Crazy For You Read Online Free PDF Page A

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,” Bobby said. “What kind of authority do I have if I get my own coffee?”
    None, which is what you have now anyway.
    “What would you do?” Bobby asked, and Bill repressed the urge to say, “I’d get my own coffee,” and said, “Just make my expectations known, I guess, like I do with the boys.”
    Bobby looked confused, so Bill went on. “I make it clear what I want from them. I don’t get upset, I just expect them to deliver. Expect Greta to give you what you want, and eventually she will.”
    “That seems pretty optimistic,” Bobby said.
    “No.” Bill flipped off the lights and started for the door. “Take this thing with Quinn and the dog. She knows we can’t have a dog, so I just kept reminding her of that until she agreed to give it to Edie.”
    “Edie’s another one I’m not too sure about,” Bobby said. “These older women do not understand authority.”
    “Look,” Bill said, pretty sure he was fighting a losing battle. “People want to be thought well of, they want to live up to other people’s good opinions of them. You let people know what they have to do to earn your approval, and they’ll do that, as long as it’s within their capabilities, of course. Never expect something from people that they can’t deliver.”
    “Greta can bring me coffee,” Bobby said.
    “And Quinn can give the dog away to a good home.” Bill opened the door as the last of the afternoon sunlight filtered into his weight room. “All it takes is patience.”
    “You’re really something, Big Guy,” the BP said. “A real master of people.”
    Bill drove home a contented man. Giving the dog to Edie had been a good idea, and so like Quinn, solving Edie’s loneliness problem and finding the dog a home, too—two good deeds at once. Bill had lived alone a couple of times in between relationships, and he’d hated it, so he knew Edie must hate it, too. When he’d met Quinn, he’d known instantly that she was the one, the way she was so practical, the way she always made everything all right. There were no waves when Quinn was around; she calmed the waters. It had taken him a year to convince her to let him move in, and another six months to get her to move to the great apartment he’d found for them, but she’d understood in the end, and now his life was perfect.
    So in June they’d get engaged, and they’d get married at Christmas. He had it all planned out so it wouldn’t conflict with school or the athletic season, and he imagined the future with her while he parked the car at the apartment. They’d have children, of course. She’d sit in the stands while he coached their sons, she’d tuck them in at night, she’d do all those mother things.