Jaime Sommers opened the door to her cabin and regarded it from the entrance. The glory days of trans-Atlantic travel were over, that much was clear. The small room was done up in a combination of brown and orange and cream, supposedly glamorous in a contemporary style, but it fell short of the glamorous part by some distance. The porthole was nice - brass, in fact - and was perhaps the best clue that she was on an ocean liner. Still, it was a thrill to be aboard - even if it was to a theme of icky colors.

Eying the contents of her suitcase, she decided four and a half days warranted a full unpacking; for some reason it bothered her to go to all the trouble of packing just to undo it right away. She hung up her outfits and quickly threw the rest into drawers. With just a little time to herself she wanted to get out and explore the ship.

Reluctantly she picked up the papers Russ had given her before he'd disembarked. There was the schedule for the conference, meals, and special events, and a couple of pages of personal information about the Wilsons that she was supposed to digest before meeting them in an hour. Russ, overburdened and apologetic, had briefed and re-briefed her regarding security issues, repeating himself (at Oscar's insistence) several times over.

Confident that she would figure it out as she went along, she quickly scanned the documents, threw on her favorite long cardigan, and headed up to the main deck. She hadn't taken more than a dozen steps when she heard someone call her name - a lone figure waving from the row of deck chairs.

The voice gave her away, but otherwise Jaime wouldn't have recognized Louise Wells, bundled up in layers of outerwear, scarf tied over her head, several blankets slung over her knees, dark glasses slipping down her small nose, book in hand.

"Hi Louise!" she grinned, bending to a hug. "I didn't know you were coming!" She had always liked Louise - her frankness and warmth - and gravitated to her on social occasions. Rudy had told Jaime that if he couldn't find Louise at a party at one a.m., he had learned to look in the kitchen and he would invariably find them together, head to head, giggling in a conspiratorial manner. At this moment, she was exactly the person Jaime needed to talk to. "Are you attending this thing?" she asked.

"Oh, hell no." Louise replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. "I'm about this interested in science and security as a topic," She made a 'zero' with her thumb and forefinger, "and they're just about as interested in the work I do. So I'm here in a wifely capacity only. It's a great opportunity to get some fresh sea air and catch up on my reading."

"They're not interested? Why not?" Louise was a renowned psychologist, specializing in the study of mental illness.

Her friend shook her head. "If it isn't about brain washing and mind control, the Intelligence community couldn't care less."

"Well, they should care. This is where it all starts, after all." Jaime tapped her forehead, grinning.

"You're such a sensible person. Here, come sit with me." Louise offered, handing her a blanket.

"I can't stay long." Jaime said regretfully as she arranged herself on the deck chair, "I'm expected in the conference room pretty soon."

"Oh, of course. Are you babysitting, or something else?"

"Oh, the usual - babysitting and eavesdropping. I'm keeping an eye on the Secretary and his wife."

"Well, you're practically a VIP then."

"Hardly. I'm disguised as Douglas Wilson's personal assistant. Where's Rudy?"

"I'd bet you five bucks he's sitting in the front row right now, glowing with excitement. There's some German on board who is the last word in synthetic molecular research and Rudy wants to trade notes. He could barely sleep last night." Louise chuckled.

Jaime laughed. "So, how have you been?"

"Great. Busy. Happy to have a break." She gave the younger woman a significant look. "More importantly, how have you been?"

"Oh, I'm okay." Jaime sighed. "You heard about Steve and me, huh?"

"Yeah - and I'm really sorry."

"Me too." Jaime smiled sadly.

"How are you doing with it all?"

"Well ... basically I'm fine. It was the right thing, but it's still hard. I feel like we've disappointed everybody who's been rooting for us all these years."

"Nobody's disappointed, Jaime - sad for you maybe, but you have to do what's right for you. In fact, we'd only be disappointed if you didn't."

Jaime smiled, looked out to the blue waters and shook her head. "It was supposed to be so perfect, you know? Our friendship when we were kids, our high school romance, our engagement... it was a classic boy-gets-girl, girl-gets-bionics, girl-loses-memory, boy-loses-girl, girl-gets-her-memory-back and then boy-gets-girl story." She smiled ruefully.

Louise laughed and took off her sunglasses, aware that no really good conversation happened when eye contact was compromised. She was surprised that Jaime was so ready to talk.

"And it was great for the first year, but then it just stopped working. We thought we knew each other so well, but we knew nothing about being together as adults. We always played well together. It was everything else that got to be a problem."

"How do you mean?"

Jaime scratched her head and contemplated her wording. "It was like ... our expectations of each other were all out of whack. I think he found me demanding, and I found him remote. And then - and this sounds like a total contradiction - I wanted my independence and he didn't like that so much."

"Hmm. Old-fashioned-boy versus new-fashioned-girl?"

"I blame it on the bionics."

Louise raised her eyebrows.

"Mine, not his. I changed after that accident - apart from the obvious stuff like the aneurysm and memory loss and new limbs - between the bionics and the work with the OSI - my expectations of life and of myself changed. I turned into a much stronger, more independent person."

"... which is a good thing." Louise interjected.

"I hope so." Jaime responded, looking uncertain. "It didn't feel like it with Steve. He missed the old me. He is kind of an old-fashioned guy." Suddenly she looked apologetic. "Oh - I don't want to rag on him - he's a great guy."

"I know, Jaime." Louise affirmed quickly. "One of the best. Nice butt too."

Jaime laughed. Louise never ceased to surprise her. "Oh yeah," she agreed, "great butt." She plucked absently at the fringe of the blanket, the smile drifting from her face. "You know, one of the stupidest things - when we argued, we practically reverted to being twelve years old."

"You're kidding! Siblings do that you know. I do it with my sister - particularly if we're both under stress. It's terrible."

"Well that's exactly it. He's more like a sibling." Jaime replied with emphasis. "So, there was a point when I think we both started wondering if we'd put all of our money on the wrong horse. You know, Steve's Mom was always telling us we were "made for each other" and "perfect together", and after all that, it didn't feel perfect at all."

Louise nodded thoughtfully.

"And then this leaves me wondering," Jaime added carefully, "have I missed the real thing, being all caught up in the Steve and Jaime fairy tale? What if the real thing just didn't look quite so perfect on the surface, but really was the right person?" She felt stupidly inarticulate. "Do you get what I mean?"

"Sure." Louise replied slowly, wondering if Jaime were speaking in general or specific terms.

Frowning, Jaime pulled the blanket up and wrapped her arms around her knees. "Then on the other hand, I'm starting to wonder if I have a thing for emotionally remote men."

So there is someone. Louise thought, glancing down the deck, wondering just how nosy she should be. "Someone in particular?"

"Well, yeah." Jaime said haltingly.

"Anybody I know?"

"Oscar." She said it quickly, as you might choose to leap into cold water rather than wade in.

Louise's eyes widened, becoming almost perfect circles. "Oscar... Goldman?" she blurted.

"He's the only Oscar I know." Jaime replied, watching her friend. Rudy and Louise were the people closest to him, the likeliest to know the state of his mind and heart.

"You're in love with Oscar?" This last sentence came out very quickly, as Louise sat up straight in her chair, her face slack with shock, her cheeks flushed. "Are you sure?!"

Jaime, though nervous about her revelation, couldn't help but smile at the intensity of her friend's expression. "Well, I get an ache in my heart every time I see him, and my brain turns to liquid and I shake and I can't put a sentence together. What do you make of that, Doctor?"

"Wow." Louise sat back with a frown, her eyes flicking around the deck as she made some mental calculation. "Does he know?" she asked.

"No. I don't think so." Louise's body language had suddenly changed from alert to reticent, and it sent a wave of anxiety through Jaime. She continued anyway - she so desperately needed her friend's perspective. "I was kind of hoping this trip might be my chance...though I have to figure out if it's even appropriate. I didn't want to go blasting out of the gate right after Steve and I split up, and then on top of that I'm worried that if I come on too strong I'm going to remind him of Lisa and freak him out completely. Or that he'll think it's just pity on my part."

Louise nodded.

"And I think he's been avoiding me since Steve told him about us. I've really only communicated with Russ in the last couple of months."

"Really?" Louise was still engaged in some mental sorting process, as though she were surrounded by piles of papers and she didn't know how to file them. "But when did this happen? I have to say, he hasn't been his most ... delightful... in the last while. Are you sure you're not on the rebound?" She gave Jaime a hard, searching look.

"Absolutely. I'm sure. I think a breakup has to be traumatic for a big rebound, doesn't it? Steve and I just kind of shook hands and called it a draw."

"I suppose." Louise conceded carefully. "Okay, well tell me, how did it happen? I'm still flabbergasted. I need details."

"It's kind of hard to explain," Jaime started, pushing her hair from her face with both hands. "I'm not sure I even get it myself. First off, Lisa made me see Oscar in a totally different way - I suppose that's not surprising. You know, I don't usually sit around thinking about other people's sex lives - especially my boss's. And Oscar would have us all believe he's immune to normal human needs - but when Lisa came along, suddenly he was exposed as a very passionate and vulnerable human being. Passionate about me. It was shocking, honestly, but a light went on - in a room in my head - a room I didn't even know was there. Know what I mean?"

"Oh, do I." Louise replied. "Rudy was one of those rooms for me."

"He was?" Jaime asked, her interest piqued. "Tell me."

"No, you finish first." Louise insisted, anxious to hear Jaime's story.

"No, really Louise, you first. I need a diversion. I've been driving myself nuts. In fact, I don't think I'll be able to carry on unless you tell me." Jaime said, with a melodramatic flourish.

"Hambone." Louise chuckled. "All right, all right! We met in grad school - we were part of a little gang that hung around together, studied together, drank together, that kind of thing. At the time I was madly in love with this..." she wrinkled her nose and shook her head, "jerk.. and I couldn't see Rudy for dust. He was just my pal - one of the gang."

Jaime grinned. "What was he like, this jerk?"

"He was a fellow student in the psych department, good looking of course - fancied himself a Renaissance man - recited poetry, canoed down the Amazon, climbed mountains..."

"Wow."

"Yeah, it looked good on paper, but he was a jerk. He was so completely dazzled by the shining light of his own glory that he couldn't even see me off in the shadows - me and the other four or five women he was dating at the time."

"Ooh - ouch."

"Yeah." Louise laughed. "And then there was Rudy - sweet, boyish, bookish, brilliant Rudy, waiting it out, gazing at me with those big sad brown eyes. You should have seen him, Jaime... he looked about fifteen, and he was so shy. Having grown up in Montana I had some pretty set ideas about what men were supposed to look like. I wanted the Marlboro man with a university degree. Rudy was too scrubbed, too tame, too steady for me. I wanted drama. I wanted a man who could build his own cabin, make love to me, and then talk about Jung. You're so stupid when you're young. And I mean young as in youthful - not Jung as in Carl."

They laughed.

"So...how did you get together?"

"Well! He gave me a bit of drama! We were walking home together from an outing with friends - we'd had too much beer, I think - and I was moaning about my love life - when all of a sudden he kicked over a garbage can, told me that he loved me and that I was an idiot - and then he stormed off and didn't speak to me for a week."

"Really?" Jaime grinned. Somehow it was easy to picture. Despite that steady, sweet demeanor, Rudy could be startlingly passionate most often about his work - but she could well imagine that he was just the sort of young man who would kick over a garbage can to make a point to the girl he loved.

"Yup. And fortunately that flicked that light on in the room in my head, and I never looked back."

"Oh, that's wonderful." Jaime said with a slightly dreamy air. She was in a state of mind where she latched onto all happy endings and imagined them as her own.

"Okay. Now, back to you." Louise said impatiently, flapping her hand. "Are you saying you've been in love with Oscar throughout your relationship with Steve?"

"No." Jaime shook her head. "Well, yes and no. Let's just say I slammed the door to that room right away. I was pretty swoony about Steve at that point, so it wasn't too difficult."

"I just have to ask one more question," Louise interjected, "this really isn't some misplaced sense of responsibility for Lisa Galloway, is it?"

"No." Jaime replied confidently. "I've asked myself that a million times - not that I didn't feel horrible about that whole thing. I know it wasn't my fault, but I still feel like I set him up for it."

Louise nodded slowly. "Okay, I'm not sure I'm entirely convinced, but go on - how did that door open again?"

"Well, it started when I noticed that I got this pain - here -" she placed her hand on her breastbone, "every single time I saw him. At first I thought it was just that I felt badly for him, and guilty and all that, but after a while I recognized it was something more. This is going to sound odd - but I missed him; every time I saw him, I missed him, because whatever we had, the way he used to look at me, the jokes, the teasing, the rapport - it was all gone. I get that pain just thinking about it. I thought it would get better with time, but it never did. He's the kind of guy that subtly slips into your life and becomes important without your even knowing it, you know?"

"Absolutely."

"So, I still thought I was just missing my lost 'friend' and then it all became very clear..." she paused to give Louise a sheepish glance, "about four months ago. Steve and I went out for dinner at Lucio's, and we ran into Oscar and ... he was on a date."

"Of course!" Louise cried. "The date!"

"You knew about it?"

"Oh yeah - we'll get to that - go on."

Jaime gave her a long look, then continued. "So, as I guess you probably know, he invited us to join them, and I - Oh God - I was absolutely blindsided by jealousy. I couldn't believe it - it came right out of the blue. He was being so sweet to her and he was more like his old self, and right then and there it clicked - and all I could think was 'that's supposed to be for me', and I just ... I could barely talk the whole evening ... couldn't eat ... it was terrible. I had to tell Steve I had a migraine. I was completely blown out of the water. I walked around in a daze for about a week, and in that time I started to allow myself feel what had been there all along. I mean, he's always been my man, Louise." She said this with an intensity that left no doubt as to the strength of her conviction. "My backbone. But he was so damned quiet about it I never even knew. I can't tell you how often I've wanted to call him in the last two years, just to hear his voice, to talk to him - about anything - but I couldn't... because of that ... cow." Jaime spat out the last word with uncharacteristic rancor. "Lisa, I mean."

"She really is out of the picture now, isn't she?"

"Oh yeah, apart from being a long way from parole, they barely got her old face back on her, and her plastic surgeon says if she tries surgery again she won't have any features left at all."

"Ew." said Louise, grimacing. "You know, that date..." she added, clearing her throat in preparation for a confession, "she's a friend of mine."

"You're kidding!" Jaime was momentarily, irrationally angry.

"No - sorry." Louise laughed apologetically. "I had no idea. I set them up - told him it would be good for him, and to my surprise he went along with it."

"Are they... are they still seeing each other?" This was the question Jaime most wanted to ask Louise, and she was terrified of the answer.

Louise paused. "No. That was the last one."

"Oh..." Jaime sighed, her eyes widening with relief. She bit her lip and looked to her friend. "You know, Louise, I was kind of hoping that when I told you how I feel about him you'd start jumping up and down because maybe everything could finally be perfect and we would live happily ever after."

"Oh, Jaime," Louise replied, reaching out to squeeze her friend's arm, "it would gladden my heart more than you can imagine to see something work out between the two of you. It's just..." Louise shook her head and frowned.

"What?" Jaime asked anxiously, feeling a sick sensation roll over her.

"It's - it's well... you know that Rudy and I spent a lot of time with him in that first year trying to help him through the whole thing."

"Yeah...?" Was Louise going to tell her that he had had a change of heart?

"He was so terribly raw, but I thought he was doing pretty well, all things considered, and then he started rebuilding his defenses - and saying was that nothing like this would ever happen to him again, because he wouldn't allow it. And since then he's clammed up completely, and we haven't had a real, heartfelt conversation for almost a year."

Jaime swallowed.

"And you know," Louise continued, her expression troubled, "I've never met anyone who has the capacity he has for self discipline. I'm worried he really meant it. I'm worried he won't allow himself."

"Yeah, I'm worried about that too. I was kind of hoping you were going to say that just one push and he'll jump straight into my arms."

"Well, he might, but he might not, and I don't want you to get hurt. You know, what Lisa did was reinforce in Oscar two of his most unproductive ideas about himself. First, that he has to live like a clam because his work is too dangerous and he can't trust a living soul, which is essentially an excuse for the second and real reason that underneath it all he's convinced that he's unlovable."

That statement sent a stab of pain through Jaime's heart. She hugged her knees tighter, as though she were hugging Oscar. "I could disabuse him of that idea." she said sadly.

"What pains me most is that he knows Lisa hated him, and that while he was falling in love with her - with you - finally opening up, she was essentially mocking him the whole time - exacting her revenge."

"I know, it makes me sick - oh my God," Jaime said, stiffening as she looked over Louise's shoulder. "Here he comes. Let's see if he pulls some kind of a dodge when he sees me."

Louise turned to look at him. "Let's wave." They waved. Oscar waved in return, and then - sure enough he crossed the fore deck to the other side of the ship.

Louise turned back to her companion, frowning, her mouth open.

"Yup. He's avoiding me." Jaime said, fighting the hollow sense of rejection that was gnawing more and more often at her innards. She pressed her face so hard into her knees that her nose buckled.

"Well, that's rotten of him," Louise said, shaking her head, "but of course, sensitive people sometimes need to grow a thick shell just so they can get on with life. And Oscar, like so many men, is completely befuddled by emotional hardship that he doesn't handle it well."

"It's hopeless, isn't it?" Jaime said mournfully, her voice half muffled due to the fact she was speaking into her knees.

"Oh, honey, don't look so glum! Don't give up!" It hadn't been Louise's intention to encourage Jaime too much - the whole affair seemed very fraught, but somehow she couldn't stop herself. "You know what?"

"What?"

"My friend Carol, the one I set him up with, broke it off the night of that dinner because, as she told me, she saw no point in dating anyone who was so clearly hung up on another woman."

"She said that?" Jaime asked, perking up. "And she thought he was hung up on me?"

"She sure did." Louise suppressed a smile, reaching for Jaime's arm. "And - I have to tell you this - she said she couldn't understand it, because you had to be one of the most sullen people she'd ever met. I told her she must have been mistaken, that it couldn't have been you."

Jaime let out a rueful laugh. "Oh, yeah, that was me. Would you apologize to her for me?"

"Of course."

"So..." Jaime was feeling flushed and her heart rate was rising. Trying to keep her voice steady, she said, "he's 'hung up' on me. I wish I could tell. I wish I felt more sure. Mostly he makes me feel repellent."

"Jaime," Louise said slowly, staring up at the seagulls wheeling over head, "I don't want you to get hurt, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. I haven't spent any time with you and Oscar together - only apart - but I've always thought there was something there - I don't even think I could really put it into words, but there's some commonality between you two. When I'm with one of you, I often think of the other and I couldn't even say why. It's something..." she shrugged and smiled, "ineffable."

"Really? Ineffable." Jaime repeated this word as though it were precious. She smiled and sighed, swinging her feet to the ground. "Thanks Louise. I guess I'd better go. I wish I could just hang out with you and gossip and read."

"I wish that too. Let's try to get together for nightcaps - or coffee breaks or something, okay?"

Jaime arranged her blanket over Louise's feet. "Roger." she said. "You've cheered me up. Thanks."