The Goldfinch

v.

ALMOST THREE HOURS LATER I was still sitting in a red vinyl booth in the Polack bar, flashing Christmas lights, a

It was getting toward the end of Happy Hour, a few students and artist types trickling in among the pot-bellied old Polish guys and grizzled, fifty-ish punks. I’d just finished my third vodka; they poured them big, it was foolish to order another one; I knew I should get something to eat but I wasn’t hungry and my mood was turning bleaker and darker by the moment. To think that he’d blown me off after so many years was incredibly depressing. If I had to be philosophical, at least I’d been diverted from my dope mission: hadn’t OD’d, wasn’t vomiting in some garbage can, hadn’t been ripped off or run in for trying to buy from an undercover cop—

“Potter.” There he was, sliding in across from me, slinging the hair from his face in a gesture that brought the past ringing back.

“I was just about to leave.”

“Sorry.” Same dirty, charming smile. “Had something to do. Didn’t Myriam explain?”

“No she didn’t.”

“Well. Is not like I work in accounting office. Look,” he said, leaning forward, palms on the table, “don’t be mad! Was not expecting to run into you! I came as quick as I could! Ran, practically!” He reached across with cupped hand and slapped me gently on the cheek. “My God! Such a long time it is! Glad to see you! You’re not glad to see me too?”

He’d grown up to be good-looking. Even at his gawkiest and most pinched he’d always had a likable shrewdness about him, lively eyes and a quick intelligence, but he’d lost that half-starved rawness and everything else had come together the right way. His skin was weather-beaten but his clothes fell well, his features were sharp and nervy, cavalry hero by way of concert pianist; and his tiny gray snaggleteeth—I saw—had been replaced by a standard-issue row of all-American whites.

He saw me looking, flicked a showy incisor with his thumbnail. “New snaps.”

“I noticed.”

“Dentist in Sweden did it,” said Boris, signalling for a waiter. “Cost a fucking fortune. My wife kept after me—Borya, your mouth, disgraceful! I said no way am I doing this, but was the best money I ever spent.”

“When’d you get married?”

“Eh?”

“You could have brought her if you wanted.”

He looked startled. “What, you mean Myriam? No, no—” reaching into the pocket of his suit jacket, punching around on his telephone, “Myriam’s not my wife! This—” he handed me the phone—“ this is my wife. What are you drinking?” he said, before turning to address the waiter in Polish.

The photo on the iPhone was of a snow-topped chalet and, out in front, a beautiful blonde on skis. At her side, also on skis, were a pair of bundled-up little blond kids of indeterminate sex. It didn’t look so much like a snapshot as an ad for some healthful Swiss product like yogurt or Bircher muesli.

I looked up at him stu

“Your wife? Seriously?”

“Yah,” he said, with a lifted eyebrow. “My kids, too. Twins.”

“Fuck.”

“Yes,” he said regretfully. “Born when I was very young—too young. It wasn’t a good time—she wanted to keep them—‘Borya, how could you’—what could I say? To be truthful I don’t know them so well. Actually the little one—he is not in the picture—the little one I have not met at all. I think he is only, what? Six weeks old?”

“What?” Again I looked at the picture, struggling to reconcile this wholesome Nordic family with Boris. “Are you divorced?”

“No no no—” the vodka had arrived, icy carafe and two tiny glasses, he was pouring a shot for each of us—“Astrid and the children are mostly in Stockholm. Sometimes she comes to Aspen to the winter, to ski—she was ski champion, qualified for the Olympics when she was nineteen—”

“Oh yeah?” I said, doing my best not to sound incredulous at this. The kids, as was fairly evident upon closer viewing, looked far too blond and bo

“Yes yes,” said Boris, very earnestly, with a vigorous nod of the head. “She always has to be where there is skiing and—you know me, I hate the fucking snow, ha! Her father very very right-wing—a Nazi basically. I think—no wonder Astrid has depression problems with father like him! What a hateful old shit! But they are very unhappy and miserable people, all of them, these Swedes. One minute laughing and drinking and the next—darkness, not a word. Dzikuj,” he said to the waiter, who had reappeared with a tray of small plates: black bread, potato salad, two kinds of herring, cucumbers in sour cream, stuffed cabbage, and some pickled eggs.

“I didn’t know they served food here.”

“They don’t,” said Boris, buttering a slice of black bread and sprinkling it with salt. “But am starving. Asked them to bring something from next door.” He clinked his shot glass with mine. “Sto lat!” he said—his old toast.

“Sto lat.” The vodka was aromatic and flavored with some bitter herb I couldn’t identify.

“So,” I said, helping myself to some food. “Myriam?”

“Eh?”

I held out open palms in our childhood gesture: please explain.

“Ah, Myriam! She works for me! Right-hand man, suppose you’d say. Although, I’ll tell you, she’s better than any man you’ll find. What a woman, my God. Not many like her, I’ll tell you. Worth her weight in gold. Here here,” he said, refilling my glass and sliding it back to me. “Za vstrechu!” lifting his own to me. “To our meeting!”

“Isn’t it my turn to toast?”

“Yes, it is—” clinking my glass—“but I am hungry and you are waiting too long.”

“To our meeting, then.”

“To our meeting! And to fortune! For bringing us together again!”

As soon as we’d drunk, Boris fell immediately on the food. “And what exactly is it that you do?” I asked him.

“This, that.” He still ate with the i

“And where do you live? Stockholm?” I said, when he didn’t answer.

He waved an expansive hand. “All over.”

“Like—?”

“Oh, you know. Europe, Asia, North and South America…”

“That covers a lot of territory.”

“Well,” he said, mouth full of herring, wiping a glob of sour cream off his chin, “am also small business owner, if you understand me rightly.”

“Sorry?”

He washed down the herring with a big slug of beer. “You know how it is. My official business so called is housecleaning agency. Workers from Poland, mostly. Nice pun in title of business, too. ‘Polish Cleaning Service.’ Get it?” He bit into a pickled egg. “What’s our motto, can you guess? ‘We clean you out,’ ha!”

I chose to let that one lie. “So you’ve been in the States this whole time?”

“Oh no!” He had poured us each a new shot of vodka, was lifting his glass to me. “Travel a lot. I am here maybe six, eight weeks of the year. And the rest of the time—”

“Russia?” I said, downing my shot, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Not so much. Northern Europe. Sweden, Belgium. Germany sometimes.”