Seven Minutes to Noon

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 sameroof 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