Nothing.

He just lay there in his dinner jacket, his handsome head turned handsomely toward her.

"Wouldn't you be more comfortable on the bed?" she said.

Then she got this horrible thought.

Maybe he'd been a lot drunker than she'd realized and had simply keeled over. What kind of letter would that inspire to Aberdeen? She'd really have to embroider that one to make it sound like anything at all.

"Why don't you let me undo your tie?" she said. "Maybe that'll make you feel better."

The waves; the roll of the massive ship; the scent of ocean; the cry of birds; her breathing and the wet smell of her hair; and moonlight through the tiny cabin window-she realized then that she was in a place alien to her Kansas ways.

It was because of the moonlight that she finally saw how awkwardly he was positioned on the floor. She just started sobbing softly to herself because it was so ridiculous, just so ridiculous.

And it ruined utterly-utterly-any sort of decent letter at all to Aberdeen.

Any sort of decent letter at all.

2

11:02 P.M.

Tobin, thanks to the largess of the game show "Celebrity Circle," was spending the cruise in a Mode 5 cabin, which meant he enjoyed the perks of a double bed, a bureau in which to put his underwear with the ragged elastic and the socks that never seemed quite to match, and a somewhat large mirror above the bureau, in which he could assess what forty-two years, red hair, alcohol, any number of fistfights, and the curse of being only five had done to him.

From the Parade deck he heard the sounds of a band that was made up of lounge lizard rejects from New York-he knew this for sure because they'd bored him in any number of night spots-four guys who all wanted to be Bert Convy when they grew up.

Or was he being unfair, as he was so often unfair? He decided probably, and he decided to hell with it, and went back to staring at the TV screen.