Page 64 of Theo of Golden

To which Mrs. Gidley replied:

I had an arrangement sent to Mr. Theo from Blossomopolis. I will open the back gate for delivery. Would you like me to order a cake and have lunch here at the office one day next week? Invite Asher?”

She, too, was being changed by the old man’s presence.

Once her initial skepticism and distrust of Theo had been assuaged, and the more she bought into the goodness of the bestowals, a lightness crept into her disposition. There was a noticeable new enthusiasm about her work. She even became giggly at times about belonging to his cabal of generosity. She knew not to ask too much about the individual bestowals; that was Theo’s private domain, and he tended to be protective of matters discussed at those meetings. But she was intrigued, inspired, and entertained by the few bits of information he was willing to share. The project seemed worthy of a movie.

After years of settled routine at Ponder House — a more honest word might have been “boredom” — Mrs. Gidley was enjoying the sense of mild adventure that Theo had brought to their work. The portrait giftings, the medical treatments for Lamisha, and the small charitable purchases that showed up on his credit card bills each month (which Mrs. Gidley paid from his trust account) were a stark departure from the work she had done for decades at the firm.

Even before Theo moved to Golden, she had felt the slow contraction of a soul that had given itself too completely, and with too great a sense of importance, to the marketplace. Theo’s creative generosity was a welcome disruption to business as usual.

She still knew almost nothing about his past, and she still held onto some small, gnawing suspicions about the man and his motives. She had racked her brain and combed through the office files for any memory of him as a previous client of Ponder House. No luck on either front.

She had learned over the years to live with partial truth about many of the Ponder House clientele. She resigned herself to the fact that Theo would be one more in a long line of mysteries, though she beheld him with a much keener sense of wonder.

Unwittingly, Mr. James Ponder and Mrs. Anita Gidley had become apprentices in the world according to Theo.

CHAPTER 37

Mrs. Gidley once offered the suggestion to Theo that he simply buy all the portraits at once, schedule a public gala at the Chalice, call in the television cameras, and make a grand presentation. Get it over with in one fell swoop.

“It would certainly save both of us a lot of work, wouldn’t it?” Theo replied. “But the giving is part of the gift. And think of all the stories I would miss if we did them all at once.”

If Theo had followed her suggestion, he would never have met Cleave Torber.

But he didn’t, and so he did.

The gift was meant for a young woman named Clarise.

Her portrait showed a beautifully proportioned face with sensuous lips and serious, half-sleepy, intelligent eyes. Her expression seemed cautious and hesitant, perhaps even afraid. Whatever it was, there was a mystique about her. Her straight dark hair was pulled back with loose strands at the temples. She had prominent cheekbones and a slender neck that tilted slightly to her right so that she looked at the camera from the left corner of her eyes. She appeared to be in her late twenties or early thirties.

Hers was a face worthy of a magazine cover.

It was also a face that, in addition to being colorful or interesting in some indefinable way, had suffered loss. Theo saw sadness in her features.

For some reason, he had doubts that she would accept his invitation. Still, he arrived at the Fedder half an hour early and took his place on the bench. The Promenade was quieter than usual for a Thursday evening in June.

At seven o’clock, no Clarise.

At seven-oh-five, one Cleave Torber.

His steps were hurried and insistent. His eyes were locked on Theo as he approached the fountain.

He was clearly a man on a mission.

Under different circumstances, Theo might have noted the young man’s striking good looks. He was as handsome as Clarise was beautiful and just as worthy of a magazine cover. They had obviously chosen each other with their eyes.

But the slender, muscular Cleave Torber who descended on Theo like a dark cloud was disfigured with anger. Everything attractive about him was twisted with contempt and jealousy. And everything about him as he approached the Fedder — his stride, his facial expression, and eventually his tone of voice — advertised forthcoming violence.

He stepped close to the bench, set his feet like a gunfighter, arms slightly away from his sides, and looked down imperiously at the old man. He wasted no time on courtesies as he spit a question at Theo.

“Are you the one who wrote this to my girlfriend?”

He held out the letter Theo had sent to the young woman. Theo recognized it immediately. “Yes, I wrote it. But is Clarise going to —”

“I don’t know who you think you are, old man, and I don’t appreciate that prissy ass artist doing a portrait of her and hanging it in that coffee shop without my permission. If you weren’t so old, I’d kick your ass across the river.”

Torber hovered over Theo, so close to the bench that Theo could not have stood if he’d wanted to. The old man looked into the anger-filled eyes peering down at him and tried to cobble a sentence together. He was less afraid than confused. Surely he could convince the man to see reason.