"It's a self-winding 1952 Rolex, Mr. Smith, I'm afraid I don't have the right gears for this kind of watch," said Oliver to his relatively grumpy client. "I don't understand, every other shop I've been to has had the parts available," said Mr. Smith with a hint of frustration. "And it's not even that rare a model, I don't see why you don't carry those types of gears."
It was mid-morning, and instead of tending to his regular tasks around the shop, Oliver was stuck behind the counter with a magnifying glass and a pair of tweezers, reluctantly poking around the inside of Mr. Smith's watch, which he knew was too out-of-date and obscure to be eligible for any sort of part replacement. For 45 minutes Oliver had been pretending to search through his drawers and boxes for the thin steel gears that were needed to revive this ancient fossil of a wristwatch, but it was obvious Mr. Smith was going to have to consider it extinct. Anyway, Oliver was used to being handled this way by quite a few of his customers, and Smith was no different.
"Well, I'm sorry, but considering it's a '52, it really won't run as well as it used to, either with or without the new gears," Oliver explained. "Fine," Mr. Smith said with a sigh and a mildly sarcastic tone. "You're the expert, right?" With that, he picked up the rusty old Rolex and walked out the door. "Won't be seeing him again, eh?" Oliver muttered to himself as he put his tools back in the top drawer of his desk, walked to the back room, and continued working on a gold pocket watch that was due for pick-up in two days. He hadn't been fixing it up for more than a minute when he noticed that his old black and white TV, which sat on a small wooden table in the corner of the room, had been left on with the volume all the way down. "Oh, for crying out loud," he mumbled as he got up to turn it off. "As if I don't pay enough for the damn electric bill already." Before he switched it off, though, he glanced at what was playing on the screen.
It was an old gangster movie, and it looked incredibly familiar, although he couldn't remember the name of the movie he thought it was. Curious as to what it was, he turned up the volume and began watching it. The plot seemed typical of a mobster flick, which didn't help in his determining exactly what it was. Eventually, it got to some kind of chase scene, where several men wearing trenchcoats and fedoras were running down an alleyway towards another man who appeared to be running away from them. Two of the men carried tommy guns, while the rest of them brandished snub-nosed pistols. Eventually, the man who was running away found himself facing the brick wall of a building, and as he slowly peered over his shoulder, he saw that the several armed men had him cornered and were all surrounding him. He babbled something like, "Please, no, I'll get you the money," and one of the gangsters probably retorted in some clever, cliché way, but what happened next caught Oliver's attention in a way he could not describe. It was followed by the man screaming, the sound of a burst of rapid gunfire, and the image of the man laying sprawled out on the ground with his eyes still open. Oliver was hit with a feeling of discomfort, and quickly looked away from the television. At first, he didn't understand his own reaction, and after sitting there for a few moments trying to figure it out, he realized something. He had witnessed that scene before, but not in a movie. Where had he seen that before, and what was so unnerving to him about such a cheesy death scene in an old gangster film? He stood up and turned off the TV, still uncertain as to the emotion that had come over him. It was then that he glanced at the clock hanging over the TV, and saw that to his surprise, it was already 1:00. "Wow, have I actually been sitting here the entire time watching a stupid movie on TV?" he said out loud. He sat back down at his desk, and continued working on the pocket watch for the next few hours.
It was 5:00, and after a relatively uneventful day at work, Oliver walked in the door to his apartment and hung his coat up. He seemed to have developed a headache as he walked home, and all he wanted to do was make a sandwich, listen to a little more Brubeck, and take a nap. There was something he had been meaning to ask his son Jonathon when he got home, but he was too exhausted to remember. He walked down the hall towards the kitchen and saw Jonathon sitting at the kitchen table, and as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, he saw a girl sitting at the table across from Jonathon. There were school textbooks and pieces of notebook paper scattered across the table, undoubtedly part of a study session. "Hey, dad," Jonathon said as he glanced over at the girl. "You remember Miranda, right?" Oliver looked at Miranda, and was not exactly sure if he did remember her. He felt like he had seen her around the apartment building at one time or another, though. "Oh...yeah, how are you?" he managed to say, his head increasing to throb in pain. "I'm good, and yourself?" Miranda said. "Good, good," he replied, and immediately turned to Jonathon, remembering what he was going to ask him. "Hey, Jonathon, did you pick up Mom's package downstairs?" "I didn't know there was a package," Jonathon said, looking confused. Oliver gave his son a stern look and said, "Well, I told you this morning." "I don't remember you telling me, but fine, I'll go get it," said Jonathon, clearly not wanting to get in an argument with his apparently irritable father. Oliver turned away, grabbed a container of ibuprofen out of the kitchen drawer, and deciding to skip the sandwich, began walking to his bedroom. Jonathon motioned Miranda to come with him, and as they got up to leave, she said to Oliver, "Well, it was good seeing you again." By that time, however, Oliver was in enough pain that he didn't feel like replying, however rude that may have seemed. After he shut himself in his room, he popped two of the painkiller pills, managed to place the needle back on the record, and flopped back onto his bed. As he began to gently float on the sea of smooth jazz as he lay there, he reflected on that strange feeling he experienced at the shop earlier that day, and just when he thought he began to understand what it all meant, he shut his eyes and faded away into sleep.
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I crawled into my bed, grabbing on to my flat pillow. After several years of use, it seemed to have lost some of its fluff, but yet I found comfort in it that night, as I cried myself to sleep.
The next day I woke up to the abrupt knocking on the door. “Oh crap!” I glanced at the clock and realized I was supposed to be leaving for school. I let Jonathan* in. “Give me two seconds!” I ran back to my room threw on a t-shirt and some jeans. Grabbed a piece of gum to attempt the drowning out of my awful morning breath. Drowned my face into the cold sink water and pushed my hair up into a sloppy bun. I knew then a long day was ahead of me. Jonathan grabbed my book bag as we fled down the stairs to make it to the bus on time.
Inhaling deeply, trying to catch my breath, I sunk into my seat. “Hey, you all right?” Jonathan asked. I loved him with all my heart, but I hated how well he read me. “I was just hoping that today would start off better.”
“Your mom?”
Just as I was about to say, “well sort of but not the usual,” Jonathan's girlfriend hoped on. “We’ll talk later, ok?”
“Ya, sure.”
School did indeed go slow that day. Jonathan and I ended up at his house that afternoon to get a head start on chemistry. Jonathan talked about bonding and atoms, I heard nothing. i jumped in my seat as the front door slammed. I figured over to Jonathan, who’s that? Mr. Stone entered the room.
“Hey dad, you remember Miranda, right?”
Oh right Mr. Stone, it had been ages sense I had seen this man. The two began bickering about some package downstairs. Jonathan motioned at me to go with him. As my body followed, my conscience was long gone. I was numb. No more pain could be taken. Nor would I realize it. When we arrived to the mailroom, there was a large package awaiting for the Stones. Jonathan started questioning me and what I thought was in it, but I wasn’t even paying attention. “Miranda you there?”
“Huh?”
“Seriously what is going on?”
“Oh I just realized I forgot to take care of something myself.” I got to head home but I’ll stop by later to grab my books. I ran towards the stairs, before Jonathan had time to say anything.
I ran up stairs and changed into my running shoes. There I started on the third floor, running up and down the 4 flights of stairs to the 7th floor. Up and down, up and down. My brain was exhausted. My body was physically worn. If I knew what the end felt like, this is how I would have imagined it. I was too tired to cry. I stopped and threw myself against the wall. Slowly I melted to the floor. “Excuse me, are you ok?” I looked up...
*Jonathan- Mr. Stones kid (Jake’s character). Jonathan and Miranda have grown up in Thallow Flats together and have become good friends over the years.
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