The Goldfinch (87 page)

“Right,” I said politely, going into the kitchen and pouring myself a huge vodka. My dad too had been wildly squeamish around pregnant women (had in fact been fired from a job for one too many ill-advised remarks; those breeder cracks hadn’t gone over too well at the office) and, far from the conventional “melting into goo” wisdom, he’d never been able to stand kids or babies either, much less the whole doting-parent scene, dumbly-smiling women feeling up their own bellies and guys with infants bound to their chests, would go outside to smoke or else skulk darkly at the margins looking like a drug pusher whenever he was forced to attend any sort of school event or kiddie party. Apparently I’d inherited it from him and, who knew, maybe Grandpa Decker as well, this violent procreative disgust buzzing loudly in my bloodstream; it felt inborn, wired-in, genetic.

Nodding the night away. The dark-throated bliss of it. No thanks, Hobie, already ate, think I’ll just head up to bed with my book. The things these people talked about, even the men? Just thinking about that night at the Goldfarbs’ made me want to be so wrecked I couldn’t walk straight.

As I approached Astor Place—African drum players, drunks arguing, clouds of incense from a street vendor—I felt my spirits lifting. My tolerance was sure to be way down: a cheering thought. Only one or two pills a week, to get me through the very worst of the socializing, and only when I really really needed them. In lieu of the pharms I’d been drinking too much and that really wasn’t working for me; with opiates I was relaxed, I was tolerant, I was up for anything, I could stand pleasantly for hours in unbearable situations listening to any old tiresome or ridiculous bullshit without wanting to go outside and shoot myself in the head.

But I hadn’t phoned Jerome in a long time, and when I ducked in the doorway of a skate shop to make the call, it went straight to voice mail—a mechanical message that didn’t sound like his. Has he changed his number? I thought, starting to worry after the second try. People like Jerome—it had happened with Jack, before him—could drop off the map pretty suddenly even if you were in regular contact.

Not knowing what to do, I started walking down St. Mark’s toward Tompkins Square. All Day All Night. You Must Be Twenty One To Enter. Downtown, away from the high-rise press, the wind cut more bitterly and
yet the sky was more open too, it was easier to breathe. Muscle guys walking paired pit bulls, inked-up Bettie Page girls in wiggle dresses, stumblebums with drag-hemmed pants and Jack O’Lantern teeth and taped-up shoes. Outside the shops, racks of sunglasses and skull bracelets and multicolored transvestite wigs. There was a needle exchange somewhere, maybe more than one but I wasn’t sure where; Wall Street guys bought off the street all the time if you believed what people said but I wasn’t wise enough to know where to go or who to approach, and besides who was going to sell to me, a stranger with horn rimmed glasses and an uptown haircut, dressed for picking out wedding china with Kitsey?

Unsettled heart. The fetishism of secrecy. These people understood—as I did—the back alleys of the soul, whispers and shadows, money slipping from hand to hand, the password, the code, the second self, all the hidden consolations that lifted life above the ordinary and made it worth living.

Jerome—I stopped on the sidewalk outside a cheap sushi bar to get my bearings—Jerome had told me about a bar, red awning, around St. Mark’s, Avenue A maybe? He was always coming from there, or stopping off on his way to me. The bartender dealt from behind the counter to patrons who didn’t mind paying double for not having to buy on the street. Jerome was always making deliveries to her. Her name—I remembered it, even—Katrina! But every other storefront in the neighborhood seemed to be a bar.

I walked up A and down First; ducked into the first bar I saw with an even vaguely red awning—liverish tan, but it might have been red once—and asked: “Does Katrina work here?”

“Nope,” said the scorched redhead at the bar, not even looking at me as she pulled her pint.

Shopping cart ladies asleep with their heads on bundles. Shop window of glitter Madonnas and Day of the Dead figures. Gray flocks of pigeons beating soundlessly.

“You know you thinking about it, you know you thinking about it,” said a low voice in my ear—

I turned to find a ripe, heavyset, broadly smiling black man with a gold tooth in front, who pressed a card into my hand:
TATTOOS BODY ART PIERCING.

I laughed—him too, a rich full-body laugh, both of us sharing in the joke—and slipped the card in my pocket and walked on. But a moment later I was sorry I hadn’t asked him where to find what I wanted. Even if he wouldn’t tell me, he’d looked like he would know.

Body Piercing. Acupressure Footrub. We Buy Gold We Buy Silver. Many pallid kids, and then, further down—all on her own—a wan dreadlocked girl with a filthy puppy and a cardboard sign so worn I couldn’t read it. I was reaching guiltily into my pockets for some money—the money clip Kitsey had given me was too tight, I was having a hard time getting the bills out, as I fumbled I was aware of everyone looking at me and then—“hey!” I cried, stepping back, as the dog snarled and lunged, snapping and catching the hem of my pants leg in its needlelike teeth.

Everyone was laughing—the kids, a street vendor, a cook in a hair net sitting on a stoop talking on a cell phone. Wrenching my pants leg loose—more laughter—I turned away and, to recover from my consternation, ducked into the next bar I saw—black awning with some red on it—and said to the bartender: “Does Katrina work here?”

He stopped drying his glass. “Katrina?”

“I’m a friend of Jerome’s.”

“Katrina? Not Katya, you mean?” The guys at the bar—Eastern Europeans—had gone silent.

“Maybe, uh—?”

“What’s her last name?”

“Um—” One leather-jacket guy had lowered his chin and turned full on his stool to fix me with a Bela Lugosi stare.

The bartender was eyeballing me steadily. “This girl you want. What is it that you want with her?”

“Well, actually, I—”

“What color hair?”

“Uh—blonde? Or—actually—” clearly, from his expression, I was about to be thrown out, or worse; my eyes lit on the sawed-off Louisville Slugger behind the bar—“my mistake, forget it—”

I was out of the bar and well down the street when I heard a shout behind me:
“Potter!”

I froze, as I heard him shout it again. Then, in disbelief, I turned. And while I still stood unable to believe it, people streaming round us on either side, he laughed and barged forward to throw his arms around me.

“Boris.” Pointed black eyebrows, merry black eyes. He was taller, face hollower, long black coat, same old scar over his eye plus a couple of new ones. “Wow.”

“And wow, yourself!” He held me out at arm’s length. “Hah! Look at you! Long time, no?”

“I—” I was too stunned to speak. “What are you doing here?”

“And, I should ask—” stepping back to give me the once-over, then gesturing down the street as if it belonged to him—“what are
you
doing? To what do I owe this surprise?”

“What?”

“I stopped by your shop the other day!” Throwing the hair out of his face. “To see you!”

“That was you?”

“Who else? How’d you know where to find me?”

“I—” I shook my head in disbelief.

“You weren’t looking for me?” Drawing back in surprise. “No? This is accident? Ships passing? Amazing! And why this white face on you?”

“What?”

“You look terrible!”

“Fuck you.”

“Ah,” he said, slinging his arm around my neck. “Potter, Potter! Such dark rings!” tracing a fingertip under one eye. “Nice suit though. And hey—” releasing me, flicking me with thumb and forefinger on the temple—“same glasses on the face? You never got them changed?”

“I—” All I could do was shake my head.

“What?” He held out his hands. “You don’t blame me, for being happy to see you?”

I laughed. I didn’t know where to start. “Why didn’t you leave a number?” I said.

“So you’re not angry with me? Hate me forever?” Though he wasn’t smiling, he was biting his lower lip in amusement. “You don’t—” he jerked his head at the street—“you don’t want to go fight me or something?”

“Hi there,” said a lean steely-eyed woman, slim-hipped in black jeans, sliding forward to Boris’s side rather suddenly in a manner that made me think she was his girlfriend or wife.

“The famous Potter,” she said, extending a long white hand ringed to the knuckles in silver. “Pleasure. I’ve heard all about you.” She was slightly taller than him, with long limp hair and a long, elegant black-clad body like a python. “I’m Myriam.”

“Myriam? Hi! It’s Theo, really.”

“I know.” Her hand, in mine, was cold. I noticed a blue pentagram tattooed on the inside of her wrist. “But Potter’s how he speaks of you.”

“Speaks of me? Oh yeah? What’d he say?” No one had called me Potter in years but her soft voice had brought to mind a forgotten word from those old books, the language of snakes and dark wizards: Parseltongue.

Boris, who’d had his arm around my shoulder, had unhanded me when she’d approached as if a code had been spoken. A glance was exchanged—the heft of which I recognized instantly from our shoplifting days, when we had been able to say
Let’s go
or
here he comes
without uttering a word—and Boris, seeming flustered, ran his hands through his hair and looked at me intently.

“You’ll be around?” he inquired, walking backward.

“Around where?”

“Around the neighborhood.”

“I can be.”

“I want to—” he stopped, brow furrowed, and looked over my head at the street—“I want to talk to you. But now—” he looked worried—“Not a good time. An hour maybe?”

Myriam, glancing at me, said something in Ukrainian. There was a brief exchange. Then Myriam slipped her arm through mine in a curiously intimate manner and started leading me down the street.

“There.” She pointed. “Go down that way, four-five blocks. There’s a bar, off Second. Old Polack place. He’ll meet you.”

v.

A
LMOST THREE HOURS LATER
I was still sitting in a red vinyl booth in the Polack bar, flashing Christmas lights, annoying mix of punk rock and Christmas polka music honking away on the jukebox, fed up from waiting and wondering if he was going to show or not, if maybe I should just go home. I didn’t even have his information—it had all happened so fast. In the past I’d Googled Boris for the hell of it—never a whisper—but then I’d never envisioned Boris as having any kind of a life that might be traceable online. He might have been anywhere, doing anything: mopping a hospital floor, carrying a gun in some foreign jungle, picking up cigarette butts off the street.

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.