The Goldfinch

“Sorry,” I said, shaking myself. Even though the accident had been the other guy’s fault—too busy honking and yakking away on his cell phone to look where he was going—several people on the sidewalk had directed their disapproving looks at me. Feeling short-winded and confused, I tried to think what to do. I could catch the subway down to Hobie’s, if I felt like catching the subway, but Kitsey’s apartment was closer. She and her roommates Francie and Em would all be out on their Girls’ Night (no point texting or calling, as I knew from experience; they usually went to a movie), but I had a key and I could let myself in and make myself a drink and lie down while I waited for her to come home.

The weather had cleared, wintry moon crisp through a gap in the storm clouds, and I began to walk east again, pausing every now and then to try and hail a cab. I wasn’t in the habit of stopping by Kitsey’s without phoning, mainly because I didn’t care much for her roommates nor they for me. Yet despite Francie and Em and our stilted pleasantries in the kitchen, Kitsey’s apartment was one of the few places I felt truly safe in New York. No one knew how to reach me at Kitsey’s. There was always the sense that it was temporary; she didn’t keep many clothes there and lived mostly out of a suitcase on a luggage rack at the foot of her bed; and for reasons inexplicable I liked the empty, restful anonymity of the flat, which was cheerfully but sparsely decorated with abstract-patterned rugs and modern furnishings from an affordable design store. Her bed was comfortable, the reading light was good, she had a big-screen plasma television so we could lie around and watch movies in bed if we felt like it; and the stainless-steel fridge was always well-stocked with Girl Food: hummus and olives, cake and champagne, lots of silly take-out vegetarian salads and half a dozen kinds of ice cream.

I scrabbled for the key in my pocket, then absent-mindedly unlocked the door (thinking about what I might find to eat, would I have to order up? she would have had dinner, no point waiting) and almost bumped my nose when the door caught on the chain.

I closed the door, and stood for a minute, puzzled; I opened it again so it caught with a rattle: red sofa, framed architectural prints and a candle burning on the coffee table.

“Hello?” I called and then again: “Hello?” more loudly, when I heard movement inside.

I’d been pounding hard enough to raise the neighbors when Emily, after what seemed like a very long time, came to the door and looked at me through the gap. She was wearing a ratty, at-home sweater and the kind of loudly patterned pants that made her rear end look a lot bigger. “Kitsey’s not here,” she said flatly without unchaining the door.

“Fine, I know,” I said irritably. “That’s okay.”

“I don’t know when she’ll be back.” Emily, whom I’d first met as a fat-faced nine-year-old slamming a door on me in the Barbours’ apartment, had never made any secret of the fact that she didn’t think I was good enough for Kitsey.

“Well, will you let me in, please?” I said, annoyed. “I want to wait for her.”

“Sorry. Now’s not a good time.” Em still wore her wheat-brown hair in a short cut with bangs, just as she had when she was a kid, and the set of her jaw—straight out of second grade—made me think of Andy, how he’d always hated her, Emmy Phlegmmy, the Emilizer.

“This is ridiculous. Come on. Let me in,” I said again, irritably, but she only stood there impassively in the crack of the door, not quite looking me in the eye but somewhere to the side of my face. “Look, Em, I just want to go back to her room and lie down—”

“I think you’d better come back later. Sorry,” she said, in the incredulous silence that followed this.

“Look, I don’t care what you’re doing—” Francie, the other roommate, made at least a pretense of sociability—“I don’t want to bother you, I just want to—”

“Sorry. I think you’d better leave. Because, because, look, I live here,” she said, raising her voice above mine—

“Good grief. You can’t be serious.”

“—I live here,” she was blinking in discomfort, “this is my place and you can’t just come barging in here any time you want.”

“Give me a break!”

“And, and—” she was upset too—“look, I can’t help you, it’s a really bad time now, I think you’d better just go. All right? Sorry.” She was closing the door on me. “See you at the party.”

“What?”

“Your engagement party?” said Emily, re-opening the door a crack and looking at me so that I saw her agitated blue eye for a moment before she shut it again.





xix.



FOR SOME MOMENTS I stood in the hallway in the abrupt stillness that had fallen, staring at the pinhole of the closed door, and in the silence I imagined I could hear Em inches away on the other side of the door and breathing just as hard as I was.

Well, that’s it, you’re off the bridesmaid list, I thought, turning away and clattering back down the stairs with a lot of ostentatious noise and feeling at once furious and oddly cheered by the incident, which more than confirmed every uncharitable thought I’d ever entertained about Em. Kitsey had apologized more than once for Em’s ‘brusqueness’ but this, in Hobie’s phrase, took the proverbial cake. Why wasn’t she at the movies with the others? Was she with some other guy in there? Em, though thick-ankled and not very attractive, did have a boyfriend, a dud named Bill who was an executive at Citibank.

Shiny black streets. Once out of the lobby, I ducked into the doorway of the florist next door to check my messages and text Kitsey before heading downtown, just in case; if she was just getting out of her movie, I could meet her for dinner and a drink (alone, without the girlfriends: the weirdness of the incident seemed to call for it) and—definitely—a speculative and humorous talk on the behavior of Em.

Floodlit window. Mortuary glow from the cold case. Beyond the fog-condensed glass, trickling with water, winged sprays of orchids quivered in the fan’s draft: ghost-white, lunar, angelic. Up front were the kinkier numbers, some of which sold for thousands of dollars: hairy and veined, freckled and fanged and blood-flecked and devil-faced, in colors ranging from corpse mold to bruise magenta—even one magnificent black orchid with gray roots snaking out its moss-furred pot. (“Please darling,” Kitsey had said, correctly intuiting my plans for Christmas, “don’t even think about it, they’re all too gorgeous and they die the moment I touch them.”)

No new messages. Quickly, I texted her (Hey call me, have to talk to you, something hilarious just happened xxxx) and just to be sure she wasn’t out of the movie yet, dialed her cell again. But as it was clicking through to voice mail, I saw a reflection in the glass, in the green jungle depths in back of the shop, and—in disbelief—turned.

It was Kitsey, head down, in her pink Prada overcoat, huddled arm in arm and whispering with a man whom I recognized—I hadn’t seen him in years, but I knew him instantly—same set of shoulder and loose-boned slink of a gait—Tom Cable. His crinkly brown hair was still long; he was still dressed in the same clothes that rich stoner kids had worn at our school (Tretorns, huge thick-knit Irish sweater without an overcoat) and he had a bag from the wine shop looped over his arm, the same wine shop where Kitsey and I sometimes ran together for a bottle. But what astonished me: Kitsey, who always held my hand at a slight distance—tugging me along behind her, winsomely swinging my arm like a child playing London Bridge—was nestled deep and sorrowfully into his side. As I watched, blank at the unfathomable sight of this—they were waiting for the light, bus whooshing past, far too wrapped up in each other to notice me—Cable, who was talking to her quietly, tousled her hair and then turned and pulled her to him and kissed her, a kiss she returned with more mournful tenderness than any kiss she’d ever given me.

Moreover, I saw—they were crossing the street; quickly I turned my back; I could see them perfectly well in the window of the lighted shop as they went into the front door of Kitsey’s apartment building only a few feet away from me—Kitsey was upset, she was talking quietly, in a low voice husky with emotion, leaning into Cable with her cheek pressed against his sleeve as he reached around lovingly to squeeze her on the arm; and though I couldn’t make out what she was saying, the tone of her voice was all too clear: for even in her sadness her joy in him, and his in her, was undisguisable. Any stranger on the street could have seen it. And—as they glided past me, in the dark window, a pair of affectionate ghosts leaning against each other—I saw her reach up quickly to dash a tear from her cheek, and found myself blinking in astonishment at the sight: for somehow, improbably, for the first time ever, Kitsey was crying.





xx.



I WAS AWAKE MUCH of the night; and when I went down to open the store the next day, I was so preoccupied I sat staring into space for a half an hour before I realized I’d forgotten to turn the ‘Closed’ sign around.

Kitsey’s twice-weekly trips to the Hamptons. Strange numbers flashing, quick hang-ups. Kitsey frowning at the phone mid-dinner and shutting it off: “Oh, just Em. Oh, just Mommy. Oh, just a telemarketer, they’ve got me on some list.” Texts coming in at the middle of the night, submarine blips, bluish sonar pulse on the walls, Kitsey jumping up bare-assed from bed to shut the thing off, white legs flashing in the dark: “Oh, wrong number. Oh, just Toddy, he’s out drunk somewhere.”

And, very nearly as heart-sinking: Mrs. Barbour. I was well aware of Mrs. Barbour’s light touch in tricky situations—her ability to manage delicate matters behind the scenes—and while she hadn’t told me a direct lie, as far as I knew, information had definitely been elided and finessed. All sorts of little things were coming back to me, such as the moment a few months before when I’d walked in on Mrs. Barbour and heard her saying in a low urgent voice to the doorman, over the intercom, in answer to a ring from the lobby: No, I don’t care, don’t let him up, keep him downstairs. And when Kitsey, not thirty seconds later, after checking her texts, had bounced up and announced unexpectedly she was taking Ting-a-Ling and Clemmy for a spin round the block! I hadn’t thought a thing about it, despite the unmistakable frost of displeasure that had crossed Mrs. Barbour’s face, and the renewed warmth and energy with which—when the door clicked shut after Kitsey—she had turned back to me and reached to take my hand.

We were to see each other that night: I was to accompany her to the birthday party of one of her friends, and then stop by the party of a different friend, later on. Kitsey, though she hadn’t phoned, had sent me a tentative text. Theo, what’s up? I’m at work. Call me. I was still staring at this uncomprehendingly, wondering if I should return the message or not—what could I possibly say?—when Boris came bursting in the front door of the shop. “I have some news.”

“Oh yeah?” I said, after a moment’s distracted pause.

He wiped his forehead. “We can talk here?” he said, looking around.

“Uh—” shaking my head to clear it. “Sure.”

“I have a sleepy head today,” he said, rubbing his eye. His hair was standing up in every direction. “Need a coffee. No, don’t have time,” he said blearily, raising a hand. “Can’t sit, either. Can only stay one minute. But—good news—I have a good line on your picture.”

“How’s that?” I said, waking abruptly from my Kitsey fog.

“Well, we will soon see,” he said evasively.

“Where—” struggling to focus—“is it all right? Where are they keeping it?”

“These are questions I cannot answer.”

“It—” I was having a hard time collecting my thoughts; I took a deep breath, drew a line on the desktop with my thumb to compose myself, looked up—

“Yes?”

“It needs a certain temperature range and a certain humidity—you know that, right?” Someone else’s voice, not mine. “They can’t just be keeping it in a damp garage or any place.”

Boris pursed his lips in his old derisive manner. “Believe me, Horst took care of that picture like it was his own baby. That said—” he closed his eyes—“I cannot say about these guys. I am sad to report that they are not geniuses. We will have to hope they have enough brains not to keep it behind the pizza oven or something. Joking,” he said loftily, when he saw me gaping in horror. “Although, from what I hear, it is being kept in a restaurant, or near a restaurant. In same building with, anyway. We will talk about it later,” he said, raising a hand.

“Here?” I said, after another disbelieving pause. “In the city?”

“Later. It can wait. But here is the other thing,” he said, in an urgently hushing tone as he looked about the room and over my head. “Listen, listen. This is what I really came to tell you. Horst—he never knew your name was Decker, not until he asked me on the telephone today. You know a guy named Lucius Reeve?”

I sat down. “Why?”

“Horst says to stay away from him. Horst knows you are an antiques dealer but he didn’t connect the dots with this other thing until he knew your name.”

“What other thing?”

“Horst would not go into it a lot. I do not know what your involvement is with this Lucius, but Horst says to stay clear of him and I thought it important that you know it right away. He crossed Horst badly on unrelated matter and Horst got Martin after him.”

“Martin?”

Boris waved a hand. “You didn’t meet Martin. Believe me, you would remember if you did. Anyway, this Lucius guy is no good to be mixed up with for someone in your business.”

“I know.”

“What are you into him for? If I may ask?”

“I—” Again I shook my head, at the impossibility of going into it. “It’s complicated.”

“Well, I don’t know what he has on you. If you need my help, of course you have it—I am pledging it to you—Horst too, I daresay, because he likes you. Nice to see him so involved and talkative yesterday! I do not think he knows so many persons with whom he can be himself and share his interests. It is sad for him. Very intelligent, Horst. He has a lot to give. But—” he glanced at his watch—“sorry, I do not mean to be rude, I have to be somewhere—I am feeling very hopeful about the picture! I think, possibility, we may get it back! So—” he stood, and bravely knocked his breastbone with his fist—“courage! We will speak soon.”

“Boris?”

“Eh?”

“What would you do if your girl was cheating on you?”

Boris—heading out the door—did a double take. “Come again?”

“If you thought your girl was cheating on you.”

Boris frowned. “Not sure? You have no proof?”

“No,” I said, before realizing this wasn’t strictly true.

“Then you must ask her, straight out,” said Boris decisively. “In some friendly and unprotected moment when she is not expecting it. In bed maybe. If you catch her at the right moment, even if she lies—you will know it. She will lose her nerve.”

“Not this woman.”

Boris laughed. “Well, you have found a good one, then! A rare one! Is she beautiful?”

“Yes.”

“Rich?”

“Yes.”

“Intelligent?”

“Most people would say so, yes.”

“Heartless?”

“A bit.”

Boris laughed. “And you love her, yes. But not too much.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you are not mad, or wild, or grieving! You are not roaring out to choke her with your own bare hands! Which means your soul is not too mixed up with hers. And that is good. Here is my experience. Stay away from the ones you love too much. Those are the ones who will kill you. What you want to live and be happy in the world is a woman who has her own life and lets you have yours.”

He clapped me twice on the shoulder and then departed, leaving me to stare into the silver case with a renewed sense of despair at my dirtied-up life.





xxi.



KITSEY, WHEN SHE OPENED the door to me that night, was not actually quite so composed as she might have been: she was talking of several things at once, new dress she wanted to buy, tried it on, couldn’t decide, put it on hold, storm up in Maine—tons of trees down, old ones on the island, Uncle Harry had phoned, how sad! “Oh darling—” flittering around adorably, raising up on tiptoe to reach the wineglasses—“will you? Please?” Em and Francie, the roommates, were nowhere in evidence, as if they and their boyfriends had wisely am-scrayed before my arrival. “Oh, never mind—I’ve got them. Listen, I had such a good idea. Let’s go have a curry before we stop by Cynthia’s. I’m craving one. What’s that hidey-hole on Lex you took me to—that you like? What’s it called? The Mahal something?”

“You mean the fleabag?” I said stonily. I hadn’t even bothered to take off my coat.

“Excuse me?”

“With the greasy rogan josh. And the old people that depressed you. The Bloomingdale’s sale crowd.” The Jal Mahal Restaruant (sic) was a shabby, tucked-away Indian on the second floor of a storefront on Lex where not a thing had changed since I was a kid: not the pappadums, not the prices, not the carpet faded pink from water damage near the windows, not even the waiters: the same heavy, beatific, gentle faces I remembered from childhood when my mother and I had gone there after the movies for samosas and mango ice cream. “Sure, why not. ‘The saddest restaurant in Manhattan.’ What a great idea.”

She turned to me, and frowned. “Whatever. Baluchi’s is closer. Or—we can do what you want.”

“Oh yeah?” I stood leaning against the door frame with my hands in my pockets. Years of living with a world class liar had rendered me merciless. “What I want? That’s rich.”

“Sorry. I thought a curry might be nice. Forget it.”

“That’s okay. You can stop it now.”

She looked up with a vacant smile on her face. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t give me that. You know good and well what I’m talking about.”

She said nothing. A stitch appeared in her pretty forehead.

“Maybe this will teach you to keep your phone switched on when you’re with him. I’m sure she was trying to call you on the street.”

“Sorry, I don’t know—?”

“Kitsey, I saw you.”

“Oh, please,” she said, blinking, after a slight pause. “You can’t be serious. You don’t mean Tom, do you? Really, Theo,” she said, in the deadly silence that followed, “Tom’s an old friend, from way back, we’re really close—”

“Yes, I gather.”

“—and he’s Em’s friend too, and, and, I mean,” blinking furiously, with an air of being unjustly persecuted, “I know how it may have seemed, I know you don’t like Tom and you have good reason not to. Because, I know about the stuff when your mother died and sure, he behaved really badly, but he was only a kid and he feels really awful about the way he acted—”

“Feels awful?”

“—but, but he’d had some bad news last night,” she continued rapidly, like an actress interrupted mid-speech, “some bad news of his own—”

“You talk about me with him? You two sit around discussing me and feeling sorry for me?”

“—and Tom, he turned up here to see us, Em and me, both of us, out of the blue, right before we were supposed to go out to the movie, that’s why we stayed in and didn’t go out with the others, you can ask Em if you don’t believe me, he didn’t have anywhere else to go, he’d had a bad upset, something personal, he only wanted someone to talk to, and what were we to—”

“You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?”

“Listen. I don’t know what Em told you—”

“Tell me. Does Cable’s mother still have that house in East Hampton? I remember how she used to always dump him off at the country club for hours on end after she fired the babysitter, or after the babysitter quit rather. Tennis lessons, golf lessons. He probably turned out to be a pretty good golfer, no?”

“Yes,” she said coldly, “yes he is pretty good.”

“I could say something cheap here but I won’t.”

“Theo, let’s not do this.”

“May I run my theory by you? Do you mind? I’m sure it’s wrong in a few particulars but I think this is basically it. Because I know you were seeing Tom, Platt told me as much when I ran into him on the street, and he wasn’t too thrilled about it either. And yeah,” I said when she tried to interrupt, in a voice just as hard and dead as I felt. “Right. No need to make excuses. Girls always did like Cable. Funny guy, really entertaining when he wants to be. Even if he has been writing bad checks lately or stealing from people at the country club or any of these other things I hear—”

“—That’s not true! That’s a lie! He never stole anything from anybody—”

“—and Mommy and Daddy never liked Tom much, or probably at all, and then after Daddy and Andy died you couldn’t keep it up, not in public anyway. Too upsetting to Mommy. And, as Platt has pointed out, numerous times—”

“I won’t see him any more.”

“So you’re admitting it.”

“I didn’t think it mattered until we were married.”

“Why is that?”