The Rule of Four Read Online Free Page A

in—”
    He nods. “Then it’s okay if you don’t call.” A grunting sound follows, sort of a half-laugh. “Anyway, she’s probably got other things on her mind right now.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Charlie holds his hand out, catching a snowflake. “First snow of the year. Nude Olympics.”
    “Jesus. I forgot.”
    The Nude Olympics is one of Princeton’s most beloved traditions. Every year, on the night of the first snowfall, sophomores gather in the courtyard of Holder Hall. Surrounded by dorms crawling with spectators from across campus, they show up in herds, hundreds upon hundreds of them, and with the heroic unconcern of lemmings they take their clothes off and run around wildly. It’s a rite that must have arisen in the old days of the college, when Princeton was a men’s institution and mass nudity was an expression of the male prerogative, like pissing upright or waging war. But it was when women joined the fray that this cozy little scrum became the must-see event of the academic year. Even the media turn out to record it, with satellite vans and video cameras coming from as far as Philadelphia and New York. Mere thought of the Nude Olympics usually lights a fire under the cold months of college, but this year, with Katie’s turn coming around, I’m more interested in keeping the home fires burning.
    “You ready?” Charlie asks once the two sophomores have finally passed by.
    I shift my foot across the manhole cover, dusting off the snow.
    He kneels down and hooks his index fingers into the gaps of the manhole cover. The snow dampens the scrape of steel on asphalt as he drags it back. I look down the road again.
    “You first,” he says, placing a hand at my back.
    “What about the packs?”
    “Quit stalling.
Go.
”
    I drop to my knees and press my palms on either side of the open hole. A thick heat pours up from below. When I try to lower myself into it, the bulges in my ski jacket fight at the edge of the opening.
    “Damn, Tom, the dead move faster. Kick around until your foot finds a step iron. There’s a ladder in the wall.”
    Feeling my shoe snag the top rung, I begin to descend.
    “All right,” Charlie says. “Take this.”
    He pushes my pack through the opening, followed by his.
    A network of pipes extends into the dark in both directions. Visibility is low, and the air is full of metallic clanks and hisses. This is Princeton’s circulatory system, the passageways pushing steam from a distant central boiler to dorms and academic buildings up north. Charlie says the vapor inside the pipes is pressurized at two hundred and fifty pounds per square inch. The smaller cylinders carry high-voltage lines or natural gas. Still, I’ve never seen any warnings in the tunnels, not a single fluorescent triangle or posting of university policy. The college would like to forget that this place exists. The only message at this entrance, written long ago in black paint, is LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA, VOI CH ’ INTRATE . Paul, who has never seemed to fear anything in this place, smiled the first time he saw it.
Abandon all hope,
he said, translating Dante for the rest of us,
ye that enter here.
    Charlie makes his way down, scraping the cover back onto its place after him. As he steps from the bottom rung, he pulls off his hat. Light dances across the beads of sweat on his forehead. The afro he’s grown after four months without a haircut barely clears the ceiling.
It’s not an afro,
he’s been telling us.
It’s just a half-fro.
    He takes a few whiffs of the stale air, then produces a container of Vick’s VapoRub from his pack. “Put some under your nose. You won’t smell anything.”
    I wave him off. It’s a trick he learned as a summer intern with the local medical examiner, a way to avoid smelling the corpses during autopsies. After what happened to my father I’ve never held the medical profession in particularly high esteem; doctors are drones to me, second opinions with