Ed McBain - Alice in Jeopardy

Eddie took the midnight blue slipper from the pocket of his frock coat.

He knelt before her.

“May I?” he asked.

And tried the slipper on her shoeless right foot.

And, of course, it fit.

“Will you marry me?” he whispered.

The words took her quite by surprise.

They’d been living together since September, when Eddie started work at Lowell, Hastings, Finch and Ulrich. This was, after all, thirteen years ago, and the entire civilized world east of the Mississippi had already been sexually liberated. But marriage had never come up as a viable option. Not before now, anyway. How could a married woman go trotting off to Brazil lugging cameras and running out for coffee while some would-be eminent director filmed piranhas in the Amazon?

She was speechless.

Eddie was still kneeling.

His hand was still resting on her now-slippered foot.

His wonderful blue eyes were asking, “Well?”

“I’ll have to think about it,” she said.

They were married shortly before Christmas.

She didn’t want to get pregnant, either.

That wasn’t part of her revised plan.

She had already begun implementing this modified plan by getting a part-time job editing film for an indie who was making a movie titled The Changing Face of the Lower East Side. Her idea was to find a series of similar temporary jobs in various aspects of film-related work until she could find full-time employment as a production assistant in a New York — based company.

What she wanted to do, you see, was produce films. She wasn’t interested in cinematography or screenwriting or directing or, God forbid, acting. What she wanted to do was create, for all these other people, an environment in which they might make good movies. Movies that won all the prizes. She felt this was an ambition compatible with a good marriage. Eddie was beginning to find his way downtown on Wall Street; she was beginning to find her way in the film industry. Pregnancy was not part of the scheme.

Encouraged by her sister, Carol, who’d been married for two years already and had been successful in avoiding any unwanted pregnancies, Alice consulted her gynecologist about acquiring the same sort of diaphragm Carol had been using so effectively. She was told by Dr. Havram — a woman whose first name was Shirley — that the diaphragm was a flexible rubber cap that a woman filled with a spermicide prior to intercourse and before inserting it.

This, Alice already knew, duh.

She learned, however, that there were some slight, ahem, disadvantages.

To begin with, using it increased the chances of bladder infections. Whee, just what Alice needed, a bladder infection! Next, the cream or jelly spermicide might have an unpleasant taste, not very appealing to Count Dracula, eh, kiddo? Moreover, it might “interrupt the effortless flow of foreplay,” as Dr. Havram put it, and added, “Although you can teach your husband to insert it as part of the foreplay.”

Not to mention the fact that it was less effective than the condom either as a birth-control device or as protection against STDs. Although Alice knew what an STD was, Dr. Havram informed her anyway that the letters were an acronym for “sexually transmitted diseases” such as gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydial infection, or herpes, none of which Alice had ever had or ever wished to have.

“Also,” Dr. Havram said, “as a contraceptive, the failure rate of the diaphragm is about eighteen percent annually. In fact, it’s most effective with older married women who experience intercourse less than three times a week.”

(“That’s nonsense,” Carol later told her on the phone. “Whenever Rafe’s home, we go at it hot and heavy almost every night of the week, and you don’t see any little creatures running around here yet, do you?”)

So Alice had herself fitted for a diaphragm.

Dr. Havram confirmed that there was no pelvic infection. Alice emptied her bowel and bladder prior to the fitting. Dr. Havram checked to see that the anterior rim of the diaphragm was just under the symphysis pubis, the posterior rim lying at the vaginal formix, the diaphragm touching both lateral walls and covering the cervix and the upper vagina. She made sure that she could feel the cervix through the diaphragm. She asked Alice if she was aware of anything inside the vagina, and was pleased when Alice answered in the negative.

The diaphragm worked in spite of the Glendennings’ heavy sexual activity, which seemed to negate Dr. Havram’s dire statistical warnings.

But then one night in April…

Eighteen months after she’d inserted for the first time the rubber cap filled with spermicidal jelly…

In fact the very night Braveheart took the Academy Award for best picture …

In the privacy of her own midnight bathroom…

Alice tore open the sealed Instastrip Onestep HCG Pregnancy Test kit and removed from it the test strip. With the arrow end pointing downward into a cup of her urine, and being careful not to dip the strip past the MAX line, she left it immersed for the required three seconds, and then removed it from the urine and placed it flat on the countertop. Scarcely daring to breathe, she watched the strip as avidly as she’d watched Mira Sorvino making her poised and articulate acceptance speech for best supporting actress. If only one band appeared in the control region, and no apparent band appeared in the test region of the strip, then no pregnancy would have been detected.

Tick-tock, tick-tock.

In less than a minute, colored bands began to appear in the test region. This meant that a developing placenta was secreting the glycoprotein hormone known as human chorionic gonadotropin, or HCG. Which meant that Alice was pregnant.

She could not believe it.

She had religiously inserted the diaphragm two to twelve hours prior to intercourse each and every time. She had made certain it remained in place for at least six hours after sex. She had never left it in place for longer than twenty-four hours. She had washed it carefully with warm soapy water and stored it in a clean dry place. And now this?

Pregnant?

She absolutely could not believe it.

Ashley was born nine months later.

The Okeh Diner is in a row of stores in a strip mall on the west side of the Trail. The mall itself attempts to emulate Old Florida, and almost succeeds in doing that. Turreted and balconied, shuttered and terraced, the pink-stuccoed and orange-tiled shops partially re-create an aura of graciousness, reminiscent of what Cape October must have been like in the 1920s. Flanking the diner’s entrance, a potted umbrella tree stands opposite a dragon tree and a corn plant, all arranged around a sidewalk flower cart massed with purple, white, and pink gloxinias, mums in yellow and lavender, spinning wheels with bright yellow centers and white petals. There are two cars parked in front of the diner. One of them is a white Caddy. Alice wonders why she thinks it belongs to Rudy Angelet.

He is sitting in a booth at the rear of the place, facing the entrance door. He rises the moment he sees her come in. She considers this an ominous sign: he knows what she looks like. Which means he’s been watching her. She walks toward the booth.

“Mrs. Glendenning?” he asks.

The same nicotine-ravaged voice she heard on the telephone.

“Mr. Angelet?” she says.

“Please,” he says, and opens his hand, using the palm to invite her into the booth beside him. Another man is sitting on the other side of the booth. He is a black man with a sceloid scar running the length of his jawline on the left side of his face.

“My partner,” Angelet says. “David Holmes.”

“No relation to Sherlock,” Holmes says, and shows white teeth and pink gums in a wide grin. “Sit down, Mrs. Glendenning.” It is more a command than an invitation. She sits alongside Angelet and opposite Holmes.