Treasure Box Page 0,82

the owners' minds. Anyway, they needed a fully trained replacement immediately. I was already here as medical officer. So I've been acting superintendent since October of '94."

"Why don't they just make it official?" asked Quentin.

"Because I don't want the job and I keep turning it down."

"So why don't you quit running the place and go back to your nurse duties?"

"Because if I do they'll bring in another salesman type to run the place, and I'd hate going back to that nightmare."

"So you won't take the job, but you won't give it up," said Quentin.

She laughed. "It sounds just as stupid to me, but what can I do? They're paying me at the nurse level plus a bonus, which saves them money, and in the meantime I don't have some cost-cutting moron glad-handing the public and stealing from the patients. Except that I'm tired all the time and don't have a life, things are going great."

Again Quentin found himself speaking on impulse. "It's a good thing we both know that I'm depressed and recovering from a spectacularly failed marriage, or I'd offer to take you away from all this." Quentin wondered at his own words. Was this flirtatious conversation for its own sake? Or did he unconsciously mean something by it?

Fortunately, she took it as a joke rather than a come-on. "Just don't say anything about the Virgin Islands or I'll take you up on it and you'd be stuck with a cast-iron bitch who doesn't look all that good in a bikini."

"Now you've done it. Now I'm thinking of you in a bikini."

They laughed.

Quentin was relieved that it was just a flirtation between two tired people who knew nothing would come of it. But he hadn't had many ventures into the world of flirtation, and most of what he'd seen had been while waiting to meet partners in upscale bars where all the flirters were so drunk that it didn't take much for them to think each other clever. It kind of gave him a thrill to play at it with a sober person whom he liked. But it also made him feel guilty. Even though he knew Madeleine wasn't real, he still felt married and he was a faithful husband.

"You're thinking of your wife," said Sannazzaro.

"Yeah, well, I was thinking that I still feel married."

"I'm glad to hear it. I've known too many men who never felt quite married no matter how many wives they've been through. Their own and otherwise."

Remembering again where they were, Quentin looked at Mrs. Tyler's closed and silent face. "I wonder how Mrs. Tyler felt about her husband."

"Loved him," said Sannazzaro. "But he died young. She told me that she thought the death of their first child, a boy, was too hard on him. He lost heart. Like I said - when people truly despair, they don't live long."

"She seems awfully old to have her oldest grandchild be only ten."

"I think the little girl is eleven. But yes. Mrs. Tyler married late. Maybe that was part of her husband's despair. She was forty before she started having babies."

"What was the delay?"

"What is it ever? She married Mr. Tyler only six months after she met him. He was more than ten years younger than her. She always assumed that he'd outlive her, which was fine, she didn't want to be a widow."

"Bummer," said Quentin.

"And you meant to be a father," said Sannazzaro. "Nobody's life ever goes according to plan."

"So why do we keep on planning?"

She thought for a moment. "Because that's how we know who we are. By what we intend to be. By what we try to become."

"And fail."

"I don't say 'fail,' Mr. Fears. I say we aim and miss. But we still hit something."

"Ouch."

She smiled. But she had been serious, and he could see that his joke disappointed her.

"Sorry," he said. "I think what you said is right. I'm just kind of caught up in the target that I missed. I haven't even looked to see what I might have hit. Maybe the arrow hasn't even landed yet. And please call me Quentin."

"Minus the 'San.' "

"That's what I'll call you."

"Call me Sally," she said.

"Sally, may I call you?" he said. And there it was. He wasn't content for this conversation to amount to nothing.

She looked at him for a while before saying, "When you know what's happening with your marriage, I wouldn't mind a phone call now and then."

He smiled. He liked a woman who knew how to spell out the rules. He