That night I got home at five. I wanted to have dinner waiting when Alice returned. I was nervous and strangely excited to hear the details of her lunch with Vivian. I wasn’t sure if dinner should be something celebratory, or something restrained, so I made a simple paella, opened a bottle of wine, and set the table with candles.
At fifteen minutes after six, I heard the garage door open and Alice’s car pull in. It was taking her so long to get upstairs, it made me nervous. I didn’t want to show my anxiety, in case things with Vivian had taken a bad turn. Eventually I heard her on the back stairs, and then the door opened. She was carrying her computer bag, her coat, a file box—loaded down, as usual. I immediately looked down to her wrist, but it was covered by the sleeve of her trench coat.
“Yum,” she said, noticing the pan on the stove. “Paella!”
“Yes,” I said, “Michelin-starred nouvelle cuisine.” I took the box from her and carried it into the living room. When I returned, her shoes and stockings and skirt were on the floor, her hair down. She was standing there in her blouse, trench coat, and underwear, looking like she could finally breathe. She’d developed a small imperfection on the inside of her left thigh, a vein that just months before had popped out a little. She’d shown me the vein on the day it appeared, upset beyond reason, I thought. “What the hell is this?” she’d demanded. “I’m in decline. Pretty soon I won’t even be able to wear skirts.”
“It’s sweet,” I’d assured her, getting down on my knees and kissing the vein, working my way up. It became a kind of code: Whenever she wanted that particular favor, she’d point to the vein and say, “Honey, I’m feeling really bad about this.” The effect was that now, whenever I saw that small imperfection, it gave me a little erotic thrill.
“How did it go with Vivian?” I asked, kicking the shoes under the kitchen table so I wouldn’t trip over them. I’ve often thought that any burglar who dared breach our front door would have a fatal accident with Alice’s shoes long before he could steal anything.
And then she did a slow, sexy dance, taking off her trench coat, unbuttoning her silk blouse, baring her shoulders, and eventually removing the final sleeve to reveal that the bracelet was gone.
I took her hand in mine and gently kissed her wrist. It looked raw. “I’ve missed you,” I said. I was so relieved, as if a physical weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
“So have I,” she said, and then she danced around the kitchen in just her bra and underwear, her hands up in the air.
“Does this mean we passed the test?”
“Not exactly. Vivian said you can’t always take the order to remove the bracelet as an indication that you’ve been cleared of subversive acts against marriage.”
“Subversive acts? Are you kidding?”
“Sometimes,” Alice said, “they continue their review after the bracelet has been removed.”
In the dining room, I pulled out a chair for her and she sat, pale legs sprawled out in front of her. “Start at the beginning,” I said.
“Well, I got to Fog City first so I could get us a table.”
“Good move.”
“Vivian had the tuna salad again, and I went with the burger. She didn’t mention the bracelet until after we’d finished our entrees. Then she said, ‘Good news, I’ve been given the key for your bracelet.’ She asked for my wrist, I laid it on the table, and she pulled a metal box out of her bag. It had a bunch of tiny blue lights on the top. She opened it, and there was a key attached to the inside of the box by a wire. Vivian took my wrist and slid the key into the bracelet. Then she hit a button inside the box, and the bracelet just popped open. And she said, ‘You’re free.’?”
“Weird.” I brought the paella in from the kichen, then sat down with Alice at the table.
“Then Vivian put the bracelet and the key back in the box, closed it up, and put it in her bag. I was happy to see that thing gone. It wasn’t all good, though. There were conditions for my release from the bracelet.”
“No!” I said, thinking of my conversation at Draeger’s. Punishments. I had the uncomfortable feeling that there was some truth in what JoAnne had said.
Alice took a bite of the paella and declared it delicious. “You know how, when she explained that whole thing about Orla and how The Pact is based on the British criminal justice system, we thought she meant it figuratively, not literally? As it turns out, we were wrong.”
Alice explained the conditions of her release. It really was like the world of criminal courts. She had to sign some papers, pay a fifty-dollar fine, and agree to see an adviser once a week for the next four weeks. “Probation,” she said.
“There’s something I should probably tell you.”
I described my encounter with JoAnne at Draeger’s and how it had weighed on my mind the past couple of days.
“Why didn’t you tell me before now?” she asked, sounding hurt.
“I don’t know. The Pact is making me paranoid. I didn’t want to say anything while you were wearing the bracelet. After everything JoAnne said, I didn’t want to get you into trouble. And I didn’t want to get JoAnne into trouble either. She seemed so nervous.”
A cloud passed over Alice’s face. I recognized it, and knew what she was going to say before the words were out of her mouth. “You said you worked together in college. But you didn’t tell me whether you ever slept with her. Did you sleep with her, Jake?”
“No,” I said emphatically. “And anyway, do we really have to go there? I’m trying to tell you something important.”
“Go ahead,” Alice said, but I could tell that the suspicion lingered.
“What I’m saying is, after your meeting today with Vivian, I have to reevaluate JoAnne’s warning. We have to consider everything she said in a new light.”
Alice pushed her plate away. “Now I’m getting paranoid.”
It wasn’t until we’d cleared the table and were washing the dishes that Alice told me the other piece of news from her day: The firm had announced the yearly bonuses. The amount Alice would receive was large enough that it almost cut her law school loans in half.
“That calls for champagne,” I said. We got out the glasses and raised a toast to the bonus, as well as to our victory against, or perhaps within, The Pact. We toasted our happy life. Then we went to bed, and we made love in our private, quiet way.
Afterward, as we were falling asleep, Alice wrapped her arms around me and whispered, “Do you think the bracelet made me a better wife?”
“You are the perfect wife, no matter what. Does The Pact make me a better husband?”