The two of them still smiled at Peggy when they ran into her in the lobby or in the laundry room or on the street, that girl with the eyes of a surprised calf and her husband, or at least her man.  The father.  A little, wiry guy, shorter than her, who grinned readily despite broken front teeth, but whom Peggy could not recall ever speaking.  The girl was chattier.  “Hi!  How are you?  Nice day!”  Smiling.  Happy.  Peggy would nod. “The baby’s all right,” the girl would say.  Always.  Every time they ran into each other.  And Peggy would clench her jaw, and look away from those surprised eyes, and nod again.

    Babies cry.  That’s what babies do.  Peggy knew that.  On an airplane once, about to go mad from the unrelenting cacophony of a dozen howling infants, she’d noticed the serene countenance of the woman seated next to her.  The harried flight attendants grew more haggard and snappish by the second; the other passengers scowled like demons and muttered sulphurous curses.  Peggy felt a great urge to stuff her fingers in her ears, but she was still young enough to cringe at the thought of appearing childish in public.  Though she didn’t usually talk to strangers, after a couple of eternities she blurted out to the woman next to her, “How can you stand it?”
    “Babies cry.  That’s what they do,” the woman murmured, placidly.  “That’s normal.  It’s when they don’t cry that you should worry.  Remember that when you have one of your own.”
    Peggy never had had any of her own, and it had been twenty years since she’d last seen the inside of an airplane, but she’d remembered.  Inscribed it as an item on the list of truths she carried around in the back of her brain, along with club soda gets out wine stains and objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.
    But the baby down the hall cried all the damn time.  Day and night and evening and afternoon.  The child never eased up; never drew in a breath without letting it out as a screech.  The downstairs neighbors pounded on their ceilings and the upstairs neighbors banged on their floors; Peggy could hear each percussive complaint through the thin walls (thin floors, thin ceilings) of the building.  She didn’t want to be like that – selfish, heartless people with their mop handles and boots, just making things worse.  Whenever she glimpsed the couple in the hall, a girl so young she should have been worrying about algebra quizzes instead of diapers and a not much older man, they looked drained, exhausted.  The girl would smile shyly.  Frequently the man’s face seemed puffy, as if he had been crying, too.
    The first two weeks after the couple and their howling baby moved in, Peggy thought she would go crazy.  The third week, she knew she would.
    Looking for work is a full-time job (another truth on her list) and for the first couple of weeks of the sound wars Peggy was neck-deep in the quest, out of the apartment twelve, fourteen hours each day, filling out every damn application in existence within the city limits, writing and rewriting resumes at the public library’s computer lab, interviewing, emailing, faxing, pulling all-nighters at the one 24-hour copy center.  She came home to eat and sleep and wash up, and the shrieking baby and the banging neighbors made her head whirl and her blood pressure spike; she slept with headphones on and heavy metal stabbing into her ears.  In the mornings she couldn’t hear the sound of the toothbrush running over her teeth, but she could still hear the baby wailing, ceaselessly, relentlessly.  Needles in her brain; nails scraping the underside of her skin.  Brambles roiling in her belly.  Didn’t it ever sleep?  Maybe it bawled in its sleep, too, the way some people talk.  Or walk.  What did they call it when babies refused to stop crying?  Colic, or something, Peggy thought.  Or maybe the poor little thing was teething.  In any case, the crying couldn’t last forever.  It had to stop sometime.
 It didn’t.  Peggy got taken on as a long-term temp at a tax-preparer’s office, which meant night hours sometimes and Saturdays every week, but she was still home a lot more than when she’d been looking for work.
    It never stopped.  Day after day, week after week.  The pounding and the banging by the irate ones upstairs and down escalated as well, as if in competition.  For every wail, a whack with the mop handle, for every shriek, a bang with a shoe.  For a while, it was an all-out battle of noise, but the baby outlasted them all.  The bangs and thumps and pound-pound-poundings on the ceiling became intermittent, erratic, with less force behind them, as if the neighbors had more or less given up and were frankly just going through the motions now, their hearts not really in it.
    The baby continued to cry whole-heartedly.  Peggy fantasized about pillows, fat, fluffy white pillows pressing quickly down on a small red bawling face.  On the bus to work, her mind was full of images of fingers squeezing a doll-sized neck.  It wouldn’t feel like a doll, though.  Mushy, that’s how it would feel.  Warm.  Soft… On the bus home, her reverie was of guns.  No, one gun.  One single big black gun, and one bullet.  One last noise, like a door slamming, to end it all, terminate it, bring peace to the building.  The other tenants would give her a freaking medal.
    The parents were in the lobby when she reached home, both of them, the short silent father laden down with grocery bags, the eternally surprised-looking mother struggling with the mailbox key, jabbing it at the keyhole, repetitively, patiently, but unsuccessfully.
    Peggy opened her mouth to say, You’ve got it upside down, when it struck her – both of the them.  Out here.  Back from shopping.  “Where’s the baby?” she blurted.
    “The baby’s all right,” the mother said, smiling shyly.
    “No, where’s the baby?”  But Peggy could tell for herself, as soon as she got the front door open.  The wails echoed down the stairwell, bouncing off the grimy walls, reverberating like shrieks in a canyon.  “You left it alone?”
    “The baby’s all right.”  The girl was still smiling.  Still jabbing the upside-down key at the lock.
    The father nodded.
    Peggy swore and shoved the heavy door wide, banging it off the wall.  She shouldered past the father and his shopping bags, seething.  “What’s wrong with you?” she snapped.
    “Nothing’s wrong,” the girl said.  “Everything’s all right.”  Finally she stuck the key in the right way, twisted it, and grinned hugely as the little mailbox door opened up.
    The mail is here and all is right with the world.  Jesus Christ, Peggy thought.  Meanwhile the baby cried, and cried, and cried.  The batteries on her Walkman gave out, and it was too damn late to go buy new ones; the only places open in this neighborhood at this time of night were places you could get a whole variety of stuff, including trouble, but not including batteries.  Peggy lay in the dark and fumed.  Then she switched on the lamp, sat up, and fumed.
    At 4:37 a.m., she lost it.
    Threw her head back and screamed.  Bolted out of bed, shot out of her apartment barefooted, in ragged sweats, left her own door wide open.  Lunged down the hall, hit the parents’ door with both fists, a thunderous overhand slam.  Yelled at the top of her lungs.  “What the fuck is wrong with you?  Shut that baby up, shut it the fuck up!”
    Peggy beat on the door again, and again.  The bullshit lock popped and the door jumped open.
    Crap, Peggy thought, her arms still raised.  Her fists tingled, then throbbed dully.  A thread of warm liquid trickled down her left arm.
    I broke the goddamn door.
    It was dark in the apartment.  The baby cried, and cried, and cried.
    Slowly, Peggy lowered her arms.  Her hands flashed sharp, jagged stabs of pain in rhythm with her heartbeat.  Maybe I broke more than the goddamn door.  A shadow moved in the recesses of the apartment, and then a light came on, yellow and not too bright, one bulb in an unshaded lamp perched precariously on a bulging cardboard box.
    The place was a mess.  Garbage all over the floor, heaps of filthy clothes, no furniture beyond boxes and a couple of chairs that had obviously been dragged out ofthe trash.  The stench of piled-up diapers whumped into the hall.  The baby wailed, but Peggy couldn’t see it.  Couldn’t see a crib, either, or a bassinet.  Where the hell was it?
    The girl with the too-wide eyes was standing next to the shaky lamp, wearing jeans and a zipped-up jacket.  "Hello,” she said.
    The warm liquid running down Peggy’s left hand felt thick.  Heavy.  She didn’t want to look.  I must be dripping all over the floor, she thought, but still she didn’t look.
    She took a step into the apartment.  As she entered, a movement near the dark, shadowy far wall caught her eye.  The husband, sitting up.  They sleep on the floor, Peggy thought.  Why am I not surprised?
    The man rubbed his eyes.  The baby kept bawling.
    “Could you do something about that baby?” Peggy shouted.  “Could you keep it quiet for once?”  She still couldn’t see where the baby was.  The crying was coming from somewhere to her left, deep in the shadows.
    “The baby’s all right,” said the mother.
    “The hell it is.  It never stops crying.  Come on, people!”  Peggy was yelling.  She hadn’t meant to yell.  But then she hadn’t meant to bust the door down, either.  “Your kid’s crying all the time.  You’ve got to do something.”
    The girl blinked at her.
    Might as well be talking to the goddamn wall.  Peggy took another step into the apartment, kicking aside a discarded t-shirt.  A wildness possessed her: she didn’t quite know what she was going to do, but she was going to do something, and whatever that something was, the baby was in it, central to it.
    Directly ahead of Peggy, smack square in her line of sight – the window.  Singular.  Only window the apartment had.  A naked window, without a blind, without a shade, without even a rag of a curtain.  The light from the lamp’s dim bulb reflected dully off the dirt-smeared glass.  Knowing this building, the damn thing was probably painted shut.  But she’d broken a door, and broken her skin…it wouldn’t be too much more to break a window as well.  Fitting, actually.  Complete the triad.  All things come in threes, after all.  Like Momma, Poppa, and baby makes...
    “Where is it?” she snapped at the girl, who just blinked at her again.  “The baby.”
    The baby cried and cried.
    “The baby’s all right,” the girl said.
    “No,” someone said, quietly, the word dropping into the short spasm of silence between the baby’s inhale and next bawling exhale.  At last, Daddy speaks up, Peggy thought, looking over at the husband, but the man was still sitting as he had been, his head leaning back against the wall, passive, silent.  Though a hint, a dash, a tiny smidgen of surprise was spreading across his dead-fish face.
    “The baby’s not all right,” Peggy said, the wildness still roiling within her.  She was afraid, coldly afraid, of herself.
    “No, it isn’t,” said the quiet voice, a man’s voice, behind her, and she turned.
    It was a young man, younger than the father though not as young as the mother, and he stood in the open doorway – or, actually, just a fraction outside the open doorway.  He ran his hand over the splintered edge of the frame where the cheapjack lock had torn out.  Damn, it’s the super, Peggy thought, and then the young man knelt, looked down, then looked up, and Peggy saw he had the identical surprised-calf eyes as the girl, and thought, damn, even worse, it’s her brother.  But the girl was gazing at the young man without recognition.
    Steadiness was returning to Peggy, a little.  The baby wailed and wailed; she waited until it paused for breath, and started, “I didn’t mean --- “  Her timing was bad, unpracticed; the stab at apology was cut off by a fresh howl.  To break the door.
    “I’m glad you did,” the young man said.  Touching his fingertips to the floor, he moved his hand around in a slow, intense circle.  Rubbing.  Wiping?  Gathering up.  He rose, and put his fingers, darkened now and dripping, on the broken wood that had held the lock bolt.  Then he stepped across the threshold.
    The baby cried and cried.
    “Hello,” said the young man, to the girl whose face was a mirror of his.  “Hello,” he said, to the man sitting in the dark, his head leaning against the wall.  His voice was sad.
    Neither one of them answered him, though the girl smiled her shy smile.
    “Mom,” he said.  “Dad,” he said.
    He said, “The baby’s not all right.”
    He had the woman’s oval, sharp-chinned face; he had the man’s curly dark hair and slight build.  His clothes were nondescript, old jeans, old jacket, old sneakers.  They could have come from almost any place, almost any time.
    “Who are you?” Peggy said.  Her hands ached.  The blood on them had gone all sticky.
    “John,” the young man said, and the girl with his face smiled broadly.
    “John is a good baby,” she said.  She clasped her hands together and squared her shoulders, as if awaiting congratulations.  The father nodded jerkily, smiling as well.
    Though the one window was closed, in all probability painted shut, Peggy felt a cold breeze on her back.
    The young man stepped over crumbled paper sacks and empty soda cans, stepped over pizza crusts and a tangle of colored wires that appeared as if they belonged inside an old lamp post.  He skirted a pile of used diapers, loosely heaped up atop a spread-out plastic bag.  Pausing at a stack of cardboard boxes, frowning, he laid his hand – the stained hand – on the top one, then moved on.  To another cardboard box, its top closed, the four flaps flat, criss-crossed and overlapped.  The young man tore up one end flap, then pulled back the others.  He reached deep into the box, and came out with the baby in his arms.
    So small, Peggy thought.  That was her first, instant reaction, before even Oh shit, I don’t believe this.  The baby was tiny, almost new-born size, and wearing nothing but a grimy disposable diaper sagging halfway off its butt.  His butt.  Bald, red-faced, his skin wrinkly and his ribs showing, the kid looked more like a tiny old man than an infant.
    “In a box?” Peggy burst out.  “In a goddamn cardboard box?”
    The young man turned, the baby nestled in the crook of his elbow, his other arm also surrounding him, embracing him, cradling him.
    The baby was quiet.
    The baby wasn’t crying any more.
    “Who are you?” Peggy asked, softly.
    “John,” he said.
    “Right,” she said, and didn’t know what she meant by that.  Because after all, every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the world was named John.
    The young man did not look at the parents.  He walked out of the apartment, the quiet baby hugged tightly to his chest.  The baby was so small and the young man’s embrace so enveloping the child’s form was almost hidden, but as they passed her Peggy caught a quick glimpse of his face, eyes closed in peaceful sleep, still red, still tear-streaked, but smiling.  Unmistakably, smiling.
    The young man was not smiling.  He still looked sad.
    The young man did not touch the doorframe as he left the apartment.  Crossing the threshold, he took a long step, a measured, stretched-out stride.  Stepping over the blood on the hallway floor.
    Peggy waited a few minutes, giving him time to get to the end of the hall, then to make his way down the stairs and out the front door.  Three minutes, four minutes.  It was a long time to stand there, silently, in the dark after the girl switched off the lamp and lay down beside her husband again, murmuring something over and over that might have been All right, but this way when Peggy emerged into an empty hall, she could tell herself the hall was empty because the young man had walked down to the end of it, and walked down the stairs, and walked out into the street, and walked on to wherever it was he was going.  Whatever place in this world was his.

    They still smile at her when they meet, the girl with the surprised eyes and her slight, silent husband.  “The baby’s all right,” she says, but now she says it with her hands pressed hard to her swollen belly.  As her belly’s grown, the rest of her has thinned; the girl looks like a stick-figure who’s swallowed a balloon.  A rapidly expanding balloon.  She’s going to have the baby any day now.  The size she is, it might even be twins.
    Whenever Peggy sees them, she looks away, even though looking away is useless; she has seen.  She knows.  And a pain spreads through her and settles down in her own belly, a mean, raw gut-ache that bites deep and stays for days, for while the unlikely may occur many times,  Peggy is much too old to believe that the flat-out impossible could ever happen twice.