the throng or else the uncomfortable subject of formal inquiry. I felt better knowing he was only a bus ride away, a straight shot down Fifth Avenue; and in the night when I woke up jarred and panicked, the explosion plunging through me all over again, sometimes I could lull myself back to sleep by thinking of his house, where without even realizing it you slipped away sometimes into 1850, a world of ticking clocks and creaking floorboards, copper pots and baskets of turnips and onions in the kitchen, candle flames leaning all to the left in the draft of an opened door and tall parlor windows billowing and swagged like ball gowns, cool quiet rooms where old things slept.
It was becoming increasingly difficult to explain my absences, however (dinnertime absences, often), and Andy’s powers of invention were being taxed. “Shall I go up there with you and talk to her?” said Hobie one afternoon when we were in the kitchen eating a cherry tart he’d bought at the farmers’ market. “I’m happy to go up and meet her. Or maybe you’d like to ask her here.”
“Maybe,” I said, after thinking about it.
“She might be interested to see that Chippendale chest-on-chest—you know, the Philadelphia, the scroll-top. Not to buy—just to look at. Or, if you’d like, we could invite her out to lunch at La Grenouille—” he laughed “—or even some little joint down here that might amuse her.”
“Let me think about it,” I said; and went home early on the bus, brooding. Quite apart from my chronic duplicity with Mrs. Barbour—constant late nights at the library, a nonexistent history project—it would be embarrassing to admit to Hobie that I’d claimed Mr. Blackwell’s ring was a family heirloom. Yet, if Mrs. Barbour and Hobie were to meet, my lie was sure to emerge, one way or another. There seemed no way around it.
“Where have you been?” said Mrs. Barbour sharply, dressed for dinner but without her shoes on, emerging from the back of the apartment with her gin and lime in her hand.
Something in her manner made me sense a trap. “Actually,” I said, “I was downtown visiting a friend of my mother’s.”
Andy turned to stare at me blankly.
“Oh yes?” said Mrs. Barbour suspiciously, with a sideways glance at Andy. “Andy was just telling me that you were working at the library again.”
“Not tonight,” I said, so easily that it surprised me.
“Well, I must say I’m relieved to hear that,” said Mrs. Barbour coolly. “Since the main branch is closed on Mondays.”
“I didn’t say he was at the main branch, Mother.”
“I think you might actually know him,” I said, anxious to draw fire from Andy. “Know of him, anyway.”
“Who?” said Mrs. Barbour, her gaze coming back to me.
“The friend I was visiting. His name is James Hobart. He runs a furniture shop downtown—well, doesn’t run it. He does the restorations.”
She brought her eyebrows down. “Hobart?”
“He works for lots of people in the city. Sotheby’s, sometimes.”
“You wouldn’t mind if I gave him a call, then?”
“No,” I said defensively. “He said we should all go out to lunch. Or maybe you’d like to come down to his shop sometime.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Barbour, after a beat or two of surprise. Now she was the one thrown off-balance. If Mrs. Barbour ever went south of Fourteenth Street, for any reason whatsoever, I didn’t know about it. “Well. We’ll see.”
“Not to buy anything. Just to look. He has some nice things.”
She blinked. “Of course,” she said. She seemed strangely disoriented—something fixed and distracted about the eyes. “Well, lovely. I’m sure I would enjoy meeting him. Have I met him?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“In any case. Andy, I’m sorry. I owe you an apology. You too, Theo.”
Me? I didn’t know what to say. Andy—sucking furtively at the side of his thumb—gave a one-shouldered shrug as she spun out of the room.
“What’s the matter?” I asked him quietly.
“She’s upset. It’s nothing to do with you. Platt’s home,” he added.
Now that he mentioned it, I was aware of muffled music emanating from the rear of the apartment, a deep, subliminal thump. “Why?” I said. “What’s wrong?”
“Something happened at school.”
“Something bad?”
“God knows,” he said tonelessly.
“He’s in trouble?”
“I assume so. No one will talk about it.”
“But what happened?”
Andy made a face: who knows. “He was here when we got home from school—we heard his music. Kitsey was excited and ran back to tell him hello but he screamed and slammed the door in her face.”
I winced. Kitsey idolized Platt.
“Then Mother