The Goldfinch

I nearly choked on my coffee—the first I’d been able to stomach in days—but Hobie didn’t seem to notice.

“Left a number. Said you would know what it was about. Oh—” he sat down, suddenly, drummed the table with his palm—“and one of the Barbour children phoned!”

“Kitsey?”

“No—” he took a gulp of his tea—“Platt? Does that sound right?”

xii.

THE THOUGHT OF DEALING with Lucius Reeve, unmedicated, was just about enough to send me back to the storage unit. As for the Barbours: I wasn’t all that anxious to speak to Platt either, but to my relief it was Kitsey who answered.

“We’re going to have a di

“Excuse me?”

“Didn’t we tell you? Oh—maybe I should have phoned! Anyway, Mum loved seeing you so much. She wants to know when you’re coming back.”

“Well—”

“Do you need an invitation?”

“Well, sort of.”

“You sound weird.”

“Sorry, I’ve had the, uh, flu.”

“Really? Oh my goodness. We’ve all been perfectly fine, I don’t think you can have caught it from us—sorry?” she said to an indistinct voice in the background. “Here… Platt’s trying to take the phone away. Talk to you soon.”

“Hi, brother,” said Platt when he got on the line.

“Hi,” I said, rubbing my temple, trying not to think how weird it was for Platt to be calling me brother.

“I—” Footsteps; a door shutting. “I want to cut right to the chase.”

“Yes?”

“Matter of some furniture,” he said cordially. “Any chance you could sell some of it for us?”

“Sure.” I sat down. “Which pieces is she thinking of selling?”

“Well,” said Platt, “the thing is, I would really not like to bother Mommy with this, if possible. Not sure she’s up for it, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I mean, she’s just got so much stuff… things up in Maine and out in storage that she’ll never look at again, you know? Not just furniture. Silver, a coin collection… some ceramics that I think are supposed to be a big deal but, I’ll be frank, look like shit. I don’t mean figuratively. I mean like literal clods of cow shit.”

“I guess my question would be, why would you want to sell it.”

“Well, there’s no need to sell it,” he said hastily. “But the thing is, she gets so tenacious about some of this old nonsense.”

I rubbed my eye. “Platt—”

“I mean, it’s just sitting there. All this junk. Much of which is mine, the coins and some old guns and things, because Gaga left them to me. I mean—” crisply—“I’ll be frank with you. I have another guy I’ve been dealing with, but honestly I’d rather work with you. You know us, you know Mommy, and I know you’ll give me a fair price.”

“Right,” I said uncertainly. There followed an expectant, endless-seeming pause—as if we were reading from a script and he was waiting with confidence for me to deliver the rest of my line—and I was wondering how to put him off when my eye fell on Lucius Reeve’s name and number dashed out in Hobie’s open, expressive hand.

“Well, um, it’s very complicated,” I said. “I mean, I would have to see the things in person before I could really say anything. Right, right—” he was trying to put in something about photos—“but photographs aren’t good enough. Also I don’t deal with coins, or the kind of ceramics you’re talking about either. With coins especially, you really need to go to a dealer who does nothing but. But in the meantime,” I said—he was still trying to talk over me—“if it’s a question of raising a few thousand bucks? I think I can help you out.”

That shut him up all right. “Yes?”

I reached under my glasses to pinch the bridge of my nose. “Here’s the thing. I’m trying to establish a provenance on a piece—it’s a real nightmare, guy won’t leave me alone, I’ve tried to buy the piece back from him, he seems intent on raising a stink. For what reason I don’t know. Anyway it would help me out, I think, if I could produce a bill of sale proving I’d bought this piece from another collector.”

“Well, Mommy thinks you hung the moon,” he said sourly. “I’m sure she’ll do whatever you want.”

“Well, the thing is—” Hobie was downstairs with the router going, but I lowered my voice just the same—“we’re speaking in complete confidence, of course?”

“Of course.”

“I don’t actually see any reason to involve your mother at all. I can write out a bill of sale, and back-date it. But if the guy has any questions, and he may, what I’d like to do is refer him to you—give him your number, eldest son, mother recently bereaved, blah blah blah—”

“Who is this guy?”

“His name is Lucius Reeve. Ever heard of him?”

“Nope.”

“Well—just so you know, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that he knows your mother, or has met her at some point.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem. Mommy hardly sees anyone these days.” A pause; I could hear him lighting a cigarette. “So—this guy phones.”

I described the chest-on-chest. “Happy to email a photo. The distinctive feature is the phoenix carving on the top. All you need to tell him, if he calls, is that the piece was up at your place in Maine until your mother sold it to me a couple of years back. She will have bought it from a dealer out of business you see, some old guy who passed away a few years back, can’t remember the name, darn, you’ll have to check. Though if he presses—” it was astonishing, I’d learned, how a few tea stains and a few minutes of crisping in the oven, at low temperatures, could further age the blank receipts in the 1960s receipt book I’d bought at the flea market—“it’ll be easy enough for me to provide that bill of sale for you too.”

“I got it.”

“Right. Anyway—” I was groping around for a cigarette which I didn’t have—“if you take care of things on your end—you know, if you commit to backing me up if the guy does call—I’ll give you ten percent on the price of the piece.”

“Which is how much?”

“Seven thousand dollars.”

Platt laughed—an oddly happy and carefree-sounding laugh. “Daddy always did say that all you antiques fellows were crooked.”

xiii.

I HUNG UP THE phone, feeling goofy with relief. Mrs. Barbour had her share of second and third rate antiques, but she also owned so many important pieces that it disturbed me to think of Platt selling things out from under her with no clue what he was doing. As for being “over a barrel”—if anyone gave off the aroma of being embroiled in some sort of ongoing and ill-defined trouble, it was Platt. Though I had not thought of his expulsion in years, the circumstances had been so diligently hushed up that it seemed likely he’d done something fairly serious, something that in less controlled circumstances might have involved the police: which in a weird way reassured me, in terms of trusting him to collect his cash and keep his mouth shut. Besides—it gladdened my heart to think of it—if anyone alive could high-hand or intimidate Lucius Reeve it was Platt: a world-class snob and bully in his own right.

“Mr. Reeve?” I said courteously when he picked up the phone.

“Lucius, please.”

“Well then, Lucius.” His voice had made me go cold with anger; but knowing I had Platt in my corner made me more cocky than I had reason to be. “Returning your call. What’s on your mind?”

“Probably not what you think,” came the swift reply.

“No?” I said, easily enough, though his tone took me aback. “Well then. Fill me in.”

“I think you’d probably rather I do that in person.”

“Fine. How about downtown,” I said quickly, “since you were good enough to take me to your club last time?”

xiv.