Down to the Wire

1

Harlan Hepplewhite scowled as he opened his eyes.

Nada por nada. Nothing but nothing but the black white ceiling. Again.

What time is it this time?

It didn’t matter. Only to sate his curiosity— Curious word, curiosity. But is it, or am I?— He pulled in a breath, fought off the ticklish urge in his throat to cough, and tensed his gut. All of that preparatory to a launch.

The word propelled him to a space— Get it?— on a dirty blue carpet in front of a black and white television screen in a dark-brown bakelite (Bakelite? Is that a trademark? Should that be capitalized? But does it matter if it isn’t written down but is only in my thoughts?) box with chrome dials that were just that tiny maybe eighth of an inch off kilter (And what the hell is a ‘kilter’?) to watch a liftoff at Cape Canaveral, later Cape Kennedy, later Cape Canaveral again but at the time Cape Canaveral, Florida. And they had liftoff too, by God, with less computing power in the whole NASA program than is currently in the most basic smart phone.

But I haven’t lifted off yet. Why not?

Is it 1 a.m. or 2? For some curious reason, or maybe because I’m personally curious or maybe because I am currently exhibiting symptoms of curiosity, I need to know. Lately it’s almost always one or the other.

Almost always. Sometimes it’s still yesterday. Sometimes it’s 9 something or 10 something or 11 something or right at the netherworld of midnight.

But my eyes don’t feel like it’s still yesterday. They don’t feel grainy and sore and covered with cobwebs. So it must be tomorrow and 1 a.m. or 2. Maybe even 3 if I lucked out and slept more than five hours.

He mentally checked the tension in his gut and attempted liftoff. He flipped his torso, twisted around—liftoff achieved!—and landed on his left shoulder to peer at the stupid red display on the stupid alarm clock.

But the top edge of his pillow bulged in exactly the right place.

Seriously? Why I gotta flatten the pillow first?

He sent that thought to the pillow itself, though he knew from past experience the pillow would snub him.

How did I end up with such a self-absorbed, snotty pillow?

His anger welling in his still-tensed gut, he slapped the pillow hard with his right hand, driving it much lower than was necessary to see the time display.

The pillow only sighed.

Inches to his left, his wife snorted in her sleep, caught herself, and flipped angrily onto her left side, as if Harlan was the source of the snort. To slap a cheek that was already bruised, she jerked her knees up, pulling the sheet and the blanket up over Harlan’s back and backside to his right shoulder and his hip.

The clock flashed red, 1:03, off, 1:03, off, 1:03, off, and Harlan shifted his left shoulder, lifted off again, and flopped onto his back, half his covers gone and his right leg below the knee dangling off the side of the mattress. His right foot swayed, stirring the demons and baiting whatever was under the bed.

Shouldn’t the display be solid? Shouldn’t it not be flashing?

He glanced to the right at the medical device in it’s place on the deep windowsill.

The annoying little light was on. Steady. Not flashing.

So the electricity still must also be on.

And why isn’t the device, which nobody ever wants to look at, above the head of the bed where it’s difficult to see? Why isn’t the clock, which someone at sometime wants to look at, on the windowsill instead? Does that make entirely too much sense to be reasonable?

A bright white spot from the smoke detector above the door flashed and was gone. It lived for an instant and died, to be reborn in One Minute. (No more often than that so as not to strobe into the sleep of those in the room).

In its instant of life the spot illuminated the ghostly bronze and dusty glass baker’s rack displaying the dusty crystals and dusty crystal dishes and that one stupid small dusty stuffed bear, as tan and drab as the crystal was bright and exciting—although to think of it fairly and reason it out one can only know intellectually the dust must have layered the bear as well as the glass and the crystals even though one cannot discern the dust on the bear. So in any unreasonable fantasy world, the indiscernible dust, having gone unseen, cannot possibly exist—and some of the panes set in the French door that was solidly blocked by the baker’s rack.

So if the spot came on for longer than that instant and if it was accompanied by the screeching tones of the fire alarm and if there was a fire he and his wife would have to leap out of bed and struggle through the house (but low, stay below the potential smoke) to the front door or the back door, the only exits other than the French door, which of course would be the most convenient escape if it weren’t blocked by that stupid baker’s rack of rocks.

But when he’d mentioned the ludicrousness of the juxtaposition of the baker’s rack and the smoke alarm, The Wife (yes, intentionally, like The Couch, The Refrigerator, The Stove, The House, and all for the same desultory reason) had actually grinned over her shoulder at him: “No way will that happen, Harlan!”

And she’d said that only moments after having set the baker’s rack in it’s current position and while balancing precariously on a step-stool and reaching up to install the smoke alarm because, after all, it just might.

The little light on the device was white too, but like the clock it displayed in Hell Red thanks to the little plastic bit his wife had cut off the lid of an old storage container.

Ridiculous.

He swung his legs off the bed, roughly, not caring in the instant whether the motion disturbed the Other sleeping in his bed—or maybe whether he, the Plus-One, disturbed the Other sleeping in her bed, and six of One, half a dozen of the Other, at any rate it was no longer their bed—and glanced at the “bedside” alarm again, which by now, one would think, should have traded places with the stupid medical device. It had certainly had time, given that it was still flashing that inane 1:03.

2

Harlan shifted, attempted to press down on the mattress to push himself up and attempted to press his feet against the carpet and failed at both but somehow managed to rise to the ‘fully upright and locked position’ that all the flight attendants on all the flights of everything but fancy repeat at least once before every liftoff and every descent anyway despite the foregone conclusion that nobody will listen and—

He looked down, amazed and—yes, curious again—by any definition of the word but for the first time ever in every direction at once.

He smiled.

Everything in life boils down to a great leveling out, doesn’t it, Harlan?

Yes. Yes indeed. Indeed it does. Apparently so.

Behind him, always prepared to correct him, his wife snorted, rolled onto her back, rolled onto her right side, flopped one hand onto his pillow—which had given up sighing, refilled itself and blocked any low perspective of the time display on the alarm clock again—sighed, “Evidently” and resumed her own soft, rhythmic breathing.

And a thought occurred:

The race is run, the finish line is crossed, and all of that was passive voice and it doesn’t matter in the slightest because only then—to be clear, when the race is run and the finish line is crossed—the realization dawns that the line has been approaching the racer the whole time. The line was drawing closer 1:03 by flashing 1:03! Not birthday by stupid birthday or attempt by stupid attempt or achievement by stupid achievement or by the steady light of a medical device on a window sill or by the time-it-yourself-I-swear-to-God once-a-minute interval of a smoke alarm that might or might not be working but at least the stupid light is working, at least minute by minute, until it suddenly isn’t.

Yes, but to repeat so as not to commit the sin of omission by confusion, after the race is run and the finish line is crossed, only then does the realization occur that the line has been approaching the racer, not the other way ‘round.

And the light from the maybe faulty—Who knows?—smoke detector flashed, illuminating the sheen of discernable and indiscernible dust on the crystals and crystal dishes and the stupid tan bear and the silly little white light on the medical device flashed flashed flashed and the time display on the clock finally slipped over to 1:04 and Harlan understood and reveled in that understanding.

He’d run the good race without ever having moved.

Instead, the finish line had moved inexorably toward him and apparently (evidently) crossed over him and he hadn’t even noticed until suddenly he did.

And he achieved liftoff without even making an attempt, though the whole silly race had gone right down to the wire.

*******