“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.
“What happened to your foot?” Angelet asks.
“I hurt myself.”
“How?”
“I got run over.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes.”
“Is it broken?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a shame,” he says. “Cup of coffee? Something to eat?”
“Just coffee,” she says. “Thanks.”
Angelet signals to a waitress wearing a pink uniform.
“Another cup of coffee, honey,” he tells her.
The waitress smiles and goes off again. She is back with Alice’s coffee not three minutes later. She smiles again at Angelet. It occurs to Alice that she is flirting with him. He is not a bad-looking man. In his late thirties, early forties, Alice supposes, with dark brown eyes and a pale complexion for a Floridian — if indeed he’s from Florida. His voice on the phone sounded more like Brooklyn than Cape October. Alice suddenly wonders if he knew Eddie while they were still living in New York. On the phone, he said, “I’m an old friend of your late husband.” How old? she now wonders.
“I’m glad you could make it,” Angelet says.
“This is a serious matter here,” Holmes says. “Your husband owed us two hundred thousand dollars when he met with his unfortunate accident. He still owes us that money.”
“Which is a lot of money,” Angelet says.
“A whole fucking lot of money,” Holmes says.
“I can’t imagine my husband owing—”
“Imagine it, lady,” Holmes says.
“How… how could he possibly…?”
“The puppies, lady,” Holmes says.
“The what?”
“The hounds.”
“I don’t know what—”
“The dog races. Your husband liked to bet.”
“He liked to bet big.”
“Too big.”
“Losers shouldn’t bet so big.”
“He was into us for two hundred large when he drowned,” Holmes says.
“Drowned too soon,” Angelet says.
“Too fucking soon,” Holmes says, and both men laugh.
Alice gets up to leave.
“Sit!” Holmes says, as if he is talking to a disobedient dog. “And don’t get up again.”
Alice sits. She looks across the table at him.
“I don’t believe a word you’re saying,” she says. “I don’t believe you knew my husband, I don’t believe he owes you money, I don’t believe—”
“Want to see his markers?” Holmes asks.
“Markers?”
“Show her the markers, Rudy.”
“What…?”
“His betting slips,” Holmes says.
Angelet reaches into the inside pocket of his sports coat. When his hand emerges again, it is holding a sheaf of three-by-four white papers, some two inches thick.
“They’re all dated,” he says. “They go back a year and a half. That’s when he started betting with us. We were carrying him a long, long time.”
“We since found out he stiffed half a dozen other bankers in town.”
“We shoulda been more careful,” Angelet says.
“You’ll probably be getting a few more calls,” Holmes says.