Beauty Queen

and enfold her in his arms.
    "Do you have a problem?" he said crossly.
    "Yes, I do," she sobbed.
    "What is it?"
    "You're going away for two months tomorrow, and I want us to make love. It's been a month since we've made love."
    "Jeannie, when will you leam that I can't make love when I'm tired? And when you put the pressure on me, I can't make love either."
    She got up out of bed, and dragged around the room in the dark, crying with deep gagging sobs.
    "Good God," said Sidney from the bed. "Am I supposed to feel pity for you, or what?"
    When she heard that, she knew it was no use. So she went to the kitchen, cried some more, and made herself some hot milk. Then she took an extra blanket from the linen closet, and settled down on the flowered sofa in the living room, with the TV on.
    Finally she fell into an uneasy sleep, her body aching with tension.
    She had a dream.
    In the dream, she was cleaning out a closet, and found some old clothes of her mother's—wonderful 1930s blouses with rhinestone buttons on them, crepe dresses with dozens of tiny buttons up the front. She was trying them on with cries of joy, flinging them right and left. Then on the top shelf she found a magnificent old hatbox that said SAKS FIFTH AVENUE. She opened it up. Inside, amid the soft tissues, nestled a magnificent hat made of iridescent bird feathers, with a pearl hatpin stuck in it.
    Underneath the hat, as she lifted it up, was her mother's head. It was quite nicely mummified, with the dry-looking silver hair done in the braids her mother had always worn.
    The reek of lavender sachet from the box seemed to linger in her nostrils even after she had shuddered awake.
    The next morning, Sidney finished packing, checked his documents, made a call to a Mr. Field in the State Department, confirmed his reservations with Northwest Orient Airlines, and called a cab.
    "Do you want to go to the airport with me?" he said.
    "No," she said.
    "An eye for an eye, huh?" he said.
    Without answering, she dialed Tom Winkler. His line was busy.
    "Okay," said Sidney, "if that's the way you want it. Give my love to the kids. And be easy on them while I'm gone, okay?"
    From the second-floor bedroom window, she watched him throw his suitcases into the trunk of the cab, with the muscular ease of a high-school boy. From the street, he looked like he was a handsome and dewy twenty-two.
    The cab drove off down the street.
    At that moment, she was sorry. She envisioned herself catching a cab, following him to Kennedy Airport. She could still catch him there, and walk with him past the security checkpoint, right to the gate, and kiss him good-bye before he boarded.
    But she didn't. She called Tom Winkler instead.
    H T t's going to be something like undercover work," said J- Mary Ellen to Liv. "Only I'll be doing it for gay people." In the glow of the single lamp, they were naked on the velour bed. Liv was sitting in the lotus position, and Mary Ellen was laying on her side before her, studying Liv's face just a little anxiously.
    "I'm going to go to work for Colter, find out about her plans—bills she's sponsoring, and so on," Mary Ellen went on. "She's going to be doing a lot more anti-gay crap. We have to know about it."
    "Like being a spy," said Liv.
    "That's right," said Mary Ellen. "And of course it's all for a good cause. But it does mean that I'll be away sometimes, when Colter goes out of town. So I want to tell you about it, so you won't think I'm out running around or something ... so you'll know where I really am and what I'm doing."
    "Are you doing this for some organization?"
    "No, just for me, right now. Some organization might want my info later, of course. And let's face it—it'd be a paying job for me too. I don't dig being a waitress."
    Liv sat looking gravely down at her crossed legs. In the soft lamplight, her breasts cast deep shadows across her firm belly. Her fleece, so clean that the hairs had golden highlights, parted to show the labia, and the red pearl of her clitoris. She had been brushing her snowy blonde hair dry, and now it spread in a white shining mantle across her shoulders. But she was thinking hard, looking like a child trying to decide why two and two couldn't be five. One hand lay limp on her thigh, the other lay on the rumpled velour with the hairbrush loosely clasped in it.
    "I do not like all this," she said.
    "What?" said Mary Ellen, her stomach clenching a little.
    "I do not like politics, and spying."
    "But that's the way