table.

I nod, propping myself up beside her. The enormous wooden plank accepts us silently. I don't know how to tell her the rest of what I mean: that we, individually, are the scientist on the outside; that we, together, are the cat.

Instead of answering, she takes a finger and runs it behind my right temple, tucking my hair behind my ear as if I've said something charming. Maybe she already knows how to solve my riddle. We are bigger than Schrodinger's box, she's saying. Like any good cat, we have nine lives.

Does it ever snow like this in Ohio? she says, consciously changing the subject. Outside, I know, it's begun again, driving down with more power than before, all our winter in this one storm.

Not in April, I say.

We're side by side on the table, just inches apart. Not in New Hampshire either, she says. Not in April, at least.

I accept what she's trying to do, where she's trying to take me. Anywhere but here. I've always wanted to know more about what her life was like at home, what her family did around the dinner table. Upper New England in my imagination is the American Alps, mountains at every turn, Saint Bernards bearing gifts.

My little sister and I used to do this thing in the snow, she says.

Mary?

She nods. Every year when the pond near our house would freeze over, we would go crack holes in the ice.

Why?

She smiles, beautiful. So the fish could breathe.

Members pass across the top of the stairs, little pockets of heat in motion.

We would take the ends of broomsticks, she says, and make holes all the way across the lake. Like punching holes in the top of a jar.

For fireflies, I say.

She nods and takes my hand. The ice skaters used to hate us.

My sisters used to take me sledding, I tell her.

Katie's eyes twinkle. She remembers she's got something on me: that she's a big sister, and I'm a little brother.

There aren't a lot of big hills in Columbus, I continue, so it was always this one.

And they would drag you up the hill on the sled.

Did I tell you this already?

That's just what big sisters do.

I can't imagine her pulling a sled up a hill. My sisters were strong as pack dogs.

Did I ever tell you about Dick Mayfield? I ask her.

Who?

This guy my sister used to date.

What about him?

Sarah used to kick me off the phone every time Dick would call.

She hears the jab in it. This, too, is what big sisters do.

I don't think Dick Mayfield had my number. She smiles, folding her fingers into mine.

I can't help thinking of Paul, of the dovetail he made with his hands.

Dick had my sister's number, I say. All it took was an old red Camaro with flames traced on the sides.

Katie shakes her head disapprovingly.

Study Dick and the Chick Machine, I tell her. I said that one night when he came over, and my mother made me go to bed without dinner.

Dick Mayfield, conjured from thin air. He called me Tiny Tom. We went riding in the Camaro once, and he told me a secret. It doesn't matter how small you are. All that matters is the size of the fire in your engine.

Mary dated a guy who drove a '64 Mustang, Katie says. I asked her if they were doing anything in the backseat. She said he was too uptight about messing up the car.

Sex stories sublimated into car stories, a way to talk about everything without talking about anything at all.

My first girlfriend drove a water-damaged VW, I tell her. You would lie down on the backseat, and this smell would come up, like sushi. You couldn't do anything back there.

She turns to me. Your first girlfriend could drive?

I fumble, realizing what I've given away.

I was nine, I say, clearing my throat. She was seventeen.

Katie laughs, and a silence follows. Finally, the moment seems to have come.

I told Paul, I say to her.

She looks up.

I'm not working on the book anymore.

For a while she doesn't respond. Her hands rise to her shoulders, rubbing them for warmth. I realize, after so many hints, so much contact, that she hasn't gotten over the temperature of the room.

Do you want my jacket? I ask.

She nods. I'm getting goose bumps.

It's impossible not to look. Her arms are covered with tiny beads. The curves of her breasts are pale, the skin of a porcelain dancer.

Here, I say, taking off the jacket and placing it across her back.

My right arm passes her far shoulder just for a second, but she reaches up, holding it in limbo. With me half crooked around her, waiting, she leans in. The smell of her perfume returns, carried in the bell of her hair. This, at last, is her answer,

Katie cocks her head, and I reach inside the jacket, into the dark space where it hangs off her shoulders, placing a hand on the far side of her waist. My fingers stick to the rough fabric of her gown, caught by an unexpected friction, and I find that my hold on her is tight and effortless at the same time. A strand of hair falls in front of her face, but she doesn't brush it back. There is a smudge of lipstick just below her lip, so small that it can only be seen from a tiny distance I'm surprised to find I have reached. Then she is too close to focus on anything at all, and there is warmth over my mouth, lips closing in.

Just as the kiss deepens, I hear the door swing open. I'm about to snap at the intruder, when I see it's Paul standing before us.

What's going on? I say, lurching back.

Paul looks around the room, startled. Vincent was taken back in for questioning, he manages to say. His shock at finding Katie in his room is mirrored by her shock at seeing him here at all.

I hope they're putting it to Taft. When?

An hour ago, two hours. I just spoke to Tim Stone at the Institute.

An uncomfortable hitch follows.

Did you find Curry? I ask, wiping the lipstick off my mouth.

But in the pause before he answers, we are silently rehashing our argument about the Hypnerotomachia ; about the priorities I've set for myself.

I came here to talk to Gil, he says, cutting the conversation short.

Katie and I watch him edge along the wall toward the desk, gather up some of his old drawings, the ones of the crypt he's been sketching for months, then disappear through the door as quickly as he came. Papers swirl on the floor in the vortex he leaves behind, shifting in a tiny current by the door.

As Katie pushes herself off the table, I think I can read her mind. This book is inescapable. Not all the decisions in the world will make it possible for me to leave it behind. Even here at Ivy, where she thought we could shake it off, the Hypnerotomachia is everywhere: on the walls, in the air, breaking in on us when we least expect.

But to my surprise, she's only focused on the facts Paul relayed. Come on, she says with a burst of energy. I need to find Sam. If they arrest Taft, she'll have to change the headline.

Upstairs, in the main hall, we find Paul and Gil speaking in a corner. The room seems to have gone quiet at the spectacle of the club recluse making an appearance at such a public event.

Where is she? Katie asks, speaking to Sam's date. I'm too distracted to hear the answer. For two years I've imagined Paul as the butt of every Ivy joke, the curiosity chained up in the cellar. But now seniors stand at attention as if one of the old portraits has come to life. The expression on Paul's face is needful, almost desperate; if he's aware that the whole club is watching him, he gives no sign. I move closer to them, trying to hear, as Paul hands Gil a familiar paper, folded over. The map of

Colonna's crypt.

When they both turn to leave, the membership watches as Gil exits the main hall. The seniors understand it first. One by one, on tables and railings and old oak walls, the club officers begin to rap their knuckles. Brooks, the vice president, is first, then Carter Simmons, the club treasurer; and finally, from all sides, comes this knocking, tapping, rumbling of good-bye. Parker, still on the dance floor, begins rapping louder than all the rest, hoping one last time to stand out. But it's too late. Gil's exit, like his entrance when we arrived, takes place in precise time, the science of a dance step to be performed only once. As the noise of the crowd finally dies, I follow them up.