Time Is An Illusion

Chapter 1

1

Her life didn’t make sense. It was sprawling. It was sharp and focused and disastrous. It was twisted in and out, and there were plenty of days where nothing seemed to fit inside her head.

Today was one of those days.

Natalie stood on the sidewalk, trying to get past everyone on the street. There was something going on, some kind of city event, but she hadn’t seen it announced or advertised, and she couldn’t see above everybody’s head to where it actually was. But it was a grand river of people, getting carried away by a pleasant current, downtown.

Somewhere on this street, too, was the watch.

She dropped it two minutes ago, because she’d been too busy trying to keep the scarf on her neck and not entirely on her face (it was a really windy day), and the watch had been in her pocket—the one that was loose and not at all shaped like a pocket. 

It had rolled out. And it wasn’t very valuable. But it was important. She couldn’t show up at home without it.

Someone bumped against Natalie as she scanned the grey ground between all the walking feet. She imagined the watch, circular and gold and polished satin smooth, rolling against the pavement, scraping against loose pebbles. She took a deep breath. As the wind picked up, she started to squat low to the ground, so people would at least pause when they reached her. (They did). She crawled with her hands in front of her body, looking looking looking. She couldn’t see it. Natalie tried going further in, to the middle of the street. It wasn’t there.

She turned around, back towards the sidewalk, still crawling. It had a yellow rim and black numbers and a brown leather wristband. A normal thing, a very ordinary watch. Maybe someone had picked it up and taken it because they thought it wasn’t worth anything.

Maybe it had skidded away the opposite direction—maybe it was next to the glass doors and the autumn-leaf-dowsed tables of the restaurant by the sidewalk. It seemed like a plausible location. She picked herself up and walked over. The window panes darkened with her reflection as she walked past, her shoes and her bare knees and her hands stained with dirt.

But really, the fact that people glanced at her with their eyebrows cocked and minute stares didn’t bother her. Natalie Fisk was calm and collected, because calm and collected were the only things she could actually do.

Find a watch? No. Buy herself a car? No. Have a nice day out, without losing an earring or spilling coffee or missing the bus? Absolutely not.

But she could handle all those things with minimal outward expression.

Ignoring the waitress sitting on the far edge, face deep in today’s newspaper, Natalie stooped again and began to look under the nearest tiny, white table.

After she made sure it wasn’t there—she even turned over the leaves on the ground—she stood and was about to walk to the second table, when an eddy of air blew her hair back and she saw, from the corner of her eye, a watch, lying at the corner of the pavement and the brick wall of the restaurant. Her shoulders, which had been held up, let go. She wiped at her runny nose with her sleeve—discretely—,and got up quickly.

Three steps away.

Two steps.

Someone came out of the restaurant then, and stepped in front of her, right on top of the watch. She could see it grazing the tip of his shoe. He stooped down and scooped it up, pinching it between his thumb and his finger as he bent his face to look at it more closely.

“Hey!” Natalie yelled. “Hey, that’s mine!”

She took the last two feet to where he stood, and had to stop herself from grasping wildly at his arm.