Chapter 36
The relationships of Theo and Mr. Ponder as landlord/tenant, consultant/client, and confidant/confider remained steadfast during the Golden year. But after the first few weeks had passed, their status as peers and business associates evolved unmistakably into a friendship.
Theo was grateful for his younger acquaintances — Shep, Kendrick, Basil, Simone, Asher, even Lamisha — and was honored they had adopted him into their circle.
But there was much about their world that he did not understand — technology, music, social media, virtual reality, digital everything.
He was an old man and an old soul, out of step with the gadgetry and zeitgeist of the times.
Having one person, an almost-contemporary, with whom he could be unguarded, someone with whom he could speak freely about his past, a confederate and co-conspirator with whom he could quietly carry out his desire to be helpful, an intellectual equal with whom he could discuss a wide range of topics and questions, and a source of information from which he could learn about the city and its people — all meant that Theo often made the inconvenient walk from his apartment to Mr. Ponder’s office.
The current of respect and fondness ran in the other direction as well.
From the start, Mr. Ponder opined that, in Theo, he had met a superior, a mentor, a rarity.
His knowledge of the man’s background only affirmed that opinion.
He was happy for any chance they might have to spend time together, and his small workload easily accommodated Theo’s spontaneous visits.
Mrs. Gidley had been instructed to allow those visits whenever possible. At first, she was not a fan of the arrangement. To her sense of propriety, there was something undignified about unscheduled, unannounced intrusions. But soon enough, she learned to bend the old protocols.
It might happen, for example, that Theo would walk into Mr. Ponder’s office, fresh from the Chalice, open book in hand, and ask Mrs. Gidley if he might have a minute with the consultant. Permission granted, he would walk to the second floor and enter the hallowed space thusly:
“Mr. Ponder, may I read something to you? I wonder what you think about this bit by Mr. Tolstoy.”
Or:
“James, can you explain about the farmers’ strike in India? I read about it in the Times this morning. Do you think their grievance is valid?”
Even when Mr. Ponder could offer no answer or insight to Theo’s questions, they enjoyed ‘good talk’ together if only for a handful of minutes.
As the friendship between the two men deepened, Mrs. Gidley detected a subtle but notable change in Mr. Ponder’s demeanor.
He was still the serious, dignified man of business he had always been, but there were flashes of cheerfulness and energy that could only be attributed to the old man’s influence.
It was not unusual for Mr. Ponder to leave a magazine article, a newspaper story, or a book excerpt on the secretary’s desk with a note:
Please make a copy of this for Theo. We talked about this topic yesterday, and I think he might be interested in what this writer says about it.
Or a request:
Please remind Theo about the chamber orchestra concert on the 18th. Mention that they’ll be playing Copland.
Or:
Anita, please send flowers to Theo for his birthday next week. Maybe something native to Portugal. Arrange delivery with the florist.
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.