Seven Minutes to Noon

wanted that diaper off. Alice changed him quickly, smiling and tickling his soft tummy. She swatted a fly from his face, set him on his feet and packed up.
    Just then she heard the sound of a motor in the distance, getting louder, nearing the café. Behind the rickety building, she now saw, was a narrow dirt road that wound through a field and disappeared behind a hill. The motor puttered closer and Alice saw that it was a European car, white and dented. It was an old Saab, not the rough-riding vehicle she would have thought would best suit these roads.
    Alice turned around to watch Oscar toddle in the children’s direction. She caught Miguel’s eye. He had noticed her looking at the incongruous car and with a self-forgiving smile said, “Gringos, like you.”
    Alice laughed. Yes, gringos like them. She turned back to watch as the car veered toward the café and pulled to a stop. Looking bored in the passenger’s seat was a very tan woman with short black hair. She looked a little familiar, Alice thought — and then saw the man who had just stepped out from behind the wheel.
    He was slight and lemony blond, his hair longish, curling behind his ears. Green, green eyes. A crackling tan. His attention snagged on the scene of the other gringo family.
    The woman yawned, unlatched her door and came out of the car. She was wearing a black bikini top and long white flowing skirt that sat low on her hips. She had a ruby stud in her belly button. A tattoo bracelet encircled her ankle.
    Behind her, asleep in the back of the car, was a little girl about two years old. Her head was turned away and Alice couldn’t see her face — how she wanted to see that face! — but her brown hair was done up in two messy pigtails and the red birthmark on the back of her neck was as good as a face and a name. It was exactly Lauren’s birthmark, in miniature. The maternal family birthmark common to every female in the family for three — now four — generations.
    Mike stepped forward. So he had seen it too, all of it. Tim, Analise, Ivy. Standing right there in front of them, comfortable as locals in their sweaty, tanned skin.
    Off to the side, Austin watched. He was seven now, lanky and confident. He dropped his soda bottle and took several steps forward across the dry, dusty ground.
    Analise turned sharply to Tim, who directed her with a nod back into the car. Tim then walked quickly forward, kicking up dust with his woven straw sandals. His toenails were dirty. He stood in front of Austin, stared at him, then snatched his hand and tried to tug him toward the car.
    “No!” Austin protested.
    “Please!” Tim begged. “I can’t leave you again.”
    Austin yanked his hand out of Tim’s and ran behind Alice, who shielded him as Tim struggled to decide. But for Alice there was no decision; Austin was her son now. She would never let him go.
    “On y va!” Analise called to Tim in French. Her tone was hard, free of the sweet, lilting accent she had mastered in Brooklyn.
    Over by the van, Mike tried desperately to work his cell phone, but there was no signal this far along the map. Tim turned around and jogged back to the car,stirring up a cloud of dust. Mike threw aside his phone and chased him. Nearly there, Mike managed to grab the back of Tim’s shirt.
    “Stop!” Mike shouted. “Enough!”
    Tim twisted himself free and Mike almost caught him again, but didn’t. And so Tim slipped away into the essential inch of difference between capture and escape. He got back into his car, slammed shut the door and revved the motor, but before pulling out he paused to say something to Mike. It was a weird moment: Tim urgently speaking, Mike listening, both men pouring sweat and exhaustion and fear and rage and anguish, the remnants of their old friendship flying off them in broken bits.
    It was just before the car began to move that Alice noticed Analise looking at her with cold, vacant eyes. At the snap of Analise’s voice — “Vite!” — Ivy woke up in the backseat and turned around just as the old white car peeled onto the road.
    Alice memorized her face. She was lovely. Round-cheeked, with Lauren’s sandy brown hair cut in bangs above vivid green eyes.
    Tim’s eyes. She would see the world his way.
    Mike pulled a scrap of paper and pen out of his pocket and wrote down the license number.
    “I’ve got it!” he called to Alice as the car disappeared.
    “You know these people?” Miguel asked.
    “Very well,” Alice said.