Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

“Sorry. Nobody but staff and tenants allowed in back.”

“It’s canvas with ribbon on the handle. My name’s on it, see? Decker?” I was pointing out the label still on our old mailbox for proof when Goldie strolled in from his break.

“Hey! look who’s back! This one’s my kid,” he said to Marco V. “I’ve known him since he was this high. What’s up, Theo my friend?”

“Nothing. I mean—well, I’m leaving town.”

“Oh, yeah? Out to Vegas already?” said Goldie. At his voice, his hand on my shoulder, everything had become easy and comfortable. “Some crazy place to live out there, am I right?”

“I guess so,” I said doubtfully. People kept telling me how crazy things were going to be for me in Vegas although I didn’t understand why, as I was unlikely to be spending much time in casinos or clubs.

“You guess? ” Goldie rolled his eyes up and shook his head, with a drollery that my mother in moments of mischief had been apt to imitate. “Oh my God, I’m telling you. That city? The unions they got… I mean, restaurant work, hotel work… very good money, anywhere you look. And the weather? Sun—every day of the year. You’re going to love it out there, my friend. When did you say you’re leaving?”

“Um, today. I mean tomorrow. That’s why I wanted to—”

“Oh, you came for your bag? Hey, sure thing.” Goldie said something sharp-sounding in Spanish to Marco V, who shrugged blandly and headed back into the package room.

“He’s all right, Marco,” said Goldie to me in an undertone. “But, he don’t know anything about your bag here because me and Jose didn’t enter it down in the book, you know what I’m saying?”

I did know what he was saying. All packages had to be logged in and out of the building. By not tagging the suitcase, or entering it into the official record, they had been protecting me from the possibility that somebody else might show up and try to claim it.

“Hey,” I said awkwardly, “thanks for looking out for me…”

“No problemo,” said Goldie. “Hey, thanks, man,” he said loudly to Marco as he took the bag. “Like I said,” he continued in a low voice; I had to walk close beside him in order to hear—“Marco’s a good guy, but we had a lot of tenants complaining because the building was understaffed during the, you know.” He threw me a significant glance. “I mean, like Carlos couldn’t get in to work for his shift that day, I guess it wasn’t his fault, but they fired him.”

“Carlos?” Carlos was the oldest and most reserved of the doormen, like an aging Mexican matinee idol with his pencil moustache and greying temples, his black shoes polished to a high gloss and his white gloves whiter than everyone else’s. “They fired Carlos?”

“I know—unbelievable. Thirty-four years and—” Goldie jerked a thumb over his shoulder—“pfft. And now—management’s all like security-conscious, new staff, new rules, sign everybody in and out and like that—

“Anyway,” he said, as he backed into the front door, pushing it open. “Let me get you a cab, my friend. You’re going straight to the airport?”

“No—” I said, putting out a hand to stop him—I’d been so preoccupied, I hadn’t really noticed what he was doing—but he brushed me aside with a naah motion.

“No, no,” he said—hauling the bag to the curb—“it’s all right, my friend, I got it,” and I realized, in consternation, that he thought I was trying to stop him taking the bag outside because I didn’t have money to tip.

“Hey, wait up,” I said—but at the same instant, Goldie whistled and charged into the street with his hand up. “Here! Taxi!” he shouted.

I stopped in the doorway, dismayed, as the cab swooped in from the curb. “Bingo!” said Goldie, opening the back door. “How’s that for timing?” Before I could quite think how to stop him without looking like a jerk, I was being ushered into the back seat as the suitcase was hoisted into the trunk, and Goldie was slapping the roof, the friendly way he did.

“Have a good trip, amigo,” he said—looking at me, then up at the sky. “Enjoy the sunshine out there for me. You know how I am about the sunshine—I’m a tropical bird, you know? I can’t wait to go home to Puerto Rico and talk to the bees. Hmmn …” he sang, closing his eyes and putting his head to the side. “My sister has a hive of tame bees and I sing them to sleep. Do they got bees in Vegas?”

“I don’t know,” I said, feeling quietly in my pockets to see if I could tell how much money I had.

“Well if you see any bees, tell ’em Goldie says hi. Tell ’em I’m coming.”

“ ¡Hey! ¡Espera! ” It was Jose, hand up—still dressed in his soccer-playing clothes, coming to work straight from his game in the park—swaying towards me with his head-bobbing, athletic walk.

“Hey, manito, you taking off?” he said, leaning down and sticking his head in the window of the cab. “You gotta send us a picture for downstairs!” Down in the basement, where the doormen changed into their uniforms, there was a wall papered with postcards and Polaroids from Miami and Cancun, Puerto Rico and Portugal, which tenants and doormen had sent home to East Fifty-Seventh Street over the years.

“That’s right!” said Goldie. “Send us a picture! Don’t forget!”

“I—” I was going to miss them, but it seemed gay to come out and say so. So all I said was: “Okay. Take it easy.”

“You too,” said Jose, backing away with his hand up. “Stay away from them blackjack tables.”

“Hey, kid,” the cabdriver said, “you want me to take you somewhere or what?”

“Hey, hey, hold your horses, it’s cool,” said Goldie to him. To me he said: “You gonna be fine, Theo.” He gave the cab one last slap. “Good luck, man. See you around. God bless.”

ii.

“DON’T TELL ME,” MY dad said, when he arrived at the Barbours’ the next morning to pick me up in the taxi, “that you’re carrying all that shit on the plane.” For I had another suitcase beside the one with the painting, the one I’d originally planned to take.

“I think you’re going to be over your baggage allowance,” said Xandra a bit hysterically. In the poisonous heat of the sidewalk, I could smell her hair spray even where I was standing. “They only let you carry a certain amount.”

Mrs. Barbour, who had come down to the curb with me, said smoothly: “Oh, he’ll be fine with those two. I go over my limit all the time.”

“Yes, but it costs money.”

“Actually, I think you’ll find it quite reasonable,” said Mrs. Barbour. Though it was early and she was without jewelry or lipstick, somehow even in her sandals and simple cotton dress she still managed to give the impression of being immaculately turned out. “You might have to pay twenty dollars extra at the counter, but that shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

She and my dad stared each other down like two cats. Then my father looked away. I was a little ashamed of his sports coat, which made me think of guys pictured in the Daily News under suspicion of racketeering.

“You should have told me you had two bags,” he said, sullenly, in the silence (welcome to me) that followed her helpful remark. “I don’t know if all this stuff is going to fit in the trunk.”

Standing at the curb, with the trunk of the cab open, I almost considered leaving the suitcase with Mrs. Barbour and phoning later to tell her what it contained. But before I could make up my mind to say anything, the broad-backed Russian cab driver had taken Xandra’s bag from the trunk and hoisted my second suitcase in, which—with some banging and mashing around—he made to fit.