The Christmas Orphans Club(21)
“Theo, I don’t think ladies have bollocks.”
He laughs. “Your tits, then. Come on.” He leads me into the gallery.
A black-clad gallery girl looks up from her laptop and flashes Theo the barest of smiles. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“What are we looking for?” I whisper as he leads me into the first room.
“You don’t need to whisper, it’s not a library.”
“Well?” I ask using my full voice, but it feels wrong in a place like this.
“I’m looking for a piece for the bedroom.” He pauses like he’s debating whether to say more. “The piece above the bed was Elliot’s, but he took it with him when he left.”
Elliot is the latest in Theo’s string of mysterious paramours. Over the five years we’ve known Theo, we’ve heard rumors of his love interests, but rarely met them. Elliot, the third-chair violinist for the New York Philharmonic, was a notable exception. Theo seemed more serious about him. They lasted seven months, a record as far as I know. He moved into Theo’s apartment this summer after two months of dating.
Theo claimed Elliot sublet his apartment because he planned to be out of the city for the summer. The way Finn told it, Elliot was a gold digger using Theo for a lifestyle upgrade. But you could never be sure about Finn’s opinions on Theo’s romantic partners. He disliked them all on principle. The principle being they were not him.
“Why didn’t you bring Finn?” I ask. “Don’t you think he’d be better at this?”
“You know that’s untrue. He’d like everything because it was expensive.”
A snort-laugh sneaks out of me. He’s not wrong.
“I was so glad when you called to make plans,” Theo continues. “You and I haven’t spent any time just the two of us in a while, and I thought we could use an activity.” Again, not wrong.
“So, was there a reason you wanted to meet?” he asks. “Not that you need a reason, of course, I’m always happy to spend time with you.” He places a hand on my lower back to guide me into the next room, which is full of hyperrealistic paintings that look like photographs if you stand far enough away. There’s one of a man wearing small swim trunks with even smaller pineapples on them, only his torso and legs are visible. Another of a young girl facing away from the viewer, wearing baggy jeans and a pink backpack. None of the subjects have faces, but you can tell so much about them from these snippets of body parts and clothing.
“I wanted to talk about Christmas,” I say.
“I had a feeling that was the case.” He doesn’t give any indication of where he stands.
“I think we should do it. Give Finn one last Christmas adventure. One for the record books!” I have a whole speech prepared. I practiced in the bathroom mirror this morning. I wait to see how my opener is received before proceeding. I was fairly certain Priya would cave, but I’m not as sure about Theo. Even though Finn and I mended fences, Theo’s kept me at arm’s length the last year, and I’ve let him. But with our possible last Christmas looming, I need things to go back to how they were before the great Hannah-Finn fight, when we were at our best. Just the four of us.
He stops in front of a painting of two sets of bare legs, a woman in sandals and a man in sneakers, and cups a hand to his chin to consider it. I can’t tell if he’s interested in the piece or stalling. For a minute, I wonder if he has a foot fetish. As far as I’m concerned, the painting is weird, but then I got a D in my required art history elective in college.
“What do you think?” he asks after a minute.
“Of the painting or about Christmas? I told you what I think about Christmas, I think we should do it.”
“I’m on the fence about both, frankly. But I think this is too jarring for the bedroom.”
He moves to stand in front of the next painting, this one by a different artist. Two bodies float in a blue ocean portrayed with thick layers of paint caked on top of each other to suggest the appearance of waves. I stand next to him and wait for him to say more about which way he’s leaning on Christmas. Another thing I’ve learned from observing Theo’s relationships is he usually has one foot out the door, always preferring to leave than be left. I know Finn’s departure must be affecting him more than he’s let on.
After a minute of silent consideration of the swimmers, Theo speaks, eyes forward, addressing the painting instead of me. “I think you should have Christmas without me. I don’t want to get in the way.”
After our first Christmas as a foursome, we weren’t sure if we’d see Theo again. That spring, we invited him to happy hours at Tacombi and to see Finn’s off-off-Broadway play about JonBenét Ramsey’s murder where he played her nine-year-old brother, despite being almost three times his age. It was ironic, Finn claimed. But Theo declined every invitation saying he was sorry to miss us, but he was out of town. The more plans he declined the clearer it became his fancy apartment was more storage unit than home.
In his absence, we scoured Google for hints about him, but didn’t get very far without a last name.
That year, Finn and I spent endless hours parsing Theo’s texts over buckets of dollar beers at Lucky’s, our neighborhood bar. Was Theo sending a shirtless selfie—his chest bronzed and a coy smile on his face—because he was coming on to Finn or was it just because he was on a beautiful Caribbean beach? Was the photo of him eating a bao bun in Beijing alongside a text that said, Dim sum always makes me think of you, a nod to our Christmas dinner or was he actually alluding to the night before? And I knew there were other texts, too, ones Finn didn’t share with me. Sometimes he’d leave his phone unlocked on the table between us and I’d catch glimpses of long swaths of messages traded between them.