The alarm didn’t go off, so she missed the bus and was
late to work. Her nine o’clock meeting started without her and ran into her ten
o’clock coffee date, which was cut short so she could make her doctor’s
appointment at eleven. She sat in the waiting room for ninety minutes, fuming
because she only wanted her prescription renewed and she wouldn’t need the
stupid pills anyway if these things could be done over the phone.
She spent ten minutes with the doctor, then stepped
into the bright afternoon sun. Lunch on the run was a hot dog bought from the
cart on the corner. No onions, just yellow mustard and neon green relish. She
enjoyed the first bite and wolfed the rest. The lineup at Starbucks was ten
minutes long; waiting on her green iced tea took another ten. A friend from her
old office caught up to her in the crosswalk and kept her chatting when they
reached the other side of the street. Her grande iced tea was almost gone
before she finally got free to drop off her prescription. Her two o’clock at the
Heuer Building was looming … she thought. She’d lost track of the time between
the hot dog and the pharmacy, and her Blackberry was sitting—goddamn
it!—on her desk. And, wouldn’t you know, City Hall had let the battery run out
on the clock tower. Could she make it to the office and collect her BBY in time
for two? What time was it, anyway?
Everyone around her was rushing, plugged in or
texting, oblivious to anything but keeping up with the flow. If she stuck out a
foot, she might catch someone with a smart phone or a working watch, but she
might also cause a chain reaction pileup on the sidewalk and get sued. Wishing
she had refilled her prescription before the pills ran out, she glanced
frantically about for a willing Samaritan and spied a tall drink of water
taking a break from his kitchen gig at the pub on the opposite corner.
He had a cigarette in one hand and a raggedy paperback
in the other, the book tipped away from the sun so his sight wouldn’t suffer
for the glare. As she approached, he actually heard her and raised his head. He
was cute, too; blond and tawny with broad cheekbones and a killer smile.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” she said at five paces.
“No bother,” he assured her, straightening. “How can I
help?”
“Do you by chance have the time?”
His smile widened. “Time for what?”
Flustered to a new level, she managed a nervous laugh.
“I mean, do you know what time it is?”
“Oh.” He wore no watch, she saw, and was about to say
forget it when he tilted his face to the sky, contemplated the position of the
sun among the streaky clouds, and announced with a grin, “I’d say it’s round
about Now.”
copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig
* * *
If there’s a point to this piece, it’s that so much
time is spent worrying about time that time passes without us being engaged
with it. I get frazzed about it like everybody else, but wherever possible, I
let go and trust that I’ll get everything done in due course. I once saw a
saying on a sandwich board in the village and it stuck with me:
“Nature does not hurry, yet all is accomplished.”
Mind you, Nature doesn’t
work for the government …
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