Treasure Box

3. In the Garden

The first thing Quentin's lawyer found out about her was that she didn't own the townhouse—a property-management firm was renting it out for an investment group in Atlanta that owned twenty condos in the complex. So she was renting.

Only she wasn't. The condo was empty.

Then did she work for the property management company? Nobody from the firm had visited the property except the yard guys, and they had no employee who fit her description particularly well anyway.

A previous renter? A relative of a previous renter? An ex-spouse or former lover of a previous renter? A roommate or subletter of a previous renter?

The condos were fairly new. There had been only one renter before, a Pakistani family of four who had been waiting for their house to be built out in Oak Park. No roommates, no sublets, no ex-spouses or former lovers, and even if one of their relatives had looked like her, they'd never given anyone a key because the wife was home all day so who locked the doors?

The research had cost him about a thousand dollars in lawyer and private investigator fees and the result was zilch. She didn't exist. No woman could possibly have walked up to that door and turned a key in the lock and gone inside. He didn't see it, it didn't happen.

He sat in the parking lot for half an hour on Saturday, trying to figure out how he could have been wrong. And came at last to the obvious conclusion—he was one seriously lonely man. Conjuring hallucinatory images of a woman very much like his dead sister, just so he could imagine meeting her and talking to her and having somebody to build a life with. It was definitely time to start dating.

The trouble was he had no idea how to go about it. He'd been a witness of the singles scene at restaurant-bars like Rio Grande and Lone Star and T.G.I.Friday's, and it always looked so pathetic to him. Come here often? You look good, and I haven't even had a drink yet. Buy you a drink? Want to help me celebrate my promotion? I hope you just broke up with your boyfriend so I don't have to kill him. Did any of these lines actually work? And even if they did, what came of it? One-night stands? Quick torrid affairs? Did any of these deliberate encounters lead to something that cured loneliness instead of simply easing the symptoms for an hour or two? Quentin wasn't interested in meeting the kind of woman who would come to one of those places looking for the kind of man who hoped to meet women there.

But this was the DC area, wasn't it? There were serious parties going on every night; Quentin knew it because some of his new business partners moved in those circles—the guy who was trying to start up a serious fund-raising business, for instance. The lobbyist who was trying to get out of the lobbying business and into publishing. They had both invited Quentin to the kind of party where congressmen and generals and admirals and undersecretaries showed up. He had turned them down as he always did.

He drove home and called them both. Two parties on the same night, one in Georgetown at a second-tier embassy and one in Chevy Chase at the home of a once-famous hostess. "These are people on the make, Quentin," said the lobbyist. "They're going to figure out fast that you aren't power, so you must be money. I hope you won't mind that."

"Are you saying they're all cynically looking for people to exploit?"

"All the eager-looking ones are. If they're really vivacious or fervent or, you know, on—they're trying to get something out of the night. So if you want pleasant company, just look for somebody who's bored but not drunk and you'll probably do OK. Of course, that's usually a description of somebody's spouse who isn't, you know, inside the belt-way. So they're probably not just bored but boring. And devotedly married."

"I just want to see what these parties are like. Tell me what to wear."

The first party was cocktails before dinner; the would-be fundraiser didn't have the clout to get him a seat at the table, but that was fine with Quentin, he had the other party to go to. The first one was a bust—everybody was on the make or, worse, on the way down and desperately clinging to prestige. Quentin kept count of the snubs he got until he ran out of fingers and then he concentrated on eating the really fine hors d'oeuvres and avoiding the cocktail pushers.

The second party was much nicer. The hostess hadn't really faded, Quentin quickly concluded. It was Washington that had faded; she had an elegance that felt pre-war. Not World War II, either. More like World War I. Could that graceful era possibly have survived in this house? The age when undersecretaries were all men of good families with old money, serving their country as a civic duty and not as a rung on the ladder? That's how it felt, for the first hour at least. But then he began to see that his lobbyist partner had been right. Even in this old-fashioned gathering, there were those who tried just a little too hard and those who remained just a little bit too aloof. It was as much about status as the other party had been, except, of course, that the other one was more nakedly obvious about it.

I might have been like these people, Quentin thought. If I hadn't just stumbled into money by being a pretty good programmer at exactly the right time for that to bring millions of dollars down on the heads of unsuspecting geeks. I might have been on the outside looking in; at the bottom looking up. Now I'm on the outside, all right, but above, looking down. I don't need anything these people have to offer. What I need, they don't even care about. Some of them probably even have it, and are wasting it, losing it—an adoring wife or a husband who gets taken for granted, ignored, hurt, left behind on the upward climb. He spotted a couple of these—women who were clearly uncomfortable in their designerish or designeresque dresses, women who belonged at a PTA social like Quentin's mom, bringing cookies to the bake sale. There was nothing for them here. Not even their husbands. Their husbands were here, yes, but not for them.

There was a high-ceilinged library with a ladder that rolled around the walls hanging from a rail. Quentin had seen such places in movies and the urge to climb the ladder was irresistible. He pulled out a book at random from the topmost shelf.

"All right, you can borrow that one, but don't lose my place."

Quentin turned to see who had produced that strong but aging woman's voice and nearly lost his footing.

"Oh, don't fall, please, the family fortune couldn't stand another lawsuit. That's why I gave up gossip."

It was the hostess. Quentin put the book back and climbed down. "I didn't mean to meddle," he said. "I've just never climbed a library ladder before."

"And I'm too old to do it anymore," she said. "That's why I have my assistant put all the mystery novels up there, so I won't forget and read them a second time by accident and then get disappointed when I realize that it's only that one again. Except that it happens anyway, even with the brand new ones. I've read them all. Seen them all. Met them all. Served expensive alcohol to everybody, and they all look the same."

"How many times have you met me?" asked Quentin. As always, he found himself sliding into the style of conversation that seemed appropriate. Polite, self-deprecating wit, that's what was called for, thrust and riposte but no one ever bloodied. He didn't analyze it, he just slipped into the role.

"Let's see," she said. "Lonely, bored, hoping to connect with somebody but unwilling to believe that you're actually good enough for anybody."

"Oh, I'm good enough," said Quentin. "Male, mid-thirties, no pot belly, all my hair, good teeth, and money."

"But you don't want the kind of woman who keeps that list, am I right?"

"So I guess you're the one I'm looking for."

"Me? Don't be silly. I married my husband for money and I've done rather well at hanging on to it in spite of taxes, recessions, inflation, and those people who make you look at pictures of starving children before they let you say no to their charity."

"Did he know? That you married him for money?"

"My dear, in those days it didn't occur to decent people to marry for any other reason. My family was old money and his was newer. Mine had more prestige and his had more zeroes after the two and the four. His mother traded on the connection to get a better grade of guest at her parties, and I was able to help my sisters live in the style to which they were accustomed until they married even richer men than my Jay. Everybody won."

He hadn't realized that there were still people who lived in such a Jane Austen world. "Did you love him?"

"Jay? I thought not until he had an affair with a secretary during the war, and then I was insanely jealous for a while and I thought that meant I loved him. Later his libido calmed down and we gardened together for a few years before he got Alzheimer's at sixty and faded away and died. Those few years in the garden, I think I did love him then. That's really above average, in my experience. Not everybody gets those years in the garden."

"I don't even have the garden."

"Neither did we, till we planted it together." She smiled, but he could sense that the intimate moment was over. She was ready to move on. So he made it easy for her.

"I'm feeling guilty. I'm monopolizing the hostess."

She studied him for a moment, as if passing a verdict on him. "There's a clever young woman out on the back porch, admiring a gnarled cherry tree that hasn't borne fruit in years but I keep it because my Jay and I planted it together and he kissed me there. It's a magical spot, and I've been prowling the party looking for someone to send there to join her."

"I've kept you talking so long, I doubt she's still there."

"Oh, I told her if she stirred from that spot before you got there, I'd never let her back in my house."

"You told her you were sending me? But you don't even know me."

"I told her I was sending a young man I wanted her to be nice to for my sake because he was so lonely at this party."

"Was I that obvious?"

"No. There's always a lonely young man at my parties. It's in the nature of young men to be lonely. Did you think you were unique?"

"So you're a matchmaker."

She turned and headed for the door, slow of step but making rapid progress all the same. "I have a garden that doesn't get used enough, that's all. Think of yourself as plant food." And then she was gone, back to the party.

The young woman was in the garden, just as the hostess had promised. For a moment, seeing her from behind, he thought he knew her. He even thought, madly enough, that it was her, the one he had seen in the grocery store and then at the door of the townhouse. But then she turned and her hair was reddish and her face was really nothing like Lizzy's or even the other woman's, but she seemed nice enough. Bored, but nice.

"So you're the lonely young man?" asked the woman.

"And you're one who's supposed to cheer me up?" asked Quentin.

"She's such a matchmaker. She forgets things though. Such as, this is the third time she's sent me to wait under the cherry tree."

"I take it the previous times didn't work out?"

"One of them did. I didn't find true love, but I did find a candidate for Congress from a Philadelphia suburb."

"Is that where you're from?"

"No, it's where he was from. I'm a headhunter, Mr...."

"Fears."

"Oh, you sound dangerous. Or at least hostile."

"Yes, it sounds like 'fierce,' but it's spelled F-E-A-R-S."

"What an interesting contradiction," she said. "Written down, you're timid; spoken, you're dangerous."

"Unfortunately, I'm not a candidate for anything."

"Neither am I," she said. "I'm not working tonight. I'm really here for old time's sake. I love the grande dame, and her garden, and her matchmaking. I had to come to one more of her parties before I leave."

"The beltway has lost its charms?"

"I suppose," she said. "Both parties are simply too ideological for me anymore. They insist on nominating horrible people because they have the correct opinions on the key issues. They don't want the kind of candidate I like to find."

"And that is?"

"Well-balanced. Open-minded. Ambitious but principled. Reasonable. Telegenic and electable but also hardworking and bright and honest enough that I'm proud to have helped them get started."

"This really was a career? Finding candidates?"

"I always think the best people for public office are the ones who really never thought of themselves in public office. Somebody has to put the bee in their bonnet."

"So what will you do now?"

"To be honest? I haven't a clue."

"But with all the candidates you found, surely there's one who can help you land in a career—"

"To be honest, Mr. Fears, the only candidate I ever found was the one I met here under this cherry tree, and he quit after one term. It wasn't really my career because nobody paid me for it. It was my... vocation."

"What's your career?"

"Middle level bureaucrat. But I have this face and I look good in evening attire and I got invited to parties by bosses who needed a partner for an out-of-town visitor—all legitimate, I assure you. I kept my eyes open, hoping to find the candidate for office that I could vote for with a clean conscience. My dream was to find a president."

"And now you've given up?"

"The parties are controlled by screamers from the left and the right. There's no room for my dreams in this town." She shivered, though the night was merely cool, not chilly. "I can't believe I'm telling you all this. I don't tell this to people. I guess you're hearing my swan song."

"I'm kind of curious why you have these dreams of politics in the first place."

She looked at him with a kind of fierceness in her eyes and took hold of his arm tightly. "Because I love power, Mr. Fears. Power used wisely and well, power used to make people safer and freer and happier. But it's power that I love, even though one is supposed to pretend that it isn't. As if anyone would ever come to this benighted town for any other reason."

"So why don't you run for office?" asked Quentin.

She smiled. "Voters don't take pretty women seriously."

Quentin almost said, You're not that pretty.

She laughed as if she had heard him. "I'm telegenic. The camera loves me. You should see my driver's license. My yearbook picture. I swear I can't take a bad picture. It's a curse. I'm much less attractive in person."

Quentin laughed and felt something inside him relax for the first rime in twenty years. Something that he hadn't even known was clenched. "Well darn," he said. "I wish I'd seen your picture before I met you."

"No, it's better this way. You would have felt too intimidated."

"Now I've got to see your license, you know."

She shrugged, opened her little evening purse, and took out the plastic card. He looked at it, angling it to get moonlight on the picture. "Am I correct in thinking that you actually crossed your eyes for your driver's license picture?"

"I stuck out my tongue the first time but they made me take it over again. They were very angry."

"This may be the ugliest driver's license photo I've ever seen."

"Do you think so?" she said. "Have you seen a lot of them, or are you just saying that?"

"What did you do in your high school yearbook, put your finger in your nose?"

"I had friends on the yearbook staff. They managed to sneak in a picture of the back of my head. Just my hair in curlers and the back of my neck. They got in so much trouble till my parents finally believed me that it was all my idea."

Her name, according to the license, was Madeleine Cryer.

"Ms. Cryer," he said, meaning to ask if he could see her again.

"Call me Madeleine, please."

"Then you have to call me Quentin."

"Is that your name?"

"Yes."

"But how unbearable. That's a terrible name for someone when you're already going to be stuck with a weird last name. Didn't your parents love you? Didn't you get beaten up in school a lot?"

"Everybody called me Quen."

"Quentin. Isn't that a prison?"

"Somebody actually asked me recently if I was named after the guy who did Pulp Fiction. Even though I must be fifteen years older than he is."

"I have to call you something else. Tin. I have to call you Tin."

Lizzy's old nickname for him. It hit him so hard that he caught his breath.

"Don't be mad at me," she said. "I shouldn't have teased about your name."

"I'm not mad," he said. And then laughed. "Actually, you're Mad."

She got the pun at once and winced. "I guess if I can call you Tin, you can call me Mad." She raised an eyebrow. "I can call you Tin?"

"Only if you'll have dinner with me. Monday?"

"I was going to fly back home tomorrow."

"Where's home?" he asked.

"The old family manse is way up the Hudson. I usually fly to Newark. I've already sent home most of my stuff. Not that I had much. I travel light, I live light."

"Upriver on the Hudson. I don't know any good restaurants there. So you'll have to pick."

"Oh, don't be absurd. You wouldn't fly to New York just to have dinner with me."

"Oh, is that excessive?"

She studied his face for a moment, perhaps trying to find the irony in his words. "You're really sweet."

"My homeroom class voted me the most likely to be the guy your mom wishes you were dating."

"I think you might just be the one my mother would like me to date. My grandmother won't agree, of course, but who cares about her?"

"Let me meet your grandmother and I promise, I'll win her over."

She smiled vaguely and looked away. "Maybe I won't go yet."

"But if you've shipped all your things home..."

"As I said. I travel light. Where are you taking me to dinner?"

"I'm new around here. I've been living in Herndon. You tell me."

"What's your budget? Because you are paying, you know."

"I can eke out at least one good dinner at a really nice place."

"I don't even know what you do for a living."

"I'm between jobs, but I have a little saved up from my last one."

"If you're serious about a really nice place, there's a French restaurant near Herndon. Some-French-word Chez François. Close to the Potomac. I've never eaten there, but I hear it's good. The kind of place where they scrape the crumbs off your table between courses."

"Wow," said Quentin. "Is that class or what."

"Give me your number, I'll call you when I get the reservation."

"I can take care of that, you know," said Quentin, writing his local number on his business card.

"But I'm not going to give you my number, and then what would you do with the reservation?"

"Take your grandmother." He handed her the card.

"I don't have a phone number and I'm not sure which friend I'll crash with when I don't take my flight tomorrow. So I'm not being unfriendly. I will call."

"I've heard that line before."

"No you haven't," said Mad. "That's the guy's line, so I know you haven't heard it, and I don't think you've even said it."

"Am I so obviously naïve?"

She touched his cheek lightly. "I think you're sweet."

"But not powerful."

"I told you—power was my dream. You're real."

She turned and walked away from him.

"Can't I take you home? Take you wherever you're crashing tonight?"

But she kept walking as if she hadn't heard him. He took a few steps after her, then thought better of following her, then thought again and followed her anyway, only she had already made her way through the crowd and she wasn't anywhere in the house, top to bottom.

Of course she wasn't going to call, he knew that. But still, it had been a wonderful half hour there by the ancient unblooming cherry tree. She might not have looked like Lizzy, the way his hallucination did, but she bantered with him in the same easygoing playful way that Lizzy always had. It was the first time he had actually enjoyed the company of a woman as a woman. It was possible. That's what this evening meant. There was hope for him to find someone. There really were interesting women out there and there were even some who might find him interesting, not for his money, but for his conversation, his company. He refused to be disappointed that this particular encounter hadn't led anywhere. It was enough that Madeleine Cryer had opened a never-opened door.

And then the next day, Sunday afternoon, she did call. They had dinner that night. They met for lunch the next day, a picnic by the Great Falls of the Potomac. They broached the delicate subject of money and each confessed to having some. Her fortune was much older, his was much larger, but it wouldn't be a barrier between them. That afternoon he bought them both English racers and the next morning they rode the whole length of the W&OD bike trail from Purcellville to Mount Vernon and at the end, with rubbery legs and covered in sweat, he asked her to marry him and she said yes, as long as he promised never to make her ride a bike that far again.