The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,311

need to go home. Get your passport. And there is a question of cash, too.”

Over Boris’s shoulder: imperturbable faces of strange, cold women. Mrs. Barbour in profile, slightly turned to the wall, clutching the hand of the jolly cleric who didn’t look quite so jolly any more.

“What? Are you listening to me?” Shaking my arm. The same voice that had pulled me back to earth many times, from fractal glue-sniffing skies where I laid open-eyed and insensate on the bed, gazing at the impressive blue-white explosions on the ceiling.

“Come on! Talk in the car. Let’s go. I have a ticket for you—”

Go? I looked at him. It was all I heard.

“I will explain. Don’t look at me like that! Everything is good. No worries. But—first off—you must arrange to be gone for a couple of days. Three days. Tops. So”—flicking a hand—“go, go arrange with Snowflake and let’s get out of here. I can’t smoke in here, can I?” he said, looking around. “No one is smoking?”

Get out of here. They were the only words anyone had said to me all night that made sense.

“Because you must go home immediately.” He was endeavoring to catch my eye in a familiar way. “Get your passport. And—money. How much cash do you have on hand?”

“Well, in the bank,” I said, pushing my glasses up on the bridge of my nose, oddly sobered by his tone.

“I am not talking about the bank. Or tomorrow. I am talking about on hand. Now.”

“But—”

“I can get it back, I’m telling you. But we can’t stand around here any longer. We must go now. Right away. Off with you, go,” he said, with a friendly little kick in the shin.

xxxv.

“THERE YOU ARE DARLING,” said Kitsey, slipping her arm through my elbow and stretching on tiptoe to kiss me on the cheek—a kiss caught, simultaneously, by the photographers circling her: one from the social pages, the other hired for the evening by Anne. “Isn’t this glorious? Are you exhausted? I hope my family hasn’t been too overwhelming! Annie dear”—extending a hand to Anne de Larmessin, stiff blonde hair, stiff taffeta dress, wrinkled neckline that did not match the tautness of her chiseled face—“listen, it’s been absolute heaven… do you suppose we can get a family snap? Just you, me and Theo? We three?”

“Listen,” I said impatiently, as soon as our awkward photo op was over and Anne de Larmessin (who clearly didn’t consider me anything even approaching family) had drifted away to say goodbye to some other, more important guests. “I’m going.”

“But—” she looked confused—“I think Anne’s booked a table somewhere—”

“Well, you’ll have to make an excuse for me. That shouldn’t be a problem for you, should it?”

“Theo, please don’t be hateful.”

“Because your mother isn’t going, I’m sure of it.” It was almost impossible to get Mrs. Barbour to go out to a restaurant for dinner, unless it was some place she felt sure she wouldn’t run into someone she knew. “Say I’ve taken her home. Say she’s been taken ill. Say I’ve been taken ill. Use your imagination. You’ll think of something.”

“Are you vexed with me?” Family language: vexed. A word Andy had used when we were children.

“Vexed? No.” Now that it had settled, and I was used to the idea (Cable? Kitsey?) it was almost like some scurrilous bit of gossip that had nothing to do with me. She was wearing my mother’s earrings, I noticed—which was weirdly moving since she was absolutely right, they didn’t suit her at all—and with a pang I reached out and touched them, and then her, on the cheek.

“Ahhh,” cried some onlookers in the background—pleased to finally see some affection between the happy couple. Kitsey—catching to it instantly—seized my hand and kissed it, prompting another battery of snaps.

“All right?” I said in her ear as she leaned close. “If anyone asks, I’m away on business. Old lady’s called me to look at an estate.”

“Certainly.” You had to hand it to her: she was as cool as dammit. “When will you be back?”

“Oh, soon,” I said, not very convincingly. I would have been happy to walk out of that room and keep walking for days and months until I was on some beach in Mexico maybe, some isolated shore where I could wander alone and wear the same clothes till they rotted off me and be the crazy gringo in the horn rimmed glasses who repaired chairs and tables for a living. “Look after yourself. And keep this Havistock out of