Chapter 2 Bess #3
I give his hand a pat for the business' sake, then remove it for my sake.
What he means is the majority share of the building housing the gallery and tea shoppe and the artists' flats above is his pet investment, his charitable cause. Theodore Pinkerton is a patron of the arts, which looks very good on Instagram.
Swivelling on his heels, he fingers each of the pieces of art as he steps past. "How's the hustle?"
"Sales are starting to increase now people are here on holiday. The cafe's turnover is up fifty percent on last month. We should be over seventy next month." It's an impressive increase, but standard for seasonal tourism.
"Savage. I knew I made a commitment to the right cause when I invested in you." He stops by my glorious, six-foot-long oil painting of a reclining Sleeping Beauty being kissed by Rapunzel. Sleeping Beauty's hand is wound in her tresses.
Hands in pockets, he leans in to read the price tag, then straightens with a snort. "Nobody who holidays here is going to pay two and a half thousand pounds for a Disney-princess lesbian-fantasy, Bess."
I don't bother to say he's missed the point of the painting entirely, that it's meant to be subversive, not a sexual fantasy. If he can't understand that just by looking at it, he won't understand why I might have painted it.
"What you should be showing is ornamentation like this." He thumbs the screen of his phone and turns it around with a single-handed flourish like he's doing a magic trick. It's a photo of a painting depicting a young couple partnered in a dance, viewed from a high angle.
Ah. So that's why he's here.
"It's by one of my London associate's wives-in-waiting, who's all mio amore for painting in oils. Look at it," he says completely unnecessarily. "It slays. It's vivid, it's got a beautiful innocence about it, it's–"
"Shit."
Theo turns the screen to face him. "It's not shit."
"It is shit. The woman's face is squashed and out of proportion, and the perspective's all wrong. Their arms are nearly half as long again as they should be. And even if it wasn't shit, she's not local. This is a gallery for Port Derrum artists, Theo."
Sing-songing my name, Theo moves ever so slightly into my space and turns the dial up on his smile from 20 watts to 100. "I told him you'd sell it for her." The problem with his smile is that he has too many teeth, like the dentist who applied his veneers over counted. He looks like a hyena.
This particular smile can mean only one thing. On occasion, Theodore Pinkerton tries to flex his guilt-making muscles to remind me he's pushed a lot of money my way without expecting much in the way of a return.
And on those occasions I remind him he might own seventy percent of the building, but he owns zero percent of the business. Except I do it with a more direct communication style.
"No. Untell him."
"I don't want to untell him, Bess. I want to support my boy."
His boy. "Your associate's girlfriend."
Theo concedes with the smallest of pauses. "Right."
"Support her by sending her to some art classes to learn the basics. When you open a gallery in London for London artists, you can sell her stuff then. This one's for Port Derrum art, which is what the out-of-town punters want and buy."
Theo eyes me for a beat, smile still in place, then he throws one hand in the air in surrender. "Aight. I'm just the landlord. You know best."
He turns to finger more of the art and the hand that remains in his pocket idly plays with his car keys. For a man who's extraordinarily aware of how he presents himself most of the time, he is extraordinarily unaware of what his wrist action makes it look like he's doing.
Naturally, I leave him to it.
Without taking his eyes off a delicately-rendered Port Derrum landscape that should sell before the week is out, he says, "Would you be killer and order me a flat white?"
Theo is a mere ten paces further away from the café's front counter than I am, so covering those extra couple of metres to order his own flat white shouldn't be much of an inconvenience.
But I suppose I have it in me to be 'killer'. I do need to keep up a reasonable working relationship with the man after all.
Tugging my forelock behind his back, I make my escape into the café.
I tell Lutek to make the coffee "to go", then gaze off into the middle distance to try to restore my equilibrium. I get two, blessed Theodore-free minutes before he saunters into the café.
"Lutek! My man! I've been meaning to ask. What sort of a tag is Lutek?"
Lutek beams. "Polish."
"You look Polish." Theo waves an arm in the direction of Lutek's head. "–all that strong Slavic bone structure – but you don't sound it."
"I've lived in Port Derrum since I was seven."
Two years younger than me, Lutek's more local than half the town – the retirees, the young couples wanting to give their children a wholesome upbringing, the life-crisis-ers coming to Port Derrum to 'find themselves' and finding a committed relationship to the local artisanal fungi instead.
"Nice one, chica." Theo has the indecency to wink at me.
"Giving it to the local Brexiteers. Black girl in the kitchen, too.
Heads must spin." He steps back and places a hand on his chest. "Or can I not say Black?
I'm never quite sure what's the new 'offensive'.
" He also has the indecency to raise his pointer fingers to invert-comma the word "offensive".
Ugh, he's a dick. Like I'd employ people purely to be politically provocative.
...
I mentally store the idea for consideration at a later date. "It's not the use of 'Black' that's the problem, Theo. Calling her a girl is a little, I don't know, infantilising?"
Lutek hands Theo his coffee, which gives him leave to ignore my comment in favour of removing the plastic lid to sniff the surface and hum a closed-eyed approval. "You make one savage brew, my man. You should be bottling that talent and selling it."
He puts the lid back on and walks backwards towards the door with two fingers pointed at me like a gun. "Bess," he says with a smirk and a wink and I will him to trip over and learn just how savage a freshly-made brew can be when decorating a shirt front.
He doesn't. He saunters competently back to his car without incident and guns the engine just loud enough and long enough that every single head in the café turns to look at him.
I can feel a headache and a G'n'T debrief with Ed coming on.