The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell, Dustin Thomason Page A

small pad registers its proximity with a beep, then unlocks the door with a sound like a shotgun being shucked. In the basement, two junior women are folding clothes on an open table, wearing T-shirts and tiny boxer shorts in the swelter of the laundry room. It never fails: walking through the laundry room in winter is like entering a desert mirage, air shivering with heat, bodies fantastic. When it’s snowing outside, the sight of bare shoulders and legs is better than a shot of whiskey to get the blood pumping again. We’re nowhere near Holder, but it feels like we’ve stumbled onto the waiting room for the Nude Olympics.
    I climb to the first floor and head toward the north flank of the building, where our room is the final quad. Paul trails behind me, silent. The closer we get, the more I find myself thinking of the two letters on the coffee table again. Even Bill’s discovery isn’t enough to distract me. For weeks I’ve fallen asleep to the thought of what a person could do with forty-three thousand dollars a year. Fitzgerald wrote a short story once about a diamond the size of the Ritz, and in the moments before I doze off, when the proportions of things are in flux, I can imagine buying a ring with that diamond in it, for a woman just on the other side of the dream. Some nights I think of buying enchanted items, the way children do in games they play, like a car that would never crash, or a leg that would always heal. Charlie keeps me honest when I get carried away. He says I ought to buy a collection of very expensive platform shoes, or put a down payment on a house with low ceilings.
    “What are they doing?” Paul says, pointing down the hall.
    Standing side by side at the end of the corridor are Charlie and Gil. They’re looking into the open doorway of our room, where someone is pacing inside. A second glance tells me everything: the campus police are here. Someone must’ve seen us coming out of the tunnels.
    “What’s going on?” Paul says, quickening his steps.
    I hurry to follow him.
    The proctor is sizing up something on our floor. I can hear Charlie and Gil arguing, but can’t make out the words. Just as I start to prepare excuses for what we’ve done, Gil sees us coming and says, “It’s okay. Nothing was taken.”
    “What?”
    He points toward the doorway. The room, I see now, is in disarray. Couch cushions are on the floor; books are thrown off shelves. In the bedroom I share with Paul, dresser drawers hang open.
    “Oh God . . .” Paul whispers, pushing between Charlie and me.
    “Someone broke in,” Gil explains.
    “Someone
walked
in,” Charlie corrects. “The door was unlocked.”
    I turn to Gil, the last one out. For the past month Paul has asked us to keep the room tight while he finished his thesis. Gil is the only one who forgets.
    “Look,” he says defensively, pointing at the window across the room. “They came in through there. Not through the door.”
    A puddle of water has formed beneath a window by the north face of the common room. Its sash is thrown wide, and snow is gathering on the sill, swimming on the back of the wind. There are three huge slashes through the screen.
    I step forward into my bedroom with Paul. His eyes are running along the edge of his desk drawers, rising toward the library books mounted on a wall shelf Charlie built him. The books are gone. His head shifts back and forth, searching. His breathing is loud. For an instant we’re back in the tunnels; nothing is familiar but the voices.
    It doesn’t matter, Charlie. That’s not how they got in.
    It doesn’t matter to you, because they didn’t take anything of yours.
    The proctor is still pacing through the common room.
    “Someone must’ve known . . .” Paul mumbles to himself.
    “Look down here,” I say, pointing at the lower mattress on the bunk.
    Paul turns. The books are safe. Hands shaking, he begins to check the titles.
    I pad through my own belongings, finding almost everything