“I’ll be at the Meadowlands. We’re playing the Jets.” He moved away from the refrigerator and took a banana from a stainless steel fruit bowl that looked like the terminal at Dulles.

She slipped on the pair of half-glasses that were lying on the desk and set her cigarette in a chunky black glass ashtray. “What about Thursday evening before you leave?”

“Meeting. Friday’s all right, though.”

“The vice president’s going to be in town that night, and there’s another reception.”

“Wednesday night if we make it after midnight.”

“That looks like it’ll work. Except—” She slammed the book shut. “I’ll have my period.” Slipping off her glasses, she rubbed the bridge of her nose, took another drag from her cigarette, and said briskly, “We’ll work around it. We have before.”

“We’ve been divorced for nearly a year, Val. Don’t you think it’s time we talked about putting an end to this?”

“There’s no need to end it yet. We agreed this would be the best arrangement until one of us finds someone else.”

“Or until we kill each other, whichever comes first.”

She ignored his crack and showed that rare vulnerability that always got to him. “I just—I just can’t imagine how to go about it. I’m attracted to powerful men. How am I supposed to tell someone like that I won’t sleep with him until I’ve seen a complete workup of his blood chemistry?”

He tossed the banana peel in the sink. “Sex in the nineties. It makes for strange bedfellows.”

“No one should have to screw an ex-spouse just because that ex-spouse happens to be HIV negative.” She stabbed out her cigarette in the ashtray.

“Amen to that.” He disliked the arrangement a lot more than she did, but whenever he tried to break it off, she made him feel like a heel. Once he found his baby-makin’ woman, however, he was putting an end to this.

“We’re both too smart to play sexual roulette,” she said.

“And you’re crazy about my body.”

She didn’t have much of a sense of humor these days, and his wisecrack set her off. Her nostrils began to breathe fire, and before long she was accusing him of gross insensitivity, reckless behavior, a bad disposition, not caring about anything but winning football games, and emotional dishonesty.

Since she was pretty much on target, he tuned her out while he polished off the banana. In all fairness, he knew her problem was worse than his, and the fact that he felt sorry for her was one of the reasons he went along with this sick arrangement. As a female member of the House of Representatives, she was judged by a stricter moral standard than her male colleagues. The voters might forgive some hounding around from their congressman, but they sure wouldn’t forgive it from a woman. For someone who liked sex as much as Valerie, but didn’t have either a husband or a man she cared about, it was a definite problem. Besides, she was one of the few honest legislators in Washington, and he figured it was his patriotic duty.