Seven Minutes to Noon

Sylvie commanded, “share your toys with your guests!”
    Alice walked over to pry the children apart. “Nell, let it go. It’s Ethan’s. I said let it go.”
    “You see?” Ethan’s voice rose triumphantly. “It is mine.” He stood apart, apparently satisfied with that fact having been established.
    “Give it to me, Nell,” Alice said, pulling Peter off his sister. “Now.”
    Nell handed over the one-inch plastic toy. Alice held it up and shook her head.
    “You guys are friends,” she said. “And you’re fighting over this ?”
    “But—”
    “No,” Alice interrupted Peter. “No little plastic toy is worth that much fuss.” She handed it to Sylvie, who slipped it into the pocket of her striped bell-bottoms.
    “But it’s mine ,” Ethan said.
    “Now it is mine.” Sylvie pronounced each word like the strike of a piano key, accentuating the prettiness of her French accent.
    “Thanks, Sylvie.” Alice led Nell and Peter to the front door. “Sorry it ended like this.”
    “It’s nothing.” Sylvie pursed her lips. “He’ll forget it in two seconds.”
    Out on the street, Nell and Peter chattered about the little Lego man. They went home to a simple dinner of rolled cold cuts, leftover pasta and carrot sticks. After their baths, Nell and Peter lay with Alice on her bed and snuggled against her sides. She read to them from the original Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne, whose quirky prose sailed over their heads but still lulled them. They fell asleep in Alice’s arms. Mike was working late, so she left them in bed for the time being, brought the covers up to their necks and switched off the light.
    Dishes done, Alice brought the laptop to the kitchen table and booted it up. She couldn’t resist the temptation to Google Julius. When she plugged his name into the search engine, she was astonished by what came up.
    Voluminous complaints filed with the Better Business Bureau. Archived articles detailing lawsuits. The Web page of a tenants advocacy group listing nearly a hundred properties owned or co-owned by him. In all the listings or articles, only Julius Pollack’s name was evermentioned: “Julius Pollack and his partner in Metro Properties.”
    Alice looked at the time. It was nearly eleven o’clock, too late to call Pam and ask her who Julius’s partner was. She sat back, away from the keyboard and the blinking laptop screen, and listened to the quiet. She was rarely alone in the evenings when the kids were asleep. The current of her ongoing dialogue with Mike, or the television, typically blotted out this depth of silence. Such stillness. She heard a key struggling in the outside lock. Finally, Mike was home.
    She got up and crossed through the living room to their apartment door. Her hand was on the knob and she was just about to turn it when she heard footsteps tramp up the stairs. She cracked open her door and watched Julius’s back labor upward. He was wearing a pale pink raincoat and — were her eyes deceiving her? — silver high heels. She crept into the hallway and peeked up after him, glimpsing the coat as his door shut and locked.
    How had the infamous Julius Pollack come to buy this house, her home? It was a beautiful house on one of the best, old blocks in the neighborhood. He was rich, and he wanted respectability, but he also wanted privacy. He could have afforded a penthouse anywhere in Manhattan. He couldn’t possibly want her apartment for the income; he wanted to hide out alone in this big old house in Brooklyn. Why? Because he cross-dressed? These days even that wasn’t so shocking. There had to be more.
    Standing in the common foyer, in the dim overhead light, she knew she shouldn’t be there — not in the hall and not in this house. She crept quietly across the foyer to her front door, then stopped. Upstairs, she heard a high, thin crying. She walked back to the bottom of the staircase, put her foot on the first step, and pitched an ear forward. The crying was distant, but she heard it escalate. She was sure of it: there was a baby up there.
    She walked halfway up the stairs, slowly, leaning herweight into her hand on the banister to help blunt the sound of her steps. She stopped and listened. It was utterly quiet. She moved farther up the staircase as it curved toward the upper landing.
    The squeal of a door opening nearly detonated her heart.
    “Alice!”
    Mike stood in the foyer.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Shh!”
    She quickly padded down the stairs.