Seven Minutes to Noon

seat and Frannie opened the back door for Alice.
    She was taken to a room behind the reception desk. Giometti and Frannie stayed with her while she answered questions to an officer who filled out a harassment report on the spot. There was an air of seriousness in the room, with both the questions and answers simple and direct. It took only about ten minutes. Alice was asked to sign the bottom of the report.
    The detectives then drove her to the courthouse, where they double-parked their blue sedan on Adams Street with an assumed immunity that Alice foundstrangely thrilling. It was a gesture of power, of protection. They hurried up the courthouse steps, ushering Alice through a revolving door and down a long, drab hallway. They veered into a room sectioned into judges’ chambers. It looked nothing like the courthouse dramas on TV. Instead of a lofty dais, each judge occupied a grim cubicle in which a battered wooden counter separated them from the complainant. Alice’s judge was a woman in her sixties with the restless air of someone who had waited too long for promotion, or retirement, or any transfer out of here.
    “Keep it simple,” Frannie whispered when Alice was called to the bench.
    She stated her case as succinctly as possible, details swirling around her in a sea of glittering omission. “My landlord is Julius Pollack. He has recently begun to harass me. I’m frightened for my children.”
    There was some back and forth about her relationship with Julius, and whether or not she would have to bring criminal charges against him before requesting the Order of Protection. Giometti stepped into the procedural line of fire, lobbing back answers Alice understood as little as the questions. Finally the judge nodded, signed a Request for an Order of Protection, banged her gavel, and it was over.
    Alice felt dizzy, swept into the current of a bureaucratic system she had never imagined she would need to tap. She had always felt secure knowing the justice system was there, but now wondered how stacks of offices and reams of paperwork could protect her, or anyone, from the cracked seed of human potential. She had always figured everyone contained elements of good and bad. Life threw obstacles in front of you, challenging you to choose a reaction. She now knew one thing in her bones: she could kill Julius Pollack if she had to. She didn’t want to, not really, but what if something happened to coax her to it? She imagined Lauren in her final moments, put a gun in her hand. Shoot, Alice silently cautioned Lauren, gathering fixed images of noon-timeBrooklyn from the backseat of the police car as they drove away from the courthouse. Shoot first.
    In the squad car on their way back to the precinct, Mike finally called.
    “I’m at home,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
    Alice explained. “I already packed for you. If there’s anything else you want, grab it now. Call Simon, okay? See if we can stay there.”
    “This is unreal, Alice.” She could hear the twist of agitation in his voice. “Let’s get out of here, okay? Get on a plane. Go.”
    It was a compelling thought, and for a moment the infinite stretch of heat-wavering pastel beach filled her mind. Yes. They could go. For a week, two, maybe more.
    “They’re taking me back to the precinct,” she said. “Just call Simon. And will you pick the kids up from school? I’m not sure I’ll be done in time.”
    Alice, Frannie and Giometti crossed through the lobby and climbed the stairs that led to the Precinct Detectives Unit. The low-ceilinged room hummed with detectives talking to each other or on the phone or tapping their keyboards or just sitting at their desks thinking. Alice and her detectives settled in around Frannie’s desk, and in the bubble of their conversation it felt like just the three of them alone in a lens that was finally being put into focus.
    “We’re going to be square with you now, Alice.” An uneasy shadow passed over Frannie’s face as if she was not quite certain it was time to remove a veil, reveal a truth, but she was going to anyway.
    “Good,” Alice said. “I really need to know what’s going on.” Across the room, Alice heard a spate of typing, then the ding of a typewriter’s return.
    Giometti took his hands out of his pockets and shifted in his chair. Frannie’s gaze slid to his face, then back to Alice.
    “Andre Capa wasn’t following you,” Frannie said. Her eyes were round and dark, fixed on