The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,284

making sounds like he was drowning.

“Potter.” Boris had gathered up my coat and was practically stuffing it in my face. “Come on! Let’s go! Ciao,” he called into the kitchen with a lift of his chin (pretty dark head appearing in the doorway, a fluttering hand: bye, Boris! Bye!) as he pushed me ahead of him and ducked behind me out the door. “Ciao, Horst!” he said, making a call me later gesture, hand to ear.

“Tschau Boris! Sorry about this! We’ll talk soon! Up,” said Horst, as the Irishman came up and grabbed the boy’s other arm from underneath; together they hoisted him up, feet limp and toes dragging and—amidst hurried activity in the doorway, the two young teenagers scrambling back in alarm—hauled him into the lighted doorway of the next room, where Boris’s brunette was drawing up a syringe of something from a tiny glass bottle.

xvii.

GOING DOWN IN THE cage elevator we were suddenly encased in stillness: grinding of gears, creaking of pulleys.

Outside, the weather had cleared. “Come on,” Boris said to me—nervously glancing up the street—he had his phone out of his coat pocket—“let’s cross, come on—”

“What,” I said—we just had the light, if we hurried—“are you calling 911?”

“No no,” said Boris distractedly, wiping his nose, looking around, “I don’t want to stand here waiting for the car, I’m calling him to pick us up other side of the park. We’ll walk across. Sometimes some of these kids push shots that are a little too big,” he said, when he saw me looking anxiously back in the direction of the townhouse. “Don’t worry. He’ll be fine.”

“He didn’t look fine.”

“No, but he was breathing and Horst has Narcan. That’ll bring him right out of it. Like magic, have you ever seen it? Throws you right in withdrawal. You feel like shit, but you live.”

“They should take him to the ER.”

“Why?” said Boris reasonably. “What will the emergency people do? Give Narcan, that’s what. Horst can give it to him quicker than they can. And yes—he will come to puking himself and feeling like stabbed through the head, but better there than in ambulance, BOOM, shirt cut open, mask jammed down on him, peoples slapping his face to wake him, laws involved, everyone very harsh and judgmental—believe me, Narcan, very very violent experience, you feel bad enough when you come round without being in hospital, bright lights and everyone very disapproving and hostile, treating you like shit, ‘drug addict,’ ‘overdose,’ all these nasty looks, maybe not letting you go home when you want, psych ward maybe, social worker marching in to give you the big ‘So Much to Live For’ talk and maybe on top of it all, nice visit from the cops—Hang on,” he said, “one moment please,” and started talking in Ukrainian on the phone.

Darkness. Under the foggy corona of the street lamps, park benches slick with rain, drip drip drip, trees sodden and black. Sopping footpaths deep with leaves, a few solitary office workers hurrying home. Boris—head down, hands thrust in pockets, staring at the ground—had got off his call and was muttering to himself.

“Sorry, what?” I said, looking at him sideways.

Boris compressed his lips, tossed his head. “Ulrika,” he said darkly. “That bitch. That was her that answered the door.”

I wiped my brow. I felt jittery and sick and had broken out in a cold sweat. “How do you know these people?”

Boris shrugged. “Horst?” he said, kicking up a shower of leaves. “We know each other from years back. I know Myriam through him—I am grateful to him for introducing us.”

“And—?”

“What?”

“On the floor back there??”

“Him? That fell?” Boris made his old who knows? face. “They’ll take care of him, don’t worry. It happens. They’re always fine. Really,” he said, in a more earnest tone. “Because—listen, listen,” he said, digging me in the side with his elbow. “Horst has these kids hanging around a lot—changes a lot, always a new crowd—college age, high school age. Rich kids mostly, trust fund, who might want to trade him some art or a painting they took maybe from their family? They know to come to him. Because—” tossing his head, tossing the hair from his eyes—“Horst himself, when he was a kid, you know—long time ago, nineteen eighties—he went for one year, or two, to one of these fancy-boy schools around here where they make you wear the jacket. Some place not too far away. He showed me it once, in a cab. Anyway—” he sniffed—“boy on the floor? He