[Alowyn]: 224.Frozen watches, seafood and cocktails, unrun baths, and other unimportant things

I only realised that my watch had stopped around midnight. Everything fell quiet, and for the first time I wondered whether I should go to bed. It’s not that I was busy. Apart from a lunch that ran late and a bit of an argument I hadn’t done much until that hour. The hands of the clock froze at one o seven. Either it stopped during my lunch, or maybe it was seven past one in the morning, and the clock had just stopped. Either could be true.

Meanwhile, I’m busy sifting through documents. Tidying up my room. Or searching for something. I’m not completely sure anymore, because I don’t have that sense of urgency. At this time of night, nothing is urgent. Whatever it is can only be for the next day. Not like anyone would come to me in the middle of the night and ask me for some papers, or to borrow a book, or my banking details.

Silence constricts the house. More than that. It sounds like the entire universe is dead. I stand by the window, listening for any sound. There isn’t even a wind. The moon reflects a perfect crescent in the pond outside, undisturbed by waves or ripples. I can’t even hear that stale faraway sound of the night.
I would check my cellphone for the time, but that feels like cheating. Maybe I’m not supposed to know what time it is. Why else would my watch stop? Fair enough, it was a cheap thing I bought off the street. Maybe a year or so ago. Can’t even remember where I bought it. It’s not like I expected it to go on forever. Not for what I paid for it. Still, I can’t help the feeling that I would be disturbing the natural order by finding out the time. In the same way that the magic of midnight would be lost if you were to check a clock and discover that it was actually four minutes past.

So there it was. Either it was after one in the morning, or it wasn’t. I can’t think of anything that had happened to me at lunch that would have stopped the watch. It wasn’t a light lunch, but it wasn’t a rowdy one, either. Just a normal meeting at a small outside seafood restaurant with a friend who I hadn’t seen for a few months. She had started work at the hospital and they worked her to the bone.
“They really are slaving me there,” she said. “Like I don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I’m actually starting to hate it.”
I sipped my fruit juice, listening intently. I always had a fruit cocktail with me when I ate seafood. Just a long standing habit.
“Honestly I don’t know why I got into the field. All the hard work – and for this nonsense. I’m not even doing what I want to do.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. There wasn’t much I could say. She wanted to be a pharmacist, and she was becoming exactly that. Telling her that careers weren’t always what we expected them to be was hardly the appropriate answer. Telling her to keep going with a job she hated, or to quit a profession she wanted, would go nowhere.
“Forget it,” she said. “How are things on your end?”

There wasn’t much to say on my end. Years of indecisiveness had led me through a varied, strange and wonderful course that was going nowhere. I was thinking applying abroad, however. I told her this. I was applying for the big scholarships.
“I’ m sure you’ll get through,” she said. “You know your stuff. Hey, you even helped me pass once.”
“A long time ago,” I nodded. “Simple stuff, really. You knew what was going on, you just needed to put it all down in order.”
“Still, you know your stuff.”
I couldn’t help but think how wrong she was. I didn’t want to say it though. I didn’t see my friend for almost half a year. Last thing I wanted to do was to start complaining. But the truth was that with all the odd jobs, travels, degrees, courses, I was still lost and running out of time.
“I’m thinking of becoming a diplomat,” I tossed some prawn shells into a spare plate. “I mean, I have some background in politics, and I know my languages and current affairs.”
“Go for it,” my friend said.
“I don’t know. I’ll see. Thing is I like the idea of diplomatic immunity. Sounds like something from Survivor.”
“Congratulations, you have won immunity. The rest of you go to tribal council.”
“And one of you will be voted off.”
“But not you. You have immunity.” My friend called the waiter and asked for another coffee. She asked me if I wanted anything. I declined.
“What does it actually mean, immunity?” she asked.
“I’m actually not sure,” I said. “Means that you’re immune to laws affecting the country you’re in, I think. But that’s just the law. I mean, I don’t know if it actually means you can’t get parking tickets.”
“Would be cool.”
“Yeah. Would be.” I thought about a newspaper headline I saw earlier. IRON FIST ON AMBASSADOR’S THROAT. I knew a bit of the story. Some embassy representing some country that condemned the rigged elections somewhere. The president-elect was furious. The police harassed them, but nothing tangible enough to win a case internationally.

Some twelve hours later – maybe – I am moving documents from one pile to another one on the other side of the desk. It’s become mechanical. I don’t even know what the pages are saying, or what I’m doing. I try to imagine myself an ambassador, doing something important with the documents, but I can’t. It’s hard to persuade myself that even the lowliest office-boy would be doing what I am in an embassy. Irritated, I muddle the documents a bit, then stack them into one neat pile. To break out of the inertia, I decide to run myself a bath. A bath and some nice tea. Maybe with some mint. Mmm. As I walk up to the door, though, I pause. No point in disturbing the dead silence with a squeaky door. I wrap my fingers around the handle. Curl it down as softly as I can. As the door slides open I slip my fingers onto the edge. Move it with such grace that the screws don’t wake up. I open it a crack, just enough for me to creep through. I move like a thief through the house. There’s another career opportunity for me: cat burglar. I guess there’s a sort of immunity that comes with that as well.

After the fight with my housemate, just as well that I prowl through the house like this. I can’t help but think that it was the most meaningless fight I’ve ever had. Even if we fought over how I leave the cap off the toothpaste it would have been more meaningful. Meaningless or not, though, it upset him. Enraged him. And I can’t even remember what we fought over. I step into the bathroom and press the door quietly shut. I think about locking it, but pull the key out and put it by the kitchen sink. At this time of night, an embarrassing exposure is the least of my problems. A monster jumping through the window or popping out of the drain is a bigger risk, and then I’d need the door open to get out. Silly, I know. But I choose not to lock.

Even though the tiles of the bathroom echo like a thousand voices, the silence wraps around everything. I open a window to allow steam to escape, but an icy night wind cuts into my skin until I close it. I’ll open the window afterwards. I grip the tap firmly and give the slightest force. I don’t want the taps to groan. Nothing happens. I turn it, it loosens and I turn more. But it’s on full blast and the tap only coughs a bit of air and drools some drops. Has the water been cut off? Maybe a pipe burst somewhere, and I’ll see the water for my bath running down the street tomorrow morning if I’m up early. Without the bath, I no longer feel like the tea either. Drinking tea is too special. You can’t just do it on its own.

I go back to my room and lie on the bed. The lights are on, but the silence constricts the electricity from humming. I can’t help but think what a crazy and futile day it had been. As if someone else’s goldfish died, and I couldn’t feel for that person. I imagined a person obsessed with a goldfish throwing me a betrayed look. But I couldn’t help it. Today was just that sort of day where the ball never really came into my court. I look at my desk. The pile of papers tumbled and avalanched onto the floor. I shouldn’t have stacked it so high. I’ll clean it up the next morning.

My watch still reads seven past one. I think about the bath that didn’t run, the tea that never got poured, the papers that never got sorted. I think about my friend who was going quickly nowhere and how I was going nowhere quickly. I strain my eyes looking at the watch, as if my glance can resuscitate life in the hands. It doesn’t move a second. Somewhere else, in another room, a housemate and I had a pointless fight.

I still can’t bring myself to sleep or to get up or to even look at my cellphone for the real time. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe my watch didn’t stop. Maybe time froze at exactly one o seven, when the silence blanketed everything, and I am waiting for nothing.