The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,257

shook my head in disbelief.

“You weren’t looking for me?” Drawing back in surprise. “No? This is accident? Ships passing? Amazing! And why this white face on you?”

“What?”

“You look terrible!”

“Fuck you.”

“Ah,” he said, slinging his arm around my neck. “Potter, Potter! Such dark rings!” tracing a fingertip under one eye. “Nice suit though. And hey—” releasing me, flicking me with thumb and forefinger on the temple—“same glasses on the face? You never got them changed?”

“I—” All I could do was shake my head.

“What?” He held out his hands. “You don’t blame me, for being happy to see you?”

I laughed. I didn’t know where to start. “Why didn’t you leave a number?” I said.

“So you’re not angry with me? Hate me forever?” Though he wasn’t smiling, he was biting his lower lip in amusement. “You don’t—” he jerked his head at the street—“you don’t want to go fight me or something?”

“Hi there,” said a lean steely-eyed woman, slim-hipped in black jeans, sliding forward to Boris’s side rather suddenly in a manner that made me think she was his girlfriend or wife.

“The famous Potter,” she said, extending a long white hand ringed to the knuckles in silver. “Pleasure. I’ve heard all about you.” She was slightly taller than him, with long limp hair and a long, elegant black-clad body like a python. “I’m Myriam.”

“Myriam? Hi! It’s Theo, really.”

“I know.” Her hand, in mine, was cold. I noticed a blue pentagram tattooed on the inside of her wrist. “But Potter’s how he speaks of you.”

“Speaks of me? Oh yeah? What’d he say?” No one had called me Potter in years but her soft voice had brought to mind a forgotten word from those old books, the language of snakes and dark wizards: Parseltongue.

Boris, who’d had his arm around my shoulder, had unhanded me when she’d approached as if a code had been spoken. A glance was exchanged—the heft of which I recognized instantly from our shoplifting days, when we had been able to say Let’s go or here he comes without uttering a word—and Boris, seeming flustered, ran his hands through his hair and looked at me intently.

“You’ll be around?” he inquired, walking backward.

“Around where?”

“Around the neighborhood.”

“I can be.”

“I want to—” he stopped, brow furrowed, and looked over my head at the street—“I want to talk to you. But now—” he looked worried—“Not a good time. An hour maybe?”

Myriam, glancing at me, said something in Ukrainian. There was a brief exchange. Then Myriam slipped her arm through mine in a curiously intimate manner and started leading me down the street.

“There.” She pointed. “Go down that way, four-five blocks. There’s a bar, off Second. Old Polack place. He’ll meet you.”

v.

ALMOST THREE HOURS LATER I was still sitting in a red vinyl booth in the Polack bar, flashing Christmas lights, annoying mix of punk rock and Christmas polka music honking away on the jukebox, fed up from waiting and wondering if he was going to show or not, if maybe I should just go home. I didn’t even have his information—it had all happened so fast. In the past I’d Googled Boris for the hell of it—never a whisper—but then I’d never envisioned Boris as having any kind of a life that might be traceable online. He might have been anywhere, doing anything: mopping a hospital floor, carrying a gun in some foreign jungle, picking up cigarette butts off the street.

It was getting toward the end of Happy Hour, a few students and artist types trickling in among the pot-bellied old Polish guys and grizzled, fifty-ish punks. I’d just finished my third vodka; they poured them big, it was foolish to order another one; I knew I should get something to eat but I wasn’t hungry and my mood was turning bleaker and darker by the moment. To think that he’d blown me off after so many years was incredibly depressing. If I had to be philosophical, at least I’d been diverted from my dope mission: hadn’t OD’d, wasn’t vomiting in some garbage can, hadn’t been ripped off or run in for trying to buy from an undercover cop—

“Potter.” There he was, sliding in across from me, slinging the hair from his face in a gesture that brought the past ringing back.

“I was just about to leave.”

“Sorry.” Same dirty, charming smile. “Had something to do. Didn’t Myriam explain?”

“No she didn’t.”

“Well. Is not like I work in accounting office. Look,” he said, leaning forward, palms on the table, “don’t be mad! Was not expecting to run into