Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

“This is ridiculous. Come on. Let me in,” I said again, irritably, but she only stood there impassively in the crack of the door, not quite looking me in the eye but somewhere to the side of my face. “Look, Em, I just want to go back to her room and lie down—”

“I think you’d better come back later. Sorry,” she said, in the incredulous silence that followed this.

“Look, I don’t care what you’re doing—” Francie, the other roommate, made at least a pretense of sociability—“I don’t want to bother you, I just want to—”

“Sorry. I think you’d better leave. Because, because, look, I live here,” she said, raising her voice above mine—

“Good grief. You can’t be serious.”

“—I live here,” she was blinking in discomfort, “this is my place and you can’t just come barging in here any time you want.”

“Give me a break!”

“And, and—” she was upset too—“look, I can’t help you, it’s a really bad time now, I think you’d better just go. All right? Sorry.” She was closing the door on me. “See you at the party.”

“What?”

“Your engagement party?” said Emily, re-opening the door a crack and looking at me so that I saw her agitated blue eye for a moment before she shut it again.

xix.

FOR SOME MOMENTS I stood in the hallway in the abrupt stillness that had fallen, staring at the pinhole of the closed door, and in the silence I imagined I could hear Em inches away on the other side of the door and breathing just as hard as I was.

Well, that’s it, you’re off the bridesmaid list, I thought, turning away and clattering back down the stairs with a lot of ostentatious noise and feeling at once furious and oddly cheered by the incident, which more than confirmed every uncharitable thought I’d ever entertained about Em. Kitsey had apologized more than once for Em’s ‘brusqueness’ but this, in Hobie’s phrase, took the proverbial cake. Why wasn’t she at the movies with the others? Was she with some other guy in there? Em, though thick-ankled and not very attractive, did have a boyfriend, a dud named Bill who was an executive at Citibank.

Shiny black streets. Once out of the lobby, I ducked into the doorway of the florist next door to check my messages and text Kitsey before heading downtown, just in case; if she was just getting out of her movie, I could meet her for dinner and a drink (alone, without the girlfriends: the weirdness of the incident seemed to call for it) and—definitely—a speculative and humorous talk on the behavior of Em.

Floodlit window. Mortuary glow from the cold case. Beyond the fog-condensed glass, trickling with water, winged sprays of orchids quivered in the fan’s draft: ghost-white, lunar, angelic. Up front were the kinkier numbers, some of which sold for thousands of dollars: hairy and veined, freckled and fanged and blood-flecked and devil-faced, in colors ranging from corpse mold to bruise magenta—even one magnificent black orchid with gray roots snaking out its moss-furred pot. (“Please darling,” Kitsey had said, correctly intuiting my plans for Christmas, “don’t even think about it, they’re all too gorgeous and they die the moment I touch them.”)

No new messages. Quickly, I texted her (Hey call me, have to talk to you, something hilarious just happened xxxx) and just to be sure she wasn’t out of the movie yet, dialed her cell again. But as it was clicking through to voice mail, I saw a reflection in the glass, in the green jungle depths in back of the shop, and—in disbelief—turned.

It was Kitsey, head down, in her pink Prada overcoat, huddled arm in arm and whispering with a man whom I recognized—I hadn’t seen him in years, but I knew him instantly—same set of shoulder and loose-boned slink of a gait—Tom Cable. His crinkly brown hair was still long; he was still dressed in the same clothes that rich stoner kids had worn at our school (Tretorns, huge thick-knit Irish sweater without an overcoat) and he had a bag from the wine shop looped over his arm, the same wine shop where Kitsey and I sometimes ran together for a bottle. But what astonished me: Kitsey, who always held my hand at a slight distance—tugging me along behind her, winsomely swinging my arm like a child playing London Bridge—was nestled deep and sorrowfully into his side. As I watched, blank at the unfathomable sight of this—they were waiting for the light, bus whooshing past, far too wrapped up in each other to notice me—Cable, who was talking to her quietly, tousled her hair and then turned and pulled her to him and kissed her, a kiss she returned with more mournful tenderness than any kiss she’d ever given me.

Moreover, I saw—they were crossing the street; quickly I turned my back; I could see them perfectly well in the window of the lighted shop as they went into the front door of Kitsey’s apartment building only a few feet away from me—Kitsey was upset, she was talking quietly, in a low voice husky with emotion, leaning into Cable with her cheek pressed against his sleeve as he reached around lovingly to squeeze her on the arm; and though I couldn’t make out what she was saying, the tone of her voice was all too clear: for even in her sadness her joy in him, and his in her, was undisguisable. Any stranger on the street could have seen it. And—as they glided past me, in the dark window, a pair of affectionate ghosts leaning against each other—I saw her reach up quickly to dash a tear from her cheek, and found myself blinking in astonishment at the sight: for somehow, improbably, for the first time ever, Kitsey was crying.

xx.

I WAS AWAKE MUCH of the night; and when I went down to open the store the next day, I was so preoccupied I sat staring into space for a half an hour before I realized I’d forgotten to turn the ‘Closed’ sign around.

Kitsey’s twice-weekly trips to the Hamptons. Strange numbers flashing, quick hang-ups. Kitsey frowning at the phone mid-dinner and shutting it off: “Oh, just Em. Oh, just Mommy. Oh, just a telemarketer, they’ve got me on some list.” Texts coming in at the middle of the night, submarine blips, bluish sonar pulse on the walls, Kitsey jumping up bare-assed from bed to shut the thing off, white legs flashing in the dark: “Oh, wrong number. Oh, just Toddy, he’s out drunk somewhere.”

And, very nearly as heart-sinking: Mrs. Barbour. I was well aware of Mrs. Barbour’s light touch in tricky situations—her ability to manage delicate matters behind the scenes—and while she hadn’t told me a direct lie, as far as I knew, information had definitely been elided and finessed. All sorts of little things were coming back to me, such as the moment a few months before when I’d walked in on Mrs. Barbour and heard her saying in a low urgent voice to the doorman, over the intercom, in answer to a ring from the lobby: No, I don’t care, don’t let him up, keep him downstairs. And when Kitsey, not thirty seconds later, after checking her texts, had bounced up and announced unexpectedly she was taking Ting-a-Ling and Clemmy for a spin round the block! I hadn’t thought a thing about it, despite the unmistakable frost of displeasure that had crossed Mrs. Barbour’s face, and the renewed warmth and energy with which—when the door clicked shut after Kitsey—she had turned back to me and reached to take my hand.

We were to see each other that night: I was to accompany her to the birthday party of one of her friends, and then stop by the party of a different friend, later on. Kitsey, though she hadn’t phoned, had sent me a tentative text. Theo, what’s up? I’m at work. Call me. I was still staring at this uncomprehendingly, wondering if I should return the message or not—what could I possibly say?—when Boris came bursting in the front door of the shop. “I have some news.”