Clock Watcher

I was in mid-doodle of a butterfly in my Ancient and Classical Literature class when I heard something about an assignment being due. I was half asleep and hadn’t had coffee that morning, but I scribbled it down. A few weeks later I was searching for a sketch of a spider when I found the term paper due date. I hit "3" on my speed dial to call up my best friend, and she verified that it was due tomorrow in 8 hours. I put a hand to my temples. She continued to say that she finished it last week; she had to lock herself in the library and spent days pouring over research. She was glad I called though because she was almost in tears over her now ex-boyfriend and what he hadn’t done. It was then I couldn’t take it anymore. I closed my eyes and held my breath. I closed them so tight it blacked out the lights of my apartment. I clenched my hands struggled to hold it until the moon slowed to an easy roll and stopped half way through the sky.

I opened my eyes. Steam from my coffee was frozen above my favorite mug. My internet connection had been frozen in mid download of a Portishead MP3. The obnoxious bass thumping from the punks upstairs had stopped. I made my way to the streets grabbing my old bike. After pumping up the tires inside a nearby Toys R Us, I took the freeway to Abby’s house. When I got there I had pull real hard on her arm to break her free. She was still on the phone, TV remote in hand.

"What’s happening?" She looked around for a few seconds. "Nice!"

Somehow I knew she was going to be cool about it.

I got her a new bike at the Galleria. Her favorite one was stolen two years ago from her garage, and she had never bought a replacement. We egged her ex-boyfriend’s house on the way out of town. Neither of us was very good with directions but we weren’t paying much attention anyway. We talked about everything we hadn’t had time to talk about since middle school. So many interruptions had kept us from talking: soccer, choir, homework, parents, parties, work. I finally got to hear the whole story about her trip to France for once. I stopped by a few libraries when I saw them, but they didn’t have what I was looking for. Eight hours isn’t much time but I wasn’t settling for less the quality sources.

When we finally reached the Florida beaches we found we could slide on the water with our rubber soles. We left our bikes on a bike rack and locked them up before leaving. We found a nice dip in the water halfway across the Atlantic. We started singing radio songs and dancing. She was a big fan of Swing and wouldn’t let me leave until I was as good as she was. We must have spent weeks there laughing. The best part of going across the Atlantic was that in certain places the water was so placid you could tell the water from sky. Occasionally we’d float upwards a little. We took turns pulling each other back down. We ended up at the shore of Portugal and moved up towards France. She took me to the places she’d visited on her last trip.

We grabbed some new bikes and toured the countryside. I stopped at a library in Munich to do some research while she tried on some dresses at a nearby store. I finally found some good sources but they were all in German, so I started translating them while she went shopping for hats and shoes across Switzerland. By the time we finally got to Moscow, I could tell she was missing her ex-boyfriend. She wasn’t so mad at him anymore. She talked a lot about her cat too, so after I picked up five more good sources I plotted a course for back home.

We trekked along the Mediterranean where I skated her down and around to the Gulf of Mexico. She’d fallen asleep along the way back, so I carried her up the Houston Ship Channel and laid her down on her couch. I curled her cat next to her and put all her new clothes on her dresser. I thought about looking at her paper since she was sleeping, but I decided against it. It was a hard decision but I think I made the right choice. I picked up a Russian to English Dictionary from Half Price Books and went back to Florida for my bike. I rode around playing a violin I’d picked up from Italy until it wasn’t much fun anymore. The mountains of Colorado were one of the nicer places I went to, but after some time even they lost my interest. I finished my paper up there. It felt relaxing to be far, far away from the city, from the noise, from the clicking of clocks. I translated it into German, Russian, and Greek just in case. My professor always took off for something. It’s never good enough. Always a ‘B-’ with some note saying "I can tell you started this last night." Even her cursive carried that nasal sounding voice of hers.

I looked everywhere and eventually found my pet frog hiding under the bed and also found a pair of glasses that I lost over a year ago that had slipped behind my bookshelf somehow. My contacts were getting dry so it was a good find. I took him over to Abby’s and left a note asking her to take good care of him. On my way back, I dropped the books I had checked out into an overnight FedEx box and after breaking into school, placed the paper in Mrs. Schnitker’s teacher box. I filled up a small rowboat with my favorite things and slid it out to sea. Humming acapella choir music from my high school days, I found a nice spot to push off and carefully climbed in. It took a few tries to get high enough, but finally I drifted far above the waves. I pulled in the oars when the world started getting smaller behind me, and as I passed an orbiting satellite I breathed out. I unclenched my fingers. I opened my eyes and set the moon in orbit again. I finished a glass of 1997 Chianti Classico and drifted asleep under a Persian afghan with plenty of time left on the project for once. Eight more hours would make for a great nap.