Free Bad Connections by Joyce Johnson

you, ducky?”
    â€œI need to talk to you,” I said portentously.
    â€œSomething wrong? Break up with Conrad, that bastard—although it might be all for the good? You don’t look so well,” she observed.
    â€œI’m not well at all, Felicia.”
    â€œOh my god. Not pregnant!”
    I leaned toward her and said quietly, “I think I may have a social disease. Of all things.”
    â€œOf all things indeed.”
    We both looked in alarm at the doorless entrance to the cubicle. Felicia rose from her desk, grabbed up her cigarettes. “Let’s go into the ladies’ room,” she said in a low conspiratorial tone. Passing the accounting and subscription departments unobtrusively, we made our way there and locked ourselves in.
    â€œNow tell me,” Felicia said, flicking her ashes into the sink. “Do you think you have any definite symptoms?”
    â€œPain here,” I said, pointing to my belly. “And I had a phone call from Fred.”
    â€œHe gave it to you of course.”
    â€œHe says I gave it to him.”
    â€œNonsense. Or maybe not nonsense, considering the other one you’re involved with. But more likely it’s Fred. You know his habits.”
    â€œYes,” I said grimly.
    â€œHigh promiscuity. I’d say he’s been asking for it. And now he’s just trying to displace the blame. Very nice.” Felicia scowled.
    â€œI’m just feeling a little overwhelmed,” I said. “I’ve never experienced anything like this.”
    â€œI have. And various other forms of sexual punishment. Of course you’re overwhelmed. And just when you’re getting settled in your new apartment.”
    â€œI could have lived without it.”
    â€œOf course, ducky.” Despite my possibly diseased condition, Felicia put her arm around me and gave me an affectionate squeeze. “Take my advice and go right away—right this minute—to the public health clinic on Twenty-fourth Street. According to the New York Times, they’ve been handling up to three hundred cases a day.”
    â€œAs many as that!”
    â€œIt’s reaching epidemic proportions. Don’t you read the papers?”
    I confessed with some embarrassment that I usually skipped the medical news.
    â€œNot allergic to penicillin, are you?” I shook my head. “Then you should have absolutely no problem. Of course, there is a particular strain from Indochina that’s highly resistant to penicillin and for which there’s no known cure. But I think it’s quite unlikely you’ve contracted that. Want me to come with you?” she asked kindly. “I’ll cancel my lunch date.”
    An offer of support was something I had encountered so rarely that I was thrown into confusion, not knowing whether to accept it or to decline. “No,” I said, “I think I’ll be all right.”
    I took a taxi only as far as Twenty-second Street and got out in front of a moving and storage company. I walked the rest of the way. A school stood next to my destination. Cutouts of autumn leaves and jack o’ lanterns were pasted against its windows and there were the innocent cries of first-graders from the playground.
    The lobby of the Public Health Clinic smelled of disinfectant, just as I had anticipated. A pimp in high-heeled silver shoes walked briskly past me. A guard, snapping his fingers to a transistor radio, stood behind a little table.
    I walked up to him.
    â€œWhich way to the social disease department?” I asked.
    He looked me up and down. “Uh huh, ”he said with a grin. He pointed left.
    The waiting room of the women’s section of the social disease department was totally lacking in amenities. Not one copy of the Ladies’ Home Journal, not one picture of fruit and flowers on its institutional-green walls, not one potted plant. It was thronged with patients waiting on the hard plastic