Daniel
Bells over the door jingle as I step into the tattoo shop. The big red flashing sign said Reeds’, and they appear to be open. I brush snow from my hair and blow warm breath into my cupped hands. It’s f**king freezing outside. It’s officially midnight, which makes it December thirty-first in New York City. Of course, it’s cold. One day until New Year’s Day, and I have twenty-four hours to cram in a lifetime of memories. Because by the stroke midnight, the last second of 2013, I have to be done with my list. I pull the piece of paper from my pocket and scan down it really quickly.
1. Get a tattoo
2. Ride a horse-drawn carriage in the snow
3. See a Broadway play
4. Buy hot chestnuts from a street vendor
5. Eat a one-pound burger at Rocko’s
6. Drink hot chocolate on a bench in the park
7. Fix my watch
I look around the shop. There’s a bunch of interesting art on the wall, and a little pixie of a woman approaches me. She’s dressed in a retro style, and her hair is all curled up and pinned like she’s a sixties model. Her nametag says Friday. It fits her. “What can I do for you?” she asks, and she blows out a slow breath. She looks tired and I immediately wonder what happened to her to put that look in her eye. But I don’t dare ask.
“Did you leave Wednesday and Thursday at home?” I blurt out.
Her right eyebrow arches and she looks down her nose at me. I immediately wish I could take it back. But then she starts to laugh. And it’s not a little laugh. It’s a great big belly laugh. She shakes a finger at me and motions for me to follow her. She sits across from me at a table and says, “I assume you’re here for a tattoo?”
I look around the shop. “Actually, I thought this was a brothel. Am I in the wrong place?” I move to get up, but my stupid prosthetic leg won’t let me play around the way I want to. It clanks against the table and I grimace.
“You okay?” she says quietly. Her eyes don’t drop to my leg. She looks me in the face. Most people at least glance at my leg before they jerk their eyes back up to meet mine.
“Fine,” I bite out.
“Well, we can’t help you out if you were looking for a brothel,” she says. She looks toward the men who are doing tats. They’re all big and blond and a little bit intimidating. And they don’t seem to like my brand of humor as much as she does. She drops her voice to a whisper. “The last time I tried sell my body in here, the boys didn’t like it.” She laughs. The men scowl even more, and I wonder if I should leave.
I glance down at my watch. I don’t know why I still look at it. It hasn’t worked since the blast in Afghanistan that took all my friends, my leg, and my sanity. I still wear it like I expect it to start up any second now. But that’s not going to happen. My life is over. Or at least it will be at midnight tomorrow tonight. I glance at the clock on the wall. Twenty-three hours and fifty-two minutes from now, I’ll get to finish what fate started. I’ll get to right the wrong.
Friday waves a hand in my face and jerks me from my thoughts. “Hello-o,” she sings.
“Sorry,” I murmur. I heave in a sigh. It’s so easy to get sucked into the memories. The screaming. The hurting. The chaos. I look into her beautiful face. “I’d like to get a tattoo,” I say. “A clock, maybe. One stuck on midnight. With fireworks shooting off around it.” Fireworks. Bombs. It’s all the same thing.
She nods. “We can do that.” She starts to draw on a piece of paper. After a few minutes, she turns it to face me. It’s pretty f**king perfect, actually. “Like this?” she asks.
I nod. I can barely speak. By the time on the watch, I’ll be gone. “It’s perfect,” I croak out. I look down at my watch. It’s what I do when I’m nervous. I don’t expect to see the time change.
Friday calls over her shoulder and one of the men responds. He’s cleaning his table, and he motions me forward. She shows him the drawing and he nods, chewing his pierced lip thoughtfully. “I can do it,” he says. “This is the last one, though, for tonight.” He grins at me. “I have a hot woman waiting in my bed at home.”
“Gee,” Friday chirps. “So do I.” She grins at me.
One of the men, the biggest one, shoves her playfully in the shoulder. “You’re every man’s fantasy, Friday,” he says as he sticks out his hand toward me. “Paul,” he says. He talks to Friday again. “Cut it out, or the man’s going to get all excited, thinking he has a chance in hell of joining you.” He narrows his eyes and leans toward me. “Not going to happen,” he says quietly. “I’ve tried for years.” He motions for me to sit down. “Where do you want it?” Paul asks while the one whose nametag says Pete washes his hands.
I lift the edge of my sleeve. My upper arm is one of the few places on my body that’s not scarred up from the burns. “Here?” I say.
“You might want to take that off so it won’t be in the way,” Pete says. He motions to my shirt.
I was afraid of that, but this is my last day on earth. Who cares what my chest looks like? I reach behind me and pull my shirt over my head the way men do, and I hear Friday gasp as she sees my na**d chest. It looks a lot worse than it actually is.
“Sorry,” Friday murmurs when Paul shoots her a glance. She sits down across from me, and her eyes finally land on the thin length of titanium that comes from my shoe. “What happened?” she asks quietly.
Pete transfers the design onto my arm and starts to ink the tattoo into my skin. It doesn’t hurt nearly enough. I heave in a sigh. “There was an explosion,” I say.
“Was it awful?” she breathes. She lays her chin in her hand and props her elbow on a table.
I nod. “It was pretty terrible. Every one of my men died.” I lift my pant leg. “I lost my leg and was burned pretty badly. But I lived.”
“The universe must have better things in store for you,” she says.
Paul snorts. “Friday, please,” he warns.
I should have died with them. “I doubt it,” I say. “I ship out in twenty-four hours,” I inform her. That’s a lie. Well, sort of. But not really. “I’m going to join my team.”
Friday brightens. “Well, that’s something to look forward to.”
Yeah. It’s all I’ve looked forward to for a long, long time.
I want to change the subject, so I think about the list in my pocket. “Do you guys know where I can find a clock shop in town? Someone who can fix a watch?”
The men look at one another and one of them says, “Henry’s?”
“Do you know if they’re open tomorrow?” I ask. “Well, today, I guess.” I have to have the watch fixed by tomorrow night. Midnight. It’s on my list.
“Call him, Paul,” Pete says. He pulls his phone from his pocket and tosses it to Paul. Paul juggles it playfully until Pete makes a noise and then he stops.
“Isn’t it awfully late to call tonight?” I ask. I look from one of them to the other.
“Henry’s wife had a stroke two years ago. They keep odd hours while he takes care of her. He might still be up. If not, Paul will leave a message.” He shrugs. “Worth a shot.”
Paul nods, and I see him smile as someone answers. Paul tells him I have a broken watch. He puts his hand over the mouthpiece and looks at me. “Can you go by there when we’re done here?” he asks. “He’s still up.”
I nod. “Love to.”
Paul talks to him for a minute and hangs up the phone.
“How is she?” Pete asks.
Paul shakes his head. “She’s not doing well, and she’s ready to give up. I think sometimes she just hangs in there for Henry.” He blows out a breath. “I’ll write down the directions for you. It’s right around the corner from here. In the basement of a building.”
He hands me the directions when Pete finishes the tattoo. I look down at my new ink and smile. It’s beautiful. I can cross that one off my list. “You’ll find Faith there,” he says. “In the clock shop.”
“Faith?” I ask. I almost snort. I don’t believe in faith. Not anymore.
“Faith is Henry’s granddaughter. She helps to take care of his wife and works in the clock shop when he’s not there.” He holds up a hand to show she’s about as tall as his shoulder. “Short little redhead. Really f**king adorable. In an I-want-to-bang-the-librarian sort of way.”
“Faith is a girl?” I ask. It’s not some mythical state of being?
Paul nods slowly.
“Oh, okay,” I breathe. I’d rather talk to a girl than talk about faith or hope or God or any of those things I don’t have anymore. I pay my bill and walk toward the front of the store. But as I’m leaving, Friday tugs on my sleeve. I look down and she stands up on tiptoe and kisses my cheek.
“Best of luck to you,” she says quietly.
“Thanks,” I croak. I suddenly have a lump in my throat and I don’t know why.
Pete shrugs into his coat. “I’ll walk with you to Henry’s. You don’t want to be alone in this neighborhood at this time of the night.” He looks over at Paul, who I assume is his brother. They look very similar, but the big one is broad enough to fill a doorway. He doesn’t smile quite as readily as Pete does. “You going to walk Friday home?” Pete asks Paul.
Paul grumbles playfully and wraps Friday up in his beefy arms. “If I have to,” he says. He scrubs a hand across Friday’s hair. She slaps at his wrists until he pulls her back in for a hug. She settles against him and exhales. He looks down his nose at her, like he’s confused. She breathes him in, a smile softening her face. He sets her back from him. “You ready?” he asks.
She nods her head and her cheeks color. “Don’t walk me home hoping I’m going to invite you in,” she chirps playfully.
“One day, Friday, I’m not going to give you a choice about inviting me in.”
She freezes and her breaths fall a little quicker.
Pete bumps my shoulder as he walks by me. “You ready?” he asks. I nod, and stick my hands in my pockets. “See you tomorrow,” he calls over his shoulder.
“Big plans for New Year’s Eve?” I ask as we step out onto the sidewalk. The snow is falling even heavier, and I pull my hood up over my head. I stumble a little in the snow, and Pete slows down. He doesn’t mention my leg. He just adjusts his walk. “Thanks,” I mutter.
“For what?” he asks. He looks into my face.
“Nothing,” I say. Maybe I’m just imagining that he’s adjusting for me. I worry so much about my disability that I think everyone else does too.
“I’m taking my girl to watch the fireworks tomorrow,” he says.
“Tonight,” I correct. I look down at my broken watch.
“Oh, yeah,” he says. He smiles. “Tonight.” He blows out a steamy breath. Suddenly, he stops and turns, and goes down in to a stairway. “You coming?” he asks, when I stand there looking at him like an idiot. “We’re here,” he explains.
I walk slowly down the stairs. Stairs are hard for me, and if he wasn’t here, I would just hop on one foot down them. That’s much easier than taking them slowly, one at a time. But it’s much less graceful.
We walk through the door and step into a basement full of clocks. There are grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks and desk clocks. A train rumbles by on a track above my head, and I smile at the noise it makes.
“Kind of awesome, isn’t it?” Pete asks.
It really is, in a ten-year-old most-awesome-thing-ever sort of way.
There’s a long table at the back of the room and an older gentleman is sitting at it, and he has gears and parts spread around him. He’s wearing magnified glasses and has a bright light shining on his workspace. He doesn’t look up, so Pete calls his name. “Henry,” he says loudly.
The man looks over the rims of his glasses at us. “Pete,” he says. He sets his tools to the side and wipes the grease from his hands. “What a nice surprise.” Pete reaches to shake hands with him, but the old man pulls Pete to him and hugs him instead.
“It’s good to see you, Henry,” Pete says. “How’s Nan?”
Henry shakes his head and gets a far-away look in his eye. “She’s still hanging in there,” he says.
Pete squeezes Henry’s shoulder.
“Well, at least she’s home,” Henry says. He looks at me and points to Pete. “This young man and his brothers came and moved our furniture so I could bring my Nan home.”
Pete looks down at his feet and doesn’t say anything.
Henry extends his hand. “I’m Henry,” he says. “Who might you be?”
“Daniel,” I say. “I’m sorry to bother you so late at night, but Pete said you might be able to help with my watch.” I take it from wrist and hold it out to him.
He pulls his glasses down and looks closely at it, flipping it over. “This is old,” he says. “Can’t say I’ve ever worked on one of these.”
It belonged to my grandfather. “Do you think you can fix it?” I ask. He takes it to a nearby table and pops the back off, appraising the gears inside like he knows what he’s look at.
“Maybe,” he grumbles.
Suddenly, there’s a thump from upstairs and the old man startles. He lays my watch down and goes to the stairs. “Do you need some help?” Pete asks.
“Granddad!” a female voice calls from the top of the stairs.