The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,287

but sparsely decorated with abstract-patterned rugs and modern furnishings from an affordable design store. Her bed was comfortable, the reading light was good, she had a big-screen plasma television so we could lie around and watch movies in bed if we felt like it; and the stainless-steel fridge was always well-stocked with Girl Food: hummus and olives, cake and champagne, lots of silly take-out vegetarian salads and half a dozen kinds of ice cream.

I scrabbled for the key in my pocket, then absent-mindedly unlocked the door (thinking about what I might find to eat, would I have to order up? she would have had dinner, no point waiting) and almost bumped my nose when the door caught on the chain.

I closed the door, and stood for a minute, puzzled; I opened it again so it caught with a rattle: red sofa, framed architectural prints and a candle burning on the coffee table.

“Hello?” I called and then again: “Hello?” more loudly, when I heard movement inside.

I’d been pounding hard enough to raise the neighbors when Emily, after what seemed like a very long time, came to the door and looked at me through the gap. She was wearing a ratty, at-home sweater and the kind of loudly patterned pants that made her rear end look a lot bigger. “Kitsey’s not here,” she said flatly without unchaining the door.

“Fine, I know,” I said irritably. “That’s okay.”

“I don’t know when she’ll be back.” Emily, whom I’d first met as a fat-faced nine-year-old slamming a door on me in the Barbours’ apartment, had never made any secret of the fact that she didn’t think I was good enough for Kitsey.

“Well, will you let me in, please?” I said, annoyed. “I want to wait for her.”

“Sorry. Now’s not a good time.” Em still wore her wheat-brown hair in a short cut with bangs, just as she had when she was a kid, and the set of her jaw—straight out of second grade—made me think of Andy, how he’d always hated her, Emmy Phlegmmy, the Emilizer.

“This is ridiculous. Come on. Let me in,” I said again, irritably, but she only stood there impassively in the crack of the door, not quite looking me in the eye but somewhere to the side of my face. “Look, Em, I just want to go back to her room and lie down—”

“I think you’d better come back later. Sorry,” she said, in the incredulous silence that followed this.

“Look, I don’t care what you’re doing—” Francie, the other roommate, made at least a pretense of sociability—“I don’t want to bother you, I just want to—”

“Sorry. I think you’d better leave. Because, because, look, I live here,” she said, raising her voice above mine—

“Good grief. You can’t be serious.”

“—I live here,” she was blinking in discomfort, “this is my place and you can’t just come barging in here any time you want.”

“Give me a break!”

“And, and—” she was upset too—“look, I can’t help you, it’s a really bad time now, I think you’d better just go. All right? Sorry.” She was closing the door on me. “See you at the party.”

“What?”

“Your engagement party?” said Emily, re-opening the door a crack and looking at me so that I saw her agitated blue eye for a moment before she shut it again.

xix.

FOR SOME MOMENTS I stood in the hallway in the abrupt stillness that had fallen, staring at the pinhole of the closed door, and in the silence I imagined I could hear Em inches away on the other side of the door and breathing just as hard as I was.

Well, that’s it, you’re off the bridesmaid list, I thought, turning away and clattering back down the stairs with a lot of ostentatious noise and feeling at once furious and oddly cheered by the incident, which more than confirmed every uncharitable thought I’d ever entertained about Em. Kitsey had apologized more than once for Em’s ‘brusqueness’ but this, in Hobie’s phrase, took the proverbial cake. Why wasn’t she at the movies with the others? Was she with some other guy in there? Em, though thick-ankled and not very attractive, did have a boyfriend, a dud named Bill who was an executive at Citibank.

Shiny black streets. Once out of the lobby, I ducked into the doorway of the florist next door to check my messages and text Kitsey before heading downtown, just in case; if she was just getting out of her movie, I could meet her for dinner and a drink (alone, without the