Crazy for You Read online

  Quinn stared down into the dog’s eyes. “No.”

  “Okay,” Darla said. “Out with it.”

  Quinn shifted in her chair again while the dog watched them both. “I’m going to keep this dog.”

  You have beige carpeting, Darla wanted to say, but it didn’t seem supportive.

  “Bill wants me to take her to Animal Control,” Quinn went on. “But I’m keeping her. I don’t care what he says.”

  “Jeez.” Darla caught the lift of Quinn’s chin and felt the first faint stirrings of alarm. Bill was being incredibly dumb about this. “He’s known you for two years, and he doesn’t know you any better than to think you’d take a dog to the pound?”

  “It’s the practical thing to do,” Quinn said, her eyes still on the dog. “I’m a practical person.”

  “Yeah, you are.” Darla felt definitely uneasy now. The one thing she’d always wanted for Quinn was a marriage as good as her own. All right, Bill was a little boring, but so was Max. You couldn’t have everything. You compromised. That was what marriages were about. “What if he says, ‘It’s the dog or me’? Tell me you’re not going to risk your relationship over a dog.”

  The dog looked over as she spoke, almost as if it were narrowing its eyes at her, and Darla noticed for the first time how sneaky it looked. Tempting. Almost devilish. Well, that made sense. If Quinn had been in Eden, Satan would have showed up as a cocker spaniel.

  “Bill’s not difficult like that.” Quinn leaned back, obviously trying to sound nonchalant and only sounding tenser because of it. “We don’t have problems. He wants every day to be the same, and since they always are, he’s happy.”

  That could be Max. “Well, that’s men for you.”

  “The thing is, I don’t think that’s enough for me.” Quinn petted the dog, who leaned into her, gazing up at her with those hypnotic dark eyes, luring her into messing with a perfectly good relationship. “It’s starting to get to me, knowing this is going to be my life forever. I mean, I love teaching, and Bill’s a good guy—”

  “Wait a minute.” Darla sat up. “Bill’s a great guy.”

  Quinn shrank back a little. “I know.”

  “He works his butt off for those kids on the team,” Darla said. “And he stayed after school to coach Mark for the SATs—”

  “I know.”

  “—and he’s the first one in line every time there’s a charity drive—”

  “I know.”

  “—and he was teacher of the year last year, and that was long overdue—”

  “Darla, I know.”

  “—and he treats you like a queen,” Darla finished.

  “Well, I’m tired of that,” Quinn said, her chin sticking out again. “Look, Bill’s nice—okay, he’s great,” she said, holding up her hands as Darla started to object again. “But what we have, it’s not exciting. I’ve never had exciting. And with the way Bill plans things, I’m never going to have exciting.”

  I did, Darla wanted to say. She and Max had been hot as hell once. She could see him now—that look in his eye as he zeroed in on her, that grin that said, I have plans for you, the way they laughed together—but you couldn’t expect that to last. They’d been married seventeen years. You couldn’t keep exciting for seventeen years.

  “It’s not really Bill’s fault,” Quinn said. “I mean, I didn’t have exciting before he showed up, either. I just don’t think it’s in the cards for me. I’m not an exciting person.”

  Darla opened her mouth and shut it again. Quinn was a darling, but—

  “See?” Quinn finally met Darla’s eyes, defeated. “You want to tell me I’m exciting and you can’t. Zoë was exciting, I’m dull. Mama used to say, ‘Some people are oil paintings and some people are watercolors,’ but what she meant was, ‘Zoë is interesting and you’re sort of washed out.’”

  “You’re the dependable one,” Darla said. “You’re the one everybody leans on. If you were exciting, we’d all be screwed.”

  Quinn slumped back. “Well, I’m tired of that. And it’s not like I’m going out Bungee-jumping or something stupid. I just want this dog.” The dog looked up at her again, and Darla’s uneasiness morphed into real dread. “That’s not even exciting, adopting a dog. And it’s not so much to want, is it?”

  “Well, that depends.” Darla glared at the dog. This is all your fault.

  “Don’t you ever want more?” Quinn leaned forward, her hazel eyes now fixed on Darla’s with a passion that made her uncomfortable. “Don’t you ever look at your life and say, ‘Is this all there is?’”

  “No,” Darla said. “No, no, I don’t. Look, sometimes you have to settle for less than you want to keep your relationship going.”

  “You’ve never settled with Max,” Quinn said, and Darla bit her lip. “Well, now I’m going to be like you. Just this once, I’m not going to settle.”

  She cuddled the dog closer, and Darla thought, Everybody settles. The dog looked over at Darla, daring her to say it out loud, the devil in disguise. Forget it, Darla told it silently. You’re not getting me in trouble. “So what do you want on your pizza?” Darla leaned across the table and picked up the phone. “The usual, right?”

  “No,” Quinn said. “I want something different.”

  Two

  Bill had gone back to the weight room slightly exasperated with Quinn but mostly amused, so when his principal, Robert Gloam, perspiring elegantly in royal blue sweats, caught the look on his face, he stopped mopping his face on a Ralph Lauren towel and said, “What’s so funny, Big Guy?”

  Of all the crosses Bill had to bear in life—parents and boosters, teenage athletes with hormones pinballing through their bodies, the struggle to make ideas like the Great Depression real and significant to a generation of mall credit junkies—the most irritating was his biggest fan, Bobby Gloam, the Boy Principal. Bill tried hard not to think of Robert as Bobby or the BP because it wasn’t respectful, and Robert was a hard-working little man, if a bit obsessive about sports; but he was so young and so clueless that the nicknames were almost irresistible.

  “Funny? Oh, Quinn found another dog,” Bill said, and Bobby rolled his eyes in male sympathy.

  “You got a lot of patience there, Big Guy,” Bobby said.

  “She’s practical,” Bill said. “She’ll do the right thing.” He began to do the last check on the weight room, which was pretty much unnecessary since he’d trained the boys well, and the BP had been in there while he was gone, nagging at every dropped towel or misplaced weight. The BP felt proprietary about the room since it had been renovated only the past month and was now almost embarrassingly plush, a symphony in scarlet and gray. “The teachers’ lounge should look this good,” Quinn had said, and Bobby had answered, “Hey, the athletes earned this. What have the teachers done for anybody?”

  “I wish Greta would do the right thing,” Bobby went on now. “Of course, she’s due to retire after next year, but that’s still a year and a half to go, and that’s a long time to put up with a lousy secretary.”

  Bill heard him only peripherally, moving toward the light switch, ready to shut down and go home and make dinner for Quinn, just like every Wednesday. Quinn. He felt good just thinking about her.

  “I mean, sometimes I think she’s defying me,” Bobby was saying.

  “She’s just a little tactless sometimes,” Bill said. “She’s a darn good art teacher, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Not Quinn, Greta,” the BP said. “Although I have doubts about Quinn, too.”

  “What’s Greta doing exactly?” Bill asked, feeling a little guilty for tuning him out.

  “Well, take my coffee,” Bobby said. “I ask her to get me some, and she pours it and puts it on the corner of her desk. And then I have to ask her to bring it in to me.”

  “Why don’t you get your own coffee?” Bill asked. “The pot’s right there on the counter outside your door. You’re probably closer to it than she is.”

  “Chain of command,”