The Bachelor

He returns to his guitar. Soon, his fingerpicking evolves into Kansas' "Dust in the Wind.'' "It's just a great song,'' he says, and then he begins to talk about the girls in Los Angeles and, again, his mom. "You go out to a club anywhere in L.A. and you're like, 'Damn!' But still, man, they can't hold a conversation, and if I can't do that with somebody, I really have no attraction. I want a girl who I can tell anything to and not worry about offending them. I've always been that way with my mother. We really converse well. We talk about everything, and I think I yearn for that.''

Right around then, Lynn Harless, who is wearing a sweat shirt that reads Be Naughty, Save Santa the Trip, comes into the kitchen and takes a seat. "I had Justin when I was twenty, and he seemed about twenty when he was born, so we've pretty much shared everything,'' she says, gazing at her boy. "We're weird like that. But there's a lot of stuff he starts telling me about that I tell him, 'OK, I think this is something you should talk to Trace about. Some things you are not supposed to say to your mother.' Sexual things. And his response is usually, 'Oh, Mom, just listen.' "

While his mom is saying this, Timberlake keeps on playing, smiling to himself. If, as he often says, he's looking for a woman just like the woman sitting opposite him right now, and if he thought he had found that woman in Spears, then Spears' betrayal of him must in some way feel as bad as if it were his mother betraying him. Actually, maybe nothing could be worse for a guy like Timberlake, more damaging or less likely to heal.