Theo of Golden

He was in­ter­ested in the plaque that told the story of the me­dian, called the Prom­e­nade, that ran down the mid­dle of Broad­way. (Wher­ever he lived or trav­eled, Theo made a habit of read­ing his­toric mark­ers, some­thing he was able to do pro­fi­ciently in five lan­guages.)

He was in­ter­ested in a sculp­ture, of mod­ern vin­tage, near the en­trance of the uni­ver­sity nurs­ing school.

He took par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est in a small bird that perched and begged for crumbs from a bench along the side­walk.

Theo stopped, bent slightly at the waist with his hands clasped be­hind him, and whis­pered to the im­plor­ing crea­ture. “I’m sorry, dear fel­low, but I have noth­ing to give you this morn­ing. Per­haps to­mor­row? And stop com­plain­ing. Be glad you’re not in New York to­day.”

He picked up an empty beer bot­tle and put it in a nearby trash can.

At one point, he took out a small mag­ni­fy­ing glass, a loupe, from his pocket to study a pur­plish aza­lea bloom.

And on and on.

Those punc­tu­a­tions of in­ter­est turned Theo’s walk into a crawl. By the time he had gone a mere two blocks, morn­ing traf­fic was steady, the side­walks were be­gin­ning to buzz with stu­dents and busi­ness­peo­ple, and the park­ing spa­ces on both sides of the Prom­e­nade, which had been va­cant ear­lier, were al­most full.

But not to worry.

On this day, and for the fore­see­able fu­ture, Theo had no dead­lines, no meet­ings, and no obli­ga­tions. He was at lib­erty to en­joy the care­free­ness of un­fet­tered flex­i­bil­ity and com­plete anonymity. He was a mere tourist.

He did not know a soul in the town.

Well… per­haps one.

He was not yet cer­tain how long he would be there — weeks, months, longer? — but in very short or­der, he was pleased with the feel of his new tem­po­rary home.

First im­pres­sion: a very pleas­ant place to be, and ap­pro­pri­ately named.

Golden.

CHAP­TER 2

As Theo con­cluded his stroll along Broad­way, he re­turned to the small cof­fee shop he had passed ear­lier that morn­ing. The aroma of caf­feine hung like a scented cloud (and func­tioned as highly ef­fec­tive ad­ver­tis­ing) at the en­trance to the busi­ness.

A painted win­dow­pane next to the door iden­ti­fied the es­tab­lish­ment in gold let­ters out­lined in black:

The Chal­ice

Light Street and Broad­way

Mon­day through Thurs­day, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, 7 a.m. to 11 p.m.

Sun­day, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Once in­side, Theo took a deep breath and scanned the room.

Stand­ing, sit­ting, alone and in small clus­ters of var­i­ous gen­er­a­tions, eth­nic­ity, and at­tire, peo­ple of all sorts had gath­ered in wit­ness to the shop’s mag­netic pull.

A young man leav­ing the build­ing with a cello on his back and a cof­fee in hand skill­fully nav­i­gated the ta­bles and the in­com­ing cus­tomers with oc­ca­sional whis­pers of “ex­cuse me.” He caught Theo’s eye with a side­ways glance, smiled, nod­ded, and spoke a greet­ing. Such a thing was un­usual, even sus­pect, in the big cities where Theo had spent most of his life, but he re­cip­ro­cated the ges­ture with a nod and a smile, then stepped to­ward the short line where or­ders were placed.

He sensed that he might be­come a reg­u­lar there, an in­tu­ition that proved true for the year he lived in Golden.

If only the cof­fee is as rich as the am­biance, he thought.

That wish­ful pos­si­bil­ity seemed un­likely.

Theo was used to the strong cof­fees of Eu­rope — abatanado and café pin­gado in Lis­bon, café con leche in Madrid, espresso in Bologna, café noisette in Mar­seilles. The Amer­i­can shops had of­ten dis­ap­pointed him, even in New York, where, for ev­ery ex­cel­lent cup he’d con­sumed, he had en­dured a half dozen let­downs. His stan­dards, he had been told, were rather ex­act­ing.

The old man ex­changed a greet­ing with the barista at the counter, placed his or­der, re­ceived his drink, and took a seat in a nearby arm­chair.

He was more than a lit­tle sur­prised at the qual­ity of the espresso and nod­ded ap­prov­ingly as the first sip rested on his tongue.

He stud­ied the room: the cus­tomers’ faces, their voices, greet­ings, and ges­tures; the care with which the cheer­ful barista did his work; the ac­tiv­ity from ta­ble to ta­ble.

But in short or­der, his at­ten­tion was drawn to and fixed en­tirely on the art­work that cov­ered the walls of the shop.

On the left, right, and rear walls were por­traits, ninety-two of them in to­tal, done in pen­cil on white pa­per and in black frames of three sizes. All had ob­vi­ously been done by the same artist. And, as if to re­flect the cus­tomers in the shop at that mo­ment, the col­lec­tion in­cluded a full range of hu­man­ity — age, race, and ex­pres­sion. Por­traits and por­traits and more por­traits.

Even from the dis­tance be­tween him­self and those framed faces, Theo per­ceived the rich­ness of de­tail and del­i­cacy with which they had been ren­dered. There was a qual­ity to them, an alive­ness, that would al­most make one be­lieve the peo­ple por­trayed were spec­ta­tors of the Chal­ice rather than mere adorn­ments on the walls.

The old man’s mind be­gan to spin a fan­ci­ful vi­sion: each of the ninety-two frames is a win­dow. Each face de­picted in the frames is stand­ing out­side the build­ing, peek­ing in with amuse­ment at the cus­tomers on the in­side. At night, when the shop is closed, the faces in the por­traits leave their frames, step in­side the shop, min­gle, talk about who and what they’ve seen or over­heard that day, share sto­ries, and then re­turn home by open­ing.

He smiled at the col­or­ful, if lu­di­crous, idea. Such things crossed his mind fre­quently.

He had the imag­i­na­tion of a poet.

But he had, too, the eyes and mind of a con­nois­seur. Though he was eas­ily in­ter­ested in many things, he was keenly in­ter­ested in a par­tic­u­lar few. Por­trai­ture fell into that cat­e­gory.

And so, while he wanted very much to study each of the ninety-two draw­ings closely and slowly, he de­cided to wait for a more op­por­tune time, when the shop was less crowded.

For now, he drank his espresso in small, de­lib­er­ate sips. To do oth­er­wise, in his mind, would have been dis­re­spect­ful, even ir­rev­er­ent, to the barista’s art. When he fin­ished his drink, he took up his hat, saun­tered out of the shop with glances to the left and right, and re­turned to the ho­tel.

Later that af­ter­noon, fol­low­ing lunch and a nap, Theo walked to the river, strolled a sec­tion of paved path­way south to north, sat for a quar­ter hour with his face sun­ward, and then made his way back to the cof­fee shop. Aside from a few ta­bles oc­cu­pied by stu­dents, the place was empty.

There was no line at the counter when Theo stepped up to place his or­der.

“Wel­come back,” the barista said. “Twice in one day.”

Theo was im­pressed that the man re­mem­bered him, es­pe­cially given the num­ber of cus­tomers who had been in the shop at rush hour ear­lier in the day.

“My dear fel­low, you made a su­perb espresso this morn­ing. Well done and thank you. Per­fectly je ne sais quoi. I have re­turned for the en­core.”

The younger man chuck­led. He didn’t of­ten hear French in the Chal­ice. “Well, thank you, sir. I will aim to make this one even bet­ter. If it’s not just right, please let me know. My name is Shep. And you are…?”

Shep reached a hand across the counter. The old man grasped it in both of his. “My friends call me Theo. It is very nice to meet you.”

Shep noted the pre­cise enun­ci­a­tion and for­eign ac­cent in the old man’s speech.

“And you as well. What brings you to Golden?”

“I am here on busi­ness. But right now I’m very in­ter­ested in the por­traits.” Theo ges­tured to­ward the walls. “I no­ticed them this morn­ing and am back to look at them more closely. Can you tell me about them?”

By then a group of four women had en­tered the shop and formed a line be­hind Theo.

“I’ll be glad to, Mr. Theo, soon as I get a break. But here’s some­thing that will get you started. It might an­swer some of your ques­tions. And I want you to tell me about you when we get a minute.”

Shep handed Theo a lo­cal mag­a­zine, The Gold Stan­dard. On the cover was a pic­ture of the cof­fee shop, taken at the en­trance through a fish­eye lens that caught all three walls — left, right, rear — and most of the por­traits. In the cen­ter of the pic­ture stood Shep and an­other lean, slightly gray-headed man, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and a tweed jacket. The cap­tion read, “The Art of the Chal­ice.”

Theo opened the mag­a­zine, turned to the ar­ti­cle, and be­gan read­ing.

It be­gan as a lark. A “what if?”

A “would you?”

A “maybe.”

Cof­fee shop as art gallery.

But that is what the Chal­ice, one of the city’s most pop­u­lar down­town busi­nesses, has be­come in re­cent months. Lo­cated at the cor­ner of Light Street and Broad­way, the Chal­ice is owned and op­er­ated by Shep and Ad­die Carlile, both na­tives of Golden.

They bought the un­oc­cu­pied three-story build­ing dur­ing the early days of the down­town re­nais­sance and, for al­most a year, spent week­ends and free time ren­o­vat­ing the ground floor. When the build­ing was fi­nally com­pleted, they left their bank jobs, ap­pren­ticed at an up­scale cof­fee shop in At­lanta for two months to learn the art of cof­fee, and even­tu­ally opened their doors to strong sales and five-star re­views. The Chal­ice of­fers a lim­ited pre­mier as­sort­ment of drinks and light pas­tries.

Since the shop’s open­ing, a loyal clien­tele has led to a thriv­ing busi­ness. Its lo­ca­tion — within two blocks of per­for­mance venues, restau­rants, re­tail busi­nesses, the court­house, and Golden Uni­ver­sity’s School of Art and De­sign — pro­vides the Chal­ice with a steady stream of cus­tomers. Go any day at any hour, and you’ll see a va­ri­ety of faces among the pa­trons.

Some of those faces never leave the room!

The Chal­ice is a few streets away from the home and stu­dio of Asher Glis­sen, also a na­tive of Golden and one of its most prom­i­nent artists. Over the course of his ca­reer, he has taught pri­vate lessons, served as cu­ra­tor of the Bred­low Cen­ter for the Arts, il­lus­trated nu­mer­ous ad pieces and pe­ri­od­i­cals, and be­come renowned as a mas­ter of por­trai­ture.

When the cof­fee shop opened, Glis­sen was one of the first cus­tomers in line. He claims to have spent a siz­able por­tion of his re­tire­ment sav­ings on cof­fee within months of the shop’s open­ing.

A year ago, the Carliles in­vited Glis­sen to dis­play some of his art­work in the shop. He took the idea and ran with it.

Shep Carlile ex­plains, “Asher said he had some­thing in mind but didn’t tell us what it was. About a month later, he showed up with half a dozen por­traits of some of our reg­u­lar cus­tomers. We were floored. It took off from there. Peo­ple love it. Some folks come in just to look at the draw­ings. We’re re­ally proud to have them here.”

There are presently 92 por­traits on dis­play. All are for sale. When one sells, an­other piece takes its place.

Glis­sen speaks of the cof­fee shop in glow­ing terms. “The Chal­ice has be­come an in­sti­tu­tion down here, a real melt­ing pot. I’ve tried to cap­ture that in the por­traits. My mother, who was an artist, used to tell me that ev­ery face is a story. I think she was right. These draw­ings are a neigh­bor­hood in their own right. It’s been a la­bor of love to bring them to­gether. I’m thank­ful that Ad­die and Shep have given them a home.”

Glis­sen can of­ten be seen at the Chal­ice and else­where down­town, cam­era in hand, pho­tograph­ing ma­te­rial for his work. If you’re in the cof­fee shop, he might well ask you to look his way. If he does, don’t be sur­prised if you be­come part of the Chal­ice gallery.

More cus­tomers en­tered the shop. While Shep pre­pared their drinks, Theo reread the ar­ti­cle, then rose from his chair and walked to the rear of the room.

A dozen por­traits, three rows of four, were hung in neat lines on the back wall. Each was a head-and-shoul­ders com­po­si­tion. Theo re­moved a pair of wire-rimmed eye­glasses from his pocket, looped them over his ears, clasped his hands be­hind his back, and be­gan to study the draw­ings from a yard away. One mo­ment his head was held down to look over the top of his eye­glasses; the next his head tilted back to look through the lenses perched at the end of his nose. An art his­to­rian at the Lou­vre could not have been more en­gaged with or en­thralled by the mas­ter­pieces at that great mu­seum than the old man was by the por­traits in the Chal­ice.

He moved closer, a foot or so from the wall, and scru­ti­nized each draw­ing down to the most in­tri­cate of pen­cil lines. He was obliv­i­ous to time and to the go­ings-on in the shop around him.

When Shep had filled all his drink or­ders, he spot­ted Theo across the room but chose not to dis­turb him. He was pleased that the old fel­low was so ab­sorbed in the art­work but was also cu­ri­ous at what might be be­hind such keen in­ter­est.

Even as a boy, Theo had been fas­ci­nated by fine lines and in­tri­cacy. Much of his child­hood was spent peer­ing through a mag­ni­fy­ing glass at feath­ers, leaves, and in­sects in the vine­yards around his home. He was be­daz­zled by spi­der­webs, drag­on­fly wings, and the un­der­sides of mush­rooms. He col­lected postage stamps and was spell­bound when he had first seen Da Vinci’s line draw­ings and sketches. As a young adult and later, it had been his habit to carry a loupe — a gift from a teacher — in his pocket in or­der to ex­am­ine small ob­jects and de­tails not vis­i­ble to the naked eye. For one like him, the por­trai­ture in the Chal­ice was an em­bar­rass­ment of riches, a trea­sure trove, a vis­ual feast.

At ev­ery frame, Theo leaned for­ward and gen­u­flected, a man trans­fixed.

He moved to the front of the shop and re­sumed his pe­rusal, once di­rectly over the heads of cus­tomers sit­ting at a ta­ble abut­ting the wall. He begged their par­don but did not al­ter his course.

For him, each face re­vealed a mood that hinted at a story and begged a ques­tion.

What is that fel­low so wor­ried about?

Why is the young woman so bash­ful?

How would I de­scribe the ex­pres­sion on that child’s face?

And how, dear God, does the artist ren­der each one so con­vinc­ingly, over and over?

As he stud­ied the pieces, Theo be­came in­creas­ingly per­plexed, trou­bled even, that so many of the por­traits were still avail­able for sale. He was baf­fled by their price tags. Only $125 for this? Only $200? They are worth far more than that. Why, he won­dered, were ninety-two por­traits of this qual­ity, at these prices, still un­sold?

He lin­gered at the por­trait of a young woman with del­i­cate fea­tures, un­smil­ing, and with eyes that looked di­rectly into his. They had a haunt­ing fa­mil­iar­ity about them. Could it be?

From her, he moved his at­ten­tion one frame to the right, to the face of a young man look­ing away from the artist at some­thing out­side the frame. What was in those dart­ing eyes? Fear? Sus­pi­cion? Con­tempt? What­ever it was, he seemed ill at ease in front of the cam­era. He wore a win­ter cap and a high col­lar that in­di­cated cold weather.

Theo had been study­ing the por­traits for al­most an hour when Shep fi­nally joined him.

“They are some­thing else, aren’t they?”

Shep was wip­ing his fin­gers on a hand towel. He nod­ded to the por­trait in front of Theo, the one of the young man with the ner­vous eyes.

“That fel­low’s been through some hard stuff. His lit­tle girl got hurt real bad in a car ac­ci­dent a while back. The mother was killed. He doesn’t come here very of­ten, but he usu­ally just wants a reg­u­lar cof­fee with room for cream. I don’t think he even knows his pic­ture is up here.”

Theo nod­ded and turned to Shep.

“Do you know all the peo­ple on the walls?”

“I know most of them at least a lit­tle bit. Some I know pretty well. Some I don’t know at all. The artist usu­ally writes their names in small let­ters on the backs of the frames, so I can tell who they are if I need to know for some rea­son. But Mr. Theo, be­fore we talk about them, please tell me about you. What’s your story? You said you’re new to town. What brings you here? Where’s home?”

Theo waved off the ques­tions be­fore giv­ing a short an­swer.

“I have lived in a num­ber of places. I was born and raised in the north of Por­tu­gal, but I have lived for many years in New York City. I still have a place there, but I’m here on a bit of busi­ness, and my home to­day is Golden. Only one day and al­ready I am very fond of your city. And Mr. Shep, I par­tic­u­larly like your shop.”

The po­litely vague an­swer hardly con­sti­tuted the story that Shep had hoped for, but he didn’t press. A fuller ver­sion would per­haps un­fold in time.

“Please, just call me Shep. That’s what my friends call me. No Mis­ter.”

“Of course, thank you. And please, call me Theo. Speak­ing of names, why the Chal­ice?”

Now it was Shep’s time to be eva­sive. “It had a nice ring to it. I’ll tell you the longer story one of these days. Did you read the ar­ti­cle about the por­traits?”

Theo nod­ded. “I did, thank you. Very in­ter­est­ing.” He handed the mag­a­zine back to Shep.

“Mr. Shep — ex­cuse me, Shep — one thing I don’t un­der­stand. Why do peo­ple not buy the por­traits?”

Shep gri­maced, then rocked his head left to right a cou­ple of times in search of a proper re­sponse. “That’s a mys­tery to me, too, Theo. I know Asher’s got plenty to do, and he prob­a­bly doesn’t need any more work, but I was hop­ing this might cre­ate some busi­ness for him. So far it hasn’t worked out that way. Not yet. We sold a good num­ber at Christ­mas last year, but I’m still wait­ing for a big break­through. I have to be­lieve that one of these days, peo­ple are go­ing to re­al­ize what a trea­sure these are. Asher did one of Ad­die — that’s my wife, Ad­de­lyn — and it’s one of my most prized pos­ses­sions. If my house ever catches fire, it’ll be one of the first things I grab on the way out.” Shep hes­i­tated. “We love hav­ing them here, but I wish some­one would come along and buy all of them.”

Theo’s eyes widened slightly. He moved his hand to his mouth, thumb un­der his chin and in­dex fin­ger tap­ping his lips.

Shep looked to­ward the counter. A cus­tomer was wait­ing to place an or­der.

“Theo, I bet­ter get back to work. Thanks for com­ing in. You know, if you be­come a reg­u­lar here, there’s a good chance you’ll end up on the wall some­day. Wel­come to Golden. In­ci­den­tally, how was the cof­fee?”

“Su­perb. Ex­cep­tion­nelle! Mar­avil­hoso!” Theo smiled, ap­plauded softly, then pat­ted Shep on the arm. He walked out of the shop, crossed the street to the me­dian, and took a seat on a bench near the foun­tain.

He thought of the un­sold por­traits.

Of the homes that would be beau­ti­fied and the lives that would be en­riched by their pres­ence.