Time slipped by. Mo told stories about summers on Nantucket where her grandmother had a twelve room "cottage" on the water. So that's where she developed her beach strut, Joe thought. Mo's father had slyly dominated the family even though her mother had all the money. Mo was ambivalent toward her father. She was proud of his intellect and accomplishments, but she had an inside view of what he had taken from every one around him and the price he himself had paid for academic success. She was looking for a way to be like him without being like him, Joe decided. Mo tried her new espresso machine. She was having dinner guests the following evening. Joe visited the bathroom and noticed that she had left open the door to her bedroom. The bed was freshly made with lilac purple sheets. A huge white flower by Georgia O'Keeffe waited on the wall. He thought it would be nice to listen to music, but he didn't say anything. He was tuning into Mo's way of inhabiting her space, her large eyes, quiet, cat-like. He talked about Kate and Max and then fell silent. "So how's your love life?" she asked suddenly. Her eyebrows were raised. She bent forward, making herself smaller. "Nothing to write home about--if I had a home." "You're a good looking man, Joe Burke. Just the right amount of gray in your mustache. Aristocrat. Rebel. How did your nose get that crook in it, by the way. I've been meaning to ask." "Oh, that," Joe said, "the rebounding wars--in high school." She had surprised him. He thought she was moving away from him, and now he sensed the outlines of an offer, the second one in two months. He and Mo could be lovers; he would ride shotgun, do things her way, and she would do her best for him in time left over from her busy life. The lilac sheets beckoned, but as suddenly as it had come, the offer, if it had been one, was gone, swept off the table with the crumbs she brushed with one hand into the other. She stood and said, "The ladies better watch it. O.K., I still have work to do today. I've got some orders I'm trying to get out by the weekend." Again he was surprised, but he went on as though nothing had happened. She drove him home, his tool case on his lap. "I'll call you when I get back from the wedding," he said with his hand on her car door. "Have fun," she said and pulled away with a thoughtful frown. Joe walked up the stairs to his apartment. What did she want? What did he want? He didn't know, he had to admit. Probably that was why the offer vanished. He'd paid attention to the plumbing and flunked passion. Joe slung the aluminum case across the room onto the mattress. The tools, in their foam cushion, didn't even rattle. "I kept my Goddamned Thing in my Goddamned Pants, Batman!" Batman maintained a dignified silence.