Seven Minutes to Noon

She heard footsteps in the apartment above, but no crying. The baby had quieted down.
    “What’s going on?” His tone was weary, almost plaintive. It was nearly midnight and he had been at the workshop all day.
    “Come inside,” she whispered.
    He followed her into the apartment. She closed the door and locked it.
    “Mike, listen to this,” she said, and told him everything: Julius Pollack, Metro Properties, the crying baby upstairs.
    They sat at the kitchen table with the dark night quilted around their windows, diminishing the room’s size, increasing the impact of the overhead light. The middle-of-the-night space was off balance, its proportions rearranged.
    “Well,” he finally said, “it’s definitely strange.”
    “We should tell the detectives, don’t you think?”
    Mike got up, walked quietly through the living room and opened the apartment door. The hinges screeched into the quiet.
    “Shh!” Alice followed him. “What are you doing?”
    Mike froze, then quietly edged himself into the front hall. Alice stood behind the partially open door, watching him. He kept perfectly still in the middle of the foyer, listening. After a minute, he looked at her and shook his head, mouthing, “Nothing.”
    It was so quiet Alice could hear her own breathing.Her body suddenly felt unbearably heavy. She turned into the living room and picked up the phone and her address book on her way to the couch, into which she sank. Mike came back into the apartment, issuing creaks and snaps and clicks as he closed the door and turned the lock.
    “I didn’t hear any baby,” he said. “Are you sure you heard it?”
    “Positive,” she said. “I think.”
    “Alice—”
    “Mike.”
    “You’re really calling the detectives?”
    She nodded. Yes, she was calling Frannie, despite the uncertainty that now trilled vaguely through her.
    “It’s midnight,” he said.
    “They work odd shifts.” Alice flipped through the pages of her address book until she came to P for police. “They’ll either be there or they won’t.”
    Mike angled himself next to Alice on the couch, watching her as she requested Detectives Viola or Giometti and waited on hold. Alice held Mike’s eyes, listening to the Muzak on the precinct’s line. The saccharine melody, meant to calm and distract, only increased her nervousness. Finally a detective Alice didn’t know came on, explaining that Frannie would be on the morning shift starting at eight, and Giometti usually got in a little after her.
    “Is there anything I can help you with?” the detective asked.
    Alice hesitated. “No, thanks,” she finally answered. “It can wait until the morning. Could you please tell Detective Viola I called?” She recited her name and number, ended the call and looked at Mike. “Maybe I should have told this other guy. What do you think?”
    “I think you’re probably right. It can wait until morning.” Mike leaned forward and took her hand. “Let’s go to bed, okay? One of them will call us back tomorrow. Remember that thing called sleep?”
    They went to bed and Mike drifted off immediately.But Alice couldn’t sleep with the sounds, the distant cries, that echoed through her mind. What if, she asked herself, Ivy is right here in this house, and all I have to do is walk upstairs and get her? She eased herself off the bed, crept upstairs and laid on the couch, listening for a thread of sound. One more cry, she promised herself, and she would call the precinct back, get a detective over here.
    Hours passed; a gray mist began to infiltrate the darkness outside. She didn’t know what time it was but it must have been close to morning. Convinced she would never sleep, she dreamed of her exhaustion, of her desire for sleep. When Lauren appeared in her dream, nursing newborn Ivy, who sucked greedily at an overflowing breast, Alice snapped awake. With relief she realized she had indeed slept. And then, with plunging despair, she remembered Lauren was dead. She was dead. She remembered Ivy and the crying baby last night.
    Alice was desperate to know one way or another whether Ivy had survived Lauren’s murder. She needed to know, to have something to grasp so she would know what to believe and how to feel. Was she mourning or hoping? Images of Ivy plagued her. The supersoft newborn skin, the ripe smell. For a moment, sitting up on the couch, Alice closed her eyes, cradled her arms over her own bulging middle and held Ivy. She felt Ivy startle,