The God Collector Page 5

  “Don’t worry, Mark, he won’t make a mess,” she said, putting one hand on her hip and leaving behind more blue-green fingerprints. Both Zimmer and Adler turned at her words. Zimmer didn’t seem thrilled at the interruption.

  Adler’s lips quirked just a little in something not quite a smile, but close. The last flecks of snow on his hair and shoulders were melting, leaving shining droplets in the black and gray.

  “Miss Speer,” he said, raising one hand in a half wave of greeting. “Hard at work, I see.” He took in Theo’s mussed hair and paint-spattered plastic coveralls, and to her surprise, the smile grew a little. “You look like you’re having fun.”

  Aki elbowed Theo, but she ignored him. “You know how I feel about my job, Mr. Adler,” she said. “I always have fun. Are you here for another look at the mummy?”

  “Never,” Adler said. “But I wanted to see things when the museum wasn’t on its best behavior. It took time for my schedule to clear enough to allow it.” He stopped at the edge of the tarpaulin, inclining his head a little.

  Theo shifted a little, unsure of what to do with herself.

  “And maybe take you out to lunch,” he added.

  Oh. She could feel heat rising in her face, and there wasn’t even a good reason for it this time. Her first instinct was to look away—break eye contact, find something else to talk about or just cover up her sudden confusion by dropping something. But dropping something in front of Mr. Adler wasn’t going to look good for her or the department—oh damn, she was turning red, wasn’t she?

  She played for time the only way she could think of and made a show of studying him mock seriously. Though the overall picture was as sleek as it had been at the gala, this time there was a little bit of telltale rumple around the edges: a scuff mark on one shoe, the worn leather of his wristwatch band, the droplets of melted snow. He looked less like the million-dollar donor now, and more like the man she was itching to sketch.

  “Thanks for asking nicely,” she said with a smile, silently ordering herself to act normal. “That actually sounds great. I have a break in about forty minutes, okay? If the paint fumes haven’t killed us all by then.”

  “I’ll meet you at the staff entrance,” he said. He nodded to her and moved on past, still trailed by the security escort, and disappeared into the next section of the hall. The gazes of the artists turned back to Theo, who could only feel her blush deepening.

  “You do realize that you don’t have to cooperate with the donors on everything, right?” Zimmer said dryly.

  “I know,” Theo replied. She fiddled with her paintbrush, trying to calm her nerves. “Relax. I’m not going to embarrass the department or give away the security codes, all right?”

  “I know,” Zimmer said. “I passed around the rules for worker-patron interaction three months ago, and you’re smart enough to remember them. What mystifies me is why you’re so calm about it.”

  Theo sighed and turned back to the wall, deliberately putting her back to the Security chief. “It’s just lunch, not the invasion of Poland.”

  “Just lunch with the controller of the Neith Trust,” Aki pointed out as he swung by for a fresh brush. “Who, by the way, has more money than either of us will ever see and spends it on sponsoring us. You can’t expect me not to make fun of that.”

  “Self-deprecation doesn’t look good on you, Aki,” Theo said. “How about you and Zimmer both stay out of my lunch plans?”

  “Only if you promise to tell me everything. Stock tips, for example.”

  Theo shucked her paint-spattered coveralls and checked her reflection in the dark mirror of the nearest sleeping computer monitor. There was still the smear of paint near her hairline, which she quickly removed with an alcohol wipe. Aside from that, she was…acceptable. Sighing, Theo fluffed her limp ash-blonde hair a little, then asked herself why she even cared. Business lunch meant businesslike, not pretty.

  Seth Adler was waiting outside, right where he’d said he would be, flecked again with fresh snow. The lead-colored sky sifted down flurries, and small drifts were already accumulating on the hoods of the parked cars. They melted when they hit the sidewalk, though, leaving only damp spots on the concrete.

  Theo huddled into her blue parka, but managed a smile as she stepped out into the cold. “Hope I’m on time,” she said. “I had to go all the way up to the loft to get out of my suit.”

  “You’re punctual,” he assured her. The cold seemed to be affecting him more than it did her; his cheeks were bright red. “I was early. Shall we?”

  “Sure,” she said, tucking her hands deeper into the jacket’s pockets. “What were you thinking? I usually throw a Hot Pocket in the caf microwave, but I don’t know if that’s your kind of thing.”

  “I was thinking of the Chancellor, actually,” Adler said. For a moment, Theo thought he was going to take her arm, but if he’d considered it, he changed his mind. Instead, he led the way to the parking lot, Theo following a step or two behind.

  “The what?”

  “A restaurant in the Loop. It’s old enough that nobody minds the pub décor, and just expensive enough to keep people from feeling uncultured about eating food that tastes good.”

  “Mind if I ask what your definition of ‘tastes good’ is?” Theo tactfully avoided mentioning the issue of payment, although her enthusiasm had dimmed slightly since his use of the word expensive. She was more than willing to pay her share, but mentioning how pricy the meal might be was kind of tacky.

  He won back some points, though, by frowning as he contemplated her question. “The problem is, there’s really no way to describe it without sounding like a double entendre.”

  “A lot of meat, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, I appreciate you trying not to be sleazy, but I did go to art school.” She gave him a bit of a smile back. “A little accidental double entendre is nothing compared to the stuff the second-year graphic design students got up to.”

  He surprised her by laughing, a hoarse little chuckle at odds with his seamless façade. “So I hear. Mr. Lee talked quite a lot about it. Too much, in fact.”

  Her smile faded a little. “He does that,” she agreed.

  “I’m sorry,” Adler said quickly. “Are you two—?”

  “We’re—” she began, but stopped. Adler’s poker face was good, but he hadn’t mastered the art of friendly disinterest. She could feel her cheeks warming a little as she smiled. “We’re friends,” she said.

  “I see.” He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have joked about another member of the cabal. Like the Marines? Offend one and you offend them all?”

  “Actually, that’s the Code of the Freaks,” Theo said. “But no, honestly, I don’t want you to get the wrong impression of the art department. We do like to make fun of each other, but we’re not…flakes, I guess.”

  Adler drew to a stop, and Theo bumped into him. The blush came back in full force and she took an instinctive step backwards, but Adler just looked over his shoulder and smiled a little. “Slippery this time of year,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Theo said quickly.

  It took her a moment to realize they’d just reached his car. It was sleek and dark gray, just like him, and had clearly been well cared for. The manufacturer’s logo was half-hidden by snow accumulating on the hood, but she still recognized it. She raised an eyebrow, surprised, as Adler unlocked the car.

  Theo hated city driving, but she loved good cars. A car was a work of collective art—a fine-tuned machine made for one purpose only. It was skill and technique bent to the service of imagination. And it could go really, really fast, which never hurt either.

  Sitting in front of her was a Mercedes S65 AMG, a car worth upwards of seventy-five thousand dollars and capable of topping 150 miles an hour. The seat on the
driver’s side was a little worn, but the passenger’s side looked fresh from the store.

  The car purred to life, and Adler glanced over at her. “Are you all right?” he said. “You look a little nervous.”

  “Just thinking,” she said.

  “I don’t think you’re a flake.”

  “What?”

  As the car peeled out of the parking lot, smooth as butter, Adler shot a quick look at Theo again. “That business about flakes. You’re very concerned about being seen as serious, aren’t you?”

  “I suppose,” she said, a little cautiously. “Isn’t everybody? I’m sure you want people to take your work seriously too.”

  Adler’s tone was wry. “The trouble is getting them to stop being serious about it. If I hear the words ‘so you manage investments—that’s very…interesting’ one more time, I’m going to quit. Even if my great-grandfather hadn’t started the Trust, I would have, just to have something to do.”

  “But you run your family’s businesses, don’t you?” Theo asked. “If you’re bored with it, why don’t you hire someone else to look after things?”

  “Family obligations, money, take your pick.” Adler slowed momentarily as they came to the on-ramp of Lake Shore Drive. “It’s a good occupation if you prefer to keep to yourself, which is the Adler family hobby.”

  “And what do you do while you’re keeping to yourself?” Theo said. What did banking types do for fun, anyway? She made a vague guess based on cognac ads. “Sailing?”

  “You,” Adler said, “are very bad at small talk.” Theo frowned at him, and he shook his head, his tone turning lightly teasing. “And thus I illustrate that I am too. I hate sailing. I hate yachting. I hate boats, period. Put an average, decent, intelligent person on a boat, and suddenly they start talking about jibs and mainsails, and sometimes even yawing. And they put ice in their beer.”

  Theo winced. Ice in beer was unforgivable in her book. “So you look at artifacts, move money around and have excellent taste in cars. What else?”

  “You don’t quit, do you?” He said it thoughtfully, as if he was working on a puzzle. “Is there a reason you’re so curious?”

  “I like to learn things,” she said simply. It was a partial lie, but not the worst one she had ever told.

  He looked over at her, and the brown eyes glinted in the reflected light from the lake. “And you want to learn about me, Miss Speer?”

  “It’s part of the job description. I’m trying to build a picture of you, and it’s not easy going.” She tilted her head, putting on a pose of scholarly contemplation. “You’re pretty hard to read. It’s probably a survival skill when you’re managing money, right?”

  “Let’s save that discussion for later,” he said. “What’s your department working on right now?”

  Museum business kept them occupied all the way into the Loop. Theo did most of the talking, but Adler kept the conversation flowing whenever she stumbled. He seemed to have retained a lot from their brief, awkward tour on the night of the party, and asked several questions about their plans for future exhibits and the places funds were needed most. Theo allowed herself to relax, and by the time they reached the Chancellor she was no longer on edge.

  The Chancellor was a strange blend of restaurant, pub, man cave and shrine to Chicago. Waiters and waitresses sported Al Capone T-shirts and each wall featured a wide-screen TV showing a mix of sports and news broadcasts, but the dining room was all dark-wood paneling, dignified leather upholstery and cloth napkins. Black-and-white prints from the city’s history crowded alongside movie posters and headshots of famous gangsters. Theo recognized a few shots from the museum’s own archives.

  It actually looked like the kind of place she would like. Theo and Aki had spent more than their share of evenings doing shots in Loop bars, especially on holidays when traffic gridlocked the whole city and there was nothing to do but drink festively-colored beer and watch the police round up their fellow drunks in funny hats. It had a settled-in feeling and there didn’t seem to be a dress code.

  Adler nodded to the on-duty bartender, who waved them towards a table in the back. Evidently her escort was a regular.

  “What do you think?” he said, sounding…awkward? Just a little, though it took her a moment to recognize the emotion from him. “Do you like it? We can go somewhere else if you’re not comfortable.”

  Theo smiled, touched a little by his unease. “It’s great,” she said quickly, picking up the drinks list from the table. “I can’t believe I’ve never been here before. I spend so much time in the Loop, but it seems like I’m always running into things I’ve never even seen before.”

  “Keeps life interesting,” he said. “That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  “Not always,” she pointed out. “I’m pretty fond of dullness myself. Artists with interesting lives usually seem to die by the time they’re thirty.”

  “Cheerful thought,” Adler observed with a twist of his lips. “I hope you’re not planning on cutting off any ears.”

  Theo touched one earlobe. Today her earrings were silvery curlicues with a pale-green chip of crystal in the center of each spiral, and she ran her fingertip over the metal, tracing the sleek curves there. “Never happen,” she said. “I like silly jewelry too much.”

  Adler’s gaze followed her finger, and she saw his eyes widen. There was a moment of silence between them before Theo quickly lowered her hand and looked back at the drinks menu. Was she flirting? Oh no, she was flirting. Mentioning jewelry at the same time too. Classy, Theo. Meet a nice guy and make him think you’re after his money.

  He didn’t seem to think that, though. There was a touch of color in his own cheeks now, and his smile was smaller but more genuine. She wondered if she could make him laugh again.

  More small talk, this time about the art department itself. Their restoration and re-creation plans interested him more than she thought they would, and he kept coming back to the subject of the shabti collection. When would they be on display? How many of them? What did she think of them?

  “We’re lucky to have them,” she said, but his curiosity prompted her to add a little more. “Dr. Schechter or Dr. Van Allen could probably tell you more, though. I just paint them.”

  “Dr. Schechter is too slippery. Every time I speak to her, I feel as if whatever she says has footnotes I’m not being permitted to see. And Dr. Van Allen…isn’t very approachable.”

  “So you want me to squeal on my bosses,” Theo deadpanned.

  “Precisely.” His expression was perfectly, beautifully serious.

  “Oh. Well, why didn’t you say so? The tyrannical regime of the Schechterites must be ousted.” Adler spluttered a little into his drink, but it wasn’t a full laugh. She grinned at him. “Although we’ll need to talk about something else too, so I won’t have to lie when the higher-ups ask me what we were discussing.”

  Adler gave that due consideration. “What sort of topic? Politics? Entertainment? Controversy?”

  “No controversy. Too controversial. How about the weather?”

  “What can you say about the weather in Chicago? ‘Day 56: Still freezing. Distinct bouquet of dead fish’. Baseball?”

  “I thought we said no controversy? When the Sox won the pennant, Interactives wouldn’t talk to Taxidermy for over a week. News? The economy?” She caught his grimace. “Oh right. That’s probably like mentioning Macbeth to an actor, right? Do I have to turn around three times to break the jinx?”

  “I’ll forgive you if you promise not to mention it again.” Adler gestured as if he were warding off the Evil Eye, getting a laugh from Theo. “Family, perhaps? You must have some stories.”

  “If you want to be bored to death,” Theo said. “The Speers are nothing to write home about. Except my grandma Dora was a Goldwyn Girl back in the day, and doesn’t that just embarrass the hell out of my mom. How
about the Adlers? It must have been strange, growing up with this huge family legacy.”

  “Not particularly.” He drummed his fingers on the table, mulling over his words. “It feels normal, really. All families have expectations of each other, don’t they? It’s rather…” Theo waited expectantly for the next words, but he stopped and offered her a crooked smile instead. “You know, I don’t have any way to end that sentence without putting my foot in my mouth. What about your family?”

  “It’s nice to know I’m not the only one with chronic foot-and-mouth disease,” Theo said. “I’m the eldest of three—there’s me, Elaine and Godfrey.”

  Adler looked amused. “Your parents like old-fashioned names, don’t they?”

  “Sort of.” Theo crossed her legs at the ankle, leaning back a little and making herself comfortable in the booth. “Grandma Ellie, Grandma Dora and Great-Uncle Godfrey pooled their savings to buy Mom and Dad a house back in the seventies, and my parents promised to name kids after them in memoriam. Mom used to tell me that if she’d had a choice, I would’ve been Jennifer Amanda. How about you? Got any sisters?”

  “No, it was just me and my brother.”

  “And where’s he now?”

  “He got religion,” Adler said.

  Theo leaned back a little more, wondering if she’d touched on something sensitive, and he shook his head. “No, not in a bad way. He was my teacher when I was little, but he never really wanted to be involved in any of”—he waved a hand vaguely, encompassing not so much the restaurant as the world—“this. He passed away a few years ago.”

  Theo winced. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

  “Don’t be. He had a good life.” Adler took a sip of his drink. “He was a good man, if a little bit too, eh, concerned for my soul. Besides, I’m the one who brought it up.” He grimaced. “My mistake.”