Seven Minutes to Noon

back.”
    Alice braced herself. “Could I see him a minute?”
    The young man pushed through the swinging door that separated the shop from a back area. A moment later, Sal Cattaneo appeared, looking more like a butcher than Alice had ever seen him. His white apron was saturated with dark red blood and his clear plastic gloves oozed with something yellowish and thick.
    “How can I help you?” Sal offered his usual bright smile.
    “Could we talk privately?” Alice asked.
    Sal hesitated a moment but never lost his courteous smile. “Come on in the back.”
    She followed him through the swinging door into a back room that was both an office and a dry-goods storage area. The room had a rough, comfortable, old-world feeling, with a poster of Sicily tacked to the wall, and completely lacked the gourmet luster of the front shop. To the left was a metal door with a long handle that Sal pulled. He held the door open for Alice, who hesitateda moment before going in. Three feet out of the refrigeration room, she could feel the chilly draft.
    Sides of beef and pork hung by their back legs from the ceiling. Clear, heavy-duty plastic bags in bins on the floors held massive clumps of chickens. Even the free-range pesticide-free kind Alice bought — displayed so neatly in the refrigeration case in the front of the store, flagged by their high-end price — were lumped together in the bins. There was a raw, tangy smell in the air. Two stainless-steel butchering tables stood in the center of the space, one of them holding the partially butchered carcass of a skinned pig. A bloody cleaver lay next to it on the table.
    “After you,” Sal said.
    Alice held her breath and walked in.
    The cold slammed her. Sal shut the door behind her and she turned around, wondering, suddenly, if there was a latch to let you out. For a split second she thought he might have shut her in here alone, but he hadn’t. He walked slowly over to the center butchering table and picked up the cleaver. And yes, Alice noted, there was a latch to open the door from the inside.
    Sal picked up his job where presumably he had paused to greet her, slicing off the pig’s second ear. He tossed it into a stained white bucket, where Alice saw the feet and a long, yellow coil of intestine.
    She thought of the homemade apple pork sausages she sometimes bought here — they were delicious grilled — and realized she could never touch them again.
    “What can I do you for?” Sal kept his eyes on his slicing blade, which parted muscle from bone at the shank. Droplets of blood collected in the cleavage of the pig’s flesh. Alice noticed blood caked under Sal’s wedding ring.
    She gathered herself to the moment. This was the man they had been looking for, the silent partner in Metro Properties. Lauren and Christine Craddock’s landlord. Julius Pollack’s cohort. Someone special in Judy Gersten’slife. This was the man who seemed to be the common denominator. The man inside the black hole that had stolen Lauren, swallowed Ivy and put Pam in a coma.
    “I was hoping you could reason with Julius Pollack for me,” she began.
    He snickered, but said nothing, didn’t even lift his eyes from the long, smooth cut he was making along the pig’s breastbone.
    “Julius is my landlord.”
    He put down his knife and forced his fingertips into the front seam of the breastbone. With two hands, he pulled apart the rib cage.
    “Not through Metro,” Alice said. “I live in his house.”
    Sal scooped out the pig’s heart and tossed it in the bucket. Then he laughed.
    “I don’t envy you there!”
    “Sal, I’ve lived in this neighborhood a long time—”
    His eyebrows rose, and she knew what that meant: she was still an outsider.
    “—and I want Julius to understand that he doesn’t have to worry about us vacating. We’ve already found a house. Our offer’s been accepted, but it’s going to take a little time. His impatience has been...” —she was going to say cruel, but caught herself— “...unnecessary.”
    “I’ve got nothing to do with that.” Sal picked up a smaller knife and gouged out the pig’s right eye, then the left, and tossed them into the bucket.
    Alice wished the pig could scream, run, anything. She wished her wire could pick up the subtext, not just the talk, because Sal was communicating beyond words.
    “The thing is, we know Julius doesn’t want us there and we are moving. We just need a few more months,” Alice said, knowing she would