"I know you did."

"We just couldn't make them pay enough attention. We pulled the biggest publicity stunt we could manage, short of rallying the party and besieging that place ourselves. Huey just moves too fast for us. Alcott's not even sworn in yet! And even after his inauguration, we'll still have the Emergency committees to deal with. Not to men-tion the partisan opposition. And besides, the federal government is just plain broke . . . . It's bad, Oscar. It's really bad."

''I'll be going up to Boston tomorrow. We'll think of something new. The hunger strike's over now, but I was never really pleased with that gambit. Don't worry. Just concentrate on getting your strength back. This game isn't over by a long chalk."

She looked at him gratefully. He watched more coverage as she tore into the sandwich.

Finally she put the plate aside, and leaned back on the yellow couch, her eyes glistening. "How was your first committee meeting, Oscar? I never asked. Were you brilliant?"

"Oh, heavens no. They hate it when you're brilliant. Brilliance only makes them mulish. I just recited my facts and figures until they got very bored and logged off. By then, my chairman had all their voting proxies. So I asked him for a mile, and he gave me a hundred yards. But a hundred yards was all that I wanted in the first place. So my meeting was really successful. I have a much freer hand now."

She laughed. "You're so bad!"

"It's no use being brilliant, unless it improves the situation. The Senator pulled a very brilliant stunt with this hunger strike, but now, Alcott should learn to be dull. Romantic people are brilliant, artists are brilliant. Politicians know when it's useful to be dull."

She nodded thoughtfully. ''I'm sure you're right. You'll be good with Alcott, won't you? You understand him. You could always talk sense to him. You can cheer him up when he's down."

"You're not down, are you, Lorena?"

"No, I'm not down, I'm coked to the gills on diet pills. But Alcott's not like me. He's very serious. He gets depressed. I can't be with him right now. And he gets so silly about sex when he's de-pressed."

Oscar was silently attentive.

"Leon Sosik was silly to let Alcott talk him into a hunger strike. Alcott has a thousand ideas, but a better chief of staff would kill his silly ones. And, Oscar, if you take that little tart Moira back to Boston when I'm not around, you'll be very silly, too."

Oscar knew the city of Boston very well indeed, having meticulously canvassed every voting district for the city council races. Boston was sane, civilized, and commonsensical, compared to other American cit-ies. Boston had so much to recommend it. A fully functional financial district. Green, quiet, showpiece parks. Real and serious museums, stocked and maintained by people with a sense of cultural continuity. Several centuries' worth of attractive public statuary. Living, commer-cial theater. Restaurants with dress codes. Real neighborhoods with real neighborhood bars. Of course Boston had its less happy areas: the Combat Zone, the half-drowned waterfront . . . but being home, however briefly, gave Oscar a vital sense of grace. He had never missed the maelstrom of Los Angeles, and as for sorry old Washington, it combined the dullness of Brussels with the mania of Mexico City. East Texas, of course, was utterly absurd. The thought of ever going back there gave him a genu-ine pang.

''I'm going to miss that campaign bus," Oscar said. "It's pared me back, to lose that asset. It's like losing a whole group of go stones. "

"Can't you buy your own bus?" Moira said, adjusting her photo-genic coat collar with newly lacquered nails.

"Sure, I could afford a campaign bus, if they built them out of concrete blocks with unskilled labor," Oscar said. "But so far, that never happens. And now I've lost good old Jimmy, too."

"Some big loss that is. Jimmy's a loser. A no-neck geek from the Southside . . . the world's got a billion Jimmies."

"Yes, that's why Jimmy was important to me."

Moira jammed her bare hands in her jacket and sniffed at the freezing air.

"I've spent too much time with you, Oscar. I had to live inside your pockets for months. I can't understand why I still let you make me feel guilty." Oscar was not going to let her provoke him. They had dropped off the bus at FedDem headquarters, and they were taking a peaceful winter stroll to his town house in the Back Bay, and he was enjoying himself "I'm not telling you to feel guilty. Am I judgmental? I was very supportive, I always looked after you. Didn't I? I never said a word about you and Bambakias."

"Yes you did! You kept lifting your big black eyebrows at me." Oscar lifted his eyebrows, caught himself doing it, put the eye-brows back in place. He hated confrontations. They always brought out the worst in him. "Look, this isn't my fault. He hired you, not me. I was just trying to let you know-tactfully-that you were pull-ing a stunt that was bound to arc out as destructive. You had to realize that."

"Yeah, I knew it."

"Well, you had to know it! A campaign spokeswoman, having sex with a married Senator. How on earth could that work out?"

"Well, it wasn't exactly sex. . . ." Moira winced. "And he wasn't a Senator then, either! When I hooked up with Alcott, he was a long-shot candidate with five percent approval. His staff people were a bunch of weird losers, and his manager was just a young start-up guy who'd never run a federal campaign. It was a hopeless cause. But I signed on with him anyway. I just really liked him, that's all. He charmed me into it. I just thought he was this naive, brilliant, charm-ing guy. He has a good heart. He really does. He's much too good a person to be a goddamn Senator."

"So he was supposed to lose the race, is that it?"

"Yeah. He was supposed to lose, and then that bitch would have dumped him. And I guess I figured that, somehow, I would be there waiting." Moira shuddered. "Look, I love him, all right? I fell in love with him. I worked really hard for him. I gave him my all. I just never realized that it would play out like this."

''I'm very sorry," Oscar said. "It really is all my fault, after all. I never quite made it clear to you that I actually intended to put the guy into federal office."

Moira fell silent as they forded through the pedestrian crowd on Commercial Avenue. The trees were stark and leafless, but the Christ-mas shoppers were hard at it, all hats and jackets and snow boots in a mess of glittering lights.

Finally she spoke again. "This is a side of you that people don't get to see much, isn't it. Under that suit and the hairstyle, you're a mean, sarcastic bastard."

"Moira, I have always been entirely straight with you. Right up and down. I couldn't have been any straighter. You're the one who's leaving. You're not leaving him. You never had him. You're never going to get him. He doesn't belong to you. It's me that you're leav-ing. You're leaving my krewe. You're defecting."

"What are you, a country? Get over yourself! I'm not 'defect-ing.'" Moira stared at him, eyes blazing. "Let me go! Let me be a normal human being!

This is like a sickness with you, this controlling thing. You need help."

"Stop trying to provoke me. You're being childish." They turned the corner onto Marlborough Street. This was his home street, it was where he lived. Time to try a fresh angle. "Look, Moira, I'm truly sorry about your feelings for the Senator. Campaigns are very intense, they make people do crazy things some-times. But the campaign's long behind us now, and you need to reassess your position. You and I, we've been good friends, we ran a great campaign together, and we shouldn't become enemies. Be reason-able."

''I'm not reasonable. I'm in love."

"Think about it. I know that you're out of my krewe, I accept that, but I can still make things easy for you. I offered to let you stay at my own house, rent-free. Wasn't that the act of a friend? If you're worried about a job, we can work out something with the local Fed-Dems. You can take a party post during the off-season. When the next campaign comes around, hey, you were the spokesperson for Barnbakias! You'll have a big rep next time, you'll have some clout. All you have to do is keep your skirt on."

"I really hate you for that."

"Look, you don't mean that."

"Yes, I do. You're disgusting. You've gone too far this time. I really hate you."

"I'm telling you this for your own good! Look, she knows. You want to make enemies, well, you've made a big one. The wronged woman is on to you."

"So what? I know that she knows."

"She's a Senator's wife now, and she's on to you. If you cross her again, she'll crush you like a bug!"

Moira barked with laughter. "What's she supposed to do? Shoot me?'

Oscar sighed. "She'll out you on the college lesbian thing." Moira gaped in wounded astonishment. "What is this, the twen-tieth century? Nobody gives a damn about that!"

"She'll leak it. She'll leak it with major-league spin. Nobody leaks like Lorena. She'll kiss up to the Capitol press at some overclass cotillion, and they'll out you like a vampire in daylight."

"Oh yeah? Well, I'm a press liaison, and if she outs me, I'll out you. I'll out you and your genius creep girlfriend!" She jabbed at him with a red-nailed finger. "Ha! You can't threaten me, you manipula-tive scumbag. I don't even care what happens to me! But I can kick over your applecart, that's for sure. You're not even human! You don't even have a birthday! I'll leak you and that creep ugly scientist, and when I'm done, she'll day the rue she . . . oh hell . . . she'll rue the day she ever met you."

"This is pathetic," Oscar said. "You've really lost it!"

''I'm strong." Moira lifted her chin. "My love has made me strong."

"What the hell are you carrying on about, anyway? You haven't even been near the guy in six weeks."

Her eyes brimmed with triumphant tears. "We trade email!" Oscar groaned. "So that's it. Well, we'll soon put a stop to that. You're completely irrational! I can't have you blackmailing me, just so that you can ruin the career of the man that I put into office. It's unconscionable! To hell with you! Do your worst."

"I'll do it! I will! I'll wipe you out."

Oscar stopped short on the sidewalk. She stamped onward, then turned on her heel, her eyes wild.

"This is my house," Oscar pointed out.

"Oh."

"Look, why don't you come inside? Let's have a cup of coffee. I know it hurts to have a bad love affair. You can get over that. Just concentrate on something else."

"What do you think I am, a wax dummy?" She shoved him. "You creep." There was a loud banging noise from across the street. Oscar ignored it. He had one last pitch here, and he thought it would work. If he could get her inside the house with him, she'd sit down and cry. If she cried, she'd confess everything. She'd pass her crisis. She'd get over it.

Another loud bang. A big chip of brick flew from his arched doorway.

"Oh hell!" he complained. "Look at my house!" Another bang. "Ouch," Moira remarked. Her purse had spun off her shoulder. She picked it up and looked at it. A hole had been punched through it. She turned and stared across the street. "He shot me!" she realized aloud. "He shot me in the purse!"

A gray-haired old man with a metal walker was standing across the street. He was firing at them with a handgun. He was extremely visible now, because the local streetlights, attracted by the highly ille-gal sound of firearms, had all swiveled on their metal necks and framed him in a torrent of glare.

Two batlike police drones detached themselves from a utility pole. They swooped at him like sonic cutouts of black construction paper, and as they passed him, he fell.

Oscar opened his door. He jumped through, lunged back out, caught Moira's wrist, and dragged her inside. He slammed the door behind them.

"Are you hurt?" he asked her.

"He shot my purse!"

She was trembling violently. Oscar looked her over carefully. Tights, skirt, hat, jacket. No holes, no blood anywhere.

Moira's knees buckled suddenly and she slumped to the floor. The street beyond the door suddenly filled with the sound of sirens. Oscar hung his hat with care and sat down companionably, hooking his elbows over his knees. It was great to be in his own house; it was cold and dusty, but it smelled like his house, it was comforting. "It's okay, it's over now," he said. "This is a very secure street. Those police drones have got him. Let me turn on my house system, and we'll have a look outside." Moira had gone green.

"Moira, it's okay now. I'm sure they've caught him. Don't worry, I'll stay here with you."

No answer. She was utterly terrified. There was a little bubble of spit on her lower lip.

"I'm truly sorry about this," he said. "It's that netwar harassment again. See, it's just like it was at the Collaboratory. I should have known that one of those lunatics would be staking out my home address. If I'd had Fontenot with me, this would never have hap-pened."

Moira toppled backward, hitting the wainscoting with a thump. Oscar reached out and tapped his solid front door with his knuckles.

"Bulletproof," he explained. "We're perfectly safe now, it's fine. I need a new security director, that's all. I should have hired one right away. I misplaced my priorities. Sorry . . . . "

"They tried to kill me. . . ."

"No, Moira, not you. Me. Never you, okay? Just me."

"I feel sick!" she wailed. ''I'm gonna faint!"

''I'll get you something. Brandy? Some antacid?"

There was a loud, repeated knock on the door. Moira shrank back, losing a shoe. "Oh my God! Don't! Don't open it!"

Oscar flicked on his doorbug. A lozenge of exterior video flashed on, showing a flashing police bicycle and a female Boston police of-ficer in badge, helmet, and blue woolen jacket. Oscar thumbed the intercom. "May I help you, Officer?"

The cop examined the glowing screen of her notepad. "Is this Mr. Valparaiso?"

"Yes it is, Officer."

"Open your door, please. Police."

"May I see some ID, please?"

The officer complied with a holographic ID card. It identified her as Sergeant Mary Elizabeth O'Reilly.

Oscar opened the door, which bumped against Moira's kneecap. Moira flinched violently and scrambled to her feet, fists clenched.

"Please come in, Sergeant O'Reilly. Thank you for being so quick in your response."

"I was in the neighborhood," the policewoman said, stepping inside. She twisted her helmeted head, methodically scanning the en-trance hall with video. "Are there injuries?"

"No."

"The system has tracked those projectiles. They seem to have been aimed at you. I took the liberty of backrunning the nearest re-cordings. You and this female were involved in a dispute."

"Actually, that's not the case. I'm a federal Senate employee, and this was an attempted political assassination." Oscar gestured at Moira. "Our so-called dispute was strictly a private matter."

"Would you show me some identification, please."

"Certainly. " Oscar reached for his wallet.

"No, not you, Mr. Valparaiso. I mean this nonresident white female." Moira pawed by reflex at her purse. "He shot my purse. . ." Oscar tried some gentle coaxing. "But your ID's still in there, isn't it?

This is a legal request from a public safety officer. You do need to show her some ID."

Moira stared at him with red-rimmed eyes. "You're completely insane. You're completely insane!"

Oscar turned to the cop. "I can vouch for her, Officer. Her name's Moira Matarazzo, she's my guest."

"You can't act like this!" Moira screeched. She shoved him sud-denly, pushing at his shoulder. "He tried to kill you!"

"Well, he missed."

Moira swung up her purse, two-handed, and walloped him. "Be scared, stupid! Be scared, like me! Act normal!"

"Don't do that," the cop commanded. "Stop hitting him."

"Are you nude out of ice? You can't act like this! Nobody thinks that fast!" She whacked him with the purse again. Oscar ducked back, raising his arms to shield his face.

"Stop that," said the cop, in a level no-nonsense tone. "Stop hitting him."