Chapter 4

TV Guide, bitter about having to pull millions of copies with Jon and Janelle on the cover, took it out on Pete and Des.

The editors sicced their best investigators on the pair. These were the sleuths who had uncovered Jennifer Aniston's favorite ice cream flavor, the shami who told the world that Eddie, the "Frasier" dog, was a son of a bitch.

True, it wasn't much of a track record, but then TV Guide didn't usually go in for hard-hitting exposes. This was different, though. This was money.

Pete got off fairly easy, even so. He was what he said he was: a 48-year-old bachelor with a history of serial monogamies, a modest career as a free-lance writer after 20 years at a variety of trade magazines the like of "Small Animal Veterinary Assistants Monthly." He had no family left except a distant cousin in Pittsburgh who had him confused with her ex-husband's nephew, the nephrologist.

There were several speeding tickets, all paid, and a fistfight with a current boyfriend of an ex-girlfriend in college, but he'd already divulged all those things during the course of the show. It appeared, as far as TV Guide could tell, that Pete had no skeletons left in his closet because he'd flung them all out into the open.

Des was a different matter. She had said nary a word about her past on the show, and the biography provided in the publicity packet was scarce. Husband? No. Children? No. Job? Retired. When the publicist had called her up, after she'd been chosen, and asked, "Retired from what?," there had been no pause at all before Des's answer: "Working."

The magazine editors were sure something juicy was hiding behind all those one-word answers. A term in prison, perhaps? That hard-bitten exterior would fit perfectly in "women in chains" movies, and the "Tank" producers' background checks might have missed a thing or two. A sex change? For a little woman, she did have a deep voice. Secret Satanic rituals? A stint in a New Orleans whorehouse? There had to be something.

This kind of imagination, let the reader note well, is what comes of watching too much TV.

The editors were disappointed. Des had no skeletons -- not the scandalous metaphoric ones they were looking for, anyway.

What she had was an older sister who had run away to join the circus -- at 23, leaving behind two children. Des had raised them and looked after her ailing parents while going through a succession of small-town jobs just ahead of rounds of layoffs. Her relatives said she was too busy for a relationship. The rest of the town said she was too demanding, too persnickety, too smart. The man she'd been engaged to when her sister ran off refused to talk, and the boy and girl she'd raised said she'd asked them not to.

It wasn't juicy, but with the right twist on the headlines it sold magazines.

Being described as too demanding at least reduced the sympathy factor for Des, but she still wasn't pleased by the article.

"Too demanding?" She threw the magazine across the living room. "Yes, I was demanding. I demanded a man have half a brain. I demanded he have some plans for his life beyond nickel beer night at the VFW next Saturday. I demanded he have some knowledge of sex beyond what he and his buddy did behind the barn when Mommy wasn't looking."

Pete laughed. "So the guys back home weren't your type?"

"No, they... Wait a minute. Don't you hand me that sympathy crap now."

"No sympathy. I'm just curious about what it takes to please a woman like you."

"Takes a hell of a lot more than you got, buster."

"No doubt. Though I've satisfied a woman or two in my time."

Her eyes glittered. "Two? Let's not exaggerate. There's your mama and who else?"

He pursed his lips. "Tough talk. I bet you scared the hell out of the good ole boys at the feed store. Meanwhile I was getting rave reviews from the women I met."

She tossed her head and snorted. "Did you have to pay them extra to say they liked it? Or did they throw it in as a freebie?"

"How droll," he said. "Is that an example of the rapier-like wit that was lost on the local yokels back home?"

She glared at him.

"Cat got your tongue?," he sneered. "Like it got those two kids who couldn't be bothered to defend you?"

"Leave my kids out of this!"

"Your kids?" He raised his eyebrows. "Rather possessive, aren't we? Ah, but then possession is nine-tenths of the law. Pity no man ever found you attractive enough to slip you the other tenth so you could have a kid of your own."

"And they say I'm a bitch. Is that the charm that won you a wife? Oh, wait, that's right. You never got married either."

"Yeah. That's me, the pot calling Ma Kettle black. Except, of course --"

"Except what?"

"Except Ma Kettle didn't wear tight T-shirts so the world could see what a hot old lady she was."

Des looked down and cursed. Her nipples were bulging into the thin fabric of her shirt. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. "It's cold in here," she said.

"I'm comfortable," he said, uncrossing his legs.

She laughed. "Is that your ego in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?"

The crotch of his shorts was, indeed, tented. He grinned broadly. "If you're going to put up a billboard," he said, "you have to expect somebody's going to pop up to look at it."

"What's that, your best line? I bet that pulled them in down at your corner meat market."

"I didn't need lines," he said. "Not when I have the old Jack-in-the-box here."

"You can jack Jack yourself, pal. You're not getting into this box." But she did keep looking.

Not a single light was on inside the Tank, but it was lit softly by the glow from a hundred candles outside. The diehard fans who called themselves Ichthyologists had made a ritual of their all-night vigils.

Refracted and reflected by a dozen planes, the candles twinkled like stars when seen from inside the house. A writer who spent a night inside once said that was what it would have felt like to be adrift on a spaceship in the middle of the Milky Way. It was a touching line, although his editor took it out because she didn't understand why someone would be flying through nougat.

The master bedroom was at the very center of the house, where the effect was most pronounced. There, lying in bed -- a very comfortable bed, with silk sheets and firm but yielding pillows -- Des was on her side, facing Pete.

They had shared the king-sized bed for several nights by then. Des has made a fuss at first of firmly enforcing a borderline between her side of the bed and his. When even a corner of one of his pillows slipped across, she shoved it back with fury.

But that night her hand crept across the invisible line. Her leg slowly slid toward him. When he rolled over and bumped into her, waking up, he protested that she was on his half.

That was patently true, but she flatly denied it. They bickered. He pointed to the middle of the headboard, then to her hand. "My side," he said. "There's the line."

"Ah," she said, "but there's my side, your side, and then the part in the middle. No-man's land."

Pete frowned. "No-man's land? But you're in it."

She stretched and the lace of her short black nightgown failed to completely cover her. "Yes," she said, "but, then, I'm not a man, am I?"

He smiled, and his boxers showed evidence that she had not lost her appeal.

They talked quietly about nothing much. Her hand made its way to his hair. His slipped onto her thigh. Color rose in her cheeks.

The talk died a natural death. Their caresses grew bolder. They kissed.

It was not, as rumors among the Ichthyologists later had it, an explosion of passion after that. They still moved slowly, but slow and steady can get you around the bases, too.

She sighed when his lips at last touched her breast. He groaned when her hands moved inside his shorts.

The sheets rustled as they moved together. She opened her legs. He rolled between them. They made intimate contact.

And he pulled away.

Her eyes snapped open. She reached out to him. He rolled all the way over to the far edge of the bed.

"What's wrong?," she asked, talking to his back.

"You deserve better," he said. "I'm not good enough for you. A crumb like me? Please."

"No," she said, "no, it was good. It will be good. Don't leave me hanging like this."

Pete rolled onto his back and spoke to the ceiling. "You want me? YOU want ME?"

"Yes," she said, "yes."

"Tell me."

"What? Oh. I want you."

"No, that's not it."

"I don't understand -- like this? I want you, lover. I need you inside me, now. Come to me, fill me up!"

He sighed. "No. That's not it."