The Goldfinch

Boris threw the hair out of his eyes. “Come on. You will feel fantastic when you hear what I have to say! But you will need to go home. Get your passport. And there is a question of cash, too.”

Over Boris’s shoulder: imperturbable faces of strange, cold women. Mrs. Barbour in profile, slightly turned to the wall, clutching the hand of the jolly cleric who didn’t look quite so jolly any more.

“What? Are you listening to me?” Shaking my arm. The same voice that had pulled me back to earth many times, from fractal glue-sniffing skies where I laid open-eyed and insensate on the bed, gazing at the impressive blue-white explosions on the ceiling.

“Come on! Talk in the car. Let’s go. I have a ticket for you—”

Go? I looked at him. It was all I heard.

“I will explain. Don’t look at me like that! Everything is good. No worries. But—first off—you must arrange to be gone for a couple of days. Three days. Tops. So”—flicking a hand—“go, go arrange with Snowflake and let’s get out of here. I can’t smoke in here, can I?” he said, looking around. “No one is smoking?”

Get out of here. They were the only words anyone had said to me all night that made sense.

“Because you must go home immediately.” He was endeavoring to catch my eye in a familiar way. “Get your passport. And—money. How much cash do you have on hand?”

“Well, in the bank,” I said, pushing my glasses up on the bridge of my nose, oddly sobered by his tone.

“I am not talking about the bank. Or tomorrow. I am talking about on hand. Now.”

“But—”

“I can get it back, I’m telling you. But we can’t stand around here any longer. We must go now. Right away. Off with you, go,” he said, with a friendly little kick in the shin.

xxxv.

“THERE YOU ARE DARLING,” said Kitsey, slipping her arm through my elbow and stretching on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek—a kiss caught, simultaneously, by the photographers circling her: one from the social pages, the other hired for the evening by A

“Listen,” I said impatiently, as soon as our awkward photo op was over and A

“But—” she looked confused—“I think A

“Well, you’ll have to make an excuse for me. That shouldn’t be a problem for you, should it?”

“Theo, please don’t be hateful.”

“Because your mother isn’t going, I’m sure of it.” It was almost impossible to get Mrs. Barbour to go out to a restaurant for di

“Are you vexed with me?” Family language: vexed. A word Andy had used when we were children.

“Vexed? No.” Now that it had settled, and I was used to the idea (Cable? Kitsey?) it was almost like some scurrilous bit of gossip that had nothing to do with me. She was wearing my mother’s earrings, I noticed—which was weirdly moving since she was absolutely right, they didn’t suit her at all—and with a pang I reached out and touched them, and then her, on the cheek.

“Ahhh,” cried some onlookers in the background—pleased to finally see some affection between the happy couple. Kitsey—catching to it instantly—seized my hand and kissed it, prompting another battery of snaps.

“All right?” I said in her ear as she leaned close. “If anyone asks, I’m away on business. Old lady’s called me to look at an estate.”

“Certainly.” You had to hand it to her: she was as cool as dammit. “When will you be back?”

“Oh, soon,” I said, not very convincingly. I would have been happy to walk out of that room and keep walking for days and months until I was on some beach in Mexico maybe, some isolated shore where I could wander alone and wear the same clothes till they rotted off me and be the crazy gringo in the horn rimmed glasses who repaired chairs and tables for a living. “Look after yourself. And keep this Havistock out of your mother’s house.”

“Well—” her voice so low I could scarcely hear her—“he’s been rather a pest recently. Phones constantly, wanting to drop in, bring flowers, chocolates, poor old thing. Mum won’t see him. Feel a bit guilty about putting him off.”

“Well, don’t. Keep him away. He’s a sharper. Now, bye,” I said loudly, smacking her on the cheek (more clicking of cameras; this was the shot the photographers had been waiting for all evening), and went to tell Hobie (happily inspecting a portrait, leaning forward with his nose inches from the canvas) that I was leaving for a bit.

“Okay,” he said cautiously, turning away. The whole time I’d worked with him I’d scarcely taken a vacation, certainly never to go out of town. “You and—” he nodded at Kitsey.

“No.”

“Everything all right?”

“Sure.”

He looked at me; he looked across the room at Boris. “You know, if you need anything,” he said unexpectedly. “You can always ask.”

“Right, yes,” I said—taken aback, not quite sure what he meant, or how to respond—“thanks.”

He shrugged, in seeming embarrassment, and turned self-consciously back to the portrait. Boris was at the bar drinking a glass of champagne and gobbling leftover blinis with caviar. Seeing me, he drained the rest of his glass and ticked his head at the door: let’s get out of here!

“See you,” I said to Hobie, shaking his hand (which was not something I ordinarily did) and leaving him to stare after me in some perplexity. I wanted to say goodbye to Pippa but she was nowhere in sight. Where was she? The library? The loo? I was determined to catch another glimpse of her—just one more—before I left. “Do you know where she is?” I said to Hobie, after making a quick tour around; but he only shook his head. So I stood anxiously by the coat check for several minutes, waiting for her to return, until finally Boris—mouth full of hors d’oeuvres—grabbed me by the arm and pulled me down the staircase and out the door.

V.

We have art in order not to die from the truth.

—NIETZSCHE

Chapter 11.

The Gentleman’s Canal

i.

THE LINCOLN TOWN CAR was circling the block—but when the driver stopped for us, it was not Gyuri but a guy I’d never seen, with a haircut that looked like someone had administered it to him in the drunk tank and piercing, polar-blue eyes.