Treasure Box

"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 bo

"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 di

"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 di

"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 di

"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 di

"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.