Ed McBain - Alice in Jeopardy

“Let me tell you something,” he says.

“Sure, tell me something,” she says.

Meaning, “But make it fast because you’re going to be out of here in ten minutes flat.”

“The minute I saw you…”

She is already rolling her eyes in disbelief.

“…I knew you were going to mean more to me than any woman I’d ever met in my life.”

Meaning what? he wonders.

She seems to be wondering the same thing. A moment ago she was turned slightly away from him, sitting there like a doubting Indian maiden with a black bush but incongruous blue eyes and blonde hair, legs crossed at the ankles, head erect and staring straight ahead, hands palm up in her lap, but now she turns her head to him and looks him directly in the eyes, wanting to know — though not asking — what he means by what he just said. Is this some bullshit line he gives to small-town girls all over the south and southwest? What exactly does he mean when he says she will mean more to him than any other woman he’s ever met, or words to that effect?

“That’s why I called you,” he says. “I couldn’t let you just walk out of my life,” he says. “I had to see you again, Jennifer. And as it turns out, I was right, wasn’t I?” he asks rhetorically. “I have never in my life felt this way with another woman.”

Meaning exactly what ? her eyes are still asking.

“I mean about someone,” he says. “I’ve never felt this way about another woman,” he says. “The way I feel about you, ” he says.

“And how exactly is it that you feel?” she asks.

She almost sounds prim. Almost sounds like a schoolteacher. He wonders if she’s a schoolteacher. He realizes that he knows hardly anything at all about her, and here he is telling her he’s never felt this way about another woman, whereas even he himself doesn’t know what the hell that means. But she’s waiting for an answer.

He is tempted merely to nod at old Willie down there, who is now standing erect after merely hearing Rafe’s feeble attempt at describing how he feels, present the evidence of a rock-hard cock to the court not forty minutes after he and Jennifer fucked for the second time, I mean what does that have to say about how a man feels about a woman, huh, Jennifer?

“Does anyone call you Jenny?” he asks, and places the tip of his forefinger on one rounded knee.

“No,” she says, and brushes his hand aside.

“Jenny,” he says, “I feel as if—”

“Don’t call me Jenny,” she says. “My name is Jennifer.”

“I’m sorry, Jennifer,” he says.

“Yes,” she says, and nods.

“What do you want me to say?” he asks.

“You’re the one doing the talking.”

“I’m married,” he says, “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t expect to meet you, I didn’t expect to fall in love with you, I’m sorry all to hell, but these things—”

“You what ?” she says.

He blinks at her. What was it he just said?

She seems to notice his cock. At last. She glances at it slyly, but does not reach to touch it.

“Say it again,” she says.

“I’ve never felt this way before in my life,” he says.

“That’s not what you said.”

“What did I say?”

“You said you didn’t expect to fall in love with me.”

“That’s true, I didn’t.”

“Say it again.”

“I didn’t expect to fall in love with you.”

“ Are you in love with me?”

“I think I’m in love with you, yes.”

“Think?” she says, and seizes his cock.

“I’m in love with you, yes,” he says.

“Say it.”

“I love you.”

“Say ‘I love you, Jennifer.’”

“I love you, Jennifer.”

“Say it again.”

“I love you, Jennifer.”

“Again.”

“I love you, Jennifer. I—”

“What about your wife?”

“Fuck her,” he says.

“Fuck me instead,” she says, and rolls onto him.

Afterward, he begins to learn a little bit about her. She’s been divorced for a year and a half, she tells him, used to be married to a lawyer who still practices in Sarasota. Was married for three years before she discovered he was playing around with this redhead in his office, another lawyer, who wore minis shorter than Ally McBeal ever did.

“Which is one of the reasons I didn’t want to start up with you,” she says.

“Because I’m a redhead?” he asks, which he isn’t. “Or because I wear minis?”

“Because you’re a married man who plays around,” she says.

“All married men play around.”

“You’d better not ever cheat on me, ” she says.

“We’re not married,” he says.

“But you love me, right?” she says.

“It would appear so, yes.”

“There’s that tic again.”

“I love you, yes,” he says.

He’s beginning to believe it himself.

She tells him that she’s been working in a jewelry boutique out on Willard, which is how she happens to know Ronnie’s Lounge, but that she’s been thinking of maybe starting her own business, if she can get her wonderful ex to make his damn alimony payments when he’s supposed to…

“I’m supposed to get a thousand dollars a month, but he’s always late with his check,” she says.

“Yeah,” Rafe says.

He’s thinking the one thing he doesn’t need in his life is paying alimony to an ex-wife, no matter how much you love another woman, if in fact you do love her, now that Willie has shrunken back into his shell again. She does indeed have a splendid rack, though, and a lovely ass, and he can’t get over the blonde hair and black bush, which he still thinks is entirely trusting of her to expose herself that way. He is beginning to think he’s never been quite this intimate with another woman in his life, which is perhaps what he meant when he said he’d never felt this way about another woman, which maybe is being in love, after all. He is beginning to get a little confused.

“Did you ever go to bed with Alice?” she asks out of the blue.

This is now three o’clock in the morning. Around three in the morning, they all ask you out of the blue to start cataloging all the women you’ve ever slept with. He’s almost forgotten this about women. You have to know this about women if you ever hope to survive. He’s glad he’s remembering it now. Before it’s too late. Too late for what? he wonders. And feels confused again.

“No, hey,” he says, “what kind of a bounder do you take me for?”

“Bounder, huh?” she says, and giggles.

It pleases him that he can make a beautiful woman like this one giggle. Not that Carol isn’t beautiful. It’s just that she doesn’t giggle much, anymore. Well, two growing boys, who would giggle anymore?

“A bounder and a rounder, too,” he says, pressing his luck, and damn if she doesn’t giggle again. “But I would never hit on my own sister-in-law.”

“Then what was your truck doing parked outside her house?” she asks.

“I told you. I stopped by to see her. I do that all the time. She’s my sister-in-law!”

“Then why wouldn’t she let me in?”

“Because…”

“Because the two of you were alone in there. And if I know you…”

“No, no, we weren’t alone.”

“Then who was there?”

“The police.”

“The police? Why?”

So he has to explain that his little niece and nephew were kidnapped…

“Get out!”…and that the people who kidnapped them asked for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills, which the police supplied for Alice to drop off Friday morning…

“That poor woman!” Jennifer says.

“Yeah, and she still hasn’t got the kids back,” Rafe says.