The Goldfinch

NYPD, FDNY, parked city vans with the windshield wipers going: K-9, Rescue Operations Battalion, NYC Hazmat. Some of the offices were modern and spare; others were crowded and dirty-looking, with untidy stacks of paper and books. Who would have appreciated her, and bought her pretty clothes and taken her to Paris for her birthday, and given her the life she deserved? And the painting, above his head, was the still point where it all hinged: dreams and signs, past and future, luck and fate.