Seven Minutes to Noon

watch. It was ten past ten; Pam was late. She looked as far down Court Street as she could, studying faces for one that might be Pam Short. But it was, of course, from the other direction that the woman arrived, startling Alice.
    “Hello!” Her voice had the tonal clarity of a bell. “I’m so sorry I’m late!”
    Pam Short was in fact not short at all; she was a good three inches taller than Alice’s five foot six, and at least fifty pounds heavier. Pam’s caftan, with its swirling pink and orange print, reminded Alice of things her mother used to wear in the late sixties, when she had seemed so cool to a very young Alice. Pam’s shoulder-length brown hair shone with the bright red patina that had recently come into fashion. Her pink lipstick matched a predominant shade in her caftan. Lastly Alice noticed the woman’s shoes: her feet bulged out of the same red, rhinestone-encrusted leather flip-flops that had looked so dainty on Sylvie’s slender feet. As a foundation for Pam Short’s large, magnificent persona, the sandals were a sly wink. Perfect, Alice thought, for how they defied expectations.
    Pam rattled a large keychain out of her purse and unlocked the long metal box on the wall that contained the storefront gate’s chain pull. With a few deft tugs, the gate scrolled up. Inside, Pam brushed a hand upward on a panel of switches and the lights came on all at once, opening the room like the page of a pop-up book. The walls were pale pink, and what looked like an original tin ceiling had been painted cream. Two antique ceiling fans slowly turned. On every wall, pinpoint lights illuminated photos of Old Brooklyn with its pastures, farms and shanties, paired with photos of New Brooklyn with its gracious homes and gardens. An oriental-carpeted aisle separated two rows of four desks each, all with tidy desktops, except for one at the far end on the right side. That desk alone was busy with knickknacks, and behind it were three framed needlepoint legends Alice couldn’t read from the distance.
    Pam sat at the very first desk on the right, the one with the best view of the street. Alice sat in a chair at the side of the desk. Folding her pudgy hands together on top of a white binder, Pam faced Alice squarely.
    “Before we start, I’ve just gotta tell you how sorry I am about your friend. Sylvie told me about her and I’ve been reading about it in the papers. You must be a wreck, and in your state. I feel for you.”
    “Thank you,” Alice said. “I appreciate it. My mom thought I should get back on my feet, so she made this appointment, but—”
    “We can do this another time,” Pam gently interrupted. “We can reschedule.”
    “No, I have to do this now. My mother’s right. Our new landlord already served us a Thirty Day Notice. He wants us out, no discussion.”
    “Don’t tell me you have the lower duplex.”
    “We have the lower duplex.”
    “I hear you, honey.”
    Pam booted up her computer and started flipping through the white binder. “Your mother said you were looking for a house, minimum two-family, but frankly we’d be idiots not to look at three. The double income makes a big dent in the mortgage, and she said you could look in the eight-hundred-thousand-dollar range, but I think you could start higher. Hell, you’ll have to start higher in this market, but don’t worry, we’ll do the math and you’ll see what I mean.”
    As Pam spoke, she stuck hot pink Post-it notes on the edges of some of the notebook’s pages. She wore four rings on each hand, including a wedding ring that was almost lost beneath a red plastic sphere.
    “Do you want to look at rentals too? Give yourself time to find the perfect house to buy?”
    The perfect house. Was there such a thing? Alice saw herself surrounded by towers of boxes, her lungs filled with dust, her muscles aching through and through from shuffling all their stuff from one place to another. Two demanding children and, soon enough, two crying babies. “I am not a gypsy,” Lauren had said to Alice just three weeks ago, accepting half of Alice’s bagel at the Autumn Café. She could see Lauren biting down into the dense bread and taste the cool, rich cream cheese on her own tongue. “In America we have rights,” Lauren had said. “That’s the whole point.”
    “No,” Alice told Pam. “We just want to buy. I don’t want to move twice.”
    Pam nodded. Alice was sure she saw the quick pull of a dimple in Pam’s cheek, the