Treasure Box Page 0,81

a stupid poem, don't you think? Here I thought I had the only high school English teacher who made students memorize and recite bad Romantic poetry."

"You probably did. I just read things and some of them stick in my memory, kind of randomly."

"You mean you picked up Wordsworth voluntarily?"

"Until I got married I had a lot of time on my hands. For a while I tried to work my way through the entire Penguin library."

"What stopped you?"

"There's an awful lot of really dull stuff masquerading as English literature."

"I always think of books as being like people," said Sannazzaro. "Even the dull ones are worthy of decent respect, but you don't have to seek them out and spend time with them."

"The disadvantage with people," said Quentin, "is you can't put bookmarks in them and set them aside till you want them again."

Sannazzaro gave a hard, sharp bark of a laugh, then raised an eyebrow. "On the contrary," she said, "I've had people do that with me lots of times."

"Feeling a little dog-eared?"

"Aren't you?"

"At the moment," said Quentin, "I'm feeling well-read."

To his amazement, she blushed slightly and looked away. Somehow things had got too personal. He could see her put on her business face again. "Well, Mr. Fears - "

"Please call me Quentin. Like the prison in California."

"Minus the 'San'?"

"You've got my 'San,' " Quentin said. "Doesn't your name mean St. Nazareth?"

"Holy Man of Nazareth, I think. Mostly it means my mother and father. Hardworking people and they loved me but it was my brothers who were meant to go to college."

"You were supposed to marry and have babies?" asked Quentin.

"Or disappear. They welcome me home for holidays but nobody ever, ever asks me what I do or cares when I tell them anyway. My married sisters and my sisters-in-law, though, there's always plenty to ask them about. They're ranked according to the number of babies they've had or are about to have. They've got quite a competition going."

"Babies are good," said Quentin, perversely. He had already convinced Chief Bolt that he was politically correct; now was he trying to make Sannazzaro think he was a neanderthal? Was he simply too tired to care what he said?

No, that was a lie. He liked Sannazzaro and so he didn't want to be polite with her, he wanted to be honest and so he said what he believed.

"I know babies are good," said Sannazzaro, predictably irritated. "I didn't say they weren't."

"I didn't say you said they weren't," said Quentin. "I just thought about babies and how my wife has left me and I'm not going to be watching our babies grow up around me. I'm just feeling sorry for myself. My babbling has kept you here when you have baths to give. Sorry."

He started to get up, but to his surprise Sannazzaro waved him to sit down, and sat herself in the other guest chair, the overstuffed one at the foot of the bed. "We're not going to be able to keep to the regular bath schedule tonight anyway. As soon as I go out there, the attendants will feel I'm putting them under pressure and everything will get tense for them. The truth is they're all working overtime and they want to go home and in a few minutes I'm going to dismiss all but the one who's really supposed to be on shift tonight."

"Your night shift is only one?"

"Supposed to be four after the dinner rush is over and then two after everybody's tucked in. But I'm staying the night so we'll be all right. And I've got to admit I enjoy a couple of minutes of visiting with somebody who isn't afraid of me."

He wasn't sure that was true - she was an intimidating person. But not because she wanted to be, or tried to be. Rather she was so direct, so forthright, so clearly uninterested in making a good impression that it gave her the upper hand. Quentin liked this about her. It made him curious. "I've never heard of a nurse being in charge of a rest home. Usually isn't it a salesman type who can sucker people in?"

"This really is a good rest home, so our residents aren't suckers," said Sannazzaro. Before Quentin could protest his innocence, she went on. "But you're right, it used to be a salesman type. Then they caught him with his hands in the till and his fly open in some of the residents' rooms - I don't know which was worse in