Get the Time
Cameron McFadden
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011
Published by:
Smashwords
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Other Books by Cameron McFadden
The Golden Book
The City of Ancients
1.
Out of impulse, James Seville checked the time.
10:09 p.m.
He still had eleven minutes before he headed home… eleven minutes to enjoy himself.
James knew his watch was accurate. It was made by the Swiss Army Knife Co., and fashioned from titanium, with a lithium wrist-wound motor, so that his battery charged with each stride, and only lost one second every 200,000 years.
This watch, he had concluded, was reliable. It never lost a second, not even after an SUV ran over it, going forty-five miles an hour.
James Seville had died in that collision; yet somehow, his watch had survived.
He looked down at his drink, a half-empty Bordeaux glass of syrah, and calculated. His peppery, full-bodied wine needed time to aerate, for the air to mingle with the grapes and soften its robust tannins, but if he took a sip every two minutes, James would be finished by ten twenty. He wouldn’t order another.
“You know, I think you‘re the only person I‘ve seen drinking wine here.”
The voice sounded bright and cheery, and certainly feminine.
But James didn’t have time for love or even conversation, especially not inside a dive bar like Simone’s. Instead, he stared into his glass, hoping whoever it was might take a hint.
“Well, you’ve got a name, don’t you?”
With a sigh, James turned to face her, but stopped short. The woman was tall, with long, pantyhosed legs and powerful calves, hips broader than her shoulders, and a mischievous smirk. Her narrow face was as pale as paper, which made her black hair and hard-green eyes all the more striking. What she had on, a crisp black jacket, matching skirt and toupee blouse, only accented her silver, club-shaped cufflinks and earrings. Yet all of it seemed a bit ruffled and unkempt, especially the sleeves of her blouse.
The woman looked older than James; he guessed late-thirties, but her cheekbones and crows feet were guised by powder and crimson mascara.
“Of course I do,” he murmured. “James Seville.”
“Hiya, Jim. I’m Sarah Gardner.”
“Pleasure.” James didn’t extend his hand.
As Sarah sat on an adjacent stool, James got a mouthful of her perfume, which tasted a lot like honey and a little like lilacs. She wore too much of it, yet he could see how some might find it arousing. But sexual temptations had died long ago, alongside his broken body.
“So, how’d it happen?” Sarah demanded.
“How did what happen?”
“You know, it. The big I-T. How’d you kick the bucket? Bite the dust… how’d it happen?” She paused, only now noticing James’ slumped posture, the receding hairline by his temples, his wrinkled tweed vest and stained slacks. “You didn’t off yourself, did you?”
“That’s preposterous,” James blurted out. He was about to add “especially in my profession”, but knew it could only prolong the conversation. He turned back to his drink instead. “It was a car accident, off 78th and Houston.”
“Oh.” Sarah sounded disappointed, and he couldn’t blame her. Hundreds of people died every day from car crashes. Even still, James always thought his death was fitting - it was an ordinary death for an ordinary man.
Sarah waited, hoping he might reciprocate her question, but he seemed more interested in his wine. She reached inside her purse, which looked as professional as her suit, and grabbed a pack of cigarettes. After pounding the green carton on the bottom of her palm five times, she removed the plastic covering.
“Would you mind stepping outside first?”
Sarah stared back at him blankly. Half the people inside Simone’s were already smoking - he could see nicotine wisps drifting by underneath the billiard lights.
“You know, those things’ll kill you,” he said.
“They did, actually.”
James was about to apologize, but Sarah just snickered as she pulled a smoke out with her lips, lit it with a silver-plated Zippo and breathed in, eyes closed. “Old habits die hard, I guess,” she said, exhaling.
“Or they don’t die at all.”
“What are you, a doctor?”
“Psychologist.”
“No kidding… aren’t you a bit young for that?”
An awkward silence followed, as James did a double-take and Sarah noticed her free hand, lying flat on the bar, was a bit too close to his. “Look, I’m not trying to pull anything, okay?” She raised her hand, motioning to a diamond ring on her index finger. “I just want to talk.”
James fixated on the ring, a familiar pang of jealousy coursing through his veins. It looked quite nice.
“No one here likes to talk much.”
“I take it you’re new here,” James said at last.
“I guess so. It happened two months ago, so yeah, you could say I’m new in town. Why? Is it obvious?”
All around them, Simone’s was quiet, but not still. Strangers sipped their scotch on the rocks, or flipped through songs at the jukebox, or chalked up crooked pool cues, but Sarah was the only one talking. Even a trio of middle-aged men, each dressed in a colored jersey, sat hushed around a table as they watched the 7th inning stretch on TV.
They came from all walks of life, these broken, severed souls, but that didn’t seem to matter here. Sooner or later, they had all resigned to wasting whatever life they still had left in silence.
It was only a matter of time before Sarah joined them.
James’s watch alarm beeped. 10:20 p.m. Zooey was waiting for him.
Though his glass was still half-full, James drank the rest in a few gulps. “I’m afraid I must be going now, Ms. Gardner. It was very nice meeting you.”
“Yeah, same here.” Sarah hesitated. There were a thousand other things she would’ve rather said.
James didn’t give her the opportunity, either.
He hastened to the exit, zipping up his black fleece overcoat. It looked cold outside, so he flipped up the collar to protect his ears, even though he knew this was useless.
People here had to wear whatever clothes they died in - James only wished he had died wearing something with a hood.
2.
As James Seville unlocked the deadbolt to apartment #1503, he was brought back to a simpler, happier time. He stepped into the foyer, slipped off his loafers and put them alongside a pair of athletic shoes.
Then, he looked down the hall. James used to love this time of night, past ten thirty, when Zooey would shut herself in the study, guzzling matte tea as she chipped away at her dissertation… something about foliage in South America, the details were hazy to him. But James could still recall how she sat in her wheeled leather chair, back to the door with headphones on, eyes locked on her laptop. He’d sneak into the study, right up next to her and rub Zooey’s bare, tanned shoulders, which always made her giggle.
It was all he needed to carry her off down the hall, to kiss and love, and to make love. Afterwards, Zooey would whisper those three wonderful words in his ear and drift to sleep, her cheek on his chest.
But these moments could never last.
“I’ve got to get this done,” she’d say, or “I’m tired, babe,” and even when they did make love, Zooey seemed distracted, as if sex was something she still owed him. At first, James took the same advice he gave troubled couples at his office, and peppered her with little instances of affection. But her excuses became more frequent, almost daily, until James stopped trying. He knew Zooey had a lot of work to do. He knew she was tired.
So most days he came home, opened the study room door and rested his hands on her shoulders, then stared with her into the blue glow of the computer screen. “Don’t work too hard,” he’d say after a minute or two. He’d look around at the walls, which they had decorated together last spring with framed Ansel Adams photos, artwork by M.C. Esher, vinyl by John Denver, and a four foot long panorama of the Virgin Islands. This they hung this over Zooey’s workspace.
She called it her muse.
Soon, he began to feel helpless. After all the priceless moments they shared, after all the promises and honest laughter and tears, and all the years they spent alone, searching for one another – all of this didn’t seem to matter. They were still slipping into the same mundane existence as every one else.
But not today. Today would be different.
As James crept across the kitchen, these frustrations seemed distant and fuzzy. He made his way past the kitchen countertop and sink, which was filled with cereal bowls and cookie sheets dotted with pizza toppings.
He would do the dishes tomorrow.
James slid up against the study room door and pressed an ear close. He could almost hear Zooey pecking away at her keyboard, who, despite spending countless hours on Word, still had to stop and search for the Tab key. He could almost hear Leaving on a Jet Plane playing out her earphones as she slurped her coffee.
Zooey always slurped her coffee, even when it was full.
Carefully now, like a teenager sneaking in after hours, James turned the doorknob and stepped inside the study. Everything was arranged exactly as he remembered it – her chair up against the desk, back to the door, headphones plugged into her laptop, her laptop open to the last few sentences she had finished on her dissertation. James had even sprinkled her perfume along the top of her chair.
The only thing missing was Zooey.
“Hey,” he whispered, putting both hands on her chair. “How’s it coming along?”
“Winning the war,” she might have said.
Most days, that’d be the end of the conversation. But not tonight. “So I stopped by that jewelry shop off 72nd. You remember the place… Vartan's Fine Jewelry.”
This would get her attention. Vartan's was one of her favorite spots in Manhattan.
“I started looking at their rings, and I, uh—” James cleared his throat. “I found one I think you’ll like a lot, with a gold band and an opal on top. I know how you hate diamonds. We’ll stop by tomorrow together and pick it up.
“Babe, you have work tomorrow.”
“I’m going to take the day off. Don’t worry about it. I know you’ve been waiting a long time for this. I don’t know what took me so long.”
James hesitated, only now noticing that their panorama of the Virgin Islands was crooked, and straightened it.
“Listen… the day we agreed to get this apartment together, back in that Italian joint Illinois, that was the happiest day of my life. I fell in love so fast.”
“James, I—“
“But it hurt,” he pressed. “I mean, I started thinking about you all day long, and when we moved in here, I got scared. Maybe that’s why I never bought you a ring… I just wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing. But now I know for sure, Zooey.
“I know that I love you and there is no one else I’d rather have by my side. I’m sorry you had to wait so long.”
James looked down at the empty chair. “You’ve still got work to do,” he managed. “No, no, keep going. Tomorrow we’ll head to Vartan’s. Don’t forget—I love you, baby.”
With this, he walked out of the study and shut the door behind him, then headed to the bedroom. He stripped and put on a pair of striped-flannel pajamas that Zooey had given him for Christmas, then pulled back the comforter and slipped into bed. He kept his head propped up on a few pillows, his eyes fixed on the open doorway. Off to the left, he could see the light from the study.
And there he waited, hoping Zooey would close her laptop, turn off the light and come to bed.
3.
But James Seville couldn’t sleep.
It didn’t matter how much wine he drank, or how long he stayed in bed or how many sleep-aids he took; he could never sleep, and he was pretty sure no one else in this place could, either. It seemed ironic. Now that he had all the time in the world, he couldn’t waste it.
By 12:30 a.m., James had slipped out of bed and back into his loafers, ready for a walk. These midnight walks had never been part of his routine, yet lately, he found himself grabbing the silver flashlight, locking the deadbolt on his way out and calling for the elevator.
He made his way through the apartment lobby, past the abandoned attendant’s window and out the automatic glass doors. Outside, it looked like it might rain.
James lived in Greenwich Village, a south-western district of Manhattan that was nearly as old as the US itself, up on the fifteenth floor of an apartment complex that had gone through as many names as occupants. At the moment, it was called Archstone Clinton, but it wasn’t nearly as exotic as the name might suggest.
Greenwich Village always seemed to be in a state of flux, and, like most buildings here, Archstone Clinton was being renovated. Metal scaffolding encased the building from all sides, draped with colossal plastic sheets, 2 x 4 wooden gangways and slanted metal ladders. From a distance, it looked like a hollow checkerboard. When James was still alive, construction workers operated cranes and trailer-mounted boom lifts, cursing and smoking and drilling away. Now, he knew Archstone Clinton would never be finished.
Outside, James made his way between two parallel lines of traffic bollards that were tied together with yellow caution tape, then on down the sidewalk. The Village was deserted and silent, save for the dim hum of electricity far above, from high-definition billboards attached to the sides of high-rises. This sort of quiet should have been soothing, but he missed the sounds of the city, of car horns blaring, the hiss from bus doors opening, the white noise from people and their cell phones.
James stopped at a streetlight, on the corner of 78th and Houston, and pressed the mirrored walk button twice. Though the street was empty, he waited until the walk signal lit up, then started to cross.
Somewhere off in the distance, he heard tires squealing, faint at first, though there wasn’t a car in sight. James felt light-headed. He walked faster, hoping he might outdistance these horrid memories.
Soon he heard other sounds of destruction - glass shards raining on the asphalt, battered wheels spinning in the air, the siren of an ambulance. These noises grew louder and louder with his every step, loud as the City now, to a fever pitch. His heartbeat raced. He had to stop, halfway down the crosswalk.
James Seville had died on January 14th, 2006, around nine-twenty in the morning.
He couldn’t remember much.
The sky was overcast but calm, typical weather in Manhattan. James had been walking to his office, a few minutes ahead of schedule, crossing 78th street when he heard something pop. It sounded like a gunshot, but a split-second later he heard tires squealing, as a black SUV careened into view, sparks spurting behind its back left tire.
The driver, instead of braking, panicked and cut a hard left. He was trying to avoid James, but as the flat tire ground into the pavement, the SUV fishtailed, skidded sideways and tumbled over.
James must have died moments after that, laying there crumpled and broken on the pavement, a few feet from where he stood now. He didn’t feel any pain. He just remembered sitting up, as if he had been sleeping, without a scratch or bruise on him.
At first James thought he had cheated death. He brushed the bits of asphalt off his jacket and grabbed his briefcase, then stood up and looked around. There wasn’t a soul in sight.
Then he noticed something strange. He rubbed his eyes and looked again, but there it was: a black spot off to his left, where Jackson Avenue used to be. He started walking, his knuckles turning white as he clutched his briefcase. He spotted another black void, and another, by back-streets and alleyways and in the place of unfamiliar skyscrapers. They seemed to be everywhere, these spots of darkness, even inside buildings.
It took a bit before James realized the truth: these voids had replaced the streets he had never walked on, all the buildings he had failed to notice, the interiors he had never seen. His world had suddenly been reduced to a grid-work of streets, subway terminals and skyscrapers that were all hollow inside, like set pieces from a movie, all of them suspended above an infinite darkness. Once, in a moment of desperation, James had reached out and touched this darkness. It felt cold and empty.
Time, it seemed, had stood still the moment he left this world - news stands were still selling papers dated January 16th, electric billboards still played a 30-second loop from an upcoming reality TV show, subway fare was still $3.60 for a round-trip – soon, James wondered if he might be stuck here forever.
But sometime later, certain pieces of his world began to fade away, slowly at first, so that was easy to overlook them. Soon these places looked faint, as faint as images from a projector, and it wasn’t long before they, too, were swallowed up in the growing darkness. It seemed random at first, the way these places disappeared, so James listed them on a yellow pad. He began to see a system.
People were starting to forget about him, and when they did, parts of his own world faded away. And each time this happened, he felt a sharp pain in his chest, as if some small part of his identity had just been taken away.
At least for now, these people were just acquaintances: Mr. Ling, owner of James’s favorite Chinese restaurant, or the manager of The Village Opera House, who was also a patient of his. These people, these places, they hardly mattered to him. But it could only be a matter of time, he knew, before more intimate, more meaningful places began to fade away, like his practice or the log cabin upstate, where his parents lived.
One by one, everyone James had ever known would forget about him - every place he had ever been would vanish, until he was left with one final piece… left with the one person who remembered him the longest. Then that place would start to fade to darkness, and then…
…James blinked.
He was breathing fast now, overwhelmed by a sickening sensation in his chest. He whirled around and looked back up at Archstone Clinton, up to the fifteenth floor, to apartment #1503. It looked as vibrant and welcoming as ever.
He was safe, at least for now.
4.
One of James Seville’s longest recurring clients was an aging accountant named Hugo McDonald. He had diagnosed Hugo with bi-polar depression, but aside from attempting suicide twenty-three times, Hugo acted much the same way as James: he had a sizable 401K built up; he drank frequently, but never to excess; he dry-cleaned his suits and folded his hands when they talked. But Hugo was fascinated by death, especially his own.
On his lunch breaks and weekends, Hugo researched every cemetery in a fifty-mile radius of his house, comparing their rates, services and track-record, then printed out embossed memorial schedules. He had even purchased himself a custom rosewood coffin. One August day, when James asked him the inevitable question why, Hugo simply shrugged. “Seems like the logical thing to do,” he said. “It’s just as important as writing a will.”
Business carried on as usual that day, but later in the evening, as James was walking to Simone’s, he noticed a cemetery, tucked between a bank high-rise and a parking garage. It was called St. Jude’s Cemetery. St. Jude’s looked old, but it had aged particularly well, with black metal fencing all along the perimeter, through an archway above the entrance and even wrapped about the many oak trees, their leaves turned the color of fire.
James knew he should keep walking, but as he stared at St. Jude’s, he felt a wild curiosity. He stepped foot inside and followed the winding gravel path, stopping every so often to read the more idiosyncratic gravestones. Flowers, both real and artificial, dotted the grass. A brick and mortar cabin, as ordinary as any rental Upstate, served as the cemetery office. Inside, James was greeted by a caretaker with salt-and-pepper hair and a friendly smile. “I’d like to inquire about your rates,” James had told him.
It seemed like the logical thing to do.
James didn’t stop by Simone’s that night. He went straight home, locked the deadbolt, and slipped off his loafers by the fridge. Later, he went into the study and placed both hands on Zooey’s shoulders, then went to bed. They made love in silence.
Moments afterward, as Zooey leaned over to switch off her light, he blurted out: “I stopped by St. Jude’s.”
He hit his lower lip, expecting Zooey might stare at him quizzically, her right eyebrow raised, the way she sometimes looked when they watched a bad movie. But she just looked irritated now. “The cemetery?” she asked. “Why would you even do that?”
But the truth was, James had brought up St. Jude’s to have something new to talk about, a distraction to keep Zooey from turning off her light and falling asleep. Something to keep them from slipping further.
But in the end, he hoped that Zooey had remembered what he said.
Because now, as he stopped outside the gates of St. Jude’s Cemetery, James could only hope that Zooey had buried him here.
It seemed like a nice place to spend eternity.
James checked his watch. 1:20 a.m.
He set his alarm for twenty minutes later, then approached the gate and followed the gravel path inside, just as he had done so many times before. The oak trees were nothing more than wood skeletons now, their leaves scattered on the grass and pathway, mixed with the stray, spilt flowers.
James reached into his coat pocket to grab his flashlight. Then, he started searching for an unfamiliar gravestone.
He knew this was pointless: even so, he wondered what his gravestone might look like. Zooey was in her second year of grad school, and his parents were now in a retirement home, so he doubted it’d be anything more than an off-white granite headstone. But what would it say? He didn’t have any children, so it couldn’t read “Beloved Father”; he hadn’t married Zooey, either, so it wouldn’t say “Faithful Husband”, though he had been faithful. “Devoted Psychologist” seemed appropriate, yet he hated to think that this was all he could be remembered for.
The rain started without a sound.
James was inspecting the fourth row of headstones when heard a pitter-patter on the crumpled leaves, moments before it turned to a downpour. This was typical in Manhattan, but he had grabbed a flashlight instead of an umbrella when he left. He tucked his neck into his fleeced jacket and looked around for cover, but really, there was only one place to go.
Inside the cemetery office, James shook the water out of his thinning hair then parted it, as he always did, on the left side. Though the cabin looked centuries old outside, the interior seemed modern and nuanced, with a pair of suede couches in the corner, an ottoman littered with magazines, and an espresso machine. James was about to take off his jacket when he heard a crinkling sound.
Over by the front desk, Sarah Garner was leaning over the glass case that served as a countertop, flipping through a laminated black binder. She hadn’t noticed him.
James glanced over his shoulder and considered leaving, but hears the rain droning on the shingled roof above. Conversation, it seemed, was inevitable. “Mrs. Garner, it’s a pleasure seeing you again.”
Sarah turned about, her fingers still on the laminated pages of the binder. She looked much older now - James couldn’t tell if this was because her makeup had faded, or because of the dim lighting here, but he could see the wrinkles by her cheekbones, the crows feet under her eyes. She took a drag off her cigarette. “Mr. Seville. I thought you were headed home.”
“Just stopping by, I’m afraid. Yourself?”
“Comparing rates.”
This made James smile. “St. Jude’s seems nice, doesn’t it?”
“It’s the cheapest in a twenty-mile radius,” she replied with a shrug. “Knowing John, he didn’t spare a dime putting me six feet under, so I might as well call this place home. That’s my husband, John.”
“Ah.”
Trapped indoors by the rain, James felt he had no choice but continue making small talk. He asked what Sarah’s husband did for a living, but she didn’t seem to care. He was, in her own words, “a technical consultant something-something” so James quickly changed the subject. From subway fares to politics and menthol cigarettes, nothing interested him and he began to wonder how long this might last
But then the rain stopped as abruptly as it started, and when it did, James checked the time. 1:37 a.m.
“Don’t you think so?” Sarah asked.
“I’m sorry. What?”
“A smoker’s discount. They should give a smoker’s discount here. I mean, smokers probably account for twenty percent of the business here. At least.”
“Absolutely.” James looked at his watch again, exaggerating the motion this time by rolling back his sleeve. “Oh my, it’s much later than I thought. I should be getting home.”
“We could have our own wing here. Do you think cemeteries should be organized by category? I do.”
“I really must be going.”
“But you just got here.”
It irritated him, the way Sarah narrowed her eyes when she said this. “Mrs. Garner, it’s one in the morning.”
“Where are you going?”
“I said I was going home.”
“I heard you.” But strangely, Sarah seemed to be at a loss for words. She stammered and took a few tentative steps towards him, keeping her hand on the countertop, like it was a railing down a flight of stairs. “But do you have to go… now? Jim, I don’t know a damn soul here and I don’t think you do, either. Don‘t you find that strange?”
James opened his mouth to say something, but as he glanced at her some certain knowledge seemed to pass before her eyes, and he stopped. She expected him to have answers, answers to big questions. And he knew these questions well. As a child, he had looked to loved ones for these answers; as a scholar, he had searched for them in books and scientific reports; as a psychologist, he had been patient and kind, hoping the answers might reveal themselves in time.
But now, his life was over and James was still at a loss for answers, for reason even. “I’m sorry,” he managed.
Then he turned around and headed for the door. It was getting late.
“Cigarettes didn’t kill me.”
James stopped. It wasn’t what she said, but rather how she blurted it out. She sounded just like James had, when he told Zooey about his trip to St. Jude’s. It was a distraction to keep James from walking away. “What did you say?”
“It wasn’t cigarettes. I lied.” Sarah unbuttoned one of her silver cufflinks and folded the sleeve back. She revealed a jagged, black gash that ran the width of her wrist. Sarah did the same with her opposite sleeve and exposed a reciprocal, fatal cut, but James did his best to look away.
A cold shiver chewed through his spine.
Sarah stared at him, curious and vulnerable now.
“Why?” James asked at last.
“Christ, I don’t know, James. I had like the world’s worst day. I lost my job and my husband, he—”
“No. Why are you telling me this?”
Sarah furrowed her eyebrows, her mouth agape. Carelessly now, she unrolled her sleeves and took another drag. “You’re a psychologist, aren’t you?”
“I already told you that.”
“Well, that’s why.”
James shook his head. “I know you’re looking for answers, but I can’t help you.”
“I know. I just wanted someone to know the truth. It happened so fast, you know?” Sarah looked at her wrists, though they were covered now. “They say, the doctors anyways, that it takes about four minutes to bleed out, but God, it happened so fast. I had second thoughts, too… I tried to move, but my body wouldn‘t work.”
Sarah touched her cheek, surprised to feel the trail of a tear. She didn’t turn away or wipe her cheeks; instead, she looked strangely at peace. The tears kept coming, released from emotions she had buried long ago, long before her suicide. “I just wish I could’ve seen my funeral. Like in the movies, an out-of-body type thing. Then I’d know they still cared.”
It was odd. James thought about Hugo McDonald, a man who fantasized about suicide. Then he looked at Sarah Gardner. Even though she was older, Sarah still acted like a child. He doubted she had ever thought about suicide, and certainly didn’t think of the consequences - yet somehow, she had succeeded where Hugo McDonald had failed so many times before.
Because of this, James repeated something he had told Hugo years ago: “But they still care about you, don’t they? Your family, I mean. They still love you. Surely, you know that.”
For a moment, it was hard to tell if Sarah was laughing or crying. And when she looked up, tears dribbled down her cheeks, but her lips were entwined in a dark, nasty smirk. “But that’s where you’re wrong, James. Everyone here, they’re still so locked up in their own little worlds. They’ve got their photo albums and home videos and all their memories and they hoard them all away. And when they’re alone, they look at these things over and over, cause they’re afraid that if they don’t, they’ll start forgetting. They’ll forget about their loved ones.”
Sarah cleared her throat. “But in this place… in this purgatory, it’s not how you will remember the people you’ve loved - it’s how those people will remember you.”
All of a sudden, James knew why a person like Sarah Garner was in this place and someone like Hugo McDonald wasn’t. Sarah’s soul had yet to be broken. And this spirit, this hope she still had, it needed to be preserved. It needed to be protected.
The alarm on James’s watch beeped once. 1:40 a.m.
“Come on,” James said, extending a hand. “I’ll walk you home.”
5.
On his way back to Archstone Clinton, James Seville stopped by Vartan's Fine Jewelry, and peered into the frosty glass, just as Zooey had done countless times before.
The lights here were always on. There were wired ceiling lights and fixed showcase displays that looked like miniature spotlights, but the brightest lights, a series of luminescent bulbs, were saved for the locked glass counters, which were arranged in two squares around the cash registers. He knew exactly where to look - in the outer square, two countertops from the left, top shelf.
Most nights, James liked to play a little game. He pretended that tomorrow, he’d stop by again and buy Zooey’s wedding ring. Maybe then, she’d shut off her laptop and James would carry her off to bed, where she’d fall asleep on his chest and whisper those three wonderful words in his ear.
But tonight, James couldn‘t ignore the truth.
He would never bring himself to buy Zooey’s wedding ring, because it wasn’t the ring that he couldn’t live without.
James sighed, his breath fogging up the window pane. He thought a moment about what Sarah had told him earlier, then pressed his thumb up against the condensation and held it there for a few moments.
Then, he stared at the imprint his thumb pad left behind.
It looked like a horizontal chunk cut out of a tree. He watched as the outer rings faded first, then one by one, each ring disappeared into the glass. The innermost rings, those at the center of his thumb pad, took the longest to fade out.
James kept staring until there was only one ring left - one tiny, crooked little ring.
Then he closed his eyes and, for the first time since he died, he began to pray.
“Please God… please be Zooey.”
By the time he opened his eyes, the imprint was gone.
James Seville took one last look at the window, then headed home.
Inspired by the Descendents song “Get the Time”