Slice by William Patterson

because I was trying not to be a crybaby.”
    â€œOh, honey, you can always call me. . . .” She stroked her daughter’s hair. “Maybe it wasn’t a scream. Laughter can sound like screaming sometime. Maybe it’s just somebody in the neighborhood having fun. The night is so still, and everybody’s windows are open. . . . Maybe, if it was Inga, Mr. Manning had just told her a joke.”
    The little girl shook her head. “It wasn’t laughter.”
    Jessie sighed. “Okay, sweetie. You get back down under the covers and I’ll go take a look. I’m sure it’s nothing. Inga will be home soon from Mr. Manning’s.”
    â€œOkay, Mommy.”
    Jessie pulled the sheet up and kissed Abby on the forehead. “Do you want me to leave the light on for you?”
    â€œNo, that’s okay. Now that I’ve told you about it, it doesn’t seem scary anymore.”
    Jessie smiled. What a brave kid she had. “Okay, sweetie, pleasant dreams.”
    â€œGood night, Mommy.”
    Jessie switched the light back off and stepped out of Abby’s room.
    She was in her nightgown, a sheer, filmy pink thing, so she pulled a terrycloth robe from a hook in the bathroom and wrapped it around herself.
    She hadn’t heard a thing. She’d been too wrapped up in her own thoughts, Jessie supposed as she headed down the stairs. She had her own idea about what Abby might have heard. She suspected it had been neither a scream nor laughter—or rather, she suspected it had been a combination of both. What Abby had likely heard was Inga and John Manning carrying on, their crescendo of passion floating out from the open windows through the still night and reaching the ears of the five-year-old girl.
    Jessie was back to thinking that the nanny had crossed the line as she pushed open the screen door and stepped out into the dark night.

T EN
    â€œ D id you hear something a little while ago?” Monica asked Todd as she got into bed.
    â€œNo,” he mumbled, reading the stocks on his BlackBerry.
    â€œIt sounded like a scream.”
    â€œProbably a bird.”
    â€œIt was no bird.” Monica shuddered, pulling the sheet up around her. “It was creepy. I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom and I heard it from the window.”
    â€œThen maybe a cat. You know how cats in heat sound.”
    Monica pouted. She knew very well how a cat in heat sounded, but she wasn’t sure Todd did, with the way he’d been utterly clueless to her attempts to get him to make love to her lately. “It wasn’t a cat either,” she said. Todd just grunted.
    Monica was still stewing about the party, about all the little dynamics of tension she’d spotted bubbling under the surface. She knew Todd still resented Bryan for jumping ship and leaving their company and heading over to one of their biggest rivals. She knew that Bryan and Heather were unhappy—that was plainly obvious in the way they looked at and spoke to each other—and she suspected Bryan had made a pass at Jessie, because her sister had bolted up from the picnic table at one point and stalked inside. Monica was very grateful that her own marriage was as solid as it was, and that her sister’s return would not cause the same kind of temptation for Todd.
    Of course, Todd’s lack of interest in sex lately did trouble her. Mostly Monica tried not to think about it, but sometimes it became unavoidable, as it had just now with Todd’s comment about a cat in heat. That had made Monica think about the lack of heat in her own relationship. But still, she didn’t think there was a problem in their marriage. It was just that Todd was consumed with work. The economic downtown had meant the banks were recalculating everything. Todd was constantly figuring and refiguring and sometimes sat up late at night on the computer, telling her to go on to bed without him. Monica often found him slumped