The Day Time Stopped

By late morning the overlook was ahead on the mountain’s shoulder and in the heat of the high afternoon I hiked along a steep stretch. Looking down below, I imagined the shape of the river as a half-heart bending back and forth around the town. I had always thought the river warded the town safe from harm, safe from the bothers of the world, safe in a bubble.

I had set out on the hike early enough, but going down I realized our dinner club would have already arrived by the time I made it back. I picked up the pace, jogging on the smooth dirt downward grade, jumping over rocks, trying not to stumble. It seemed forever for me to hike down the mountain knowing I was late. I had promised Ruth I would be back by five to shower and get ready. But here I was letting the clock get ahead of me again. I braced for the worst, knowing how Ruth felt about such things.

At last, the townhome was in sight. I opened the garage to put away my pack and hiking poles. The group had already arrived and I could hear laughter on the upstairs deck.

“Here’s my Frank again, late as usual,” Ruth said as I came out the kitchen door to the outside deck.

The five of them turned towards me.

“Give me ten minutes,” I said. “I’ll clean up.”

When I came back the group was in the middle of appetizers, some kind of shrimp kabob that Owen and Vera had brought. Vera was admonishing Owen about eating all the shrimp. While she did, he grabbed another one, teasing her with a dangling shrimp, the two of them looking like fifty-somethings who hadn't aged since forty. Owen, with the tanned jock look and strong chin. Vera, the cute redhead. Beautiful people, I’d often thought, considering they were lead scientists at Time Research Institute based in Denver, famous for their time gravity equations, geeks to the maximum degree. The other couple was Victor and Eve who lived in the townhome next to ours, a young couple from New York. Victor was the proud papa with his arm around Eve, who looked like her stomach held twins and could be arriving any minute.

“Took you long enough,” Victor said to me in his Italian accent as I opened a beer.

Eve stared at her husband. “Aren’t you getting sick of the jokes?”

Victor crunched on a carrot and stared right back. “There’s nothing to do but joke, is there honey? When you get right down to it."

“Can everyone just sit down,” Ruth said. She gestured to me with her forefinger to take my place at the head of the table.

Dinners like this always made me think the best of the world, the cacophony of conversation amidst the joking, the soft music, the western light as the sun set over the mountains. This night, we talked about the fall season and who would be going to the concerts, what hiking trails were open, and whether E-bikes were allowed—the things you talk about in a resort bubble community. Ruth carried her Beef Wellington through the kitchen door to oohs and aahs, set the platter in front of us, and sliced it up. The six of us stabbed a piece as a discussion ensued about how best to get the perfect medium rare. I brought out more wine and opened a bottle of red cabernet. After a while, I opened another bottle.

“The new satellites they’re doing, Frank?” Victor said. “Tell us what’s going on.” Victor always reminded me of what the mayor of New York should be, stocky, a bull dog, the get things done kind of guy.

“I’m just Director of Operations, a fancy title for paper pusher,” I said, nodding to Owen. “Owen and Vera are the ones who know what’s going on.” I looked over to Owen, who kept his eyes on his plate. “What IS going on, Owen?”

Vera is the one who spoke up. “The first indications are great,” she said. “The array alignment is holding its own. Why it’s—"

“Excuse me.” Eve's chair dragged loudly as she pushed away from the table. She gave her husband, Victor, a sharp look and slammed the kitchen door going to the downstairs bathroom.

Victor looked at the group around the table. “You can’t blame her. My babe’s the one having the kid, not you guys.”

Owen glanced at the kitchen door where Eve had gone, then back to the four of us. “We’re testing the satellites now. We hope we can hold it to where it is today.”

Owen, the physics Nobel Prize winner I’d once watched give a speech to thousands, had raised his voice an octave. I’d never heard him do that before.

“Here's to hope as a strategy,” Vera said, and held her wine glass up to the group of us.

Victor made a joke about how you can never eat enough Beef Wellington and took another slice.

Eve was standing in the doorway. “But you can’t stop it, can you, Vera?”

Vera tipped over her wine glass, the red cabernet in the bottom of her glass spilling across the table.

“I’ll get it, Ruth said, and dipped her napkin in the wine.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” Eve said, still in the doorway, her eyes fixed on Vera.

Vera poured herself more wine. “We’re working on it. That's all we do is work on it. The Institute is bringing in the best minds on the planet.” She didn’t look at Eve.

Eve came out on the deck and plunked herself down in her chair still looking at Vera. “Sure. The best minds. But how much time do we really have?”

Victor threw his knife down which clattered on his plate. “Enough Eve.”

Vera looked at Victor. “It’s ok, Victor. The Institute has a breakthrough.”

“A breakthrough?” Eve laughed. “Like what you told us six months ago?”

“We’ll know tomorrow,” Vera said.

That night, for the first time, I felt the slowing as I lay in bed trying to sleep. Ruth was next to me with her heavy breathing and I felt the familiar pang of jealousy mixed with envy. I’d always been a light sleeper but now I was looking at the red digits from the bureau clock at 2:15 am. A watched clock never changes and I rolled over in the dark, the sound machine on the bureau making a rushing sound. I held out as long as possible, and when I couldn’t take it anymore, I looked back at the clock. The clock said 2:16 am.

I must have slept, because when I checked the clock again it was after six. I put my arm on Ruth’s shoulder. This meant only one thing and we made love. It lasted a long time, the intimacy of Ruth’s hands finding my shoulders, welcoming my touch, the release. The sex lasting longer felt like a rare gift. Afterwords, Ruth got out of bed and I lay there listening to the shower thinking maybe the effect wasn’t all that bad.

The meeting was in Denver. The line for security dragged as much as always, the wait to board the plane stalled, and flying through turbulence went on and on coming into Denver International, but everything now was like a watched clock and I was grinding my back teeth more than ever.

Both Owen and Vera, along with other C-Suite execs, were in the conference room down the hall from my office. The conference room walls were glass and I could tell Owen was arguing with Max Mathews, the CEO. Max is tall, even in his chair, and tends to loom over people in his pinstriped Corneliani suit, like he was doing now to Owen. I opened the door and went in. Whatever Max had said, Owen wasn’t having it.

“It’s not about your quarterly return,” Owen said. “Screw your return.”

Max grinned with his white teeth, what they called Hollywood teeth, the kind I’d overheard him telling someone in the breakroom were, ‘the real deal’. He had the square jawline of a man who had never once been told no. “Screw the return?” Max said, staring at Owen.

Owen’s face was bright red. “We need to recalibrate, and we need to do it now.”

Vera leaned in from where she was seated to the left of Max and put her hand on his forearm. “He’s right, Max. Listen to him.”

Max shook off Vera’s hand and leaned back in his chair. He settled like a building leaning into its foundation — with the building and the quarterly return all the same load-bearing system. “Oh, I’m listening alright,” he said. “I’m just not liking what I’m hearing.”

Owen closed his eyes across the table from Max. I thought there was something wrong with him, but then he almost whispered and I strained to hear. “Do you have any idea what today’s results look like?” He opened his eyes, pulled a stack of papers from his briefcase, and threw them on the mahogany table. Half of the papers fell to the floor. “What the collapse will look like?” He stared at Max, the whites of his eyes reminding me of a panicked horse I’d seen once.

Max stared back at Owen. “Let’s just take a moment to consider.” He was smiling his CEO smile, the one that says we’re all in this together, but really means we’re going to do it his way. After scanning the table, he sighed. “Do you know what I did this morning? I made eggs. I mixed the broken eggs in a bowl and added pecorino cheese. I then waited for the eggs to firm up and slid them onto my plate. They never tasted better, the texture of silky egg on my tongue, the salty taste, the pecorino giving it a kick.”

Vera was holding some of the paperwork she had picked up from the floor. “There's a problem,” she said.

Max stared her down. “People will pay for eggs, Vera. To stretch the moment, relish the moment. We’re doing the world a favor, do you think that might be possible?”

Vera didn’t look away. She stood up. “What you don’t get, Max, is pleasure goes fast, but pain takes a long time. To imagine time can be extended for the good things and not also the bad, is an illusion.”

“What I CAN imagine is what people will pay to extend time,” Max said, “what they will pay on a monthly subscription, that’s what I can imagine. We need to tweak the effect, increase the perception of time for pleasure.”

Vera laughed, a shrill broken sound. “Except it’s not perception we’re changing, Max. It’s time.” She threw the papers to the table in front of him and they slid across on the shining mahogany, pivoted, and walked to the window; the high rises of Denver, the white capped mountains beyond. "We’ve got a breakthrough alright. There's your proof. But it’s too late.” Her hands shook as she pressed them against the glass. “The horse, Max, the damn horse, is already out of the barn.”

The flight back home didn’t seem any longer or shorter, about the same, but my teeth still ground.

Ruth was in the living room sitting on our couch. It was like she hadn’t heard me come in.

“Ruth, you ok honey?”

“Victor called,” she said, “just now.”

It took ten minutes to get to St. Lukes. Reception told us Victor was in the maternity waiting room. We got on the elevator to go to the 4th floor. I smashed the button, 4th floor, again and again. The elevator finally shuddered. There was one of those arrows above the door pointing at the floors. I watched the arrow inch from floor to floor We rose to the 2nd floor… 3rd floor… Finally, the door whooshed open and we rushed out.

Victor was in the waiting room and stood up when he saw us. The mayor of New York, the cocky Italian, was gone. The only thing remaining was his red eyes and hunched over body. I thought he’d aged ten years since I'd seen him last.

“Victor?”

“We lost the baby, Frank. “The doctor said it was taking too long and we could have lost them both.” He collapsed in a chair.

“How is she?”

We stayed for what seemed like hours while Eve slept. Our last sight of Victor was of his slumped back walking away down a green corridor. I watched as he looked through the pane glass lining the hallway, at the babies lined up in maternity, each in a crib, many with yellow ribbons, others blue. He stood at the glass for a long time before looking back at us.

Later, just as Ruth and I entered our townhome, my cellphone lit up—Vera.

“Owen and I heard about Eve,” she said. “But that’s not why I called.”

“What?”

“I can’t explain it, and you’d never understand the science, but we did something. We did something with gravity and time and now everything takes longer.”

“I know, Vera, but what is it? We still have time, don’t we?”

“I’m afraid not, Frank.”

We talked longer before I terminated the call. Ruth was behind me. “I heard,” she said. “We should go now.”

The air was cool on the trail as Ruth and I gained altitude. The aspens, dry yellow in the early fall, twittered in a language their very own, like secrets passing in a light wind. In two hours of hiking we reached the overlook, sat on the wooden bench and looked down in the high desert sun. The town was snuggled between hills below us and the Bigwood River traced the base of the mountain we were on. The river’s rapids were like a fixed photo from this height, too high to see the movement, frozen in motion.

“Next week, we go to Wyoming,” Ruth said. “We’ve never been there and they’re having their fall festival, aren’t they?”

“They sure are.”

“Have you booked a hotel?”

“Not yet, I will when we get back.”

Ruth started to cry and she never cries. “Do you remember, Frank?”

“What?”

“The day we were married and we rushed down to the courthouse? You’d forgotten the ring, but we were married anyway, and we asked the clerk to be our witness. Do you remember?”

“I do, like it was yesterday. You wore the green dress and the judge teared up reading the vows.”

“That’s right. She teared up. I’d forgotten that part.”

“She did though. Just seeing us I guess.”

“Do you think we made the best of the time we had, Frank. Do you?”

I put my arm around my wife on the bench, and just then a hawk rose up riding the thermals.

I’d often seen the hawk gliding up this draw, the way the bird rose without beating a wing, the way the updraft held it aloft. I watched it again now from the overlook — but now it was too long.

“Look,” I said and pointed at the hawk. When I turned back, Ruth’s face was frozen pale, staring at the sky.

I checked my time, 11:42 am lit up on my cellphone screen and hadn’t changed.

When I raised my eyes, the clouds had stopped moving, the aspen’s leaves didn’t shiver, and a windless quiet lay over the land. Below, the river would stay in its ancient channel and never carve deeper.