Chapter 21
The exteriors of those houses — gables, columns, porticoes, handrails, dormers, ceilings, doors, window frames — pointed to a bygone architectural era that celebrated whimsy and individuality in residential design.
Porches were standard fare. Some wrapped around the entire circumference of the houses to which they were attached. Others were mere nooks, often beside a front door. All allowed for and seemed to encourage the blessed leisure art of sitting and relaxed conversation.
Lawns and gardens in the Boughery were well-groomed and meticulously cared-for. On spring and summer days, the scent of gardenia, tea olive, camellia, and narcissus beckoned walkers closer and closer to the yards, where those fragrant plants grew in abundance.
In the early generations of Golden’s history, houses in the Boughery had belonged to wealthy leaders in the community.
More recently, during Golden’s rejuvenation, many of the houses had been purchased by an eclectic assortment of artists, young families, professionals, and affluent history buffs who were willing to live at the borderlands of an increasingly gentrified town center to the north and a chronically impoverished low-rent district to the south.
An abiding hope that the downtown would continue to flourish and, at the same time, retain a healthy regard for the city’s past was a common trait amongst the tribe of Boughery residents. They were proud and protective of their little province, Asher among them.
At 8:58 a.m., Theo arrived at 107 South Broadway, on the west side of the median.
It was a three-story house — pewter gray with green trim, red front door, and wraparound porch on three sides.
Though obviously intended to be a residence at its inception, Asher and Brooke had bought it cheap and converted it into a studio.
Asher did most of his work there, awash in natural light and able, through an assortment of strategically placed windows, to see trees and sky at all times with a mere tilt or turn of his head.
Theo climbed five steps up to the porch and knocked on the door.
He was a mixture of mild uneasiness and eagerness at the prospect of conversation with the young prodigy.
As he waited for Asher to answer, he surveyed the porch.
It was deep and long on the front side with a balustrade of turned hourglass spindles.
The porch ceiling was painted powder blue.
An old superstition held that such a practice was effective at keeping bad spirits from entering a house and also at keeping spiders from spinning webs in the corners.
Perhaps it worked. No bad spirits seemed to be present as Theo waited for Asher’s welcome, nor did he see any spiders.
Bronze wind chimes, still and silent at the moment, hung at one end of the porch. An assortment of wicker furnishings, neatly organized and cared-for, filled the area without crowding it. Theo was making mental notes of flowers and plants around the lawn when he heard footsteps inside the house.
Asher opened the door and wiped blue paint from his right hand with a towel, before holding it out to Theo.
“Good morning, Theo. Sorry to make you wait. I was just finishing a canvas and cleaning my brushes.”
Theo hesitated to step inside. “Please, Mr. Asher, let me come back at a more convenient time. I can come whenever you’d like. I don’t want to take you from your work.”
“No, really,” Asher insisted. “This is a perfect time. I woke up early and came on over to touch up something I was working on last night. I just finished, so we can celebrate over coffee. Please, this is a good time. Come in.”
Finally convinced, Theo entered as Asher held the door for him. The smell of coffee and the strains of music, something baroque, greeted them. Theo, in true European fashion, presented a bouquet of flowers to Asher.
“Thank you, Theo. Ah, echinacea and narcissus. My mother’s favorites.
How did you know?” Asher pointed to the wall behind Theo.
“Here’s a painting I did years ago for her.
Echinacea and narcissus. I’m guessing you saw it on my website, or Shep tipped you off.
Thank you. Anything that makes me think of my mom is welcome here. ”
Theo had barely glanced at the painting when Asher directed him to the back of the house.
The walls along the hallway were filled with Asher’s work.
Theo was tempted to stop and linger with each step but he resisted, settling instead for mere glances left and right as he walked to the large room that served as Asher’s work area.
Throughout that large, open room — hanging on the walls, displayed on the floor, stacked on tables, framed, unframed, matted, large, small, painted, drawn, finished, unfinished, landscapes, cityscapes, birds, flowers, nudes, still lifes, portraits and more portraits — the genius and exuberant output of Asher Glissen was on stunning display.
For Theo, 107 South Broadway was sensory overload.
If the entrance hall was an appetizer, this room was the main course of a feast.
Three easels — facing the south, west, and north walls — held canvasses or drawings in various stages of completion.
On one was an unfinished oil portrait, slightly less than life-sized, of a distinguished older man. He was standing in what appeared to be a home library. The tones were dark and subdued.
The middle easel held a somewhat smaller work in progress, a pencil drawing of a child on snow-white paper. She was kneeling on a sidewalk beside a bucket of chalk, drawing a large smiley face that was asymmetrical and disproportionate.
In Asher’s composition, there was no background at all to the little girl. The viewer was forced to see her and only her.
The intricacy of the lines that composed the child, the soft shading of her face, the smallness of her body against the bare background, and the delicacy with which those elements had been laid on the paper created a sense that she had been whispered into existence.
The drawing, as Asher explained later, was an illustration — one of forty-six — that he had done for a children’s book.
The third easel was a riverscape after nightfall. In contrast to the realism of the other two, this one, on a wide narrow Gessobord, was an impressionistic work in oil in which dense layers of color had been applied with a palette knife.
The river in the painting was stippled in various shades of blue, black, white, and peach.
The tree line, in deep greens, stood against a night sky that was purple at the horizon and darkened into blackness as it ascended.
The piece was unlike Asher’s other work and yet, to Theo’s eye, it bore the same delicacy of touch that was a defining quality of the artist’s style.
Theo took a cursory glance around the room, resisting again his desire to observe and study each piece closely.
The sheer richness of the place washed over him.
Soft morning light, the scent of paint, the finery of oriental rugs, the aura of mastery, the history of the space, and the younger man’s inviting presence enlivened the older.
Theo would have gladly foregone conversation, at least for a while, to meander from frame to frame, stack to stack, wall to wall, easel to easel. But when Asher offered coffee and nodded to a pair of cushioned chairs with a small table between them, Theo politely took a seat.
“Asher, thank you for letting me come by. I see now that you do more than portraits.”
Asher shrugged. “I try. Portraits have definitely been my bread and butter over the years, and I’m always honored when somebody asks me to do one for them.
I love the challenge of drawing faces. Plus, I have a wife and daughter and a mortgage and all that, and portraits pay the bills.
But I like to always have something I’m working on for the sheer pleasure of being creative.
That one,” Asher pointed to the river scene on the easel, “is my present diversion. Ones like that usually don’t sell, but they pay me in other ways.
They help keep me in love with what I do.
But enough about me. What’s your story, Theo? I detect an accent. Where’s home?”
Asher already knew, from speaking with his niece, Minnette, that Theo was from Portugal, but he asked anyway.
“I have lived in many places,” Theo said, “but I was born and grew up in Portugal, a little town near Porto in the north, a place called Pinh?o, in the Douro River Valley with the hills and vineyards. It was a wonderful place to be a child. My parents were simple people, farmers, but they loved beauty, and they loved books, though we didn’t have so many.
They died many years ago. I have been a businessman and investor for much of my life, so I’ve lived in big cities for the most part: Paris, Florence, Rio.
I have a home in New York City now. I’ve been there for almost twenty years. ”
“And what brings you to Golden?”
“I have some properties nearby that need my attention.”
Asher remained silent momentarily in the hope that Theo might say more. Theo didn’t, using the pause instead to sip his coffee.
“How long will you be here?” Asher asked.
“I’m not sure, but Mr. Ponder — you know him, yes? — has been kind enough to let me rent his apartment at Ponder House. It’s a lovely place.”
Asher seemed surprised. “I didn’t know Mr. Ponder rented that apartment, but I’m happy to hear it. You’ll have a front-row seat to the Promenade from up there.”
Theo nodded. “I’m very fortunate. It’s a beautiful place. You’ll have to come see me sometime.”
“Theo, I hope the locals have been kind to you so far. I’ve been in Golden pretty much all my life — not a very ambitious artist, I guess — and I can’t really compare it to anywhere else, but I know we’ve got some fine, generous people in our town.
Got plenty of problems and bad elements too, but there seems to be a prevailing goodness here most of the time. ”