The Goldfinch

“How many people will be there?” Pippa asked. She’d been forced to walk down to Morgane Le Fay and buy a dress since she hadn’t packed for the party.

“Couple hundred.” Of that number, maybe fifteen of the guests (including Pippa and Hobie, Mr. Bracegirdle and Mrs. DeFrees) were mine; a hundred were Kitsey’s, and the remainder were people whom even Kitsey claimed not to know.

“Including,” said Hobie, “the mayor. And both senators. And Prince Albert of Monaco, isn’t that right?”

“They invited Prince Albert. I seriously doubt he’s coming.”

“Oh, just an intimate thing then. For the family.”

“Look, I’m just showing up and doing what they tell me.” It was A

xxxi.

SINCE I DIDN’T SEE any particular reason I needed my wits about me for the party, I made sure to get good and looped before I left, with an emergency OC tucked into the pocket of my best Turnbull and Asser just in case.

The club was so beautiful that I resented the press of guests, which made it difficult to see the architectural details, the portraits hung frame to frame—some of them very fine—and the rare books on the shelves. Red velvet swags, garlands of Christmas balsam—were those real candles on the tree? I stood in a daze at the top of the stairs, not wanting to greet or talk to people, not wanting to be there at all—

Hand on my sleeve. “What’s the matter?” said Pippa.

“What?” I couldn’t meet her eye.

“You look so sad.”

“I am,” I said, but I wasn’t sure if she heard or not, I almost didn’t hear myself saying it, because at exactly the same moment Hobie—sensing we’d fallen behind—had doubled back to find us in the crowd, shouting: “Ah, there you are…”

“Go, attend to your guests,” he said, giving me a friendly parental nudge, “everyone’s asking for you!” Among the strangers, he and Pippa were two of the only really unique or interesting-looking people there: she, like a fairy in her gauzy-sleeved, diaphanous green; he, elegant and endearing in his midnight blue double-breasted, his beautiful old shoes from Peal and Co.

“I—” Hopelessly, I looked around.

“Don’t worry about us. We’ll catch up later.”

“Right,” I said, steeling myself. But—leaving them to study a portrait of John Adams near the coat check, where they were waiting for Mrs. DeFrees to drop off her mink, and making my way through the crowded rooms—there was no one I recognized except Mrs. Barbour, whom I really didn’t feel I could face, only she saw me before I could get by and caught me by the sleeve. She was backed in a doorway with her gin and lime, being addressed by a saturnine spritely old gentleman with a hard red face and a hard clear voice and a puff of gray hair over each ear.

“Oh, Medora,” he was saying, rocking back on his heels. “Still a constant delight. Darling old girl. Rare and impressive. Nearing ninety! Her family of course of the purest Knickerbocker strain as she always likes to remind one—oh you should see her, full of ginger with the attendants—” here he permitted himself an indulgent little chuckle—“this is dreadful my dear, but so amusing, at least I think you will find it so.… they ca

“Theo,” said Mrs. Barbour, putting her hand out to me quite suddenly as I was trying to edge away, as a person trapped in a burning car might make a last-minute clutch at rescue perso

Havistock Irving turned to fix me with a keen—and, to me, not wholly congenial—beam of interest. “Theodore Decker.”

“Afraid so,” I said, taken aback.

“I see.” I liked his look less and less. “You are surprised I know you. Well, you see, I know your esteemed partner, Mr. Hobart. And his esteemed partner Mr. Blackwell before you.”

“Is that so,” I said, with resolute blandness; in the antiques trade, I had daily occasion to deal with insinuating old gents of his stripe and Mrs. Barbour, who had not let go my hand, only squeezed it tighter.

“Direct descendant of Washington Irving, Havistock is,” she said helpfully. “Writing a biography of.”

“How interesting.”

“Yes it is rather interesting,” said Havistock placidly. “Although in modern academia Washington Irving has fallen a bit out of favor. Marginalized,” he said, happy to have come up with the word. “Not a distinctly American voice, the scholars say. Bit too cosmopolitan—too European. Which is only to be expected, I suppose, as Irving learned most of his craft from Addison and Steele. At any rate, my illustrious ancestor would certainly approve of my daily routine.”

“Which is—?”

“Working in libraries, reading old newspapers, studying the old government records.”

“Why government records?”

Airily he waved a hand. “They are of interest to me. And of even greater interest to a close associate of mine, who sometimes manages to turn up quite a lot of interesting information in the course of things… I believe you two are acquainted with each other?”

“Who is that?”

“Lucius Reeve?”

In the ensuing silence, the babble of the crowd and the clink of glasses rose to a roar, as if a gust of wind had swept through the room.