The Goldfinch

Chance plays tricks, my dad had liked to say. Systems, spread breakdowns.

Where was Boris? In my fever haze I tried, unsuccessfully, to amuse or at least divert myself with thoughts of how very likely he was to show up at just the moment you didn’t expect him. Cracking his knuckles, making the girls jump. Turning up half an hour after our state issued Proficiency Exam had begun, widespread classroom laughter at his puzzled face through the wire reinforced glass of the locked door: hah, our bright future, he’d said scornfully when on the way home I’d tried to explain to him about standardized tests.

In my dreams I couldn’t get to where I needed to be. There was always something keeping me from where I needed to go.

He had texted me his number before we left the States, and though I was afraid to text him back (not knowing his circumstances, or if the text could be traced to me somehow), I reminded myself continually that I could reach him, if I had to. He knew where I was. Yet, hours into the night, I lay awake arguing with myself: relentless tedium, back and forth, what if, what if, what harm could it do? At last, at some disoriented point—night light burning, half-dreaming, out of it—I broke down and reached for the phone on the nightstand and texted him anyway before I had the chance to think better of it: Where are you?

Over the next two or three hours I lay awake in a state of barely controlled anxiety, lying with my forearm over my face to keep the light out even though there wasn’t any light. Unfortunately, when I woke from my sweat-soaked sleep, somewhere around dawn, the phone was stone dead because I’d forgotten to switch it off, and—reluctant to negotiate the front desk, to ask if they had chargers for loan—I hesitated for hours until finally, mid-afternoon, I broke down.

“Certainly, sir,” said the desk clerk, hardly looking at me. “United States?”

Thank God, I thought, trying not to hurry too much as I walked upstairs. The phone was old, and slow, and after I plugged it in and stood for a while, I got tired of waiting for the Apple logo to come up and went to the minibar and got myself a drink and came back and stared at it a bit more until at last the lock screen came up, old school photo I’d sca

Four-fifteen p.m. The sky was turning ultramarine over the bell gables across the canal. I was sitting on the carpet with my back against the bed and the charger cord in my hand, having methodically, twice, tried all the sockets in the room—I’d switched the phone on and off a hundred times, held it to the lamp to see if maybe it was on and the display had just gone dark, tried to re-set it, but the phone was fried: nothing happening, cold black screen, dead as a doornail. Clearly I’d short-circuited it; the night of the garage it had gotten wet—drops of water on the screen when I took it from my pocket—but though I’d had a bad minute or two waiting for it to come on, it had seemed to be working just fine, right up until the moment I tried to put a charge in it. Everything was backed up on my laptop at home, apart from the only thing I needed: Boris’s number, which he’d texted me in the car on the way to the airport.

Water reflections wavering on the ceiling. Outside, somewhere, ti

I didn’t have a return ticket. But I had a credit card. I could take a cab to the airport. You can take a cab to the airport, I told myself. Schiphol. First plane out. Ke

Janet. The thought of Janet was absurdly reassuring. Janet who was an efficient mood system all her own, Janet fat and rosy in her pink shetlands and madras plaids like a Boucher nymph as dressed by J. Crew, Janet who said excellent! in answer to everything and drank coffee from a pink mug that said Janet.

It was a relief to be thinking straight. What good was it doing Boris, or anyone, me waiting around? The cold and damp, the unreadable language. Fever and cough. The nightmare sense of constraint. I didn’t want to leave without Boris, without knowing if Boris was okay, it was the war-movie confusion of ru

Telephone book. Pencil and paper. Only three people had seen me: the Indonesian, Grozdan, and the Asian kid. And while it was quite possible Martin and Frits had colleagues in Amsterdam looking for me (another good reason to get out of town), I had no reason to think the police were looking for me at all. There was no reason they would have flagged my passport.

Then—it was like being struck in the face—I flinched. For whatever reason I’d been thinking that my passport was downstairs, where I’d had to present it at check-in. But in truth I hadn’t thought of it at all, not since Boris had taken it away from me to lock in the glove box of his car.

Very very calmly, I set down the phone book, making an effort to set it down in a ma

Bruised inky skies. It was early in America. Hobie just breaking for lunch, walking over to Jefferson Market, maybe picking up groceries for the lunch he was hosting on Christmas Day. Was Pippa in California still? I imagined her tumbling over in a hotel bed and reaching sleepily for the telephone, eyes still closed, Theo is that you, is something wrong?

Better a fine and talk our way out of it in case we are stopped.

I felt ill. To present myself at the consulate (or whatever) for a round of interviews and paperwork was asking for far more trouble than I needed. I hadn’t put a time limit on waiting, on how long I would wait, and yet any movement—random movement, senseless movement, insect-buzzing-around-a-jar movement—seemed preferable to being cooped up in the room even one minute more, seeing shadow people out of the corner of my eye.

Another huge Tiffany ad in the Tribune, bringing me Season’s Greetings. Then on the opposite page a different ad, for digital cameras, scrawled in artsy letters and signed Joan Miró:

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at a picture for a second and think of it all your life

Centraal Station. European Union, no passport control at the borders. Any train, anywhere. I pictured myself riding in aimless circles through Europe: Rhine falls and Tyrolean passes, cinematic tu