The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,131

house—making way too much noise, shushing each other—the garage was empty: no one home. “Thank God,” said Boris fervently, falling to the concrete to prostrate himself before the Lord.

I caught him by the collar of his shirt. “Get up!”

Inside—under the lights—he was a mess: blood everywhere, eye swollen to a glossy slit. “Hang on,” I said, dropping him in the center of the living room carpet, and wobbled to the bathroom to get something for his cut. But there wasn’t anything except shampoo and a bottle of green perfume that Xandra had won at some giveaway at the Wynn. Drunkenly remembering something my mother had said, that perfume was antiseptic in a pinch, I went back to the living room where Boris was sprawled on the carpet with Popper sniffing anxiously at his bloodstained shirt.

“Here,” I said, pushing the dog aside, dabbing the bloody place on his forehead with a damp cloth. “Hold still.”

Boris twitched away, and growled. “The fuck are you doing?”

“Shut up,” I said, holding the hair back from his eyes.

He muttered something in Russian. I was trying to be careful but I was as drunk as he was, and when I sprayed perfume on the cut, he shrieked and socked me on the mouth.

“What the fuck?” I said, touching my lip, my fingers coming away bloody. “Look what you did to me.”

“Blyad,” he said, coughing and batting the air, “it stinks. What’d you put on me, you whore?”

I started laughing; I couldn’t help it.

“Bastard,” he roared, shoving me so hard I fell. But he was laughing too. He held out a hand to help me up but I kicked it away.

“Fuck off!” I was laughing so hard I could barely get the words out. “You smell like Xandra.”

“Christ, I’m choking. I’ve got to get this off me.”

We stumbled outside—shedding our clothes, hopping one-legged out of our pants as we went—and jumped in the pool: bad idea, I realized in the too-late, toppling-over moment before I hit the water, blind drunk and too wrecked to walk. The cold water slammed into me so hard it almost knocked my breath out.

I clawed to the surface: eyes stinging, chlorine burning my nose. A spray of water hit me in the eyes and I spit it back at him. He was a white blur in the dark, cheeks hollow and black hair plastered on either side of his head. Laughing, we grappled and ducked each other, even though my teeth were chattering and I felt way too drunk and sick to be horsing around in eight feet of water.

Boris dove. A hand clamped my ankle and yanked me under, and I found myself staring into a dark wall of bubbles.

I wrenched; I struggled. It was like in the museum again, trapped in the dark space, no way up or out. I thrashed and twisted, as glubs of panicked breath floated before my eyes: underwater bells, darkness. At last—just as I was about to gulp in a lungful of water—I twisted free and broke to the surface.

Choking for breath, I clung to the edge of the pool and gasped. When my vision cleared, I saw Boris—coughing, cursing—plunging towards the steps. Breathless with anger, I half-swam, half hopped up behind him and hooked a foot around his ankle so that he fell face-forward with a smack.

“Asshole,” I sputtered, when he floundered to the surface. He was trying to talk but I struck a sheet of water in his face, and then another, and wound my fingers in his hair and pushed him under. “You miserable shit,” I screamed when he surfaced, heaving, water streaming down his face. “Don’t ever do that to me again.” I had both hands on his shoulders and was about to dive on top of him—push him down, hold him for a good long time—when he reached around and clasped my arm, and I saw that he was white and trembling.

“Stop,” he said, gasping—and then I realized how unfocused and strange his eyes were.

“Hey,” I said, “are you okay?” But he was coughing too hard to answer. His nose was bleeding again, blood gushing dark between his fingers. I helped him up, and together we collapsed on the pool steps—half in, half out of the water, too exhausted even to climb all the way out.

xxiii.

BRIGHT SUN WOKE ME. We were in my bed: wet hair, half-dressed and shivering in the air-conditioned cold, with Popper snoring between us. The sheets were damp and reeking of chlorine; I had a shattering