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“What are you talking about? Do you know
what time it is?”
I held the broken watch in my right hand: a magnificent
Longines set with miniscule diamonds. The glass face was missing.
“Ian? Ian, what’s going on?”
“I’m fine, never felt better. I wanted you to be the
first to know. I’m getting married.”
Shattered beauty: that’s what I saw when I looked at the
watch. It made me feel melancholic.
My sister said, “Is it Morgane? Is something wrong with
Morgane?”
I smiled. I wished she could have seen me smile.
“Her name’s Jackie.”
“Oh, Ian.”
“Look, I’ll call you later.”
I hung up. I knew that my sister was crying on the other
side of the continent. If only she realized how blissful sadness could be.
The watch shop was in the Lower East Side, on
Clinton Street. I made my way through Tompkins Square Park, crossed Houston
and found it a few blocks south. The lights were out; on the door was a note: ‘Back in five minutes.’ So I waited.
Five minutes later she appeared; she paused when
she saw me, and then there was that smile again: a smile that carried such a
sense of promise in that smile, but that made her seem so enticingly far
away, drifting on a cloud over a precipice, unaware of the danger. She
unlocked the door, walked in without turning on the lights. I entered after
her, and found myself surrounded by the ticks and tocks and chimes and bells
of a multitude of old and new clocks that greeted us with a cacophonic
session of loud mechanisms. Jackie picked up something from beside the cash
register. I stumbled forward.
“Pretty, isn’t it?” she
said, showing me an antique music box where two ceramic figures -- a bride and
groom -- danced to Mozart’s “Wedding March.”
“An antique?”
“Oh, no, it’s not that old. But age would make it more
attractive, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know, possibly,” I said. “I wouldn’t know.”
She looked at me curiously. “May I help you?” she asked
as she put down the music box.
“I...perhaps...I think you...”
The sound of the clocks returned with renewed fury and
prevented me from continuing.
“Please, look around,” she said as she inched up against
the store window, her hair tumbling over her shoulders in two cream-colored
tresses. She blew against the glass, fogging up a small round patch. She drew
a circle in the fog with a wan smile, then placed a right angle within the
circle. Then angrily she ran her finger through the middle of her drawing and
turned away.
I handed her the Longines. I said, “I think you left this
in a phone booth earlier this morning.”
Jackie took the watch, examined it sadly. Her eyes were
vaguely bloodshot, her make-up slightly smudged. She spoke after a long
silence.
continued
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