Taryn thought first of London Underground and Kelly's for finding a job. They had just hired someone at Kelly's, but London Underground looked more promising. Taryn talked to Skye Quartermaine, who said she would talk to Sergei Kanishchev.

Taryn hung out for awhile, chatting with Mikhail the bartender, wondering if and when Clay would come in, without working up the nerve to just ask Mikhail.

The bar got busier. Taryn watched Mikhail work as she had Clay before. She had liked doing that. She had asked Skye about waitressing, but wondered if she could learn to be a bartender. Being 18 was wonderful. It opened up so many new possibilities.

Chad Breyer came up to the bar to make an order. A couple of seconds later, Mary Ellen Delaney came to the bar and stood next to Chad, not knowing him, just another customer who happened to be next to him.

But to Taryn, the appearance of these two people in one place had significance.

Impulsively, she went over to them. "Well, if it isn't the Morality Police," she said. "Are you partners now? Where's your squad car?"

"So Toby hasn't called you, eh, Taryn?" Chad said.

Maryellen looked confused. She looked at Chad for the first time. He seemed to know what Taryn was talking about.

Then the name struck Maryellen. "Oh, you're the girl who moved the car off the railroad tracks while under the influence."

"Yeah," Taryn said. "Thanks for covering that in the newspapers. It was a real important event everybody has to know about."

Maryellen shrugged. "For the Port Charles Gazette, it's big enough."

Taryn shrugged, too. "Wow, your career is really big time," she said, and walked away.

Maryellen looked at Chad again. "What was that all about?" she asked him.

"Taryn was dating two guys, one of them was my brother Toby. I happened to catch her instead of Toby. I told Toby. What did you do?"

Maryellen smiled. "I'm a reporter, and I did a story for the Port Charles Gazette. Two stories, actually. In the second one, I put her name, because she was over 18."

"So that's why we're the morality police. Well, partner, let me buy you a drink."

"Sure," Maryellen said. "My name is Mary Ellen Delaney, by the way."

"Mine is Chad Breyer," Chad said. "Are you here with anybody?"

"My sisters," Maryellen said. "You?"

"I'm here on my own to hear the band. My brother Toby is the guitarist."

"Sit with us for awhile."

"Thanks," he said, taking the drinks from Mikhail.

Mary Ellen introduced Chad to her sisters Colleen and Melinda. "Taryn Polk just yelled at both of us," she explained. "It seems we both exposed her, separately."

"How is that?" Colleen asked.

"I wrote about her little escapade in the paper, remember?" Mary Ellen said.

"And I told my brother I saw her kissing someone else," Chad said. "She was dating my brother."

"Oh, wait," Mary Ellen said. "The other guy she was dating is our brother."

"Your brother? Clay the bartender is your brother?"

"Yep," Mary Ellen grinned at him. "Taryn broke up with Clay, though."

"Then Toby broke up with her," Chad said.

Melinda laughed. "Two men to no men. Seems sort of just, somehow. Well, it looks like you two are the foundation of the 'Expose Taryn Club.'"

Chad smiled broadly, looking at Mary Ellen. "We're going to save the world from Taryn Polk," he said.

"Or at least, the town of Port Charles," Mary Ellen grinned back.

Skye was sitting up at the bar when Sean Monroe came up and asked Mikhail for a beer. "Why hello, Skye," he said, in his friendliest accents.

"Hello, Sean," Skye said.

"Hey, Skye, do you want to go to the Nurse's Ball with me?" Sean asked her.

"No way," said Skye.

Sean just grinned. "You may as well say yes, because I'll keep pestering you. And about coming to see my apartment, too."

"I have no doubt of that," Skye rolled her eyes. "And I'll keep saying no. Though I may want to see your apartment. I'm thinking of looking for one for myself."

"You can still move into mine, as I offered before," Sean said.

"So that offer is still open? Sorry, no deal."

"OK," Sean said. "But come and see it anyway. Remember, 15D Fairview Court."

Skye went back into the office. When she came out an hour later, Sean wasn't there.

On her way home, Skye debated whether to drop by his apartment. She wanted to see him, she thought. Yet she viewed it as a weakness. Sean had cheated on her, though he claimed he didn't know they were exclusive, but how dense could he be? Would he really have reacted to her sleeping with some other guy with indifference? She wondered if Sean could ever be trusted. But then he had never actually lied to her. Once she had dumped him for sleeping with that slut Valerie Edwards, Sean had said he would agree they would be exclusive and they could move in together.

Skye thought about this. What would it be like living with Sean? Sure it would be great to have readily available all that great sex Sean was capable of. He was easygoing with little things, so it might not be that irritating to live with him. But why do it? Maybe she could get back together with him with the understanding they didn't sleep with anyone else, but not live together.

But why was she thinking of this? No way was she getting back together with Sean.

Still, she found herself driving over to the apartment, trying to bolster in her mind a justification based on her needing to see what types of apartments were available. Yet she knew that wasn't a really good reason to go and see Sean's.

Maybe seeing it and him would help her make up her mind. She thought she must be crazy to even consider getting back together with him. But his argument that he just didn't know she expected it and his offer to be exclusive and even live together, that he had made once he had found she didn't like his sleeping around, was very persuasive.

That was the problem with damn lawyers, Skye decided. They could be so convincing. Yet you couldn't be sure they meant it.

Laraine Breyer met her mother Lane for dinner at the Port Charles Grill.

Lane Charleson had gone back to her maiden name upon her divorce, even though she had three grown children named Breyer and had used that name herself for well over twenty years. But she had her reasons.

"Hello, dear," Lane said to her daughter.

"How are you, Mom? How are things at the library?" Lane was a librarian at the Port Charles Public Library.

"Fine, praise the Lord. How are things at Deception?"

"Hectic sometimes. But interesting."

"Have you made any new friends?"

"Sort of. There's Gia, she and I have hung out a little bit. She was a model and now she's a manager."

"Is she single, too?"

"No, she's married and in fact she is expecting."

"Oh, bless the Lord," said Lane. "Isn't that wonderful?"

"Gia is very happy about it," Laraine answered.

"It would be so nice for you to marry a good Christian man and have some children."

"Yes, that would be," Laraine said. She had learned not to debate these issues with Lane. There was no way to change Lane's mind about these things. "I guess you could say the same for Chad."

"He never tells me anything," Lane said.

Laraine understood where her brother was coming from.

After the waiter took their order, Lane said, "Have you met any nice guys recently?"

"No," Laraine said.

"Oh, well, praise God, someone will come along."

"I'm surprised you worry about it then, Mom."

"Oh, I don't worry that it won't happen. For all three of you. I pray for you all to be able to build good, Christian families."

"So you want a lot of grandchildren, eh, Mom?" Laraine tried to think of how to steer this conversation a different way, and then wondered why she even tried. She knew from experience that she would never succeed.

Lane just smiled. "There is someone very special. Our new pastor. Maybe you should meet him."

Laraine groaned inwardly. She looked away, as if looking to flag down a waiter, so she could have a second to compose her thoughts. This was the kind of thing she'd dreaded her mother wanting to do ever since Lane had been "born again."

And the pastor of that church! That was way worse than just some good Christian man Lane might have met as a fellow congregation member.

"So your new pastor isn't married?" Laraine asked.

"No," Lane said.

"So why don't you date him, Mom?" Laraine teased. But she knew the answer.

"Someday your father will see the light," Lane said.

Laraine didn't mind the idea of her parents getting back together. But she was fairly sure that her father wasn't going to be interested for a long, long time. Laraine didn't think he was as likely to be born again as Lane seemed to think. And Lane being un-born-again didn't seem a likely possibility.

"I wish you'd come to church more often," Lane said.

Laraine went sometimes to humor her mother. But her heart wasn't in it. At least, not the way Lane's was. And now, knowing Lane wanted her to meet this preacher and would probably be praying that she'd marry him, Laraine thought that church was the last place she wanted to go.

"I'll think about it, Mom," she said. That was what she always said.

Lane smiled the smile of the eternally saved. "I'll be praying for it," she said.

The next day, drinking orange juice while Laraine drank coffee at Kelly's, Gia smiled. "He would be different, you know. Different from all those guys you were dating and complaining that they were the same. And at least he'd speak English."

"Too much English," Laraine grinned. "One thing about being born again is that the words just flow off your tongue. And if this guy is the preacher, there's no end to his eloquence, no doubt."

"But then he won't be commitment phobic or sleeping around on you," Gia said.

"You're right. It'll at least be a different set of annoyances. Men are just annoying. Except when they don't speak English. Then they can't talk about how they don't want a commitment or how they want to play the field. Better than that, they can't control your life."

"Yeah, but they can learn English," Gia said.

Laraine laughed. "That's true. A different set of annoyances. Maybe it's worth trying. At least different. Or maybe more tolerable. I'm kind of used to Mom's language. It goes in one ear and out the other. But then a guy like that would expect me to start using that kind of language. I never can, you know? It's not so much that I don't believe in God, it's that I don't see the point in talking about it all the time. When people do, it even makes me a little suspicious. Why do they have to go on about it all the time?"

"It makes me uncomfortable, too," Gia said. "I know what you mean. My mom took us to church as kids. She wasn't like that, but some of the other people were, and I always felt put on the spot."

"That's it," Laraine said. "Put on the spot. That's how you feel. Then you think, well who appointed you God and gave you the right to examine my beliefs? When it's my mother, I can take it. I have Dad to balance her out."

"So your Dad is not born again," Gia said.

"Nope. Only once."

Gia laughed. "And your brothers?"

"They're just like me. Completely bamboozled. One day our mother was sane, and the next she was spouting like a holy roller."

"Really, was it sudden? Did she have an illness or something?"

"Nope. Nothing particular."

"Maybe it really was a miracle," Gia said.

Laraine threw a balled up napkin at Gia. "Don't you start on me now, too," she said. They both laughed.