The Goldfinch, Page 20

  was wrong.

  II.

  When we are strongest—who draws back?

  Most merry—who falls down laughing?

  When we are very bad,—what can they do to us?

  —A

  RTHUR

  R

  IMBAUD

  Chapter 5.

  Badr al-Dine

  i.

  THOUGH I HAD DECIDED to leave the suitcase in the package room of my old building, where I felt sure Jose and Goldie would look after it, I grew more and more nervous as the date approached until, at the last minute, I determined to go back for what now seems a fairly dumb reason: in my haste to get the painting out of the apartment, I’d thrown a lot of random things in the bag with it, including most of my summer clothes. So the day before my dad was supposed to pick me up at the Barbours’, I hurried back over to Fifty-Seventh Street with the idea of unzipping the suitcase and taking a couple of the better shirts off the top.

  Jose wasn’t there, but a new, thick-shouldered guy (Marco V, according to his nametag) stepped in front of me and cut me off with a blocky, obstinate stance less like a doorman’s than a security guard’s. “Sorry, can I help you?” he said.

  I explained about the suitcase. But after perusing the log—running a heavy forefinger down the column of dates—he didn’t seem inclined to go in and get it off the shelf for me. “An’ you left this here why?” he said doubtfully, scratching his nose.

  “Jose said I could.”

  “You got a receipt?”

  “No,” I said, after a confused pause.

  “Well, I can’t help you. We got no record. Besides, we don’t store packages for non-tenants.”

  I’d lived in the building long enough to know that this wasn’t true, but I wasn’t about to argue the point. “Look,” I said, “I used to live here. I know Goldie and Carlos and everybody. I mean—come on,” I said, after a frigid, ill-defined pause, during which I felt his attention drifting. “If you take me back there, I can show you which one.”

  “Sorry. Nobody but staff and tenants allowed in back.”

  “It’s canvas with ribbon on the handle. My name’s on it, see? Decker?” I was pointing out the label still on our old mailbox for proof when Goldie strolled in from his break.

  “Hey! look who’s back! This one’s my kid,” he said to Marco V. “I’ve known him since he was this high. What’s up, Theo my friend?”

  “Nothing. I mean—well, I’m leaving town.”

  “Oh, yeah? Out to Vegas already?” said Goldie. At his voice, his hand on my shoulder, everything had become easy and comfortable. “Some crazy place to live out there, am I right?”

  “I guess so,” I said doubtfully. People kept telling me how crazy things were going to be for me in Vegas although I didn’t understand why, as I was unlikely to be spending much time in casinos or clubs.

  “You guess?” Goldie rolled his eyes up and shook his head, with a drollery that my mother in moments of mischief had been apt to imitate. “Oh my God, I’m telling you. That city? The unions they got… I mean, restaurant work, hotel work… very good money, anywhere you look. And the weather? Sun—every day of the year. You’re going to love it out there, my friend. When did you say you’re leaving?”

  “Um, today. I mean tomorrow. That’s why I wanted to—”

  “Oh, you came for your bag? Hey, sure thing.” Goldie said something sharp-sounding in Spanish to Marco V, who shrugged blandly and headed back into the package room.

  “He’s all right, Marco,” said Goldie to me in an undertone. “But, he don’t know anything about your bag here because me and Jose didn’t enter it down in the book, you know what I’m saying?”

  I did know what he was saying. All packages had to be logged in and out of the building. By not tagging the suitcase, or entering it into the official record, they had been protecting me from the possibility that somebody else might show up and try to claim it.

  “Hey,” I said awkwardly, “thanks for looking out for me…”

  “No problemo,” said Goldie. “Hey, thanks, man,” he said loudly to Marco as he took the bag. “Like I said,” he continued in a low voice; I had to walk close beside him in order to hear—“Marco’s a good guy, but we had a lot of tenants complaining because the building was understaffed during the, you know.” He threw me a significant glance. “I mean, like Carlos couldn’t get in to work for his shift that day, I guess it wasn’t his fault, but they fired him.”

  “Carlos?” Carlos was the oldest and most reserved of the doormen, like an aging Mexican matinee idol with his pencil moustache and greying temples, his black shoes polished to a high gloss and his white gloves whiter than everyone else’s. “They fired Carlos?”

  “I know—unbelievable. Thirty-four years and—” Goldie jerked a thumb over his shoulder—“pfft. And now—management’s all like security-conscious, new staff, new rules, sign everybody in and out and like that—

  “Anyway,” he said, as he backed into the front door, pushing it open. “Let me get you a cab, my friend. You’re going straight to the airport?”

  “No—” I said, putting out a hand to stop him—I’d been so preoccupied, I hadn’t really noticed what he was doing—but he brushed me aside with a naah motion.

  “No, no,” he said—hauling the bag to the curb—“it’s all right, my friend, I got it,” and I realized, in consternation, that he thought I was trying to stop him taking the bag outside because I didn’t have money to tip.

  “Hey, wait up,” I said—but at the same instant, Goldie whistled and charged into the street with his hand up. “Here! Taxi!” he shouted.

  I stopped in the doorway, dismayed, as the cab swooped in from the curb. “Bingo!” said Goldie, opening the back door. “How’s that for timing?” Before I could quite think how to stop him without looking like a jerk, I was being ushered into the back seat as the suitcase was hoisted into the trunk, and Goldie was slapping the roof, the friendly way he did.

  “Have a good trip, amigo,” he said—looking at me, then up at the sky. “Enjoy the sunshine out there for me. You know how I am about the sunshine—I’m a tropical bird, you know? I can’t wait to go home to Puerto Rico and talk to the bees. Hmmn…” he sang, closing his eyes and putting his head to the side. “My sister has a hive of tame bees and I sing them to sleep. Do they got bees in Vegas?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, feeling quietly in my pockets to see if I could tell how much money I had.

  “Well if you see any bees, tell ’em Goldie says hi. Tell ’em I’m coming.”

  “¡Hey! ¡Espera!” It was Jose, hand up—still dressed in his soccer-playing clothes, coming to work straight from his game in the park—swaying towards me with his head-bobbing, athletic walk.

  “Hey, manito, you taking off?” he said, leaning down and sticking his head in the window of the cab. “You gotta send us a picture for downstairs!” Down in the basement, where the doormen changed into their uniforms, there was a wall papered with postcards and Polaroids from Miami and Cancun, Puerto Rico and Portugal, which tenants and doormen had sent home to East Fifty-Seventh Street over the years.

  “That’s right!” said Goldie. “Send us a picture! Don’t forget!”

  “I—” I was going to miss them, but it seemed gay to come out and say so. So all I said was: “Okay. Take it easy.”

  “You too,” said Jose, backing away with his hand up. “Stay away from them blackjack tables.”

  “Hey, kid,” the cabdriver said, “you want me to take you somewhere or what?”

  “Hey, hey, hold your horses, it’s cool,” said Goldie to him. To me he said: “You gonna be fine, Theo.” He gave the cab one last slap. “Good luck, man. See you around. God bless.”

  ii.

  “DON’T TELL ME,” MY dad said, when he arrived at the Barbours’ the next morning to pick me up in the taxi, “that you’re carrying all that shit on the plane.” For I had another suitcase beside the one with the painting, the one I’
d originally planned to take.

  “I think you’re going to be over your baggage allowance,” said Xandra a bit hysterically. In the poisonous heat of the sidewalk, I could smell her hair spray even where I was standing. “They only let you carry a certain amount.”

  Mrs. Barbour, who had come down to the curb with me, said smoothly: “Oh, he’ll be fine with those two. I go over my limit all the time.”

  “Yes, but it costs money.”

  “Actually, I think you’ll find it quite reasonable,” said Mrs. Barbour. Though it was early and she was without jewelry or lipstick, somehow even in her sandals and simple cotton dress she still managed to give the impression of being immaculately turned out. “You might have to pay twenty dollars extra at the counter, but that shouldn’t be a problem, should it?”

  She and my dad stared each other down like two cats. Then my father looked away. I was a little ashamed of his sports coat, which made me think of guys pictured in the Daily News under suspicion of racketeering.

  “You should have told me you had two bags,” he said, sullenly, in the silence (welcome to me) that followed her helpful remark. “I don’t know if all this stuff is going to fit in the trunk.”

  Standing at the curb, with the trunk of the cab open, I almost considered leaving the suitcase with Mrs. Barbour and phoning later to tell her what it contained. But before I could make up my mind to say anything, the broad-backed Russian cab driver had taken Xandra’s bag from the trunk and hoisted my second suitcase in, which—with some banging and mashing around—he made to fit.

  “See, not very heavy!” he said, slamming the trunk shut, wiping his forehead. “Soft sides!”

  “But my carry-on!” said Xandra, looking panicked.

  “Not a problem, madame. It can ride in front seat with me. Or in the back with you, if you prefer.”

  “All sorted, then,” said Mrs. Barbour—leaning to give me a quick kiss, the first of my visit, a ladies-who-lunch air kiss that smelled of mint and gardenias. “Toodle-oo, you all,” she said. “Have a fantastic trip, won’t you?” Andy and I had said our goodbyes the day before; though I knew he was sad to see me go, still my feelings were hurt that he hadn’t stayed to see me off but instead had gone with the rest of the family up to the supposedly detested house in Maine. As for Mrs. Barbour: she didn’t seem particularly upset to see the last of me, though in truth I felt sick to be leaving.

  Her gray eyes, on mine, were clear and cool. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Barbour,” I said. “For everything. Tell Andy I said goodbye.”

  “Certainly I will,” she said. “You were an awfully good guest, Theo.” Out in the steamy morning heat haze on Park Avenue, I stood holding her hand for a moment longer—slightly hoping that she would tell me to get in touch with her if I needed anything—but she only said, “Good luck, then,” and gave me another cool little kiss before she pulled away.

  iii.

  I COULDN’T QUITE FATHOM that I was leaving New York. I’d never been out of the city in my life longer than eight days. On the way to the airport, staring out the window at billboards for strip clubs and personal-injury lawyers that I wasn’t likely to see for a while, a chilling thought settled over me. What about the security check? I hadn’t flown much (only twice, once when I was in kindergarten) and I wasn’t even sure what a security check involved: x-rays? A luggage search?

  “Do they open up everything in the airport?” I asked, in a timid voice—and then asked again, because nobody seemed to hear me. I was sitting in the front seat in order to ensure Dad and Xandra’s romantic privacy.

  “Oh, sure,” said the cab driver. He was a beefy, big-shouldered Soviet: coarse features, sweaty red-apple cheeks, like a weightlifter gone to fat. “And if they don’t open, they x-ray.”

  “Even if I check it?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said reassuringly. “They are wiping for explosives, everything. Very safe.”

  “But—” I tried to think of some way to formulate what I needed to ask, without betraying myself, and couldn’t.

  “Not to worry,” said the driver. “Lots of police at airport. And three-four days ago? Roadblocks.”

  “Well, all I can say is, I can’t fucking wait to get out of here,” Xandra said in her husky voice. For a perplexed moment, I thought she was talking to me, but when I looked back, she was turned toward my father.

  My dad put his hand on her knee and said something too low for me to hear. He was wearing his tinted glasses, leaning with his head lolled back on the rear seat, and there was something loose and young-sounding in the flatness of his voice, the secret something that passed between them as he squeezed Xandra’s knee. I turned away from them and looked out at the no-man’s-land rushing past: long low buildings, bodegas and body shops, car lots simmering in the morning heat.

  “See, I don’t mind sevens in the flight number,” Xandra was saying quietly. “It’s eights freak me out.”

  “Yeah, but eight’s a lucky number in China. Take a look at the international board when we get to McCarran. All the incoming flights from Beijing? Eight eight eight.”

  “You and your Wisdom of the Chinese.”

  “Number pattern. It’s all energy. Meeting of heaven and earth.”

  “ ‘Heaven and earth.’ You make it sound like magic.”

  “It is.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  They were whispering. In the rear view mirror, their faces were goofy, and too close together; when I realized they were about to kiss (something that still shocked me, no matter how often I saw them do it), I turned to stare straight ahead. It occurred to me that if I didn’t already know how my mother had died, no power on earth could have convinced me they hadn’t murdered her.

  iv.

  WHILE WE WERE WAITING to get our boarding passes I was stiff with fear, fully expecting Security to open my suitcase and discover the painting right then, in the check-in line. But the grumpy woman with the shag haircut whose face I still remember (I’d been praying we wouldn’t have to go to her when it was our turn) hoisted my suitcase on the belt with hardly a glance.

  As I watched it wobble away, towards personnel and procedures unknown, I felt closed-in and terrified in the bright press of strangers—conspicuous too, as if everyone was staring at me. I hadn’t been in such a dense mob or seen so many cops in one place since the day my mother died. National Guardsmen with rifles stood by the metal detectors, steady in fatigue gear, cold eyes passing over the crowd.

  Backpacks, briefcases, shopping bags and strollers, heads bobbing down the terminal as far as I could see. Shuffling through the security line, I heard a shout—of my name, as I thought. I froze.

  “Come on, come on,” said my dad, hopping behind me on one foot, trying to get his loafer off, elbowing me in the back, “don’t just stand there, you’re holding up the whole damn line—”

  Going through the metal detector, I kept my eyes on the carpet—rigid with fear, expecting any moment a hand to fall on my shoulder. Babies cried. Old people puttered by in motorized carts. What would they do to me? Could I make them understand it wasn’t quite how it looked? I imagined some cinder-block room like in the movies, slammed doors, angry cops in shirtsleeves, forget about it, you’re not going anywhere, kid.

  Once out of security, in the echoing corridor, I heard distinct, purposeful steps following close behind me. Again I stopped.

  “Don’t tell me,” said my dad—turning back with an exasperated roll of his eyes. “You left something.”

  “No,” I said, looking around. “I—” There was no one behind me. Passengers coursed around me on every side.

  “Jeez, he’s white as a fucking sheet,” said Xandra. To my father, she said: “Is he all right?”

  “Oh, he’ll be fine,” said my father as he started down the corridor again. “Once he’s on the plane. It’s been a tough week for everybody.”

  “Hell, if I was him, I’d be freaked about getting on a plane too,” said Xandra bluntly. “After what he’s been t
hrough.”

  My father—tugging his rolling carry-on behind him, a bag my mother had bought him for his birthday several years before—stopped again.

  “Poor kid,” he said—surprising me by his look of sympathy. “You’re not scared, are you?”

  “No,” I said, far too fast. The last thing I wanted to do was attract anybody’s attention or look like I was even one quarter as wigged-out as I was.

  He knit his brows at me, then turned away. “Xandra?” he said to her, lifting his chin. “Why don’t you give him one of those, you know.”

  “Got it,” said Xandra smartly, stopping to fish in her purse, producing two large white bullet-shaped pills. One she dropped in my father’s outstretched palm, and the other she gave to me.

  “Thanks,” said my dad, slipping it into the pocket of his jacket. “Let’s go get something to wash these down with, shall we? Put that away,” he said to me as I held the pill up between thumb and forefinger to marvel at how big it was.

  “He doesn’t need a whole,” Xandra said, grasping my dad’s arm as she leaned sideways to adjust the strap of her platform sandal.

  “Right,” said my dad. He took the pill from me, snapped it expertly in half, and dropped the other half in the pocket of his sports coat as they strolled ahead of me, tugging their luggage behind them.

  v.

  THE PILL WASN’T STRONG enough to knock me out, but it kept me high and happy and somersaulting in and out of air-conditioned dreams. Passengers whispered in the seats around me as a disembodied air hostess announced the results of the in-flight promotional raffle: dinner and drinks for two at Treasure Island. Her hushed promise sent me down into a dream where I swam deep in greenish-black water, some torchlit competition with Japanese children diving for a pillowcase of pink pearls. Throughout it all the plane roared bright and white and constant like the sea, though at some strange point—wrapped deep in my royal-blue blanket, dreaming somewhere high over the desert—the engines seemed to shut off and go silent and I found myself floating chest upward in zero gravity while still buckled into my chair, which had somehow drifted loose from the other seats to float freely around the cabin.

  I fell back into my body with a jolt as the plane hit the runway and bounced, screaming to a stop.

  “And… welcome to Lost Wages, Nevada,” the pilot was saying over the intercom. “Our local time in Sin City is 11:47 a.m.”

  Half-blind in the glare, plate glass and reflecting surfaces, I trailed after Dad and Xandra through the terminal, stunned by the chatter and flash of slot machines and by the music blaring loud and incongruous so early in the day. The airport was like a mall-sized version of Times Square: towering palms, movie screens with fireworks and gondolas and showgirls and singers and acrobats.

  It took a long time for my second bag to come off the carousel. Chewing my fingernails, I stared fixedly at a billboard of a grinning Komodo dragon, an ad for some casino attraction: “Over 2,000 reptiles await you.” The baggage-claim crowd was like a group of colorful stragglers in front of some third-rate nightclub: sunburns, disco shirts, tiny bejeweled Asian ladies with giant logo sunglasses. The belt was circling around mostly empty and my dad (itching for a cigarette, I could tell) was starting to stretch and pace and rub his knuckles against his cheek like he did when he wanted a drink when there it came, the last one, khaki canvas with the red label and the multicolored ribbon my mother had