This Time

He wasn’t sure why, but the grandfather clock in the corner of the room continuously caught his attention. Not that it had any reason to do so - there was nothing extraordinary about it. Yet its presence was almost palpable.

She had left without telling him. One day, she had just left their apartment while he was at work, and when he got home only the empty rooms greeted him. Not that she had taken the furniture or anything. The whole place just seemed immensely empty without her for some reason - as if she had taken the soul of the apartment with her.

Now he usually spent most of his free time in the local bar. There was a TV in one corner, blaring out sports results and live baseball games to an unattentive audience. No grandfather clock.

The faint but distinct click clack sounds of the wheels and the pendulum in the clock wrought him out of his thoughts again. It was like there was no escaping its presence. Why couldn’t it leave him alone?

His colleagues at work were pretty ok, though. They hardly reacted to his announcement that she had left him. One thing had changed - they were now including him in discussions about the girls that frequented the singles bar a block from the office. It was nice to sit in the canteen and exchange little white lies about what girl had almost done what with whom. It was somewhat like returning to high school. Back to the good old days, when problems were simple.

A whirr and some distinct metallic clicks prepared him for the upcoming hourly chime of the clock. He glanced at its hands and realized that he had been sitting immersed in his world of thoughts for two hours. But then again, so what? Time was a commodity he had plenty of these days.

There was one thing she had left him. The chore of rewinding the clock every day. Precisely at nine pm every evening, he went through the ritual - open the cover, pull the chain making the weight at its end hang just below the dial. Open the glass door in front of the hands and adjust the time of day, according to the time of the clock in the Nine o'clock news on TV. Close the glass door, close the pendulum cover and put the key back at its place in the small drawer, top left in the Secretary. And then wait till the next evening, and the next nine pm.

He was not sure why he kept following the ritual - just a gut feeling that his life would come to an end if he failed to do so one evening. Nothing seemed as certain as that. And maybe she would come home from Bridge night one evening and scold him in her mild manner for having done her job?