Are You Jealous (part six)

Are You Jealous

(part six)

Reiff, white hair in minimalist proportion to brow, brow deeply furrowed with the demands of craftsmanship, and coming cliff-like over blue eyes…also was capable of emerging from a trap, it appeared.

“You know me?”

“Who else am I expecting?”

If this were a business complaint, Gabriel felt charged and somewhat guilty. He proffered his Visa, and Reiff vanished again, into an alcove optically concealed by the sheer whiteness of the space. Gabriel had come in person to do what could be done over the phone, with reason—a friend of Presby might know information to Presby’s discredit.

Reiff was back, without a word holding out card and receipt.

“You work with Presby,” Gabriel said, tucking the receipt into his right pocket, the wallet into his left.

“For Presby I sometimes work.”

“You admire Presby?”

“Why should I admire Presby?”

“You…like Presby?”

“Why should I like Presby?”

“You dislike Presby?”

“Why should I dislike Presby?”

Checkmated, Gabriel fell silent.

“You dislike Presby, of course,” Reiff said. “A troubling thing, a clock.”

“Oh, it’s not… Troubling?”

“This one does not keep time. It will lose, I predict, twenty minutes. She will bring it to me every six months. Or you will bring it. April. Shall I get the book?”

“Oh. I don’t know… April is… In the future.”

“Six months in the future, yes.”

Appointments can be changed. Gabriel found himself standing flummoxed, with an urge to say, “Eva and I will be fine in April.”

When Reiff issued from the half-light a third time, he had in his hands a clock. It was black, but abraded with antiquity to a matte umber. The numbers on its face had a peasant lumpishness and a fine grasp at elegance, both. The face was yellowed to amber, the hands stopped at a quarter past three. Above the face was a little arched door with a keyhole, under a delicately painted garland.

“In Großherzogtum Weimar, this clock was sold, in the year eighteen forty-five. That is all we can say of it.”

“I’m glad,” Gabriel said.

And a hasty, “…that you know its age, more or less. Helpful to repairing it.”

Reiff gave him a hard look. “The clock is broken, yes. So long as this clock has been known, no one has found the part to fix it. I, through great luck, have come to own the clock. For my life I have worked to solve it.”

6

Are You Jealous

Are You Jealous (part seven

(Stephanie Foster, 2016)