“How long have you and this nursery school teacher been seeing each other?” She took a quick, angry drag.

“Not long.”

“And she, of course, is everything I wasn’t.” Her mouth tightened as she stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.

Valerie had a good-sized ego and she didn’t usually give in to petulance, but he understood that he was hurting her. “I’m sure she’s not as smart as you, Valerie. Not as sexy, either. But the thing of it is, she’s real good with kids.”

“I see. She’s passed your Mother Goose audition.” She gave him a bright, hard smile. “Actually, Dan, I’m glad this came up because I’ve been wanting to talk to you about the same thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Our arrangement isn’t working for me.”

He feigned surprise. “You want to break it off?”

“I’m sorry, but, yes. I just didn’t know how to bring it up without hurting you.”

He jumped up from his chair and gave her a little of the outrage he knew she needed to hear. “Who is he? Have you got another man, Val?”

“It was inevitable, Dan. So let’s not have any scenes.”

He looked down. Shoved his foot around in the carpet pile for a little bit. “Damn, Valerie, you sure know how to cut a man down to size. I don’t know why I even try to have the last word with you. Here I came over to break it off with you, and all the time you were getting ready to dump me.”

She regarded him suspiciously, trying to see if he was putting her on, but he kept the same sincere expression on his face he’d used in Sunday’s postgame interviews when he talked about how well the Broncos had played and how friggin’ much they’d deserved to win.

She gave the conference table a brisk thump with her fingertips and stood. “Well, then, I guess there isn’t anything more to say.”

“I guess not.”

As he looked down at her, the good times came back instead of the bad. Most of them had taken place in bed, but he supposed that was more than a lot of divorced couples could say. He wasn’t sure who moved first, but the next thing he knew they had their arms around each other.

“Take care of yourself, y’hear?” he said.

“Have a good life,” she whispered back.