The Problem With Theo
1408 Words
I notice it at breakfast.
The way Zane goes still when Theo laughs.
Not dramatically. Not in the performed way of someone communicating something. The specific quality of a man whose body has registered new information and is processing it very carefully and very quietly while appearing to do nothing at all.
Theo is at the far end of the cookhouse table telling Priya something about a lion he worked with at his previous company. The story involves a misunderstanding about feeding schedules that ends with Theo in a compromising position and the lion looking deeply unimpressed. He tells it with his hands moving and his eyes warm and the specific ease of someone who finds his own disasters genuinely funny.
The table is laughing.
Priya who does not laugh easily is laughing.
I am laughing.
Theo catches my eye across the table.
He smiles.
Not the general smile. The specific one. The one that arrives when his eyes find mine and narrows slightly like the smile is just for this. Just for me. Like he has been looking for my reaction specifically and has found it and is glad.
My stomach does something small and specific.
I look at my coffee.
Zane is eating his eggs with the focused efficiency he brings to everything practical and his jaw is doing the thing it does when he is holding something still that wants to move.
He has eaten approximately four bites.
Theo says across the table: Ivy. Come settle a dispute.
I look up.
He is leaning forward with his elbows on the table and his eyes warm and direct on mine and the morning light catching the line of his jaw and I think:
This man is a problem.
He says: Priya says the correct response to finding unexpected wildlife in your equipment is immediate evacuation. I say context matters enormously and evacuation is an overreaction.
Priya says: there was a lion.
Theo says: a small lion. Relatively.
I say: there is no such thing as a relatively small lion Theo.
He says: Augustus would disagree.
I say: Augustus is seventeen years old and enormous.
He says: Augustus is a gentleman. He says it with the warm eyes still on mine. He has excellent taste.
He says it the way he says things that mean something beyond what they say. With the specific directness of someone who is not performing subtext but is also not hiding it.
I look at my coffee again.
Zane puts his fork down.
He stands up.
He says: rigging check.
He walks out.
His eggs are six bites eaten.
Mira beside me says: hm.
I say: don't.
She says: I said hm.
I say: the hm was very loud.
She turns a page of her book.
Theo across the table is talking to Priya again. His shoulder turned toward her now. Giving her the full attention. The easy transition of someone for whom warmth is not a finite resource to be rationed but simply how he moves through the world.
He glances back at me once.
Just once.
The warm eyes and the corner of his mouth.
I look at my coffee.
I find Zane at the equipment rack.
He is not checking anything.
He is standing at the rack with his clipboard and the expression of someone who has decided the clipboard is the most important thing in the room.
I say: the rigging was checked this morning.
He says: yes.
I say: at three forty five.
He says: yes.
I say: so the rigging check at eight forty five.
He says: thorough checking is not the same as sufficient checking.
I say: Zane.
He says: yes.
I say: you left six bites of eggs on the plate.
He says: appetites change.
I say: yours changed when Theo made me laugh.
A pause.
Long enough to mean something.
He says: I don't see the connection.
I say: the connection is sitting at the far end of the table eating six bites of eggs and then suddenly needing to check rigging that has already been checked.
He says: the appetite changed. He says it with the complete flat commitment of someone who has decided this is the position. He says: are we doing this or discussing my breakfast.
I say: we can do both.
He says: we're doing the session.
He says it with the quiet authority of someone who has ended a conversation by deciding it is ended.
I say: Zane.
He says: yes.
I say: he's warm.
He says: he's loud.
I say: that's not the same thing.
He says: close enough.
He goes back to the clipboard.
I lean against the rack.
I say: you checked the rigging at three forty five this morning.
He says: the north anchor needed attention.
I say: and at eight forty five it needs attention again.
He says: thorough.
I say: you left six bites of eggs on your plate.
He says: Calloway.
I say: yes.
He says: are we doing the session.
I say: the session is at nine.
He says: then we're doing the session at nine.
He makes a note on his clipboard.
The corner of his mouth moves.
Just barely.
There. Gone.
He says: go eat something. You haven't finished your breakfast either.
I say: my breakfast is fine.
He says: your breakfast is a coffee and half a piece of toast. He says it without looking up. That's not a breakfast. That's a position.
I stare at him.
He makes another note.
I say: you noticed what I ate for breakfast.
He says: I notice everything.
He says it simply.
Like it is just information.
Like noticing everything about me specifically is simply standard procedure and he sees no reason to make anything of it.
I stand at the equipment rack and I think about he notices everything said without emphasis and I think about Theo's specific smile across the breakfast table and the stomach thing it produced and I think about six bites of eggs and rigging checked at three forty five.
Two completely different kinds of dangerous.
Theo's warmth easy and available on the surface.
Zane's warmth hidden and specific and arriving in wrist wraps and anchor checks and I notice everything said to a clipboard.
Both of them doing something to me.
Neither of them making it simple.
I go back to the cookhouse.
Theo is still there.
He sees me come in and shifts slightly on the bench making space beside him in the easy natural way of someone who does not think about these things because warmth is simply how he operates.
I sit beside him.
His arm along the back of the bench behind me.
Not around me.
Behind me.
The warmth of him immediately present. The easy comfortable warmth that does not announce itself. That simply arrives and is there.
He says quietly: six bites.
I say: you counted.
He says: I count things too. He says it with the warm eyes doing the seeing more than they show thing. He says: he doesn't like me very much.
I say: he doesn't dislike you.
He says: that's a very specific distinction.
I say: he's careful about new people.
He says: he's careful about you. He says it simply. The specific difference. He pauses. I'm new to the lot. He's careful about me specifically because of you.
I look at my coffee.
He says: it's fine Ivy. He says my name the way he says things he means. Directly. He says: I'm not going anywhere. His arm shifts slightly on the back of the bench. The warmth of it closer without being on me. He says: and I'm not blind.
I say: Theo.
He says: finish your breakfast. He stands up. He looks down at me with the warm brown eyes and the easy smile and the something underneath both that is more serious than either. He says: the act needs you fed.
He goes.
I sit with my coffee.
I think about his arm along the back of the bench and the warmth of it and the I'm not blind said simply.
I think about six bites of eggs and I notice everything said to a clipboard.
I think about two completely different kinds of dangerous and what it means that both of them are doing something to me in completely different ways.
The coffee is cold.
I drink it anyway.
- Writer
