Beauty Queen

there was always the possibility that she'd figure out a better way than shooting Colter. She wondered if she'd get scruples at the last minute. After all, she'd never actually shot another human being.
    Then she smiled to herself.
    She had just thought of the near-perfect solution to the problem of reconnoitering Colter.
    Meanwhile, Liv would be home soon—she had better hide the weapon.
    In the bottom of her closet were two boxes of mementos relating to her father—stacks of old Spring 3100s, photos taken at police picnics, even the mounted head of a ten-point buck that her father had shot, and that Liv couldn't bear to see hung on the wall. Mary Ellen hid the gun deep in one box, under several pounds of magazines. Liv never went near those boxes.
    That night was Sidney's last night in New York. The next afternoon he was flying to Tokyo, and from there to Peking. In those last days before Sidney left, Jeannie's physical need of her husband had increased in direct proportion to her apprehension about his going.
    She had almost reverted to her old beauty-queen self. She actually went to Saks and bought a lovely new nightgown and negligee, very modest, but boldly printed in art-nouveau flowers. She made sure she was ready for bed when Sidney was, with no political work to delay her. She was lounging around the bedroom, smiling, bathed fresh, lightly misted in cologne, her hair brushed loose, no cream on her face. She left the phone off the hook.
    But Sidney came shambling in, shucked his jacket, said how tired he was, went into the bathroom and took a shower. He emerged wrapped tightly in his white terry robe, and sat on the edge of the bed and smoked a cigarette (which he knew annoyed her) and repeated how tired he was from all the briefings and all the last-minute running around town for vaccinations and letters of introduction to People's Republic officials.
    Shortly he lay toppled against the pillows asleep, before she even turned off the hght.
    He had done this to her every night for weeks. And every night Jeannie had lain there in the dark, wide-awake, her body screaming with need for him. The need was almost a pain. It made her body rigid, it clamped an iron vise on the back of her head and around her shoulders, it throbbed in the small of her back.
    In vain she turned this way and that on the bed, hoping to brush her hip or breasts against him in such a way that he'd wake up and make love to her.
    She remembered how good things had been, once upon a time.
    The fact was, their lovemaking had been a lot better back when she was the beauty queen and he was the ambitious young political reporter. Good juicy love, nearly every night, sometimes twice a night. Things had even stayed good when she had started feeling the nervousness, when she had started doing a fair amount of social drinking. Even when she realized that, from a given Friday night to a given Monday night, she had been half-boozed the whole time.
    But when her mother died, she stopped drinking, stopped cold. Now she was lucky if Sidney performed his conjugal duties one or twice a month.
    The deep nervousness had stayed there all the time, and being saved hadn't helped it, and the change in Sidney's attitude to her hadn't helped either.
    The irony was that the Bible didn't forbid married people to enjoy each other in bed. God had made man and woman for each other. Those poor homosexuals didn't know what they were missing.
    What really frightened her was that men's sex drives supposedly slacked off when they got older, and women's sex drives got stronger as they neared their forties. What would happen if Sidney stopped having relations with her altogether, and she was left to deal with her itch of desire herself? There could be no masturbation, of course, and no adultery. No relief at all. Then what? She couldn't believe that Sidney had slacked off simply because he no longer found her attractive. Good heavens, she broke her neck to make herself attractive—even now, with her more modest way of looking.
    That last night before China, after Sidney fell asleep, she was sure she was getting a taste of the future, and she was sure she couldn't stand it. She was also aware that she was very nervous. If she was this bad now, how would she be in the last frantic weeks of the gubernatorial race next year? She found herself thinking of a nice little glass of sherry to calm her nerves.
    She started to cry.
    Sidney woke up. She hoped he would feel sorry for her,