Edward Adrift

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I look at my watch at 3:37 p.m., or actually 3:37 and sixteen seconds—I have the kind of watch with an LED digital display for precision—and stop in the kitchen. I have another fifty-four seconds and could easily make it to the couch, but I stand still and watch the seconds tick off. The six morphs (I love the word “morphs”) into a seven and then an eight and then a nine and then the one becomes a two and the nine becomes a zero, and I keep watching. Finally, at 3:38 and ten seconds, I draw in my breath and hold it. Time keeps going, and I exhale. I look down again and notice that I am standing on top of dried marinara sauce that sloshed out of the saucepan yesterday. And just like yesterday, I don’t have the energy to clean it up, even though it bothers me.

At 3:38 p.m. and ten seconds, twenty-one days ago, on Wednesday, November 16, 2011, Mr. Withers fired me from my newspaper job at the Billings Herald-Gleaner. I know it happened at that time because as Mr. Withers said, “I hate like hell to have to tell you this, Edward,” I looked directly at my Timex watch on my left wrist, where I always keep it. Its display read 3:38:10, and I made a mental note to write it down as soon as possible, which I did exactly fifty-six minutes and fourteen seconds later, as I sat in my car. A phrase like “I hate like hell to have to tell you this” is a precursor to bad news, and I think the fact that I recognized this is what caused me to look at my watch. I was right about the news. Mr. Withers finished by saying, “But we’re going to have to let you go.” He said a lot of other things, too, but none of them are as important. I couldn’t listen very closely, because I needed to concentrate on remembering the time. The time is now logged, but that’s purely academic.

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