Chapter 8: Gold on a Spoon

On Monday night Theda came to dinner with a bottle of wine and a list of questions.

She walked into the shop in her scrubs and clogs, with her curls pinned up on a pencil.

She looked Maddox over from beard to boots.

"So you're the ladder man."

"I'm the ladder man," he said.

"Any criminal record?"

"One parking ticket. I contested it."

"Siblings?"

"Two sisters. They'd like you."

"Do you hurt people for sport?"

"I make tables," Maddox said gravely. "It's the opposite."

Theda turned to me.

"I love him, he's allowed," she said, and handed him the wine.

He cooked on the hot plate upstairs, a skillet of sausage and peppers in far too much garlic.

We ate at the little table, with Theda on the bed and Maddox on a nail keg, and nobody once mentioned Kendrick Marlow.

I noticed that around the second glass.

I noticed that I was laughing, a real laugh, with my mouth full.

"Show him the gold," Theda said, pointing her fork. "He's been staring at your arms all night."

"I have not," Maddox said.

"You have."

"Okay, I have."

I brought down my kit from the studio, the little book of leaf in its tissue pages, the size, the gilder's tip.

I put a plain wooden spoon on the table and painted a thin coat of size on the bowl.

"Now you wait," I said. "It has to get tacky, not wet. You'll know when it squeaks."

"Like a cot?" Maddox said.

Theda choked on her wine.

I kicked him under the table, and he grinned into his beard.

When the size squeaked against my knuckle, I opened the book.

"Hold your breath."

"Why?"

"Because this is two molecules thick, and a sneeze will send it to the ceiling."

He held his breath until his face went red.

I lifted a sheet on the tip and laid it onto the spoon, and it clung and glowed.

"There," I said softly.

Maddox let the breath go in a huge whoosh, and the next sheet in the book flew straight up into his beard.

It stuck.

He sat there with a glittering gold mustache and a face of enormous dignity.

Theda slid off the bed.

She laughed until she had to hold the wall, and then she picked up her bag and wiped her eyes.

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