“May I have your attention, please?” he inquired ironically.
“What?”
“Toast?” Tipping his glass to me.
I rubbed my hand over my forehead. “And you are what, here?”
“Eh?”
“Toasting what, exactly?”
“Christmas Day? Graciousness of God? Will that do?”
The silence between us, while not exactly hostile, took on as it grew a distinctly glaring and unmanageable tone. Finally Boris fell back in his chair and nodded at my glass and said: “Hate to keep asking, but when you are through with staring at me, do you think we can—?”
“I’m going to have to figure all this out at some point.”
“What?”
“I guess I’ll have to sort this all out in my mind some time. It’s going to be a job. Like, this thing over there… that over here. Two different piles. Three different piles maybe.”
“Potter, Potter, Potter—” affectionate, half-scornful, leaning forward—“you are a blockhead. You have no sense of gratitude or beauty.”
“ ‘No sense of gratitude.’ I’ll drink to that, I guess.”
“What? Don’t you remember our happy Christmas that one time? Happy days gone by? Never to return? Your dad—” grand flinging gesture—“at the restaurant table? Our feast and joy? Our happy celebration? Don’t you honor that memory in your heart?”
“For God’s sake.”
“Potter—” arrested breath—“you are something. You are worse than a woman. ‘Hurry, hurry.’ ‘Get up, go.’ Didn’t you read my texts?”
“What?”
Boris—reaching for his glass—stopped cold. Quickly he glanced at the floor and I was, suddenly, very aware of the bag by his chair.
In amusement, Boris stuck his thumbnail between his front teeth. “Go ahead.”
The words hovered over the wrecked breakfast. Distorted reflections in the domed cover of the silver dish.
I picked up the bag and stood; and his smile faded when I started to the door.
“Wait!” he said.
“Wait what?”
“You’re not going to open it?”
“Look—” I knew myself too well, didn’t trust myself to wait; I wasn’t letting the same thing happen twice—
“What are you doing? Where are you going?”
“I’m taking this downstairs. So they can lock it in the safe.” I didn’t even know if there was a safe, only that I didn’t want the painting near me—it was safer with strangers, in a cloakroom, anywhere. I was also going to phone the police the moment Boris left, but not until; there was no reason dragging Boris into it.
“You didn’t even open it! You don’t even know what it is!”
“Duly noted.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe I don’t need to know what it is.”
“Oh no? Maybe you do. It’s not what you think,” he added, a bit smugly.
“No?”
“No.”
“How do you know what I think?”
“Of course I know what you think it is! And—you are wrong. Sorry. But—” raising his hands—“is something much, much better than.”
“Better than?”
“Yes.”
“How can it be better than?”
“It just is. Lots lots better. You will just have to believe me on this. Open and see,” he said, with a curt nod.
“What is this?” I said after about thirty stunned seconds. Lifting out one brick of hundreds—dollars—then another.
“That is not all of it.” Rubbing the back of his head with the flat of his hand. “Fraction of.”
I looked at it, then at him. “Fraction of what?”
“Well—” smirking—“thought more dramatic if in cash, no?”
Muffled comedy voices floating from next door, articulated cadences of a television laugh track.
“Nicer surprise for you! That is not all of it, mind you. U.S. currency, I thought, more convenient for you to return with. What you came over with—a bit more. In fact they have not paid yet—no money has yet come through. But—soon, I hope.”
“They? Who hasn’t paid? Paid what?”
“This money is mine. Own personal. From the house safe. Stopped in Antwerp to get it. Nicer this way—nicer for you to open, no? Christmas morning? Ho Ho Ho? But you have a lot more coming.”
I turned the stack of money over and looked at it: forward and back. Banded, straight from Citibank.
“ ‘Thank you Boris.’ ‘Oh, no problem,’ ” he answered, ironically, in his own voice. “Glad to do it.’ ”