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#Danke Tabby!
morgansmornings · 19 days
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[insert all the colours that say how awesome you are 🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈]
This Meme: Accepting @tabbyrp
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You know I love you. You know I would absolutely do anything and everything with you. I miss you and you are such a wonderful, flowy light that I will continue to thank until we are old and grey.
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alibonbonn · 2 months
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Kittens season just started and I've got 2 new foster babies to raise!
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Meet the wretched beasts, Dilly and Dally
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totallycubetastic · 3 months
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Sippy slurp
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halfway-happyyy · 2 years
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new year’s day (rooster bradshaw)
the result of being purely in my feelings and listening to taylor swift. no warnings, fluff only.
Your home is brimming with friends and a scant few family members, but there aren't enough of them to make it feel like home, to make it feel like San Diego. It’s where you usually prefer to spend the thirty-first of December each year- and you are dismayed to find yourself longing for it, but the decision to stay tucked away in your borough of the city this year had been a mutual one.
Rooster has been the heartbeat of the festivities this evening; an assortment of comfort food from the golden days of his childhood- which he spent the last day preparing- and some of your favourite snacks, lay in an array of dishes on the dining room table. An ancient tabby cat that you had rescued from a dank alleyway a couple of years ago, winds its way through tangles of pant-suited and stockinged legs, blissfully oblivious to the chaos that is about to ensue. His yellowed eyes are keen and utterly uncaring, and you long to follow him to the bedroom at the end of the hall, where you’ll lay down with him on the bed, your fingers lost in oceans of soft, ginger fur. What you really want is to wake up hours from now to the notion that your home is void of people again, the first of January and the rest of the year, laid out before you like a blank canvas.
“You have a beautiful home,” someone tells you as they pass by on their way to the snack table.
You mean to tell them thank you, but they’ve already disappeared into the throng of people.
Clocking the watch face on the underside of your wrist, you take note that you are fifteen minutes away from the countdown and a sigh of relief exits your parted lips in the form of a small puff of air. You couldn’t be sure when the switch had occurred, but at some point in the last couple of years, being around large crowds of people began to deplete your energy in ways you could never have fathomed before. Where you once thrived on the presence of many people, of myriads of conversations, it now exhausted you to every extent.
A pair of arms, warm and utterly familiar in their touch circle your waist and Rooster drops his chin to the curve in your shoulder, his breath fanning out over the back of your neck in warm waves.
“Have you eaten anything tonight, kid?”
You smile and gesture toward the laden food table. “I ate my weights worth in pimento cheese about an hour ago.”
“That’s my girl.” He laughs and presses a chaste kiss to the top of your head.
You turn in his embrace and cock your head to the side, studying his features. There are no readily telltale signs that he misses Fightertown as much as you do, but you also know him better than that.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” You ask, after a couple of minutes.
Rooster grins wide and nods his head, his top-shelf whisky orbs are bloodshot and unfocused with unbridled happiness and the glass clutched in his grasp is a mere sip away from being void of wine completely.
“Can I tell you something?” You ask.
He nods his head.
“You have to come closer though,” You whisper.
He offers you another wide beam and bends his head low so that you can tell him what you need to say.
“I love you, Rooster.”
He pulls away to reveal a shyness you haven’t been privy to in years- and a gruff laugh to match, as he circles his arms around your waist ever tighter. 
“I love you too, kid.”
Ten minutes lapse, and you decide at the last minute to head to the balcony to ring in your new year. You lose yourself in the noise of the city around you, and in the cacophony of everyone else’s celebrations. Though its loud, it’s nothing compared to the inside of your house, and you allow yourself a deep breath of fresh air. A December (or is it January now?) chill stings your cheeks and makes you feel more alive than anything behind you- save for maybe Rooster, ever did. You can hear them all inside now; the choir-like chant of a myriad of voices counting down the final seconds of the year. The balcony door opens, and with it a rush of warmth. Rooster appears beside you, sporting a headband with golden stars that depict the new year, and flop around merrily in the wind. Wordlessly, he adorns you with the same headband and places two glass atop the metal railing.
“It’s almost time, kid.”
He pops a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on five, and pours for you, the distinctive orange label nostalgic to you in every way. You view his figure in the scattered lighting around you, clad in a crisp, white button-up, black pressed trousers and multi-colored socks. Taking a sip of the effervescent alcohol, you revel in the tickle of the bubbles on your tongue, and in the slight sting as they slide down your throat and warm in your belly. The muffled notes of your guests inebriated version of Auld Lang Syne can be heard from inside.
“Three… two… one… Happy New Year!”
He reaches for you then, pulls your frame against his and kisses you like it’s the last time he’ll ever have the pleasure. When he breaks away, you are both breathless and grinning like idiots.
“Happy new year, kid.” He murmurs.
Another gust of warm air as Jake steps out onto the balcony with you, brandishing a polaroid camera.
“Smile, you two!”
Doing as he’s told, Rooster slings an arm around your shoulder, pulling you back into the warmth of his chest. Though sleepy from the bubbles catching fire in your belly, your smile is wide and genuine.
Rooster settles in a few seconds later, eyes fluttering shut as he sinks into the blissfully warm, sudsy water before you.
Your home is void of the last inebriated straggler around one o’clock in the morning. The only indications that they were ever there at all, are in the scattered wine glasses, polaroid photos, and confetti littering the hardwood floor- precious remnants from an evening well spent. You know it all needs to be dealt with, but the hour is nigh, and your bathtub calls out to you like a siren song. Rooster follows you to the washroom down the hall, where nimble fingers work the zipper down your dress, where you shed the useless material with an audible sigh of relief. You settle into the tub running while he discards his own clothing, and sidles in to the near-scalding water with a very audible sigh of relief.
You are quiet as you revel in your first few minutes of aloneness and utter silence, and when his eyes fall open again, he is grinning sleepily.
You quirk an eyebrow in question. “What?”
“You have a piece of confetti on your cheek.” He reaches toward you, a dripping finger brushes the shiny piece of plastic away from your face, leaving a miniscule trail of lavender-scented suds in its wake.
You regard each other with an intensity reserved only for painfully intimate times. Neither of you feel compelled to say much- one of things you love about him (and there are many things) is that the silence never feels imposing.
He reaches for your hand, takes it in his and brings it to his lips, indifferent to the suds that now gather on them.
“I am eternally grateful for you, kid. For our home, for the cantankerous feline that takes up just the right amount of space, for our life together.”
He squeezes your hand thrice beneath the water.
I love you…
Melancholy- caused by the imminent passage of time, had packed ice around your heart all evening, and now, a warmth gleaned from his words and from the tender way he’s looking at you now, helps to thaw it out. You take a deep breath and smile at him, the promise of looming adventures, of boundless laughter to be had with him, warms your heart even further.
“Happy new year, Rooster. I can’t wait to see what this year brings us.”
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highwayphantoms · 1 year
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Happy Friday!! For Cal and shapeshifting, how about ❛ i’m not afraid of you. ❜ 🥺
and another one for @dadrunkwriting :D ty for the prompt! here is the first time Cal and Anders get to have a proper conversation outside the Circle. :3
Warnings: General implications of canon-typical violence, nothing explicitly mentioned. Words: 853
--
Somehow, Darktown seemed less terrifying after dark. Even in the guise of a big, black dog that had, so far, been intimidating enough that even members of the Carta left them alone, Cal felt hopelessly vulnerable traversing Darktown alone. Under any other circumstances, they would not have ventured out alone. With Carver, or perhaps even Aveline, though a guardsman in the bowels of the city would hardly go unnoticed.
This was not a conversation that Cal relished having with others listening in. That was, at least, assuming Anders was even in the clinic to begin with. After what had happened in the Chantry earlier in the evening, Cal wouldn’t be surprised if he simply disappeared. But they owed him an explanation. Several explanations.
And Karl…
Cal had not known Karl well, but well enough to be thoroughly horrified at what the templars had done. Using a known associate to lure out a runaway? That fit perfectly with the habits of templars. But to take a Harrowed mage and render him Tranquil?
Carver, Varric, Aveline—they hadn’t understood. How could they? Not one of them knew what it meant to be Tranquil. How the process just removed everything that made a mage a person.
But Cal had known a half dozen Tranquil mages in Kinloch. The idea of doing that to an enchanter was unthinkable. At least, it had been. Uncomfortably aware of the grime collecting between their toes, Cal trotted through the narrow alleys of Darktown to the marginally less dank corner where Anders had set up the clinic. The muck wouldn’t transfer—they’d learned that early on—but the memory of it would itch at them until they bathed. They suppressed a shudder and continued on. The lamp outside the clinic was dark, but the tiny sliver of light under the doors suggested that Anders was indeed present. Cal nudged the door with their nose, hoping it might be unbarred and not surprised to find that it wasn’t.
They sighed and, in the span of a heartbeat, shifted back. Armed with opposable thumbs once more, Cal rapped their knuckles against the door in an old, familiar pattern. One-two, one-two, one-two-three.
Silence answered them. After several seconds, Cal began to doubt their initial assessment of the light under the door, but then they heard the rasp of wood rubbing against wood. Another moment, then the door was pulled open.
His eyes were rimmed with red, but dry and wary. “So you are from Kinloch,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Cal nodded tightly. “May I come in?”
With a humorless laugh, Anders stepped aside. “Might as well,” he muttered. “I’m sure you have questions.” Wordlessly, Cal entered the clinic. Once they were clear, Anders shut the door and slid the bar back across it, then turned to face them. “At least answer one of mine first. Who are you?”
“Calanthe,” they said quietly. “I was one of Wynne’s apprentices.” He peered at them for a long moment, then shrugged helplessly. “I wish I could say I remembered you.”
“You’ve seen that I can become a dog,” they said gently, “but the first shape I mastered was that of a tabby cat.”
Anders frowned. “What are you saying?”
“I believe you called me Mr. Wiggums.”
For a long moment, Anders only stared at them. Then, in a halting voice, he said, “Then—you know—”
Cal shook their head and firmly replied, “I would never breathe a word to anyone else.”
“I—thank you.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, casting his gaze anywhere but at Cal. “Your turn. What do you want to know?”
“You’re possessed,” they said.
“That’s not a question,” he retorted, still avoiding their eyes.
“How long?”
Anders shrugged and said evasively, “A few months.”
“I’m not afraid of you, you know,” Cal murmured, taking a step towards him.
In turn, he stepped back, maintaining what little distance there was between them. “You should be,” Anders countered.
They nodded, just once. “Okay.” Cal took a deep breath, considering their words, and exhaled slowly. “I just… I’m sorry. I should have been honest with you from the start, instead of using my brother to ask you for help. I was afraid. Afraid you’d throw me back to the templars to save your own skin, but…”
“I would never.”
“I know,” they said. “I spent eleven years in the Circle. I’m… I forget that it’s different out here.”
This time, Anders did look at them. “You can trust me,” he said quietly.
Cal smiled tightly. “I should go,” they replied. “My mother will have a fit if I’m not back before morning.”
“That’s probably wise.” He was quiet for a moment, then added, “Thank you. I… seem to owe you a great deal more than I thought.”
“Different world, different rules,” Cal said quietly. “As far as anyone else knows, you and I met for the first time tonight. I would like to keep it that way.”
Anders nodded, and gestured towards the door. “Then it was nice to meet you. And I’ll… see you around.”
“Goodnight, Anders.”
“Goodnight, Hawke.”
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ahihistyle · 8 months
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amethystique777 · 3 years
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I want each in every color!!
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rattledazzlebones · 4 years
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I said Kabuki could call me that, but I suppose you could too.
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jessalynny · 5 years
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anyway my cats made perfect meme fodder
here’s the original if you wanna make your own
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princesstigerbelle · 7 years
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Rare cryptid spotted
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morgansmornings · 4 months
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🙌
This Meme: Accepting @tabbyrp
~~~*~~~
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Fun fact that separates Jayden and I: I am a self-taught Belly dancer. Or at least I can belly dance with about 57% confidence. And have been doing it on and off since I was 18. Many, many moons ago. Jayden does more standard swaying and 'As seen on T.V.' dancing.
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clefeah · 7 years
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any idea for what i should name my cat? I'll be picking him up from the shelter sometime this month. (no pics yet but he's gray and very loving?)
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totallycubetastic · 4 months
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Cat
Sorry I haven’t been posting, whenever I tried to make a post, nothing would happen
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halfway-happyyy · 3 years
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I'm a day late, but 'New Year’s Day’ by Taylor Swift never ceases to make feel all of the things when I hear it, and that is what this short piece is inspired by.
Their spacious apartment is brimming with people tonight. Friends, friends of friends, a scant few family members- not nearly enough to make it feel like home, to make it feel like Stockholm. It's where they usually prefer to spend the thirty-first of December each year- and she is dismayed to find herself longing for it, but this year, the decision to stay tucked away in their borough of the City had been a mutual one.
He has been the heartbeat of the festivities this evening; an assortment of comfort food from Sweden which he spent the last day cooking, and some of her favourite snacks, lay in an array of dishes on the wooden dining room table, which guests peruse at their own leisure. An ancient tabby- one that she had rescued from the dank alleyway behind a bar a couple of years ago, winds its way through tangles of pant-suited and stockinged legs, blissfully oblivious to the raucous that is about to ensue. His yellowed eyes are keen and utterly uncaring, and she longs to follow him to the bedroom at the end of the hall, where she will lay down with him on the bed, her fingers lost in oceans of soft, ginger fur. What she really wants is to wake up hours from now to the notion that her home is void of people again, the first of January- and the rest of the year, laid out before her like a blank canvas.
“You have a beautiful home,” Someone tells her as they pass by on their way to the snack table.
She means to tell them thank you, but they have already moved on to someone else.
Clocking the watch face on the underside of her wrist, she takes note that they are fifteen minutes away from the countdown and a sigh of relief exits her parted lips in the form of a small puff of air. She couldn't be sure when the switch had occurred, but at some point, being around large crowds of people began to deplete her energy in ways she could never have fathomed before. Where she once thrived on the presence of many people, of myriads of conversations, it now exhausted her to every extent.
A pair of arms, warm and utterly familiar in their touch circle her waist and Alexander drops his chin to the curve in her shoulder, his breath fanning out over her neck in warm waves. “Have you eaten anything tonight, kid?”
She smiles and juts her chin toward the laden food table. “I ate my weights worth in toast Skagen about an hour ago.”
“That’s what its there for,” He laughs.
She turns in his embrace and cocks her head to the side, studying his features. There are no readily telltale signs that he misses Sweden as much as she does, but she knows him better than that. “Are you enjoying yourself?” She asks, mildly.
Alexander grins wide and nods his head, his glassy orbs slightly bloodshot and unfocused, the glass clutched in his grasp is a mere sip away from being void of wine completely.
“Can I tell you something?” She asks.
He nods his head.
“You have to come closer though,” She whispers.
Alexander offers her another wide beam, closing the distance between them again and bends his head low so that she can tell him what she needs to say. “I love you, Alex.”
He pulls away from her, a shyness she hasn’t been privy to in years- and a gruff laugh bubbles up from his throat as he circles his arms around her waist again, ever tighter. “I love you too, kid.”
Ten minutes lapse, and she decides at the last minute to head to the balcony to ring in her new year. She loses herself in the noise of the City around her, in the cacophony of other people’s celebrations. Though its loud, it’s nothing compared to the inside of her apartment and she allows herself a deep breath of fresh air. December (or is it January now?) chill stings her cheeks, makes her feel more alive than anything behind her- save for maybe Alexander, ever did. She can hear them inside now- the choir-like chant of a myriad of voices counting down the final seconds of the year. The balcony door opens, and with it a rush of warm air, and Alexander appears beside her, sporting a headband with golden stars on springs that depict the new year, and flop around merrily in the wind. Wordlessly, he adorns her with the same headband and places two glass atop the metal railing.
“It’s almost time, kid.”
He pops a bottle of Veuve Clicquot on five, and pours for them, the distinctive orange label nostalgic to her in every way. She views him in the scattered lighting around them, clad in a crisp, white button-up, black pressed trousers and multi-coloured socks. Taking a sip of the effervescent alcohol, she revels in the tickle of the bubbles on her tongue, and in the slight sting as they slide down her throat and warm in her belly. The muffled notes of one of their guests inebriated version of Auld Lang Syne can be heard through crevices in the windows and door.
“Three… two… one… Happy New Year!”
He reaches for her then, pulls her frame against his and kisses her like it’s the last time he’ll ever have the pleasure. When he breaks away, they are both breathless and grinning.
“Happy new year, kid.” He murmurs.
Another gust of warm air, as someone steps onto the balcony with them, brandishing a polaroid camera. “Smile, you two!”
Doing as he’s told, Alexander slings an arm around her shoulder, pulling her back into the warmth of his chest. They pose for the shot together and she does smile, and it is genuine.
Their home is void of the last straggler around one o’clock in the morning, the only indications that they were there at all, are in the scattered wine glasses, polaroid photos, and confetti littering the hardwood floor- talismans of a night well spent. She knows it all needs to be dealt with, but the hour is nigh, and her bathtub calls out to her like a siren song. Alexander follows her to the washroom down the hall, where nimble fingers work the zipper down her dress, where she sheds the useless material with an inaudible sigh of relief. She gets the tub running while he disposes of his own clothing, and sidles in to the near-scalding water with a very audible sigh of relief.
Alexander settles in a few seconds later, eyes fluttering shut as he sinks into the blissfully warm, sudsy water before her.
They are quiet as they revel in their first few minutes of aloneness and utter silence, and when his eyes fall open again, he is grinning sleepily.
She quirks an eyebrow in question. “What?”
“You have a piece of confetti on your cheek.” He reaches toward her, a dripping finger brushes the shiny piece of plastic away from her face, leaving a miniscule trail of lavender-scented suds in its wake.
They regard each other with an intensity usually only reserved for painfully intimate times, though she reckons it doesn’t get much more intimate than a bubble bath with your lover. Neither of them feel composed to say much- one of things she loves about him (and there are lots) is that the silence never feels imposing.
He reaches for her hand, takes it in his and brings it to his lips, indifferent to the suds that now gather on them.
“I am eternally grateful for you, kid. For our home, for the cantankerous feline that takes up just the right amount of space, for our life together.”
He squeezes her hand thrice beneath the water.
I love you...
Melancholy- caused by the imminent passage of time, had packed ice around her heart all evening, and now, in it’s place, a warmth gleaned from his words and from the tender way he’s looking at her right now, helps to thaw it out. She takes a deep breath and smiles at him, the promise of looming adventures, of boundless laughter to be had with him, warms her heart ever further.
“Happy new year, Alex. I can't wait to see what this year brings us."
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boreothegoldfinch · 3 years
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chapter 10 paragraph xvi
Gyuri left us out in the Sixties, not far at all from the Barbours’. “This is the place?” I said, shaking the rain off Hobie’s umbrella. We were out in front of one of the big limestone townhouses off Fifth—black iron doors, massive lion’s-head knockers. “Yes—it’s his father’s place—his other family are trying to get him out legally but good luck with that, hah.” We were buzzed in, took a cage elevator up to the second floor. I could smell incense, weed, spaghetti sauce cooking. A lanky blonde woman—shortcropped hair and a serene small-eyed face like a camel’s—opened the door. She was dressed like a sort of old-fashioned street urchin or newsboy: houndstooth trousers, ankle boots, dirty thermal shirt, suspenders. Perched on the tip of her nose were a pair of wire-rimmed Ben Franklin glasses. Without saying a word she opened the door to us and walked off, leaving us alone in a dim, grimy, ballroom-sized salon which was like a derelict version of some high-society set from a Fred Astaire movie: high ceilings; crumbling plaster; grand piano; darkened chandelier with half the crystals broken or gone; sweeping Hollywood staircase littered with cigarette butts. Sufi chants droned low in the background: Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq. Allāhu Allāhu Allāhu Haqq. Someone had drawn on the wall, in charcoal, a series of life-sized nudes ascending the stairs like frames in a film; and there was very little furniture apart from a ratty futon and some chairs and tables that looked scavenged from the street. Empty picture frames on the wall, a ram’s skull. On the television, an animated film flickered and sputtered with epileptic vim, windmilling geometrics intercut with letters and live-action racecar images. Apart from that, and the door where the blonde had disappeared, the only light came from a lamp which threw a sharp white circle on melted candles, computer cables, empty beer bottles and butane cans, oil pastels boxed and loose, many catalogues raisonnés, books in German and English including Nabokov’s Despair and Heidegger’s Being and Time with the cover torn off, sketch books, art books, ashtrays and burnt tinfoil, and a grubby-looking pillow where drowsed a gray tabby cat. Over the door, like a trophy from some Schwarzwald hunting lodge, a rack of antlers cast distorted shadows that spread and branched across the ceiling with a Nordic, wicked, fairy-tale feel. Conversation in the next room. The windows were shrouded with tacked-up bedsheets just thin enough to let in a diffuse violet glow from the street. As I looked around, forms emerged from the dark and transformed with a dream strangeness: for one thing, the makeshift room divider—consisting of a carpet sagging tenement-style from the ceiling on fishing line—was on closer look a tapestry and a good one too, eighteenth century or older, the near twin of an Amiens I’d seen at auction with an estimate of forty thousand pounds. And not all the frames on the wall were empty. Some had paintings in them, and one of them—even in the poor light—looked like a Corot.
I was just about to step over for a look when a man who could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty appeared in the door: worn-looking, rangy, with straight sandy hair combed back from his face, in black punk jeans out at the knee and a grungy British commando sweater with an ill-fitting suit jacket over it. “Hello,” he said to me, quiet British voice with a faint German bite, “you must be Potter,” and then, to Boris: “Glad you turned up. You two should stay and hang out. Candy and Niall are making dinner with Ulrika.” Movement behind the tapestry, at my feet, that made me step back quickly: swaddled shapes on the floor, sleeping bags, a homeless smell. “Thanks, we can’t stay,” said Boris, who had picked up the cat and was scratching it behind the ears. “Have some of that wine though, thanks.” Without a word Horst passed his own glass over to Boris and then called into the next room in German. To me, he said: “You’re a dealer, right?” In the glow of the television his pale pinned gull’s eye shone hard and unblinking. “Right,” I said uneasily; and then: “Uh, thanks.” Another woman—bobhaired and brunette, high black boots, skirt just short enough to show the black cat tattooed on one milky thigh—had appeared with a bottle and two glasses: one for Horst, one for me. “Danke darling,” said Horst. To Boris he said: “You gentlemen want to do up?” “Not right now,” said Boris, who had leaned forward to steal a kiss from the dark-haired woman as she was leaving. “Was wondering though. What do you hear from Sascha?” “Sascha—” Horst sank down on the futon and lit a cigarette. With his ripped jeans and combat boots he was like a scuffed-up version of some below-the-title Hollywood character actor from the 1940s, some minor mitteleuropäischer known for playing tragic violinists and weary, cultivated refugees. “Ireland is where it seems to lead. Good news if you ask me.” “That doesn’t sound right.” “Nor to me, but I’ve talked to people and so far it checks out.” He spoke with all a junkie’s arrhythmic quiet, off-beat, but without the slur. “So—soon we should know more, I hope.” “Friends of Niall’s?” “No. Niall says he never heard of them. But it’s a start.”
The wine was bad: supermarket Syrah. Because I did not want to be anywhere near the bodies on the floor I drifted over to inspect a group of artists’ casts on a beat-up table: a male torso; a draped Venus leaning against a rock; a sandaled foot. In the poor light they looked like the ordinary plaster casts for sale at Pearl Paint—studio pieces for students to sketch from—but when I drew my finger across the top of the foot I felt the suppleness of marble, silky and grainless. “Why would they go to Ireland with it?” Boris was saying restlessly. “What kind of collectors’ market? I thought everyone tries to get pieces out of there, not in.” “Yes, but Sascha thinks he used the picture to clear a debt.” “So the guy has ties there?” “Evidently.” “I find this difficult to believe.” “What, about the ties?” “No, about the debt. This guy—he looks like he was stealing hubcaps off the street six months ago. “ Horst shrugged, faintly: sleepy eyes, seamed forehead. “Who knows. Not sure that’s correct but certainly I’m not willing to trust to luck. Would I let my hand be cut off for it?” he said, lazily tapping an ash on the floor. “No.” Boris frowned into his wine glass. “He was amateur. Believe me. If you saw him yourself you would know.” “Yes but he likes to gamble, Sascha says.” “You don’t think Sascha maybe knows more?” “I think not.” There was a remoteness in his manner, as if he was talking half to himself. “ ‘Wait and see.’ This is what I hear. An unsatisfactory answer. Stinking from the top if you ask me. But as I say, we are not to the bottom of this yet.” “And when does Sascha get back to the city?” The half-light in the room sent me straight back to childhood, Vegas, like the obscure mood of a dream lingering after sleep: haze of cigarette smoke, dirty clothes on the floor, Boris’s face white then blue in the flicker of the screen. “Next week. I’ll give you a ring. You can talk to him yourself then.” “Yes. But I think we should talk to him together.” “Yes. I think so too. We’ll both be smarter, in future… this need not have happened… but in any case,” said Horst, who was scratching his neck slowly, absent-mindedly, “you understand I’m wary of pushing him too hard.” “That is very convenient for Sascha.” “You have suspicions. Tell me.” “I think—” Boris cut his eyes at the doorway. “Yes?” “I think—” Boris lowered his voice—“you are being too easy on him. Yes yes—” putting up his hands—“I know. But—all very convenient for his guy to vanish, not a clue, he knows nothing!” “Well, maybe,” Horst said. He seemed disconnected and partly elsewhere, like an adult in the room with small children. “This is pressing on me—on all of us. I want to get to the bottom of this as much as you. Though for all we know his guy was a cop.” “No,” said Boris resolutely. “He was not. He was not. I know it.” “Well—to be quite frank with you, I do not think so either, there is more to this than we yet know. Still, I’m hopeful.” He’d taken a wooden box from the drafting table and was poking around in it. “Sure you gentlemen wouldn’t like to get into a little something?” I looked away. I would have liked nothing better. I would also have liked to see the Corot except I didn’t want to walk around the bodies on the floor to do it. Across the room, I’d noticed several other paintings propped on the wainscoting: a still life, a couple of small landscapes. “Go look, if you want.” It was Horst. “The Lépine is fake. But the Claesz and the Berchem are for sale if you’re interested.” Boris laughed and reached for one of Horst’s cigarettes. “He’s not in the market.” “No?” said Horst genially. “I can give him a good price on the pair. The seller needs to get rid of them.”
I stepped in to look: still life, candle and half-empty wineglass. “Claesz-Heda?” “No—Pieter. Although—” Horst put the box aside, then stood beside me and lifted the desk lamp on the cord, washing both paintings in a harsh, formal glare—“this bit—” traced mid-air with the curve of a finger—“the reflection of the flame here? and the edge of the table, the drapery? Could almost be Heda on a bad day.” “Beautiful piece.” “Yes. Beautiful of its type.” Up close he smelled unwashed and raunchy, with a strong, dusty import-shop odor like the inside of a Chinese box. “A bit prosaic to the modern taste. The classicizing manner. Much too staged. Still, the Berchem is very good.” “Lot of fake Berchems out there,” I said neutrally. “Yes—” the light from the upheld lamp on the landscape painting was bluish, eerie—“but this is lovely… Italy, 1655‥… the ochres beautiful, no? The Claesz not so good I think, very early, though the provenance is impeccable on both. Would be nice to keep them together… they have never been apart, these two. Father and son. Came down together in an old Dutch family, ended up in Austria after the war. Pieter Claesz…” Horst held the light higher. “Claesz was so uneven, honestly. Wonderful technique, wonderful surface, but something a bit off with this one, don’t you agree? The composition doesn’t hold together. Incoherent somehow. Also—” indicating with the flat of his thumb the too-bright shine coming off the canvas: overly varnished. “I agree. And here—” tracing midair the ugly arc where an over-eager cleaning had scrubbed the paint down to the scumbling. “Yes.” His answering look was amiable and drowsy. “Quite correct. Acetone. Whoever did that should be shot. And yet a mid-level painting like this, in poor condition—even an anonymous work—is worth more than a masterpiece, that’s the irony of it, worth more to me, anyway. Landscapes particularly. Very very easy to sell. Not too much attention from the authorities… difficult to recognize from a description… and still worth maybe a couple hundred thousand. Now, the Fabritius—” long, relaxed pause—“a different calibre altogether. The most remarkable work that’s ever passed through my hands, and I can say that without question.” “Yes, and that is why we would like so much to get it back,” grumbled Boris from the shadows. “Completely extraordinary,” continued Horst serenely. “A still life like this one—” he indicated the Claesz, with a slow wave (black-rimmed fingernails, scarred venous network on the back of his hand)—“well, so insistently a trompe l’oeil. Great technical skill, but overly refined. Obsessive exactitude. There’s a deathlike quality. A very good reason they are called natures mortes, yes? But the Fabritius…”—loose-kneed back-step—“I know the theory of The Goldfinch, I’m well familiar with it, people call it trompe l’oeil and indeed it can strike the eye that way from afar. But I don’t care what the art historians say. True: there are passages worked like a trompe l’oeil… the wall and the perch, gleam of light on brass, and then… the feathered breast, most creaturely. Fluff and down. Soft, soft. Claesz would carry that finish and exactitude down to the death—a painter like van Hoogstraten would carry it even farther, to the last nail of the coffin. But Fabritius… he’s making a pun on the genre… a masterly riposte to the whole idea of trompe l’oeil… because in other passages of the work—the head? the wing?—not creaturely or literal in the slightest, he takes the image apart very deliberately to show us how he painted it. Daubs and patches, very shaped and hand-worked, the neckline especially, a solid piece of paint, very abstract. Which is what makes him a genius less of his time than our own. There’s a doubleness. You see the mark, you see the paint for the paint, and also the living bird.”
“Yes, well,” growled Boris, in the dark beyond the spotlight, snapping his cigarette lighter shut, “if no paint, would be nothing to see.” “Precisely.” Horst turned, his face cut by shadow. “It’s a joke, the Fabritius. It has a joke at its heart. And that’s what all the very greatest masters do. Rembrandt. Velázquez. Late Titian. They make jokes. They amuse themselves. They build up the illusion, the trick—but, step closer? it falls apart into brushstrokes. Abstract, unearthly. A different and much deeper sort of beauty altogether. The thing and yet not the thing. I should say that that one tiny painting puts Fabritius in the rank of the greatest painters who ever lived. And with The Goldfinch? He performs his miracle in such a bijou space. Although I admit, I was surprised—” turning to look at me—“when I held it in my hands the first time? The weight of it?” “Yes—” I couldn’t help feeling gratified, obscurely, that he’d noted this detail, oddly important to me, with its own network of childhood dreams and associations, an emotional chord—“the board is thicker than you’d think. There’s a heft to it.” “Heft. Quite. The very word. And the background—much less yellow than when I saw it as a boy. The painting underwent a cleaning—early nineties I believe. Post-conservation, there’s more light.” “Hard to say. I’ve got nothing to compare it to.” “Well,” said Horst. The smoke from Boris’s cigarette, threading in from the dark where he sat, gave the floodlit circle where we stood the midnight feel of a cabaret stage. “I may be wrong. I was a boy of twelve or so when I saw it for the first time.” “Yes, I was about that age when I first saw it too.” “Well,” said Horst, with resignation, scratching an eyebrow—dime-sized bruises on the backs of his hands—“that was the only time my father ever took me with him on a business trip, that time at The Hague. Ice cold boardrooms. Not a leaf stirring. On our afternoon I wanted to go to Drievliet, the fun park, but he took me to the Mauritshuis instead. And—great museum, many great paintings, but the only painting I remember seeing is your finch. A painting that appeals to a child, yes? Der Distelfink. That is how I knew it first, by its German name.”
“Yah, yah, yah,” said Boris from the darkness, in a bored voice. “This is like the education channel on the television.” “Do you deal any modern art at all?” I said, in the silence that followed. “Well—” Horst fixed me with his drained, wintry eye; deal wasn’t quite the correct verb, he seemed amused at my choice of words—“sometimes. Had a Kurt Schwitters not long ago—Stanton Macdonald-Wright—do you know him? Lovely painter. It depends a lot what comes my way. Quite honestly— do you ever deal in paintings at all?” “Very seldom. The art dealers get there before I do.” “That is unfortunate. Portable is what matters in my business. There are a lot of mid-level pieces I could sell on the clean if I had paper that looked good.” Spit of garlic; pans clashing in the kitchen; faint Moroccan-souk drift of urine and incense. On and on flatlining, the Sufi drone, wafting and spiraling around us in the dark, ceaseless chants to the Divine. “Or this Lépine. Quite a good forgery. There’s this fellow—Canadian, quite amusing, you’d like him—does them to order. Pollocks, Modiglianis— happy to introduce you, if you’d like. Not much money in them for me, although there’s a fortune to be made if one of them turned up in just the right estate.” Then, smoothly, in the silence that followed: “Of older works I see a lot of Italian, but my preferences—they incline to the North as you can see. Now—this Berchem is a very fine example for what it is but of course these Italianate landscapes with the broken columns and the simple milkmaids don’t so much suit the modern taste, do they? I much prefer the van Goyen there. Sadly not for sale.” “Van Goyen? I would have sworn that was a Corot.” “From here, yes, you might.” He was pleased at the comparison. “Very similar painters—Vincent himself remarked it—you know that letter? ‘The Corot of the Dutch’? Same tenderness of mist, that openness in fog, do you know what I mean?” “Where—” I’d been about to ask the typical dealer’s question, where did you get it, before catching myself. “Marvelous painter. Very prolific. And this is a particularly beautiful example,” he said, with all a collector’s pride. “Many amusing details up close—tiny hunter, barking dog. Also—quite typical—signed on the stern of the boat. Quite charming. If you don’t mind—” indicating, with a nod, the bodies behind the tapestry. “Go over. You won’t disturb them.” “No, but—” “No—” holding up a hand—“I understand perfectly. Shall I bring it to you?” “Yes, I’d love to see it.”
“I must say, I’ve grown so fond of it, I’ll hate to see it go. He dealt paintings himself, van Goyen. A lot of the Dutch masters did. Jan Steen. Vermeer. Rembrandt. But Jan van Goyen—” he smiled—“was like our friend Boris here. A hand in everything. Paintings, real estate, tulip futures.” Boris, in the dark, made a disgruntled noise at this and seemed about to say something when all of a sudden a scrawny wild-haired boy of maybe twenty-two, with an old fashioned mercury thermometer sticking out of his mouth, came lurching out of the kitchen, shielding his eyes with his hand against the upheld lamp. He was wearing a weird, womanish, chunky knit cardigan that came almost to his knees like a bathrobe; he looked ill and disoriented, his sleeve was up, he was rubbing the inside of his forearm with two fingers and then the next thing I knew his knees went sideways and he’d hit the floor, the thermometer skittering out with a glassy noise on the parquet, unbroken. “What…?” said Boris, stabbing out his cigarette, standing up, the cat darting from his lap into the shadows. Horst—frowning—set the lamp on the floor, light swinging crazily on walls and ceiling. “Ach,” he said fretfully, brushing the hair from his eyes, dropping to his knees to look the young man over. “Get back,” he said in an annoyed voice to the women who had appeared in the door, along with a cold, dark-haired, attentive-looking bruiser and a couple of glassy prep-school boys, no more than sixteen—and then, when they all still stood staring—flicked out a hand. “In the kitchen with you! Ulrika,” he said to the blonde, “halt sie zurück.” The tapestry was stirring; behind it, blanket-wrapped huddles, sleepy voices: eh? was ist los? “Ruhe, schlaft weiter,” called the blonde, before turning to Horst and beginning to speak urgently in rapid-fire German. Yawns; groans; farther back, a bundle sitting up, groggy American whine: “Huh? Klaus? What’d she say?” “Shut up baby and go back schlafen.” Boris had picked up his coat and was shouldering it on. “Potter,” he said and then again, when I did not answer, staring horrified at the floor, where the boy was breathing in gurgles: “Potter.” Catching my arm. “Come on, let’s go.” “Yes, sorry. We’ll have to talk later. Schiesse,” said Horst regretfully, shaking the boy’s limp shoulder, with the tone of a parent making a not-particularly-convincing show of scolding a child. “Dummer Wichser! Dummkopf! How much did he take, Niall?” he said to the bruiser who had reappeared in the door and was looking on with a critical eye. “Fuck if I know,” said the Irishman, with an ominous sideways pop of his head. “Come on, Potter,” said Boris, catching my arm. Horst had his ear to the boy’s chest and the blonde, who had returned, had dropped to her knees beside him and was checking his airway.
As they consulted urgently in German, more noise and movement behind the Amiens, which billowed out suddenly: faded blossoms, a fête champêtre, prodigal nymphs disporting themselves amidst fountain and vine. I was staring at a satyr peeping at them slyly from behind a tree when, unexpectedly —something against my leg—I started back violently as a hand swiped from underneath and clutched my trouser cuff. From the floor, one of the dirty bundles—swollen red face just visible from under the tapestry—inquired of me in a sleepy gallant voice: “He’s a margrave, my dear, did you know that?” I pulled my trouser leg free and stepped back. The boy on the floor was rolling his head a bit and making sounds like he was drowning. “Potter.” Boris had gathered up my coat and was practically stuffing it in my face. “Come on! Let’s go! Ciao,” he called into the kitchen with a lift of his chin (pretty dark head appearing in the doorway, a fluttering hand: bye, Boris! Bye!) as he pushed me ahead of him and ducked behind me out the door. “Ciao, Horst!” he said, making a call me later gesture, hand to ear. “Tschau Boris! Sorry about this! We’ll talk soon! Up,” said Horst, as the Irishman came up and grabbed the boy’s other arm from underneath; together they hoisted him up, feet limp and toes dragging and—amidst hurried activity in the doorway, the two young teenagers scrambling back in alarm—hauled him into the lighted doorway of the next room, where Boris’s brunette was drawing up a syringe of something from a tiny glass bottle.
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