Lost Hour

Greetings from the lost hour,

The clock was standard government issue, common in classrooms and police stations and county morgues and in nearly every military base built since the last war.  Every number shown, no fancy artwork, no implied anything.  This is the time.  The red second hand wound its way around the face, snick, snick, snick, teasing the big hand forward, which in turn eased the small hand on its way.  Twelve hours in the post meridien twelve in the ante meridien.  Except once a year when it was one more, and once a year when it lost an hour.  Snick. Snick. Snick.

The conference room was littered with papers.  There were take-out containers on floor along the wall, wadded up paper, scribbled notes on post it notes, torn out pages of books.

The twelve of them had been in the room almost without a break for eighteen hours, debating, writing, walking around the long teak table, posting large sheets of notes on the wall.  The white board on one wall was completely covered with mathematical equations that appeared to be the work of maniacs.  Someone had drawn a sad face emoji in the center of Falconer’s Conjecture.  They had abandoned math days ago. 

Six months ago they had scoured philosophy, brought in three experts and sent them packing.  Brought in scientists, experts in how the brain works.  They sifted through history, through sociology, psychology, religions, and nothing gelled.  But they were close, all of them felt it in their caffeine-soaked genius brains.

A little after 1:00 am Sergei leaned back in his chair.  They had thought about this, the greatest minds gathered in any one room in the world, and thought right past it.  They had the question almost right, but the answer was not in science as any of them knew it.

Every human conflict, every angry emotional response, the germination of hate, of envy, of distrust, the harbingers of racism and divisiveness, had this seed in common.  And so the solution to it would have it in common.  He felt something tip over in the deepest region of his mind, the infinitesimal space between synapses where everything waits to be understood.

He flipped through his leather-bound notebook and stood up.  Still reading he walked to the whiteboard and erased a huge swath in front of him.  He took a pen and began to write.  The  room went quiet and one by one they each sat down in the chairs in front of the white board.  The awe was palpable.

He wrote furiously, phrases, snippets of math, a long sentence which two of them recognized and behind him he heard ‘Oh..right..’ and he wrote on.  And then dropped the pen and stood back.

It was beautiful and terrifying.  It was the answer to mankind’s destruction, to a world where understanding was possible, where empathy was the first path of interaction. 

Snick. Snick. Snick.  And it was gone. The hour leapt to 3:00 am.  They were back in their chairs running circles around the same arguments.  The emoji was back in the middle of the equation. Sergei flung his leather bound notebook against the white board and stormed out of the room, angry. He did not come back.

No clocks on the walls of the casino.  The crowd around the craps table had been cheering the man throwing the dice, except for the two losers who had bet it all on the last throw and now watched as the night turned into someone else’s victory.  And then the sweep hand on the pit boss’s watch passed 2:00. Snick. Snick. Snick.  The hour was gone.  The money lost and won was back where it started. One gambler stepped back and took his last twenty dollars with him.

Gregory looked into the plastic bottle and counted the pills into his hand.  He had walked out of the Elks club, another night of drinking, finally found the courage to swallow them, to end the pain, the years of struggle.  There would not be another day like this one.  He would finally do it.  He raised his hand to his mouth, the capsules sticking to the sweat on his palm.  Snick. Snick. Snick.  Now he was watching an informercial, blurry eyed, terrified of his choices.  And there would be another day.

Arnav sat on the filthy bench nearest the track, tried not to think of the stickiness against his pants.  At the other end of the bench a woman sat, alone, and obviously uncomfortable at Arnav’s presence, clutching her purse close to her side.  Nearly 1:00 am, a pretty woman alone, and out of all the benches in the train platform this brown man chooses to sit five feet from her.  He felt awkward suddenly and yet was too embarrassed to now move to another bench.

Terrin glanced at him, ashamed at her first reaction.  She shouldn’t be alone in the subway at this hour but her nurse manager kept her another six hours and here she was.  She looked at him again and was glad he could not read her mind.  The fear response, then the curiosity.  She looked at her shoes.  She had looked him and felt that pang, but then the word ‘beauty’ floated in her mind.

She breathed in, pictured her lonely apartment, three stops down on the L, three blocks walk, three flights up.  She would sleep a few hours and then fight her way back into the hospital. Doubting why she was doing any of it.  The ache in her soul ebbed like a hot coal.

“Sort of peaceful like this, right?” she said, surprised at her own voice.

Arnav was a little startled.  He looked at her to be sure she wasn’t on the phone or something, that she was actually talking to him.  “Yes.” he said, straightening a little.  “I am often here on my way to work at this time.  It’s like it’s another world in the middle of the night.”

She turned a little on the bench, to face him, to look at him.  She felt herself relax, her hands unclenched around her battered purse.  “Why are you going to work at this godawful hour?”

He laughed.  “If you only knew how often I have asked myself that question.”

And so it began.  A question, a shared laugh, a few moments and then more words.  And between them they wove gossamer strands of steel, winding around and into one another.  A train came and went and they didn’t move.  They talked, found the places in common, the pains and the humor, a dream, a broken promise. They threaded friendship into an empty space, felt the tautness of it and then offered one thing more. 

Terrin held her hand out and said her name and felt his hand in her palm and heard him say his.  There was a moment she thought another train must be rumbling in because she felt a vibration that went through her, something powerful.

Snick. Snick. Snick.

Terrin watched the man sit at the other end of the bench, and felt fear, clutched her purse closer to her side.  She shook off the fear, and another thing.  She glanced at him and then away.  Moments swept across her, wiping off the instinct, the choice, erasing the path.  She waited for the train, waited for the feelings to pass.

The fireman arrives too late and then the hour changes and he saves the struggling baby.  The elevator opens to a chance meeting, and it is missed.  The daughter doesn’t fall asleep and hears her father call in the desperate moment.  The world spins and shudders and the moments pass into the ether and in the missing of them lives are changed.

The hour disappears, and all the possibility, the love and terror and beauty and pain and ecstasy and laughter disappear with it.  And we wake, groggy and disoriented, wondering what has changed; knowing and not knowing, and going on anyway.

Hope this finds you saving daylight,

David

Copyright © 2019 David Smith