Hank Devereaux and Meg Quigley’s Unresolved Mutual Attraction

Hank Devereaux and Meg Quigley’s Unresolved Mutual Attraction takes shape through small, suggestive gestures and Hank’s uncertain readings of them, while his influence over Meg’s employment gives their personal tension practical stakes. The evidence supports an attraction that may be reciprocal, but not a settled relationship: Hank imagines possibilities, Meg answers him obliquely, and no resolution is shown.

The Blotter and the Peach

A damaged blotter becomes the relationship’s most visible object. Hank tells himself that Meg has ruined it, and her matter-of-fact agreement does not explain whether she means to provoke him, acknowledge a private joke, or simply answer literally. When Hank later returns to his office, he finds a single ripe peach in the middle of the blotter. The fruit turns an ordinary work surface into a pointed reminder of Meg’s visit, though its meaning remains open rather than confirmed.

Hank’s attention to the peach reveals how readily he converts ambiguous details into possible messages. He wonders whether Meg is extending a literary metaphor by presenting herself as bold where a more hesitant figure would not be, or whether the gesture instead carries a self-deprecating meaning aimed at him. His interpretations move between flirtation and insult without settling on either. The uncertainty is part of the dynamic: Meg’s gesture gives Hank something to read, but not enough to know what she intends.

The peach also draws attention to the difference between an imagined encounter and an actual one. Hank pictures himself in bed with Meg and Rachel, but recognizes that even this fantasy leaves him unequal to the imagined situation. The episode establishes his desire as a private construction, not as evidence that Meg has agreed to intimacy or that the two have acted on their attraction. His thoughts expose his own uncertainty more clearly than they disclose Meg’s feelings.

Teasing, Memory, and Distance

During a later telephone call from The Tracks, Hank urges Meg to get Billy Quigley to watch the local news and gives her the channel. When she identifies the bar from its model trains, the exchange shows that she knows the place and can answer his teasing on familiar terms. Hank asks how a respectable Catholic girl knows such places, but recalls that he once fetched her from a bar after she wanted him to undress her and put her to bed. The memory gives their current banter a history of charged possibility; it does not establish that he did what she asked.

Meg redirects the conversation by asking why Hank does not call Billy himself. Hank says Billy behaves badly at that hour, and Meg observes that he sounds drunk. The exchange is playful but also practical: Hank has called to draw Meg into watching his appearance on the news, while she recognizes his condition and questions why he has not contacted her father directly. Neither speaks plainly about their attraction.

Hank then brings up the ruined blotter. Meg’s approving reply encourages him to continue, and he begins to say that he is flattered before she hangs up. Her abrupt ending prevents his explanation from clarifying what he means. It can be read as a refusal to entertain the subject, a teasing withdrawal, or another expression of the pair’s unfinished conversation; the scene does not settle among these possibilities.

Desire Meets Professional Authority

Hank’s attraction matters beyond private fantasy because he appears to have influence over whether Meg can be rehired for the coming fall. In a conversation with Billy Quigley, Billy asks Hank to tell Meg that she cannot return. Billy says he has arranged a possible assistantship for her at Marquette, which would cover a substantial part of her expenses. He presents the request as an effort to help his daughter find a better opportunity, not as a judgment that she is incapable.

Hank’s response to Billy’s appeal is complicated by his attraction to Meg. As they speak, he finds a tender peach in his jacket pocket and feels guilty, associating his flirtation with Meg with betrayal of Billy, his wife, and his secretary. The moment links the fruit motif to the professional conversation: what has served as a private, ambiguous sign now accompanies a request that could materially affect Meg’s work. Billy’s trust in Hank places the decision inside a family and employment relationship, not merely a flirtation.

Billy is unusually sober and speaks with embarrassment when explaining why he wants Hank to act. He distinguishes Meg from his other children, saying that she has the strongest prospects and that he has contacted someone who can help her. Hank recognizes that the favor is consequential rather than casual. The evidence records Billy’s request, but does not show Hank’s final decision, whether Meg is rehired, or whether she accepts the proposed assistantship.

Ambiguity Without Resolution

The relationship develops through asymmetrical knowledge. Hank openly examines his own desire, including the possibility that he may be trying to pursue Meg, yet much of what he claims to read in her behavior remains conjecture. Meg’s peach, her response to the blotter, her recollection of The Tracks, and her earlier request all suggest familiarity and possible interest; none supplies a definitive account of her intentions. Her silence at one point and her ending the telephone call keep that uncertainty intact.

Hank’s position also complicates the meaning of his attention. He is not only a man attracted to Meg but someone Billy approaches about her fall employment. The move from teasing to Billy’s request makes the attraction ethically charged even though the text does not show Hank exploiting his authority or taking a final action against Meg’s interests. The relationship remains suspended between playful intimacy, imagined desire, and institutional responsibility. Its decisive feature is not a romantic outcome, but the gap between what Hank can imagine and what either he or Meg has actually made clear.