She’d talked to legal because she wanted to make sure her research was correct. If she married Taggart, he would be considered a Pittsburgh resident and could come and go without needing to jump through hoops for a visa. She didn’t want to be married to a man stuck in another universe.
Had Taggart manipulated her? She replayed the key conversations over. No.
“Taggart isn’t intimidated by me,” Jane said. “I find that very appealing.”
“I see.” Dmitri tapped on the desk for another minute. “It’s obvious that Hal doesn’t know yet. Please, let me know when you decide to tell him.”
He was afraid that Hal would self-destruct when he found out. Considering Hal’s love of explosives, this could be a very bad thing for the station.
“I will.” Jane promised.
According to Nigel and Hal, a male catfish built a nest in shallow water out of pebbles. It invited the female in to lay her eggs, then chased her out to fertilize and guard over them until they hatched. Somewhere in three rivers fed by countless streams were two nests.
They had a narrow, six-day window to find them.
The talk of “fertilized eggs” reminded Jane that she had no birth control. She hadn’t been out on a date since high school. Sooner or later, she wanted the chance to test the chemistry between her and Taggart. They hadn’t gotten beyond kissing as her house was overflowing with family and friends.
Taggart had lost part of his luggage just before driving to Pittsburgh and never replaced its contents. It meant that there was a high probability that he didn’t have any contraceptives on hand either.
The problem was how to get birth control without Hal finding out. She couldn’t just drop Hal at his apartment and go shopping. Their very public downtown fight might have made them a target with the oni. For the time being, all the men needed her watching their backs. It would mean, though, Hal watching her shopping cart. He knew full well that she wasn’t dating anyone prior to the Chased by Monsters’ crew arriving in Pittsburgh. He was smart enough to connect the dots.
The problem with living on the Rim, she couldn’t just slip out in the middle of the night and grab something quick. The only twenty-four-hour store in Pittsburgh was the Oakland Giant Eagle. The largest store of the Earth-based chain, the Oakland supermarket was geared toward college students that seemingly never slept and had a great love of ramen noodles. It would take her over an hour to drive from her house, buy what she needed and drive back.
She could send Hal and Nigel to Wollerton Hardware while she and Taggart went to the South Side Giant Eagle Supermarket. It would be nice to have a mature conversation on contraception options with the selection right in front of them. The two naturalists could buy equipment for the nest hunt. In theory, they’d be safe while she crossed the street to buy groceries.
She needed Wollerton’s to be still standing when she was done shopping. The hardware store was a sponsor of PB&G.
It left the choice of letting Taggart pick out the contraception alone or her deciding what they used when they hit that point.
She sent Taggart to Wollerton’s. As an extra measure of safety, she called Aaron Wollerton and warned him of Hal’s presence.
She grabbed a cart and headed into the Giant Eagle. The store had been restocked after Shutdown and the initial rush of shoppers was over. Perishable imported foods like bananas were sold out but there were still mounds of potatoes, apples and onions. Local tomatoes, sweet corn, zucchini and non-perishable vegetables from Easternlands took the place of the sold out Earth goods.
A young couple with that European flair stood puzzling over the purple gourd-like diki. New arrivals. Their fascination with the vegetable made Jane consider a possible segment for Chased by Monsters. Not a full episode — that would never fly — but certainly could be used to lengthen a short piece on some elusive animal. The whole point of marrying Taggart was to make sure that the film team wasn’t sent back to Earth without enough footage for an entire season.
That and he was the sexiest man she’d ever met.
Hal was handsome. He needed to be for network television. Sexy? Was there ever a time she thought he was sexy? She wasn’t sure: the only lasting memory from the first few months included lots of vomit and fire extinguishers.
She found the feminine product section. She loaded up for her period and then considered the birth control section, which was frightening close to the pregnancy tests. There were a lot more choices than she thought there would be.
How was she going to tell Hal that she was getting married to someone else? It still boggled her that she even needed to tell him. They’d never dated. Never kissed. Never held hands. When they’d met, Hal had been a drunken mess. She’d gotten the job because he’d run his production assistant over with a golf cart. He set fire to himself that first day. The rest of the week had gone nearly as bad. It was obvious that he needed her to do a drastic intervention to save his life. She found him a new, safer, cleaner place to live, one that was far away from any bar or liquor store. She used the move to steal all his booze. She stole the alternator out of his car so he couldn’t drink and drive. Twice she’d handcuffed him in her bathroom to dry out. She rode herd on him nearly every waking hour, taking him to family events so she could keep an eye on him. It was a long, tedious, trying year but in the end, all worth it.
Hal loved her. She didn’t feel the same way. She’d saved his life and probably his sanity. It had been a job for her. One she enjoyed most of the times. Other times, she struggled not to drown him in some convenient puddle. She was fond of Hal like a younger brother, even though he was nearly a decade older than her.
Would he self-destruct? Had he gotten stronger than he had been? Judging by Dmitri’s reaction, no one thought so.
She knew him best but she hadn’t realized how much he loved her until Taggart pointed it out. Hal never hit on her, at least, to the point that she knew he was. Maybe there been some kind of ninja-mode flirting going on?
“Jane?”
She looked up from the box of condoms that she’d been studying to find her mother standing beside her. “Mom! What are you doing here?”
“Shopping. What you doing here?”
Jane controlled the urge to put the fling the box over her shoulder. “Shopping.” She dropped the condoms into her cart as calmly as she could manage.
Her mother’s eyes widen. “Jane! How wonderful!”
Jane blushed. She should have expected that reaction. Her mother raised her to believe she had the right to control her own body. Sex equaled a boyfriend which equaled possible son-in-law which meant future grandchildren.
“Taggart?” Her mother asked. “Or is there someone new?”
“Yes, Taggart.” Jane winced as she realized while they had a six to ten-day window on the namazu nests, they had equally narrow window for an elaborate Kryskill wedding. Every day she let go by, the more annoyed her mother would be with her for jeopardizing a lifetime of expectations. Jane may be one of seven children, but it would be the bride’s family that planned her five brothers’ weddings. All the years that Boo had been missing, Jane had been her mother’s one shot at going hog wild on planning.
“Mom. You can’t tell Hal.” Jane needed to get that in first, let it sink in, before popping the news. “I need to be the one that tells him.”