Seven Minutes to Noon

voice materialized.
    “Hello?”
    “I’m still here, Frannie. Where are you? Are you driving?”
    “Paul’s driving. We’re entering a tunnel. If I lose you, I’ll call you back.”
    If they were in a tunnel, chances are they were heading into New Jersey. Why were they going there?
    “Alice,” Frannie said, “tell me exactly what you saw.”
    “I first noticed the man a week ago, over by the Carroll Street Bridge. Then I saw him again on Clinton Street. And I’m starting to think he was the man who turned around and walked away on Degraw Street onthe block where we park our car. The way he ran away today, I’m sure he was following me. He’s creepy, Frannie. He smells like dirty laundry.”
    “He came that close?”
    “This morning, the first time,” Alice said. “I thought I’d have a heart attack when I turned around and there he was.”
    “Describe him.”
    Alice told her everything she could remember about the limo driver. Thick, steel-gray hair. Mismatched blue and green eyes. Tall and beefy, the reek of tobacco, badly dressed.
    “Well,” Frannie said, “we can see if we get a hit on him in the DMV database. Not too many people have two-color eyes. We’ll start by finding out who he is.”
    “Thanks.”
    “Try not to go out alone if you can help it. Walk on busy streets if you have to. Okay? If you’ve got a real stalker, we’ll get him.”
    “Frannie?” Alice had to ask this. “What if he’s the other half of Metro Properties? What if he’s the one who killed Lauren? What if he’s after me now?”
    There was a pulse of silence.
    “There are so many assumptions in what you just said, Alice, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
    “Right. But what if—”
    “Do you think you’re in danger?”
    “I don’t know. He never tries to talk to me.”
    “Here’s what we’re going to do.” Frannie’s voice was breaking up again and she spoke quickly. “If you see him again, you’ll call us right away. You’ll keep telling us everything. Everything. We’ll do the rest.”
    Then her voice evaporated into whatever tunnel had swallowed the car she was in.
    The next morning, Mike dropped off the kids at school, then returned home to wait for Alice to get ready for the ten o’clock appointment with Pam. She found him at the kitchen table, wearing clean but tornwork clothes, his eyes fixed on a single spot of the morning paper.
    “Mike?” Her presence seemed to startle him. “You okay?”
    “Fine.” He pushed the paper away and stood up. “Ready?”
    “You weren’t actually reading the newspaper just now.”
    “Can’t concentrate,” Mike said. “Didn’t sleep much last night.”
    “That’s not like you.” They locked up their front door and passed together through the shadowy front hall. “We can’t both be insomniacs. That’ll never work.”
    He smiled a little but didn’t laugh.
    Alice reached up to tuck the faded tag back into the collar of his forest green T-shirt as he locked the building’s front door behind them. As she was about to move down the front stoop, he caught her wrist. “From now on, when I can’t go see houses with you, you’ll have Pam meet you and take you over. Okay?”
    “Yes,” Alice agreed. There was a wisp of cool breeze in the air, a hint of the autumn chill that would soon swallow the last of summer.
    “And we’ll get Maggie to bring you to work, or that Jason of yours—”
    “Mike, I don’t need a babysitter! Frannie said to stay on busy streets and I will.”
    “I don’t get it.” He was walking a little too quickly for Alice, who struggled to keep up. “How can I not worry? Worrying doesn’t belong only to you.”
    “Mike, slow down.”
    Quickness, a call to action, had always been his response to anxiety when upon rare occasion he succumbed to it. She wished he would leave the worry to her; she was better at it.
    He walked faster.
    “Mike, I’ve only told you what I’ve seen and heard. The facts. You’re the one always telling me not to embellish.” She wished now that she hadn’t told him everynuance of her thoughts and fears, that she had trusted her instinct to hold things back.
    She hooked her arm through his to keep him from racing ahead. “You’re the only person I know who gets more energy with less sleep.”
    After a minute he allowed himself to fall into an easier pace. Arms linked, the two walked south along Court Street. It began to feel more like the old Carroll Gardens than the shinier,