Seven Minutes to Noon (16 page)

A glance at her watch told her to hurry. She quickened her pace to the corner of Clinton, where she waited for a small burst of traffic to pass. It was then, in that brief pause, that she noticed the large gray-haired man with the mismatched eyes, the limo driver from the other morning by the canal, sitting on a stoop across the street. He seemed to be watching her, and as soon as she noticed him, he nodded. Just like before. This time, she didn’t nod back. He was weird, and she didn’t like him; sometimes this urban village could get too small. If that eerie-eyed man on the stoop lived in the house it was attached to, it was one strike against the block.

She kept walking, almost there.

Pam had told her that the owner was asking only seven hundred thousand dollars. Only. Alice wondered when she had joined the ranks who thought that was a bargain. But for this neighborhood, it was. “Heart of Carroll Gardens,” Pam had read from her sheet. Four floors, owner’s triplex, one rental, unusually narrow at fourteen feet wide, and only twenty-five feet deep, lots of potential. Available immediately. Before even getting to the house, Alice had spun a fantasy about fulfilling the abundant potential of her unseen, centrally located, bargain home. It would be their quick route away from Julius Pollack. But as soon as she saw it, her stomach dropped.

Lots of potential,
she learned in the instant her eyes fell on the lean, brick husk, meant
gut renovation required.
Pam was waiting for her outside, scribbling in her notebook. When she saw Alice, she started walking.

“I’m
sorry,”
she said with such conviction Alice believed she really meant it. “It’s a new listing and I never saw it. Can you believe this crap? I couldn’t even show it to you if you wanted to see it. It has no floors! Come on. We’ll grab some coffee before the next stop.”

They went around the corner to La Traviata Café, stood at the counter and ordered cappuccino for Pam and an orange juice for Alice. Stock photos of Frank Sinatra competed with a life-size poster of Placido Domingo on the rear, brick wall. It was a funny hodgepodge of a place, offering the
Post
and the
News,
a few women’s magazines, a single rack of paperback books and an eclectic assortment of opera and rap CDs. Candy and gum were arranged on slanted shelves beneath a counter that held both cash register and huge, gleaming espresso machine. The air was rich with the smell of strong coffee and by the time Pam’s arrived, Alice felt ill. She regretted ordering juice; it would be too acidic on her queasy stomach.

They picked up their drinks and sat at the single outdoor table. Pam blew craters into her milky foam and stirred in a packet of sugar.

“That place,” Alice said, thinking about the house and the limo driver as if an ill-willed cloud hovered over their shared territory.

“Forget it.” Pam sipped her coffee. “Every house is a blind date. It’s hit or miss, mostly miss. You move on.”

“I’ll remember that.”

“You never looked before?”

“We’ve lived in the same place for fifteen years. Before we changed careers, we could have bought something easily. We
should
have, then. But we had a great apartment that was a great deal, so why bother?”

One side of Pam’s soft face puckered. “You wouldn’t believe how much I hear that. Back when nobody knew about this place, that was when you should have struck. Now?” She shrugged her shoulders. “Never mind. You’ve got a down payment and good savings, and your store’s a keeper. I just feel it in my toes.” Pam let out a burst of laughter and kicked one foot out from under the table. Alice recognized her shoes immediately: round-toed fawn-colored wedgies.

“You’re the one who bought those?” They were among the most recent arrivals in the store, expensive ditties at three hundred dollars apiece. “Why haven’t I ever seen you at the store?”

“I go late in the day, after work.”

Maggie’s shift. Perfect alchemy: Maggie’s charm, eager feet and an open wallet.

Pam looked at her watch.

“Do we need to go now?” Alice asked.

“We’ve got a few minutes still.” Pam pushed her empty mug across the table and sat back. “So you might as well tell me about this new landlord of yours.”

A city bus pulled up, let out two women and a diesel burp, then groaned back into traffic. “He’s a nightmare,” Alice began. “The timing couldn’t be worse. Between the twins coming and Lauren’s...” She became dizzy at the memory of Lauren’s ruined body being hauled out of the canal. “I’m having trouble just getting out of bed in the morning. But we can’t live under the same
roof as that man. Lauren was fighting an eviction. She was a
fighter.
But not me.” The flow of words unlatched something in her and she found herself talking, pouring out. She told Pam all about Lauren and their friendship, describing Lauren’s disappearance and discovery in detail, along with her hopes for Ivy. She even told Pam what Ivy looked like, or what Alice imagined her to look like: small, light brown hair, Lauren’s pale blue eyes. As she gushed, Alice began to feel embarrassed, realizing that what she really needed wasn’t a real estate agent but a therapist to listen to her winding recollections, disturbances and unanswerable questions. Pam Short might have made an excellent therapist, Alice was just thinking, when Pam suddenly interrupted.

“She lived where?”

Alice repeated Lauren’s address. “Her husband’s there alone now, with their son.”

Pam’s eyes narrowed. “You said they have the second floor on the B side? Three bedrooms, lots of details, great kitchen, deck to the yard?”

“How do you know all that?”

“That listing just came in to us. We were given an October one occupancy date. I guess he’s giving up the fight.”

Alice was shocked. Tim was moving? Where would he and Austin go? Would they stay in the neighborhood? Why hadn’t he said anything about his plans?

“Well, you won’t have any trouble renting it,” Alice muttered, “since it’s stabilized.”

“Stabilized, hell! That place is at the top of the market. They’re asking thirty-two hundred for it, if I remember right.”

“But Lauren and Tim only pay eleven hundred,” Alice said. “It’s
stabilized.
It can’t go up that much, can it?”

“Only if the rent hits two thousand or there’s been significant renovation.” Pam shook her head. “I hate it when the landlords lie to us. What do they think we are, idiots?”

“But you can’t be responsible for knowing something’s stabilized, can you?”

“If it’s registered, I am.
Shit.
Sorry — I can’t curse when I’m at home. Ray hates it.” Pam drummed her fingers on the table. “No point worrying about that now, right? I’ll look it up when I get back to the office. Ready to rock and roll?”

As they walked to their next appointment, Alice considered that if Lauren’s apartment could go for that much money, hers would go for even more. Because their apartment was in a two-family building, it wasn’t covered by any rent controls. It seemed they were paying only a third of its market value, and it hit her that Julius Pollack might want their apartment not for himself but for its potential income. Maybe he wasn’t motivated by a desire to live in the building’s better space but by the same money lust that was dogging so many of the new local owners. Of course, that was it. That was
always
it. Julius Pollack didn’t care about the Halpern family
or
the space from which he was evicting them; he cared about money, lusted after it in the same contagion that had wiped out most of the neighborhood’s old-timers since Alice and Mike had first arrived.

The next house was better than the first, but still depressing. Alice came away from her first bout of house hunting feeling flattened. She walked along Court Street with Pam, hearing a pep talk that must have been well worn by now.

“See you later,” Pam said, pumping her fist in the air. “Upward and onward. The next one is much better, I promise you. Kiss those gorgeous shoes hello for me.”

“I will,” Alice promised. It was after eleven, already late to open Blue Shoes. But Alice had something she needed to do first, something she just couldn’t get off her mind. She needed to make a quick stop by Tim’s apartment to find out what was going on, if it was true that he was leaving.

Tim hesitated a moment before telling Alice, “Come on up,” and buzzing her into the building. That catch in his voice was the first bad sign. The next was the stack of bulging plastic garbage bags accumulated in the hallway outside his front door.
Lauren’s
front door. Was he throwing out her things?

The door was cracked open, so Alice walked in. Austin was playing on the living room floor in his pajamas. She bent to kiss the top of his head.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“In the kitchen.” He didn’t break his gaze from his toys to look at her. She wondered how long Tim would keep him out of school.

In the galley kitchen off the living room, Tim was in the midst of an excavation of appliances, dishes, pots and pans. The mini food processor Alice had recently given Lauren as a prebaby present — for pureeing baby food — was in a pile on the counter, still boxed. Tim stood in the middle of the kitchen looking enervated, beyond exhaustion.

“What are you doing, Tim?”

“I was going to tell you and Mike tomorrow.” Tim reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. He slipped one out and was about to light it.

“Tim,” Alice said, “I’m pregnant. Please don’t.” She was surprised by her own assertiveness. They had crossed a boundary: she had caught him at something;
he was no longer to be pampered so gingerly. He laid the cigarette on the counter and slid the pack back into his pocket.

“Sorry.” He opened his hands beseechingly. “Alice, I
am
sorry. I don’t want to go. I don’t want any of this. I don’t want it! But I can’t go back to work and I can’t stay here.”

“We’ll help you, Tim. Please let us—”

“You don’t understand.” He moved to the sink and brusquely turned on the cold tap, rinsing his hands and drying them on his shirt. “It isn’t about money. I can afford to stay home in terms of
money.
I just can’t be here. Do you understand? I can’t
be
here anymore.”

Yes, Alice understood. How could she not understand the desire to flee the places that resonated with Lauren? Every minute of every day Lauren shimmered around her. She knew. But there was more than just herself to think about; she had a family. And so did Tim.

“What about Austin?”

“He’ll be fine. We’ll take a break, go somewhere new.”

“You’re taking him out of school?”

“It’s kindergarten, Alice. He’ll be fine.” In a burst of irritation, Tim picked up his unlit cigarette, twirled it in his fingers, then put it back on the counter. “We’ll be back, I’ll get a new place, I’ll go back to work, but nothing will ever be the same.”

“Where are you going?”

Tim shrugged deeply and with such finality that Alice knew it was a question he couldn’t answer. But how could she just let them leave? How could Austin, especially, be taken from the people he’d known as family his entire life?

“Out west probably. For the winter. We’ll come back in the spring.”

Alice nodded slowly. “How will we reach you?”

“I’ll call you when I have an address, okay? Alice, we won’t forget any of you. We’re not leaving
you.
We’re just... leaving.”

Alice thought of something she had to ask, even if it pained him. “What about the investigation? Do the police know you’re going?”

“I cleared it with them. They’re done with me, Alice,” he said with such bitterness that she knew, she just knew he believed she no longer trusted him. He picked up his cigarette and abruptly lit it. “Listen, I’ve got movers coming in two days. All this stuff’s going into storage. I’ve got to get back to packing or...” He didn’t finish the sentence but he didn’t have to; Alice knew the ending:
or I’ll go crazy.

“Don’t leave without saying good-bye, Tim. Please?”

His eyes, green as moss, considered her. He balanced his burning cigarette half off the counter, crossed the narrow kitchen and took her in his arms. This close, his smoky smell was pungent.

“Of course we’ll say good-bye.”

“I’ll miss you and Austin so much,” she whispered into his coarse blond hair, feeling Lauren well up inside her, burying her own face in her husband’s neck for the last time.

Alice stopped on her way through the living room, where Austin had circled a tiny cowboy with a ring of brown plastic cows. She bent down to kiss his soft cheek.

“You smell like cinnamon.” She kissed him again, then added in a whisper: “I love you.” Austin froze as she ran her fingers gently over his face, memorizing every curve and swoop of bone and flesh.

She let herself out, deliberately not turning around for final glances. Walked slowly down the stairs, through the building’s front door and into the hot, noisy neighborhood. Walked steadily toward Blue Shoes. She would open the store, late. Sit there. Serve customers. Go through the paces. There was no place she felt she could easily be today, so it didn’t matter where she was. The life of the street continued and she felt soaked by a sensation of helplessness. In less than two weeks, one third of her life — the Barnet family — had spun into oblivion like an extinguished star.

She stopped in front of a corner deli whose window was papered with magazine covers. A sidewalk rack held the day’s newspapers. Lauren had become a subset, a little box in the corner of the dailies.
POLICE HUNT FOR MOTHER’S KILLER, NO CLUES. UNBORN BABY STILL MISSING.
LADY KILLER STILL LOOSE IN BROOKLYN.
Moment to moment, Lauren’s death was fading from the front page. Tomorrow, would it even be there?

Alice picked up the
New York Times
and looked at the Metro section. For the first time in days, the reporter who had been following Lauren’s case did not have something on the front page. Alice searched her memory for the reporter’s name. Erin Brinkley, that was it.

She wondered if she should call Erin. Talk to her. Give her the forbidden nugget of held-back fact: that Ivy was a girl. Alice fished her cell phone out of her purse and flipped it open. Slowly, she dialed Information. She could call the newspaper and be connected with the reporter in minutes. Splash the news of Ivy over the front pages so people would know what they were looking for, not just a baby but a baby
girl.
Alice could tell Erin Brinkley everything.