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You'll fucking die, Gil, Parker says, arriving una
He speaks directly to Gil, as if Paul and I are invisible. Down at the table, I can see Brooks shaking his head.
I've decided to come as JFK, he continues. And my date's not going to be Jackie. She's going to be Marilyn Monroe.
Parker must see confusion in my expression, because he dashes his cigarette into an ashtray on the table. Yes, Tom, he says, Ke
The latest product of a California wine family that has sent a son to Princeton, and to Ivy, for generations, Parker cleared both of those hurdles thanks only to what Gil, charitably, calls the Hassett family's momentum.
Before I can respond, Gil leans forward.
Look, Parker, I don't have time for this. If you want to come as Ke
Parker, who seemed to expect something better, shoots a sour look at all of us and walks off, wine in hand.
Brooks, Gil says now, can you go down and ask Albert if there's any di
Brooks agrees. He is the perfect vice president: obliging, tireless, loyal. Even when Gil's favors come out sounding like commands, he never seems to be ruffled. Tonight is the only time he has ever looked weary to me, and I wonder if he just finished his thesis.
Actually, Gil adds, looking up, I'll bring two of them up here, and eat mine in the dining room. We can talk about the wine order for tomorrow while I eat.
Brooks turns to Paul and me. Good to see you guys, he says. Sorry about Parker. I don't know what gets into him sometimes.
Sometimes? I say under my breath.
Brooks must hear me, because he smiles before leaving.
The food should be ready in a few minutes, Gil says. I'll be downstairs if you guys need me. He focuses on Paul. We can go to the lecture as soon as you're ready.
For a second after he leaves, I can't escape the feeling that Paul and I are committing some kind of fraud. We're sitting at an antique mahogany table in a nineteenth-century mansion, waiting for someone to bring us our di
Come downstairs with me, Paul says abruptly.
Unsure what he means by it, I follow. We descend past the stained-glass window that runs along the south landing, then down another flight of stairs into the basement of the club. Paul leads me through the hall toward the President's Room. Gil is supposed to have sole access to the room, but when Paul worried about having less and less privacy at his library carrel while trying to finish his thesis, Gil promised him a copy of the key, hoping to lure him back to the club. Paul had found little to recommend Ivy by then, work-obsessed as he was. But the President's Room, large and quiet and accessible to Paul directly through the steam tu
As we arrive in front of the door, Paul pops the lock open with his key. Shuffling in behind him, I'm caught by surprise. It's been weeks since I've seen the place. The first thing I remember is how cold it is. Here, in what is effectively the club's cellar, temperatures hover uncomfortably close to freezing. Exclusive or no, the room looks like it's been hit by a hurricane of letters. Books have settled on every surface like mounds of debris: the shelves of Ivy's moldering European and American classics are almost obscured by Paul's reference books, historical journals, nautical maps, and stray blueprint designs.
He closes the door behind us. Beside the desk is a handsome fireplace, and the clutter of papers is so heavy here that some of the titles are bleeding onto the hearth. Still, when Paul scans the room, he seems pleased; everything is as he left it. He walks over and picks up The Poetry of Michelangelo from the floor, brushes some paint chips off the cover, and places it carefully on his desk. Finding a long wooden match atop the mantel, he strikes the head and reaches down into the fireplace, where a blue flame breathes life into old newsprint weighted with logs.
You've done a lot, I tell him, looking at one of the more detailed blueprints unraveled across his desk.
He frowns. That's nothing. I've made a dozen like that, and they're probably all wrong. I do it when I feel like giving up.
What I'm looking at is a drawing of a building Paul invented. The edifice is stitched together from the ruins of buildings mentioned in the Hypnerotomachia: broken arches have been restored; riddled foundations are strong again; columns and capitals, once shattered, now find themselves repaired. There is an entire pile of blueprints beneath it, each one assembled the same way from the odds and ends of Colo
What are they supposed to be? I ask.
The building Francesco is designing.
I'd almost forgotten Paul's habit of referring to Colo
What building?
Francesco's crypt. The first half of the Hypnerotomachia says he's designing it. Remember?
Of course. You think it looks like these? I ask, gesturing at the drawings.
I don't know. But I'm going to find out.
How? Then I remember what Curry said at the museum. Is that what the surveyors are for? You're going to exhume it?
Maybe.
So you found out why Colo
This was the pivotal question we came to, just as our work together ended. The text of the Hypnerotomachia alluded mysteriously to a crypt
Colo