The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,166

teenage days, including her junior-high charm bracelet, ajingle with horseshoes and ballet slippers and four leaf clovers.

Boris straightened up, pinched his nostrils, handed me the rolled-up bill. “You want some?”

“No.”

“Come on. It’ll make you feel better.”

“No, thanks.”

“There must be four or five eight balls here. Maybe more! We can keep one and sell the others.”

“You did that stuff before?” I said doubtfully, eyeing Xandra’s prone body. Even though she was clearly down for the count, I didn’t like having these conversations over her back.

“Yah. Kotku likes it. Expensive, though.” He seemed to blank out for a minute, then blinked his eyes rapidly. “Wow. Come on,” he said, laughing. “Here. Don’t know what you’re missing.”

“I’m too fucked-up as it is,” I said, shuffling through the money.

“Yah, but this will sober you up.”

“Boris, I can’t goof around,” I said, pocketing the earrings and the charm bracelet. “If we’re going, we need to leave now. Before people start showing up.”

“What people?” said Boris skeptically, running his finger back and forth under his nose.

“Believe me, it happens fast. Child services coming in, and like that.” I’d counted the cash—thirteen hundred and twenty-one dollars, plus change; there was much more in chips, close to five thousand dollars’ worth, but might as well leave her those. “Half for you and half for me,” I said, as I began to count the cash into two even piles. “There’s enough here for two tickets. Probably we’re too late to catch the last flight but we should go ahead and take a car to the airport.”

“Now? Tonight?”

I stopped counting and looked at him. “I don’t have anyone out here. Nobody. Nada. They’ll stick me in a home so fast I won’t know what hit me.”

Boris nodded at Xandra’s body—which was very unnerving, as in her face-down mattress splay she looked way too much like a dead person. “What about her?”

“What the fuck?” I said after a brief pause. “What should we do? Wait around until she wakes up and finds out we ripped her off?”

“Dunno,” said Boris, eyeing her doubtfully. “I just feel bad for her.”

“Well, don’t. She doesn’t want me. She’ll call them herself as soon as she realizes she’s stuck with me.”

“Them? I don’t understand who is this them.”

“Boris, I’m a minor.” I could feel my panic rising in an all-too-familiar way—maybe the situation wasn’t literally life or death but it sure felt like it, house filling with smoke, exits closing off. “I don’t know how it works in your country but I don’t have any family, no friends out here—”

“Me! You have me!”

“What are you going to do? Adopt me?” I stood up. “Look, if you’re coming, we need to hurry. Do you have your passport? You’ll need it for the plane.”

Boris put his hands up in his Russianate enough already gesture. “Wait! This is happening way too fast.”

I stopped, halfway out the door. “What the fuck is your problem, Boris?”

“My problem?”

“You wanted to run away! It was you who asked me to go with you! Last night.”

“Where are you going? New York?”

“Where else?”

“I want to go someplace warm,” he said instantly. “California.”

“That’s crazy. Who do we know—”

“California!” he crowed.

“Well—” Though I knew almost nothing about California, it was safe to assume that (apart from the bar of “California Über Alles” he was humming) Boris knew even less. “Where in California? What town?”

“Who cares?”

“It’s a big state.”

“Fantastic! It’ll be fun. We’ll stay high all the time—read books—build camp fires. Sleep on the beach.”

I looked at him for a long unbearable moment. His face was on fire and his mouth was stained blackish from the red wine.

“All right,” I said—knowing full well I was stepping off the edge and into the major mistake of my life, petty theft, the change cup, sidewalk nods and homelessness, the fuck-up from which I would never recover.

He was gleeful. “The beach, then? Yes?”

This was how you went wrong: this fast. “Wherever you want,” I said, pushing the hair out of my eyes. I was dead exhausted. “But we need to go now. Please.”

“What, this minute?”

“Yes. Do you need to go home and get anything?”

“Tonight?”

“I’m not kidding, Boris.” Arguing with him was making the panic rise again. “I can’t just sit around and wait—” The painting was a problem, I wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but once I got Boris out of the house I could figure something out. “Please, come on.”

“Is State Care that bad in America?” said Boris doubtfully. “You make it seem like the cops.”

“Are you