Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

What had happened was: I’d overshot my hotel by a couple of blocks. Moreover: I was not used to European hotels where you had to ring to get in after a certain hour, and when at last I splashed up sneezing and bonechilled to find the glass door locked, I stood for some indefinite time rattling the handle like a zombie, back and forth, back and forth, with a rhythmic, locked-in, metronome dumbness, too stupefied with cold to understand why I couldn’t get in. Dismally, through the glass, I gazed through the lobby at the sleek, black desk: empty.

Then—hurrying from the back, startled eyebrows—neat dark-haired man in dark suit. There was an awful flash where his eyes met mine and I realized how I must look, and then he was looking away, fumbling with the key.

“Sorry, sir, we lock the door after eleven,” he said. Still averting his eyes. “It’s for the safety of the customers.”

“I got caught in the rain.”

“Of course, sir.” He was—I realized—staring at the cuff of my shirt, splatted with a browned blood drop the size of a quarter. “We have umbrellas at the desk should you require them.”

“Thanks.” Then, nonsensically: “I spilled chocolate sauce on myself.”

“Sorry to hear that, sir. We’ll be happy to try to get it out in the laundry if you like.”

“That’d be great.” Couldn’t he smell it on me, the blood? In the heated lobby I reeked of it, rust and salt. “My favorite shirt too. Profiteroles.” Shut up, shut up. “Delicious though.”

“Happy to hear it sir. We’ll be happy to book you a table at a restaurant tomorrow night if you like.”

“Thanks.” Blood in my mouth, the smell and taste of it everywhere, I could only hope he couldn’t smell it quite so strongly as me. “That’d be great.”

“Sir?” he said as I was starting off to the elevator.

“Sorry?”

“I believe you need your key?” Moving behind the desk, selecting a key from a pigeonhole. “Twenty-seven, is it?”

“Right,” I said, at once thankful he’d told me my room number and alarmed that he’d known it so readily, off the top of his head.

“Good night sir. Enjoy your stay.”

Two different elevators. Endless hallway, carpeted in red. Coming in, I threw on all the lights—desk lamp, bed lamp, chandelier blazing; shrugged my coat on the floor, and headed straight for the shower, unbuttoning my bloodied shirt as I went, stumbling like Frankenstein’s monster before pitchforks. I wadded the sticky mess of cloth and threw it into the bottom of the bathtub and turned on the water as hard and hot as it would go, rivulets of pink streaming beneath my feet, scrubbing myself with the lily scented bath gel until I smelled like a funeral wreath and my skin was on fire.

The shirt was a loss: brown stains scalloped and splotched at the throat long after the water ran clean. Leaving it to soak in the tub, I turned to the scarf and then the jacket—smeared with blood, though too dark to show it—and then, turning it right side out, as gingerly as I could (why had I worn the camel’s-hair to the party? why not the navy?) the coat. One lapel was not so bad and the other very bad. The wine-dark splash carried a blatting animation that threw me back into the energy of the shot all over again: the kick, the burst, trajectory of droplets. I stuffed it under the tap in the sink and poured shampoo on it and scrubbed and scrubbed with a shoebrush from the closet; and after the shampoo was gone, and the bath gel too, I rubbed bar soap on the spot and scrubbed some more, like some hopeless servant in a fairy tale doomed to complete an impossible task before dawn, or die. At last, hands trembling from fatigue, I turned to my toothbrush and toothpaste straight from the tube—which, oddly enough, worked better than anything I’d tried, but still didn’t do the job.

Finally I gave it up for useless, and hung the coat to drip in the bathtub: sodden ghost of Mr. Pavlikovsky. I’d taken care to keep blood off the towels; with toilet paper, which I compulsively wadded and flushed every few moments, I mopped up, laboriously, the rusty smears and drips on the tile. Taking my toothbrush to the grout. Clinical whiteness. Mirrored walls glittering. Multiple reflecting solitudes. Long after the last tinge of pink was gone, I kept going—rinsing and re-washing the hand towels I’d sullied, which still had a suspicious flush—and then, so tired I was reeling, got in the shower with water so hot I could barely stand it and scrubbed myself down all over again, head to toe, grinding the bar of soap in my hair and weeping at the suds that ran into my eyes.

xv.

I WAS AWAKENED, AT some indeterminate hour, by a bell buzzing loudly at my door which made me leap up as if I’d been scalded. The sheets were tangled and drenched with sweat and the blackout shades were down so I had no idea what time it was or even if it was day or night. I was still half asleep. Throwing on my robe, cracking the door on the chain I said: “Boris?”

Moist-faced, uniformed woman. “Laundry, sir.”

“Sorry?”

“Front desk, sir. They said you asked for laundry pickup this morning.”

“Er—” I glanced down at the doorknob. How, after everything, could I have neglected to put out the Do Not Disturb sign? “Hang on.”

From my case I retrieved the shirt I’d worn to Anne’s party—the one Boris said wasn’t good enough for Grozdan’s. “Here,” I said, passing it to her through the door and then: “Wait.”

Suit jacket. Scarf. Both black. Did I dare? They were wrecked-looking and wet to the touch but when I switched on the desk lamp and examined them minutely—specs on, with my Hobie-trained eye, nose inches from the cloth—no blood to be seen. With a piece of white tissue, I dabbed in several places to see if it came away pink. It did—but only the faintest bit.

She was still waiting and in a way it was a relief, having to hurry: quick decision, no hesitating. From the pockets I retrieved my wallet, the damp-but-amazingly-intact Oxycontin which I’d slipped into my pocket before the de Larmessin party (Did I ever think I’d be grateful for that hard time-release matrix? No) and Boris’s fat glassine envelope before handing suit and scarf over as well.

Closing the door, I was suffused with relief. But not thirty seconds later a murmur of worry crept in, worry which rose to a shrieking crescendo in moments. Snap judgment. Insane. What had I been thinking?

I lay down. I got up. I lay back down and tried to go to sleep. Then I sat up in bed and in a dreamlike rush, unable to help myself, found myself dialing the front desk.

“Yes Mr. Decker, how can I help you?”

“Er—” squeezing my eyes shut tight; why had I paid for the room with a credit card? “I was just wondering—I just sent a suit out to be dry cleaned, and I wonder if it’s still on premises?”

“Sorry?”

“Do you send the laundry out to be done? Or is it done on site?”

“We send it out, sir. The company we use is very reliable.”

“Is there any way you could see if it’s gone out yet? I just realized that I need it for an event tonight.”

“I’ll just check sir. Hang on.”

Hopelessly, I waited, staring at the bag of heroin on the nightstand, which was stamped with a rainbow skull and the word AFTERPARTY.In a moment the desk clerk came back on. “What time will you be needing the suit, sir?”

“Early.”

“I’m afraid it’s already gone out. The truck just left. But our dry cleaning is same-day service. You’ll have it this afternoon by five, guaranteed. Will there be anything more, sir?” he asked, in the silence that followed.