Time Is An Illusion

Chapter 3

3

Dedicated to one of the most fantastic friends, writers, people in the entire world.

Natalie opened the door and stepped in. Her first words were, “Dad, I need to ask you something.”

There was no answer.

She went into the kitchen (to the left of the hallway), inspected an open microwave and a can by the sink, and then into the living room (to the right), in which the TV was pleasantly silent.

It seemed like the most utterly idiotic thing to say, but she said it anyways. “Hello? Is anyone here?”

If Natalie believed in anything, it was that there was always someone. In your house, in your bus route, in your thoughts, in your brain, in your memory. In your nose. Human intoxication is everywhere. It permeates. It is inescapable. That was what she believed.

And she did not want to escape it, ever—but in this point in time, this very moment, second, she wanted to be sure of it.

There was a sudden answer—it came from the other side of the tiny house. “I’m busy, really busy, do you need something? Urgently?”

“Busy with what?” she asked.

“With everything, sweetheart, with everything.” His face, chubby and bearded and aging, appeared out of his bedroom door, peering out to the hallway. “What is it?” he asked, once Natalie had walked the last few steps between them to stand in front of him. (She saw that the only thing he was busy with was clearing his desk of eraser shavings.)

“Something odd happened.” Which was not exactly the most accurate description.

“Interesting.”

“Not so much interesting as terrifying and infuriating,” she said, fingering the watch in her pocket.

He looked at her for a second and swung the door open. With a quizzical eyebrow and a swift placement of his arm on her shoulders, he said to Natalie, “Well, tell me about it.”

As she began with “I was downtown and I accidentally dropped it”, he led them both to the living room, where he proceeded to squash onto his favorite armchair (and completely fill it), and Natalie set herself on the sofa adjacent to it.

She told her father about the watch falling, and then her finding it, and also George Carrington Barclay the second, who was supposedly a philosopher. Whether she doubted that specific part was a question she could not answer. It was all so out of place and unordinary that it seemed the only way to deal with it was to believe it.

After taking five minutes to explain every minute detail of the occurrence, Natalie stopped and looked at her dad, Harold Fisk, and expected him to, well, explain.

“You didn’t call the police?” he asked, with his hand on his chin.

“There wasn’t any time! How could I call them without the guy getting away? Ridiculous.”

“You do know that you could’ve been assassinated brutally, or been kidnapped, or run over by a car as you ran after him. And you wouldn’t have caught him, either way, if that happened. And we’d have to scrape you up from the concrete. Or would’ve needed to pay a ransom note. Or paid for your funeral!”

She stayed silent. Then, “But it didn’t happen. And I got it back. And I want to know why he wanted it.”

Harold Fisk looked at his daughter and mirrored her questioning eyebrow. “That’s a good question.”

“Yes, I know,” she told him. “Really, why?”

“You’re asking me? I bought that watch on your birthday because I couldn’t think of anything else to give you, darling.”

“Is it worth anything?” Natalie asked.

“Not worth being chased by the police—or angry teenagers—for.”

They were quiet.

“He said he would come back for it,” Natalie said.

Her dad looked out the window for a second. “Yes, that’s worrying. Though it would be very stupid of him to actually do so. We could call the police now—let them deal with it.”

“Maybe,” Natalie said. “Probably.”

“You got his name down, didn’t you? I’ll call and I’ll give them a rundown.”

“I don’t think he was stupid enough to give me his real name. Who’d honestly do that?”

“You’ve got a point.”

It was quiet again.

“Where’s Mom?” she asked, as a passing thought.

“Oh, she went to the store to get dinner.”

“I think she’d know what to do,” Natalie said.

“I agree.”

With one last final look between them, they both stood and walked out of the living room—one to his room to start on today’s work, which was an advertisement for a fancy brand of cat litter, the other to the kitchen, where she placed the watch at the back of a drawer.

Just in case.

**

The dinner today was chicken and rice with an alternative entre of coffee. All three of them took a seat at the very tiny, very old dinner table. Natalie, Harold, and Julia, more commonly known as Mom.

“Mom, something happened today,” Natalie began, halfway through the chicken and the rice and the coffee.

“What?” Mom answered.

Natalie put her fork down and told her everything, just as she had told her dad, except Natalie’s arms had recovered from the day’s fatigue by dinner time, so she flung them about now, letting them swing around as if she were still running after George Carrington Barclay, or allowing her hands to stamp around her lips when she couldn’t believe what she was saying (that there had been a possibility today of her dying, concretely.)

Natalie finished, stopped, silenced herself, silenced the whole room, and stared at Mom.

Julia An Fisk, middle aged, with greying hairs and an easy laugh, was uncharacteristically quiet. She looked at Natalie just as Natalie looked at her. Mom’s eyes were a bit wide.

“We thought we should call the police,” Natalie finally added. “In case—you know, in case he does come back. But I don’t  know his name—his real name. And we can’t tell them to stand guard every minute of the day, obviously, of course.”

“That’s true,” Mom said.

“So?”

Natalie and Harold looked at Mom simultaneously.

“Well, I don’t know, sweetheart, what do you want me to say?” Julia took a drink out of her cup and stared back at them. “I think you should just wait it out and let it pass. It doesn’t seem like such a serious thing. He’ll most likely move on. That’s how it works. He wouldn’t try to get it again—no one’s that… idiotic.”

Natalie thought of this for a second and scooped some chicken on to her fork and glanced out the window.

She nodded. “I agree.”

It was almost eleven p.m.

Natalie sat on the edge of her bed, slipping her socks off, because sleeping with your socks on is the worst thing to do, ever. Toes suffocating, fabric scratching against fabric as you try to find a better position—the Perfect Position. She didn’t understand anyone who could sleep like that.

After the dreaded socks were thrown to the corner of the room, she swung her feet up and under her covers, and nestled her arms beneath her pillow, and let her whole body go. Toes, calves, thighs, hips, stomach, shoulders, neck. She let everything fall, one by one, all the way to her head.

She was halfway between consciousness and darkness when something smacked hard against her window and landed with a loud thud, groan, and “Jesus Christ, stupid window.”

Natalie sprang up in an instant.