The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt Page 0,70

was even a horror person,” Andy said, in his faint, annoying voice. “I think he was some kind of fetishist. All that dungeon stuff with the girls strapped to the laboratory tables was pretty much straight-up bondage porn. Do you remember him begging her to try on those vampire teeth?”

“Yeah. That was when she went up to talk to the security guard.”

“Leather pants. All those piercings. I mean, who knows, maybe he really was making a vampire film but he was definitely a huge perv, did you notice that? Like, that sneaky smile? And the way he kept trying to look down her top?”

I gave him the finger. “Come on, let’s go,” I said. “I’m hungry.”

“Oh, yes?” I’d lost nine or ten pounds since my mother died—enough weight that Mrs. Swanson (embarrassingly) had started weighing me in her office, on the scale she used for girls with eating disorders.

“What, you’re not?”

“Yeah, but I thought you were watching your weight. So you’d fit in your prom dress.”

“Fuck you,” I said good-naturedly as I opened the door—and walked straight into Mr. Barbour, who had been standing right outside, whether eavesdropping or about to knock it was hard to say.

Mortified, I began to stammer—swearing was seriously against the rules at the Barbours’ house—but Mr. Barbour didn’t seem greatly perturbed.

“Well, Theo,” he said dryly, looking over my head, “I’m certainly glad to hear that you’re feeling better. Come along now, and let’s go get a table.”

iv.

DURING THE NEXT WEEK, everyone noticed that my appetite had improved, even Toddy. “Are you done with your hunger strike?” he asked me curiously, one morning.

“Toddy, eat your breakfast.”

“But I thought that was what it was called. When people don’t eat.”

“No, a hunger strike is for people in prison,” Kitsey said coolly.

“Kitten,” said Mr. Barbour, in a warning tone.

“Yes, but he ate three waffles yesterday,” said Toddy, looking eagerly between his uninterested parents in an attempt to engage them. “I only ate two waffles. And this morning he ate a bowl of cereal and six pieces of bacon, but you said five pieces of bacon was too much for me. Why can’t I have five pieces, too?”

v.

“WELL, HELLO THERE, GREETINGS,” said Dave the psychiatrist as he closed the door and took a seat across from me in his office: kilim rugs, shelves filled with old textbooks (Drugs and Society; Child Psychology: A Different Approach); and beige draperies that parted with a hum when you pushed a button.

I smiled, awkwardly, eyes going all around the room, potted palm tree, bronze statue of the Buddha, everywhere but him.

“So.” The faint traffic drone floating up from First Avenue made the silence between us seem vast, intergalactic. “How’s everything today?”

“Well—” I dreaded my sessions with Dave, a twice-weekly ordeal not incomparable to dental surgery; I felt guilty for not liking him more since he made such an effort, always asking what movies I enjoyed, what books, burning me CDs, clipping articles from Game Pro he thought I’d be interested in—sometimes he even took me over to EJ’s Luncheonette for a hamburger—and yet whenever he started with the questions I froze stiff, as if I’d been pushed onstage in a play where I didn’t know the lines.

“You seem a little distracted today.”

“Um…” It had not escaped me that a number of the books on Dave’s shelves had titles with the word sex in them: Adolescent Sexuality, Sex and Cognition, Patterns of Sexual Deviance and—my favorite: Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction. “I’m okay, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“No, I’m fine. Things are good.”

“Oh yeah?” Dave leaned back in his chair, Converse sneaker bobbing. “That’s great.” Then: “Why don’t you bring me up to speed a little bit on what’s been going on?”

“Oh—” I scratched my eyebrow, looked away—“Spanish is still pretty difficult—I have another make-up test, I’ll probably take that Monday. But I got an A on my Stalingrad paper. So it looks like that’ll bring my B minus in history up to a B.”

He was quiet so long, looking at me, that I began to feel cornered and started casting around for something else to say. Then: “Anything else?”

“Well—” I looked at my thumbs.

“How has your anxiety been?”

“Not so bad,” I said, thinking how uneasy it made me that I didn’t know a thing about Dave. He was one of those guys who wore a wedding ring that didn’t really look like a wedding ring—or maybe it wasn’t a wedding ring at all and he was just super-proud of his Celtic heritage. If I’d