The Goldfinch

The name Kotku (Ukrainian variant: Kotyku) makes her sound more interesting than she was; but it wasn’t her real name, only a pet name (“Kitty cat,” in Polish) that Boris had given her. Her last name was Hutchins; her given name was actually something like Kylie or Keiley or Kaylee; and she’d lived in Clark County, Nevada her whole life. Though she went to our school and was only a grade ahead of us, she was a lot older—older than me by three whole years. Boris, apparently, had had his eye on her for a while, but I hadn’t been aware of her until the afternoon he threw himself on the foot of my bed and said: “I’m in love.”

“Oh yeah? With who?”

“This chick from Civics. That I bought some weed from. I mean, she’s eighteen, too, can you believe it? God, she’s beautiful.”

“You have weed?”

Playfully, he lunged and caught me by the shoulder; he knew just where I was weakest, the spot under the blade where he could dig his fingers and make me yelp. But I was in no mood and hit him, hard.

“Ow! Fuck!” said Boris, rolling away, rubbing his jaw with his fingertips. “Why’d you do that?”

“Hope it hurts,” I said. “Where’s that weed?”

We didn’t talk any more about Boris’s love interest, at least not that day, but then a few days later when I came out of math I saw him looming over this girl by the lockers. While Boris wasn’t especially tall for his age, the girl was tiny, despite how much older than us she seemed: flat-chested, scrawny-hipped, with high cheekbones and a shiny forehead and a sharp, shiny, triangle-shaped face. Pierced nose. Black tank top. Chipped black fingernail polish; streaked orange-and-black hair; flat, bright, chlorine-blue eyes, outlined hard, in black pencil. Definitely she was cute—hot, even; but the glance she slid over me was anxiety-provoking, something about her of a bitchy fast-food clerk or maybe a mean babysitter.

“So what do you think?” said Boris eagerly when he caught up with me after school.

I shrugged. “She’s cute. I guess.”

“You guess?”

“Well Boris, I mean, she looks like she’s, like, twenty-five.”

“I know! It’s great!” he said, looking dazed. “Eighteen years! Legal adult! She can buy booze no problem! Also she’s lived here her whole life, so she knows what places don’t check age.”

ii.

HADLEY, THE TALKATIVE LETTER-JACKET girl who sat by me in American history, wrinkled her nose when I asked about Boris’s older woman. “Her?” she said. “Total slut.” Hadley’s big sister, Jan, was in the same grade with Kyla or Kayleigh or whatever her name was. “And her mother, I heard, is a straight-up hooker. Your friend better be careful he doesn’t get some disease.”

“Well,” I said, surprised at her vehemence, though maybe I shouldn’t have been. Hadley, an army brat, was on the swim team and sang in the school choir; she had a normal family with three siblings, a Weimaraner named Gretchen that she’d brought over from Germany, and a dad who yelled if she was out past her curfew.

“I’m not kidding,” said Hadley. “She’ll make out with other girls’ boyfriends—she’ll make out with other girls—she’ll make out with anybody. Also I think she does pot.”

“Oh,” I said. None of these factors, in my view, were necessarily reasons to dislike Kylie or whatever, especially since Boris and I had wholeheartedly taken to smoking pot ourselves in the past months. But what did bother me—a lot—was how Kotku (I’ll continue to call her by the name Boris gave her, since I can’t now remember her real name) had stepped in overnight and virtually assumed ownership of Boris.

First he was busy on Friday night. Then it was the whole weekend—not just the night, but the day too. Pretty soon, it was Kotku this and Kotku that, and the next thing I knew, Popper and I were eating di

“Isn’t she amazing?” Boris asked me again, after the first time he brought her over to my house—a highly unsuccessful evening, which had consisted of the three of us getting so stoned we could barely move, and then the two of them rolling around on the sofa downstairs while I sat on the floor with my back to them and tried to concentrate on a rerun of The Outer Limits. “What do you think?”

“Well, I mean—” What did he want me to say? “She likes you. Sure.”

He shifted, restlessly. We were outside by the pool, though it was too windy and cool to swim. “No, really! What do you think about her? Tell the truth, Potter,” he said, when I hesitated.

“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully, and then—when he still sat looking at me: “Honestly? I don’t know, Boris. She seems kind of desperate.”

“Yes? Is that bad?”

His tone was genuinely curious—not angry, not sarcastic. “Well,” I said, taken aback. “Maybe not.”

Boris—cheeks pink with vodka—put his hand on his heart. “I love her, Potter. I mean it. This is the truest thing that has ever happened to me in my life.”

I was so embarrassed I had to look away.

“Little ski

Quietly, I poured myself another vodka, though I really didn’t need one. The Kotku business was all doubly perplexing because—as Boris himself had informed me, with an unmistakable note of pride—Kotku already had a boyfriend: a twenty-six-year-old guy named Mike McNatt who owned a motorcycle and worked for a pool cleaning service. “Excellent,” I said, when Boris had broken this news earlier. “We ought to get him out here to help with the vacuuming.” I was sick and tired of looking after the swimming pool (a job that had fallen largely to me), especially since Xandra never brought home enough chemicals or the right kind.

Boris wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. “It’s serious, Potter. I think she’s scared of him. She wants to break up with him but she’s afraid. She’s trying to talk him into going to a military recruiter.”

“You’d better be careful that guy doesn’t come after you.”

“Me!” He snorted. “It’s her I’m worried about! She’s so tiny! Eighty-one pounds!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Kotku claimed to be a “borderline anorexic” and could always get Boris worked up by saying she hadn’t eaten anything all day.

Boris cuffed me on the side of the head. “You sit too much around here on your own,” he said, sitting down beside me and putting his feet in the pool. “Come to Kotku’s tonight. Bring someone.”

“Such as—?”

Boris shrugged. “What about hot little blondie with the boy’s haircut, from your history class? The swimmer?”

“Hadley?” I shook my head. “No way.”

“Yes! You should! Because she is hot! And she would totally go!”

“Believe me, not a good idea.”

“I’ll ask her for you! Come on. She’s friendly to you, and always talks. Shall we call her?”

“No! It’s not that—stop,” I said, grabbing his sleeve as he started to get up.

“No guts!”

“Boris.” He was heading indoors to the phone. “Don’t. I mean it. She won’t come.”

“And why?”

The taunting edge in his voice a

“What?” said Boris—spi

“Nothing. It’s just—”

“Yes she did!” He was charging back to the pool now. “You’d better tell me.”

“Come on. It’s nothing. Chill out, Boris,” I said, when I saw how angry he was. “Kotku’s tons older. They’re not even in the same grade.”