Penny didn’t go to sleep. She just brooded. It was some hours later that her brooding was interrupted by the ringing of the telephone.
“Hello?”
“This is the doctor from the laboratory, remember, no? A mistake, I’m afraid there has been. So some sad news for you I have, Mrs. Candie.”
“Miss Candie,” Penny corrected him automatically.
“Oh, so? Then some good news maybe I have for you, Miss Candie.”
“What is it?”
“In a minute, I tell you. But first, if you are pleasing, when the shpritz you brought here the other day, in what did you carry it?”
“In a brown paper bag. Why?”
“Come now! Are you telling me you shpritzed into a brown paper bag?”
“Well, no.” Penny evplained. “I used a coffee container. And then I put that in the bag.”
“Aha! And was this a coffee container which had been used?”
“If you mean did it have coffee in it before I used it, yes.”
“Then everything that explains! Miss Candie, when the bunny the bucket kicked, I tell you that you are pregnant. Right?”
“Right.”
“Wrong! I was wrong. A big enough man I am to admit my mistakes. An autopsy we perform on our fuzzy friend, and what do you think we’re finding?”
“What?”
“From you being pregnant, he doesn’t demise. Caffeine poisoning it is that kills our rabbit! Caffeine from your coffee container. So not pregnant you are, Miss Candie. How do you like that?”
“I like it fine,” Penny told him. “Just fine. And thanks for calling, Doctor.”
Well! Penny breathed a sigh of relief. That solved more than one problem. Besides clearing up her own personal difficulties, it also made it unnecessary to choose between Annie and Marie and Sappho. Now she wouldn’t have to take a leave of absence. She wasn’t pregnant. Hallelujah! Too soon we rejoice and too soon we are disillusioned. So it was with Penny. Only a few short weeks went by, and then she realized how misplaced her rejoicing had been. And then she remembered the one small detail which had slipped her mind. A growing suspicion gave her cause to remember.
That night with Studs, that night they’d made love a second time, that night before she’d found out she wasn’t pregnant—that night they had taken no precautions! And now, now . . . So, once again Penny found it necessary to hop onto the Fifth Avenue bus with a brown paper bag in her hand—this time with a bottle rather than a coffee container inside it.
And once again, some hours after she’d returned from that journey, Penny received a telephone call. “Hello, Mrs. Candie this is?” the voice at the other end said. “Good news, have for you—~”
“Miss Candie,” Penny interjected.
“I see.” A long pause. Then — “Well, Miss Candie, trouble I’m afraid you’ve got . . .”