Read Treasure Box for Free Online Page B

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.