Borrowed Time

Simon stood with the book in his hand, as if it could hold him in place. He had borrowed it from Copenhagen’s Main Library that same morning. Now he was standing by the window in the apartment. From the height of the fourth floor, he looked down at the traffic, at mothers pushing prams ahead of them – everyone in coats and scarves. Early spring was cold and wet.

The book was a paperback with a broken spine and a stamp on the title page. It smelled of dust, shelving, and photocopier. He had borrowed it without thinking, and he didn’t know whether he would read it. Maybe it was more of a prop for getting through the day.

His gaze fell on the dining table a few metres away, covered in his notes, other books, and a cup of coffee steaming in the cool room. The heavy, matte-green telephone with its coiled cord sat on the shelf like an animal sleeping with one eye open. The radio played at low volume: the latest news from the Balkans, then music – Oasis, “Wonderwall.”

Simon opened the book and read the first line without understanding it. He enjoyed the familiar calm of reading someone else’s sentences, but here it was like a puzzle whose pieces refused to fit. It was as if, somewhere behind his forehead, there were words he couldn’t say out loud.

It was only when he read the sentence for the fourth time that he noticed it: the music freezing on a line. Liam Gallagher’s voice was locked on the word winding. The steam from the coffee cup hung motionless in the air. Caught mid-movement – like a flower that forgot to wilt. He looked down at the street. The traffic no longer flowed. It was simply there. The light was stuck on yellow.

He turned a page, skimmed the sentences, but found no meaning in the words. Instead, he glanced at the wristwatch his girlfriend, Laura, had given him before she left. He didn’t want to think about what they were supposed to talk about. The second hand stood still, between the four and the five. He tapped the glass with his index finger. The hand didn’t move. The same sustained note still filled the room.

Then Simon closed the book. The music continued. Traffic began moving again, and the light switched to green. Steam rose from the coffee cup and dissolved beneath the white-painted ceiling. The second hand moved again, as if it were out of breath after holding its breath.

He opened the book. The music stopped at once, now in the second verse. Outside, the rain halted. The drops hung in the air like glass beads. He put a hand on the cool windowpane and looked down. It was like looking at a Polaroid photograph. The moment froze in place. The second hand stood still again.

Simon closed the book. Opened it. Closed it again. Three, four, five times. Each time the same result, the same simple logic, like pressing a switch on a wall. Open – pause. Close – time. He sat down on a chair by the dining table and took a sip of the coffee, which was turning lukewarm. His gaze drifted to the telephone. For the first time that afternoon, it didn’t feel as if it were waiting for him.

The book lay on the table beside the coffee cup, as if it could burn straight through the pale birchwood if he didn’t keep an eye on it. He glanced again at the watch strapped tight around his wrist. The second hand moved in its ordinary way. It was loyal to the world as long as the book was closed.

The coffee left a bitter aftertaste, as if it meant to remind Simon of something important before everything changed. He looked at the telephone again. It was an appointment he had postponed all week. Instead, he began speaking to the empty room.

“Just two minutes,” he said, surprised by how clearly his voice sounded in the space.

Then he opened the book.

Everything stopped at once – not dramatically, like a door slamming, but rather like one being closed gently after standing ajar for a long time. The music, which had now shifted to a Spice Girls track, froze again: a sustained tone that felt almost intimate now, a secret only Simon knew.

He leaned back in the chair and let his shoulders drop. It felt liberating to be inside a moment that demanded nothing from him. He didn’t have to think about the telephone. It was no longer a threat – just an object on a shelf.

He tried to think rationally. In his mind, he rehearsed sentences he could say to her. What he ought to say about the mistake he had made. That he hadn’t meant to do it that way, in full public view. He thought about what would sound right and what wouldn’t. With his right hand, he stroked the smooth, lacquered tabletop. It had a cold calm to it. Somewhere inside him, he felt an impulse to stay in the pause longer than he had promised himself.

“Two minutes,” he repeated. “Just two.”

But the pause didn’t resist. It yielded – soft and safe. The longer he sat there, the two minutes no longer felt like an agreement, but like a postponement.

He closed the book again, the way you close a window before a draft turns into cold. The sounds returned: the music, the traffic, footsteps in the stairwell outside. The second hand moved again, and everything was almost provocatively normal. He found the remote control and turned off the radio. Simon sat perfectly still and waited for his pulse to settle back into place. He already knew he would open the book again.

The telephone rang, mechanical and insistent. It sounded like a hammer striking metal. It made him flinch; he felt tension all the way out in his fingertips, as if a current ran through him.

Ring. Ring.

He could see himself standing up, walking to the shelf, lifting the receiver. He could hear himself saying, It’s Simon, and everything he had shoved ahead of him would come rushing out. He saw Laura’s hands the first time she had fastened the watch around his wrist. He remembered how tight it had felt.

Ring. Ring.

He didn’t think about it. It happened more like a reflex – his hand reaching for the book. It was an escape route, wide open.

He opened it.

The ringing froze, and the room went still. Simon remained seated, staring at the telephone. He imagined it as an animal that had suddenly fallen asleep mid-leap after its prey. The relief was so strong it almost made him nauseous. Then he got up and walked slowly to the telephone. In one hand, he held the book open; with the other, he laid two fingers on the matte-green plastic. It felt warm, like a human body’s temperature. He remembered the warmth of Laura’s body.

Then he placed one hand on the receiver, but didn’t lift it. He thought he could stand like this. In the frozen pause. He could keep his hand on the receiver and choose not to say anything. The book was still open. It was a door he could keep to himself. He went back to the table, sat down, and left it open.

He let the book lie open on the table in front of him. It was as if it were no longer a book at all, but had become something else – a pause button.

And there, as he sat in the silence, he noticed it: the strangest thing was that the silence wasn’t completely silent. He sat listening, and it was as if he could hear his own body working. The radio was off, the telephone was frozen, and there was no traffic noise rising from the street. And yet there was a faint, almost inaudible crackling track somewhere in the room, like old yellowed newspapers being turned very carefully.

The open book lay perfectly flat, the pages looking as if they had been pressed down by a strong hand. Simon leaned forward and looked at the lines. It was a novel that, at first glance, looked like any other novel you might borrow from the library. He looked again at the opening sentences – the ones he’d struggled so hard to make sense of. Then he skimmed on and let his gaze slide a few lines down.

And stopped.

In the middle of a paragraph, there was a word that didn’t belong. It wasn’t a strange word, just an everyday word, but it was placed wrongly, with no connection to the rest of the text.

Dining table.

It sat in the middle of a description of a seaside town. It didn’t fit with the rest of the passage. He lifted his eyes and looked at his own dining table: the pale, lacquered birchwood, his notes, the cup of coffee now gone cold. Simon felt a strange sensation of being watched, even though he knew he had been alone ever since she left.

He turned to the next page and kept reading – still skimming, but now with sharper concentration. Halfway down the page, three new words appeared:

The matte-green telephone.

He was sure it didn’t belong in the text. Simon drew a deep breath in through his nose and let it out slowly through his mouth, trying to calm himself. The book’s dry smell, its hint of archive, suddenly felt sharper. He turned the pages slowly to the next one without feeling any resistance from the air in the room. The paper moved almost by itself. At the bottom of the page, surrounded by white space and generous line breaks, a detached sentence stood on its own.

The telephone rings without sound.

Simon glanced toward the shelf. A moment ago, his hand had rested on the receiver; now it hung slack at his side. He read the sentence again, and as he did, a new line appeared in smaller type at the very bottom of the page. It almost seemed as if the printing had just finished.

He postpones.

The book still lay open on the table in front of him, and Simon still sat leaning forward, as if he didn’t dare let his back rest against the chair for fear of falling out of his own body. For the first time, the pause didn’t feel like something he could control. It felt, instead, as if someone – or something – was reading him. The room felt less stable as he read the line again.

He postpones.

There was nothing angry about the sentence. It was simply a blunt observation, yet it pulled something out of him – something he had held on to for too long. He opened his mouth, then closed it again without speaking. Simon tried to feel his tongue, his teeth; he moved his hand from the tabletop up to his cheek. It felt warm; the contrast to the cool table was clear, and there was nothing abnormal about it. Everything seemed to be working as it should, and yet it was as if a distance had appeared, a thin sheet of glass between him and himself.

The telephone stood on the shelf, frozen in its call. It was the dangerous thing he had feared all week, and yet now it seemed harmless – an object in matte-green plastic, simply standing there and waiting. Simon glanced at his hands. They looked like themselves, too: the cracked winter skin, since spring had not yet brought warmth, the nails that needed trimming. He gave his hands a small shake, as if to coax blood into them in the frozen air, but the movement wasn’t entirely his. It was more like a demonstration.

He leaned forward over the book again and let his gaze drift down the lines, though he wasn’t really reading. He was waiting for the next break, the next sign that the novel had opened a small hole in his living room. Then a new word appeared. It stood in the middle of the page, isolated from the rest of the text.

Cold.

He looked at the coffee cup. The steam was gone now; the small remnant of liquid was cold. It was more an idea of coffee than something he could sense. Tiny bumps of gooseflesh rose on the back of his hand.

Simon swallowed. He could no longer remember what it felt like when something was truly hot. He could think his way back to steam, to the sting of burning his tongue, but he couldn’t feel it. His body didn’t remember. Instead, he tried to stand, sleepwalking, as if he were moving through water. His movements were slow – not because time was moving more slowly (it wasn’t moving at all), but because he himself was folding away from it.

He reached the window and placed his hand against the pane. The raindrops hung motionless in the air like perfect glass beads. He saw his own reflection in the glass, but it wasn’t a mirror image. Something was out of sync – small shifts, slips, errors. He listened again to the dry rustle, the nearly inaudible crackling track in the room. It didn’t come from the book, but from somewhere inside him. Simon stood by the window for a few minutes longer before he went back to the table and began reading again. He hadn’t turned a page, and yet a new line had appeared. The type had grown slightly smaller, as if the book were whispering.

He stays here.

It was like a message to him, a possibility he hadn’t considered. He could choose to remain in the frozen moment. If he wanted, he could make the pause permanent – locked into the instant where the telephone never finished ringing. Where no answer would ever come, and nothing would have to be said out loud.

Simon glanced at the watch again. The second hand was still frozen. He tried to imagine it moving again, but he couldn’t bring the image to life. It was as if he had already lost the right to movement.

He turned on to the next page, where a sentence waited – so simple it hurt.

She leaves.

He closed his eyes and pictured her. It wasn’t dramatic — just a sharp Polaroid. Laura was in the doorway with a travel bag slung over her shoulder. Her gaze was distant, fixed on a future that didn’t include him. She had said something that sounded rational and right, but wasn’t. And he had acted as if they could sort it out later.

Later had become a week. A week had become a telephone ringing.

Simon opened his eyes and stared at the telephone. He imagined her voice – not so much what she would say, more how she would sound. Whether she was tired, gentle, or already finished. He felt relief, but beneath the relief lay another mood: an unvarnished, settled shame. The recognition that he was choosing wrong because it was more comfortable.

Then he read on.

If he stays, he doesn’t have to say it.

It was a turning point. It didn’t arrive with fanfare, but with a quiet clarity. Simon hadn’t opened the book to stop time. He had opened it to escape the words he needed to say – the words behind his forehead.

He thought of the sentence he had rolled around in his mouth all week without ever letting it into the world. Simon placed his hand flat on the open page. The paper was dry, the only thing in the room that felt real now. Even his breathing felt more distant, as if his body belonged to someone else. As if he were a spectator of his own life.

He looked at the book. And then, with calm he hadn’t had before, he did it.

Simon closed it. The sounds returned at once, but not as chaos. They settled into place, as if the world had simply been waiting patiently: traffic from the street below, the rain falling again. The telephone continued ringing, as if it had never been interrupted.

Ring. Ring.

Simon walked over and lifted the receiver.

“It’s Simon,” he said, and then he heard a sound at the other end. Maybe it was a sigh; maybe it was just the hum of the line. He didn’t say anything more – he listened. As he did, his gaze drifted across the living room: the birchwood table with the notes, the cup of coffee now gone cold, the closed book with its broken spine. His face tightened for a moment, as if he were swallowing something bitter, and then it loosened again. He nodded a couple of times, as if answering something that couldn’t be explained.

“Yes,” he said at last. Then, lower: “I know.”

He set the receiver down carefully and stood for a few seconds with his hand resting on the telephone. He needed a moment to get used to the weight of time again. Then he went to the window.

Down on the street, the late-afternoon traffic had started up again. The pavement was full of people on their way home from work. The light changed. Copenhagen carried on, as if nothing had happened.

But in the middle of it all, one drop hung there. It hovered in the air a few centimeters from the glass – perfectly round, neither falling nor evaporating. It was like a small piece of the pause that hadn’t been told the world had begun again.

Simon glanced back over his shoulder. The book lay closed on the table, exactly as it should. He waited a moment, as if to make sure it really was closed. Then he turned his head and looked out the window again. The drop was still there, hanging motionless in the air. Time, it seemed, was hesitating – one moment longer than it ought to.