No Time Like This Time

He did watch repair. She sold minutes. He was busy, bent over a vintage Rolex when Aurora came in with her broken time-piece. Anyone would be able to tell by her outfit that she was one of the five-minute girls. They wore short navy skirts and knee-high boots, white blouses with ties. The ties were printed with stop watches in different colors. The half-hour girls wore leather. The hour-girls wore mink.

“I don’t mess with those new-fangled devices,” he said after a quick glance in her direction. “You know that.”

His whole world was dedicated to time. The far wall of his store was filled with clocks of all shapes and sizes, ticking endlessly. The noise was his favorite sound. It was like a heartbeat to him. Many heartbeats. He couldn’t sleep in a room without at least three clocks.

“Oh, please, Horace. It’s just missing a screw, I think.”

He was fundamentally against people who bought the extra time. It didn’t make sense to him. 24 hours, 60 minutes an hour, 60 seconds a minute. What more could you need? Why would an extra five minutes be worth $50?

“Can’t you just take a look?” she asked. “I promise, it won’t take any time at all.”

He glared at her. 

“I know. I know. Bad pun.”

With a sigh, he lifted her time-piece. In theory, he understood how it worked. For a price and the prick of a finger, the customer could stretch his or her day by five-minute increments.

“We don’t have time for this,” he said.

“We?” 

“You know what I mean. We've been over this, you and I.”

“I do know what you mean," she said. “I’ll buy you some if you fix it.”

He didn’t want to go into why he was anti-time-adding. She’d heard all of the arguments. What he truly felt was that time was precious, and that mucking about with the time continuum was a dangerous game to play. Nobody was really sure how time worked, even now, with the time-ologists and universities dedicated to time stretching. His personal belief was that perhaps if you bought five minutes now, it would shorten your life at the end. But that was a conspiracy theory only a few holdouts had. And those who did think this, didn’t mind. Who wouldn’t want to add time to the middle of your life and shorten the bitter end?

She flashed her lashes at him.

That sort of trick didn’t usually work.

But this timechick, this side piece, as they were called, was a little more unusual than most. She had her own personality that she let show even though she was wearing the standard attire. Even beyond that, she was his ex. They had history—shared the same timeline.

In spite of himself, he reached for her device. Aurora was right. There was just a screw loose. He got out his tiniest screwdriver and went to work. While he did, she started to talk to him.

“So you’re still anti-time-adding?”

“You know I am.” It was why they’d broken up.

“But I’m sure you just don’t get it.”

“Ah, the ‘you’re too stupid to understand how great this is’ argument.”

“Well…”

“Enlighten me.”

They’d been over this before. It was the only thing they’d fought about.

“It’s just adding five minutes at a time to your day. It’s like putting a nickel in a parking meter. Back when there were parking meters. And nickels.” 

“But that just keeps you from getting a ticket.”

“This does the same thing, Horace, and you know it.”

He guessed what she was going to say, so before she could he parroted the latest ad to her in a sing-song fashion:

“You know how great it is to hit the Snooze button? But it often means you can’t take a shower? This lets you hit the button and take the shower.”

He was still fiddling. The equipment was intricate, but he was a master.

She took a step closer to him. “Don’t you think about me?”

He looked up and met her eyes. He did. He thought about her all the time.

Even after the break-up, occasionally they’d run into each other at different neighborhood watering holes. And his heart would race. It wasn’t simply the way she looked. That’s what he told himself. It wasn’t only because the time girls wore their skirts short and combat boots tall, but because she had a type of way she moved through a crowd, with precision and finesse. Everything about her seemed well-oiled.

“Don’t you miss kissing me?”

He looked up from his workstation. He did. He thought about kissing her for more than a few minutes more than a few nights.

“Well, let’s say we kiss one more time, and it’s the best kiss you ever had. It’s the best kiss of your whole life. Wouldn’t you want it to linger? Wouldn’t you want it to go on for five more minutes?”

“Why wouldn’t it? Why couldn’t we just kiss as long as we wanted to?”

“Maybe the club is closing. Maybe you have a customer about to show up to pick up their watch. Maybe it’s almost time to go to work…”

“I do have a customer about to show up…” he said.

“Is my time piece done?”

He passed it to her and nodded. She reached for his hand and he winced as she pricked his thumb. Twice. And pressed his finger into her device. “That’s ten minutes,” she said.

“What do I owe you?”

She straddled him in his chair and said, “A kiss.”

“A kiss?”

“Like this,” she said, and her lips were on his, and he couldn’t remember his name, or what number came after 11, or which hover-bus he took home.

She kissed him, and his mind flickered through other kisses he’d had in his life, even with ones with her when they’d dated so briefly. And how none, not one, compared to this. They kissed and time seemed to stop for him. In a way it never had.

Then she leaned back and said, “Don’t you have something to do?”

And he said no he didn’t. Nothing was as important as this kiss.

“A customer…”

And he looked at the wall of clocks, and he sighed, and he said, “Yes, you’re right,” and she said, “Wouldn’t you like five more minutes…”

“I’d like 500 more minutes.”

“Doesn’t work like that, you know it. Sixty max. Plus, you don’t need 500. You just need to finish the job, and then you and I can meet after you close up shop. And we can spend all night doing what I know you’re thinking of doing.”

Her kiss made him dizzy. Her kiss made him forget and remember and forget again.

But then he looked at his finger. And he thought of the people he saw throughout the day. The ones with bandaids on every finger. The ones with bandages on their wrists. The way they seemed glazed as they moved through life, buying time, always buying a little more time.

This is why they’d broken up.

He shook his head, and he said he was sorry, because he was sorry. Her eyes were wet when she looked back at him, but he didn’t flinch.

He finished the watch he’d been working on, and he locked up his shop and left the store. The night air was cool, with the fragrance of fall. Leaves decorated the sidewalk in red and gold. He paid attention to every sensation. The crunch under his boots. The scent of wet asphalt. He breathed in deeply and let the air out.

There was music playing. He could hear it through an open window. An old jazz standard. He stood in front of the building for a few bars and let the sound wash over him.

A few houses were already decorated for Halloween. He looked at the pumpkins grinning at him from the front porch of the house next to his own small cottage.

The walk home only took five minutes. 

But in a way, it was a lifetime. Because every second counted.