My Model Seven

Four days ago, the woman of my dreams slipped right through my fingers. Or, to be precise, I lost her four days, three hours, thirty-eight minutes and some odd number of seconds ago.

She was so beautiful – from her profile photo – well-educated, and had a great sense of humor. Like me, she’s widowed, childless, and looking for someone to share the rest of her life with.

This past Saturday evening, I was prepared to meet the future Missus Snodgrass for dinner at the Town Crier – the best restaurant in town, hands down. Thus far, from our voluminous exchanges of online messages, I knew her as Caroline.

But all my efforts came to naught…

My failing was in trusting my watch – a rare, antique timepiece I’d bought at auction. Paid seven grand for it – a Rothchild Model Seven. To protect my investment, I’d commissioned renowned London watch smith Stanford Caruthers to recondition and restore it. Every spring, every gear was gone over with a fine-tooth comb. This included a painstaking verification of the Model Seven’s legendary accuracy, a timepiece without peer in the 1920’s. 

“It's like new,” Caruthers assured me. Accurate to two seconds per week, he boasted.

On Saturday evening, when I’d thought I was stepping into the Town Crier at five o’clock, it was more like half past five. By then, Caroline had given up and left, a half-drunk glass of merlot standing sentinel at the center of an immaculately white tablecloth. The tall, perfect glass glowered at me, judged me a failure. My heart sank in its stare.

Her seat was still warm to the touch. A faint whiff of perfect perfume surrounded me. How close, yet how far, as they say.

After that, she ghosted me, despite all my attempts to apologize through more messaging through FindForeverLove.com.

Some might think it unreasonable that a stunning, mature woman ghosted a love interest after one missed date. But I’ve something to confess. This was our second missed date. The first time, I had arrived at Shackleton’s coffee bar forty-five minutes late – again, thanks to my Model Seven.

Thing is, I couldn’t remember winding it before the Shackleton debacle, so I couldn’t blame the watch. After the Town Crier failure, however, I saw red, and gave Caruthers a piece of my mind, in person at his shop, the following afternoon. Even worse – after keeping it in his shop for two days, the damnable contraption was measured as being accurate to one second!

I’d have dashed my Model Seven against a wall if I hadn’t paid so much for it, timepiece geek that I am.

I got home and whiled away the evening by sipping my way through half a bottle of scotch, a Puccini opera blaring through the speakers. Which one, I didn’t care.

Just after midnight – or so said the digital display on my microwave – I walked over to the mantel where the Model Seven was on proud display and did a double take. It read a quarter past one!

“Son of a bitch!” I cried.

I held the timepiece to my one good ear to check if it was ticking, but the music was too loud, to I walked across the room and turned it down. But as I brought the watch back up to my ear, I saw that it now showed three o’clock!

Impossible! The primary hairspring and pallet fork inside the Model Seven would never allow the mechanism to tick several thousand times in mere seconds! All sense of annoyance faded away as I stared, mesmerized, into the face of my precious antique timepiece – my first true masterpiece of a watch…

Then it happened. The minute hand spun clockwise from twelve to five in a few seconds. A moment later, the hour hand jerked counterclockwise from three to eleven! As these macabre events unfolded, a pall of foreboding descended upon me.

This was impossible…

“What’s wrong with you?” I said, the watch’s crystal an inch from my nose.

As if in answer, the watch’s knurled crown spun wildly back and forth. At one point, it accelerated into a blur of motion and emitted a faint whir while the watch hands scarcely moved! My watch was violating the very laws of physics!

I stood in the center of my parlor, heart in my throat, as I began to fear this otherworldly thing. It was no longer an antique Model Seven but something perverse. At last it hit me right between the eyes – this piece of shit had sabotaged me and Caroline! While it kept perfect time in the hands of Caruthers at his watch shop, it was mocking me, confusing me, ruining my life.

I’ve done some lame-brained things in my life – haven’t we all – but I reacted now in a combined sense of rage and terror.  Soon thereafter, the watch lay on my workbench, on its back, while I wielded a heavy claw hammer above it.

All at once, the watch ceased its chaotic antics. Until all I heard was my own heartbeat, and the calm, syncopated ticking of my Rothchild Model Seven.

“So, it appears I might have the upper hand now, eh? Not so bold and brazen as you were a short while ago! Not so ready to make me late for a date with the woman of my dreams and ruin my happiness! My how quickly things change, huh?”

I brought the hammer down hard on the solid, stained maple of the workbench. The loud strike rang out into the silence, and the Model Seven jumped a few millimeters up from the wood before settling back down into its ticking near-silence…

Should I write to Caroline and spill the beans? About why I was late for both our dates? Plead my case for a third chance, this time using my cell phone to keep the time?

As if in answer to my unvoiced thoughts, the watch’s crystal suddenly flipped open, as if it were surrendering – showing me its vulnerable “underbelly” – free of all defense and protection.

The laugh began as a thought. Deep and echoing through all the unseen in me. Then it gained a kind of corporeal presence, and I heard it with my ears. Louder and louder he laughed, until his mockery boomed through my ribs, rattled every cell in my body.

Terrified, I brought the hammer down hard on the watch’s exposed face. The laughter continued. The face was unaffected, as if invulnerable. Again I struck it. Again. Again. I gripped the handle with both hands and brought it down with all my strength, and a painful shock coursed through my hands, up my arms.

Eventually, arms numb, I paused. The laughter ceased as I stood contemplating my alternatives. Hurl it into the river? Bin it with my trash?

The watch’s crystal flipped shut.

As before, it lay there, ticking away the seconds, minutes, and hours with perfect accuracy…