Crazy For You (19 page)

Darla stubbornly refused to go home and Max just as stubbornly refused to admit there was anything wrong. “She’s being unreasonable,” he told Quinn. “She knows I’d never cheat.” “This isn’t about Barbara, Max,” Quinn said, and then Max got that mule look on his face and refused to talk any more.

“It’s hopeless,” Darla told her later. “But at least I’m not living the same damn life I was before. I’ve stopped thinking about screaming all the time. You don’t mind if I stay here, do you?”

“No,” Quinn said. “It’s kind of fun. And it’s not like I have a life, anyway. I’m turning into my mother after all; she had Edie and I have you. Not in the same way, of course.”

“You never know,” Darla said. “We live together for ten or twenty years, we may see the light.”

Not that Edie and Meggy’s life was perfect.

“Edie’s so quiet,” Meggy told Quinn when she dropped Edie off at play practice. She checked to make sure that Edie was across the stage out of earshot, and then she said, “She keeps going in the bedroom and closing the door, and when I go in there, she’s
reading.”

“She’s an English teacher,” Quinn said. “They do that.”

“She’s just used to being alone too much,” Meggy said. “Poor Edie.”

Quinn thought about her own house, full of ESPN now that Joe had the cable hooked up, and Darla’s boys who came to dinner every night, and Darla’s mother who stopped by every night, too, to see if Darla had come to her senses yet and gone back to Max who was a good provider. “Yeah, poor Edie.”

Later that night, Edie cornered her and said, “Your mother is driving me crazy. She keeps bringing me things, asking me what I want for dinner, telling me to put down my book and come watch TV with her.”

“I’m sure it just takes a little getting used to,” Quinn said. “It’s only been a couple of weeks. She spent almost forty years with Daddy and you’ve always lived alone. There’s bound to be some adjustments.” She thought of Joe, settling into life on Apple Street because he thought it was going to be temporary, sure he’d be moving home to his big TV before the World Series started.

“I loved living alone,” Edie said.

“Well, then, why did you move in?” Quinn said, feeling exasperated and then feeling guilty for feeling exasperated.

“Because she was so excited about it.” Edie looked rueful. “She kept saying how we could finally be together and how could I say, ‘I like living alone’? That would have been terrible.”

Quinn thought about her mother’s face, beaming at them all that night in the kitchen. “You’re right. I couldn’t have said no to her, either.”

“I’ll get used to it,” Edie said. “Heck, I’m spending so much time on this play, I won’t be around much anyway.”

Bill, on the other hand, was around all the time, dropping by Quinn’s room to discuss Jason’s participation, even though she’d told him over and over she wasn’t interested in talking to him. “I’m just worried he may be overextended,” Bill said, inviting her to worry with him.

“That’s Jason’s business,” Quinn said, and turned her back on him to teach.

The BP wasn’t nearly as tactful as Bill. “You’re ruining the team,” he told her when he called her in the last Wednesday in March, the fifth summons he’d given her that month. “Jason Barnes’s discipline has gone to hell, and Corey Mossert’s getting to be just as bad. You tell them they’re off that crew, or I will.”

“Then you will,” Quinn said. “They’re eighteen, Robert. They’re capable of making their own decisions about extracurricular activities.”

“Baseball is not an extracurricular activity.”
Bobby’s eyes were lit from within by religious fervor.

“Right,” Quinn said and escaped to the outer office. “Is he getting loonier or is it just me?” she asked Greta.

“It’s just you,” Greta said, without looking up from her typing. “He’s always been a bedbug.”

And if that wasn’t enough, somebody kept reporting her to the housing authorities and she had to put up with one inspection after another—water, foundation, pest control, gas leak, fence, on and on—until she was so worn down by the hassle that she almost wished she’d never bought the house.

“Somebody is out to get you,” Darla said.

“The thought occurred to me,” Quinn told her. “I asked Bill to stop calling the city on me, and he said he wasn’t. What do you do when they stonewall you like that?”

“I moved out,” Darla said. “But you’ve already done that so you’re stuck. Which reminds me, the mail came. You have another notice from the city.”

Bill wasn’t the only one stonewalling her: Nick dropped off the face of the earth. They’d talked every day for years, and now, suddenly, he just wasn’t there. Quinn was mad, then hurt, and finally just lonely, missing the huge part of her life he’d occupied. This was what he’d meant by risking their friendship, and she tried to regret the night on the couch and then gave up. She’d wanted exciting and he’d given it to her; how could she regret that when she wanted more? She fought the urge to confront him and decided to wait him out. Tibbett wasn’t that big, he couldn’t ignore her forever. Sooner or later he’d have to come back or at least acknowledge in some way that she existed. She hoped.

He’d talked his way out of jail by paying the fines for trespassing and for Katie. The pound was really not interested in pressing charges since the phantom caller never showed up to pursue the dog bite report, so Katie was put on probation after Quinn promised never to let the dog out of her sight outside the house again and took out a license in her own name this time.

But if the Katie problem was solved, the Quinn problem wasn’t. No matter how virtuous he tried to feel about walking away from the couch, he couldn’t help thinking about what would have happened if he hadn’t. His libido was showing Technicolor movies with SurroundSound of What Might Have Been, and the knowledge that Quinn was exasperated but willing did not make his life easier.
Just once,
his id would whisper.
Just once, to get it over with, so you can stop thinking about it. She’ll be like all the rest then. Do it just once.

This was such a bad idea that when Max came into work two weeks after Darla moved out and said, “I’m going to Bo’s tonight, want to come?” he didn’t say, “I don’t want to get involved with a married guy trolling for women at a bar,” he said, “Yeah.” Anything was better than another night thinking about Quinn.

Unfortunately, Joe was standing beside him when he said it.

“Great idea,” Joe said. “I’ll come, too. In my own car, though, in case I get lucky.”

“Lucky?” Nick said and felt ill.

“Well, it’s probably going to take Meggy another couple of weeks to start missing me,” Joe said. “No point in just sitting around waiting. Right, Max?”

“Right,” Max said with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

The night went downhill from there.

There wasn’t anything wrong with Bo’s Bar & Grill. Nick had spent plenty of good times there: the beer was cold, the pizza was hot, the jukebox wasn’t too obnoxious, and they only did karaoke on Wednesday nights so it was easy to avoid. The place wasn’t attractive—lots of scarred Formica tables and stainless-steel chairs that probably looked like hell in the daylight—but nobody went to Bo’s for the decor. They went for the booze, the TV, and the company. Tonight, Nick could have done without the company.

“So this is where you meet women,” Max said as he sat down, trying to sound like a man of the world and sounding instead like a high school freshman trying to sound like a man of the world.

Joe leaned on the bar and surveyed the place. “Great pickings. Way to go, Nick.”

“We’re not staying long,” Nick said and ordered a beer.

The way he figured it, Joe would get bored and begin watching the game that was always on the TV over the bar. And women would start hitting on Max pretty soon—there was that face, after all—and he’d get spooked and want to go home. Then they could all go to Max’s since Joe would go anywhere there was cable, and he could get out of this nightmare.

“Hey, Nick,” Lisa said from behind him, and he froze.

“Hi, Lisa.” He turned around to be polite. “How you doing?”

“Lonely,” she said, smiling at him, young and beautiful and nothing he wanted at all.

“Sit right here, little lady,” Joe said, moving down a stool to make room between them, and Nick shot him a dirty look while Lisa boosted herself up on the stool. “I’m Joe.” He leaned toward her smiling even wider than she was smiling at Nick. “Can I get you a beer?”

“Uh, sure,” Lisa said, looking at Nick, but he felt Max lean into him and turned to see what Max was trying to get away from.

“You’re new here, aren’t you?” a neat little blonde was saying to Max.

“Uh, Max,” Max said, holding out his hand for the blonde to shake.

“Tina,” she said, taking his hand and holding on to it. “Very pleased to meet you.”

“Uh, um, how about a beer?” Max bumbled, gesturing with the bottle he held in his left hand, since Tina had taken permanent possession of his right. “What do you say?”

Tina dropped his hand as if it were slime and said, “You
creep,”
and stomped off.

“What did I do?” Max said, panic making his voice higher than usual. “I thought you were supposed to offer them booze.”

Across the room, Tina whispered to her friends and they all glared at Max.

Nick looked down at the beer bottle clutched in Max’s left hand. “Well, this is just a guess, but it might have been the wedding ring.”

“Oh, hell.” Max put the bottle down and tugged at his ring, but it wouldn’t budge.

“What’s up?” Joe called across Lisa and then he saw Max pulling at his ring. “Good idea.” He slipped his off and put it in his pocket while Lisa watched. “My wife left me,” he told her sorrowfully. “After thirty-nine faithful years, she threw me out.”

“That’s
terrible,”
Lisa said. “Thirty-nine faithful years.” She shot a look at Nick under her lashes. “Now that’s commitment.”

Nick turned back to Max, who was still yanking on his ring. “You know, that’s probably a sign you shouldn’t be here.”

“You sound like Quinn,” Max said, still grumbling. “Signs. Hey,” he called to the bartender, “You got any butter?”

“Max, give it up and get her back,” Nick said. “You don’t want anybody here, you want Darla.”

“She left me,” Max said, that mule look back on his face.

“It’s been two weeks, and all she’ll say is she wants something new.” He looked around Bo’s as if it were Sodom. “Well, this is new. Damn it.”

“I think she probably meant something new with her.” Nick looked at him in disgust. “I can’t believe you’re fucking up your marriage like this.”

Max glared at him. “Is this your business?”

“Great.” Nick went back to his beer. “Fine. Go for it. Knock yourself out.”

They sat in silence for a couple of minutes, and then Max said, “I don’t notice you hitting on anybody.”

“I’m resting,” Nick snarled.

“You going to call Quinn?”

“No.”

“And you think I’m stupid. Quinn wants you, you dumb-ass.”

“Well, I don’t want her,” Nick said, thinking about hitting on Lisa to get Max off his back and dropping the thought immediately.

“Yeah, right.” Max sounded normal again, now that he was arguing. “You’ve wanted her forever.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be picking up women?” Nick said, and before his sentence was finished, a woman sat down beside Max and said, “Hello, Max Ziegler, what are you doing in a place like this?”

Max jammed his left hand in his pocket and turned. “Oh, hell. Hi, Marty.”

Nick squinted past him. Marty Jacobsen, one of Darla’s regulars. Good. Served Max right. He hadn’t wanted Quinn forever.

Just for the past twenty years.

“Darla know you’re out tonight?” Marty said, leaning into him a little.

“Nope,” Max said, leaning back a little. Nick nudged him upright, and he said, “Just out with Nick and Joe.” He pulled his left hand out and looked at his watch, flashing his wedding ring under her nose.

“I heard she left you.” Marty leaned a little closer. “Must be pretty dumb to leave a great guy like you.”

“She’s just staying at Quinn’s for a while,” Max said nervously.

“Heard about that, too.” Marty nodded, sympathetic. “Must be terrible for you, finding out like that.”

“Finding out what?”

“First Quinn’s mom and Mrs. Buchman and then Quinn and Darla.”

Nick laughed as he realized what Marty was getting at, and she straightened, glaring past Max at him. “Not that I think it’s wrong or anything. I mean, Darla’s still going to do my hair.”

“What are you talking about?” Max said, mystified.

“I just thought, if you wanted, you know,
reassured,
that I could help.” Marty batted her eyes at him. “I’d love to help.”

“Marty, they’re not lovers,” Nick said. “They’re just working on the play.”

“
Lovers
?” Max said.

“You men are so blind,” Marty said. “Quinn left the coach, didn’t she? Like the best guy in town?” She shook her head. “And then they cut their hair like that. It’s obvious.”

“Lovers?” Max said to Nick, his brows drawing together, as the thought took hold and he got angrier.

“Not lovers,” Nick said. “Jesus, Max, get a grip.”

“Yeah, but people
think
—”

“So how about a beer, Max?” Marty said. “I sure am thirsty.”

“Sure,” Max said, signaling the bartender and putting a bill down on the counter. “Lady’d like a beer.” He nodded to Marty. “Well, gotta be going. Nice seeing you.”

He slid off the barstool to Nick’s relief and Marty’s disappointment, and said, “Joe?”

Nick turned to see Joe leaning against the bar talking to Lisa and two of her friends, a redhead and a brunette.

“Now what you got there,” Joe was saying, “is probably a bad washer if your sink is really old.”

“It’s really old,” Lisa said, beaming up at him.

“Well, I could come over and fix it tomorrow.”

“All right.” Lisa slid her eyes to Nick to see if he was listening. “You and I have a date tomorrow.”

“I don’t believe this,” Max said under his breath.

“We’re leaving, Joe,” Nick said. “You have a good night.”

“I plan to,” Joe said, toasting him with his beer.

Lisa ignored Nick completely.

“We’re going to have to do that again real soon,” Nick said as he‘ followed Max out to his car.

“Shut the fuck up,” Max said.