Latchloose Building
3.
 There was one older brick building at the edge of that dimly glowing downtown. The Latchloose Building’s battered red walls were covered with a lacy filigree of snow dust, like white ivy crawling up to drink moonlight. The old office building’s windows were so dark they look like shiny black marble reflecting the amber street lights. But there was one window filled with a faint green light, and a lone figure dimly visible at a corner computer screen. The elderly man working in the solitude of his office late at night was one Arthur Latchloose, banker and real estate financier, who was exceedingly rich in money and exceedingly poor in all else. There he was again in his office—long after the staff had left, like just about every other day of the year.
He barely noticed the monotonous clanging of three bells in a nearby clocktower on the quarter hour, so close that one could almost feel the ga-wump, ga-wump of the mighty steel works thundering in their sturdy lumber containments and coffers. He ignored the bells, having felt their distant throbbing on thousands of solitary evenings. Instead, he focused on the computer whose greenish glow illuminated, in a sepulchral manner, his aging but still craggily handsome features.
Mr. Arthur Latchloose had acquired a tidy fortune in banking and real estate, and lived an exemplary life as he saw it. He and his late wife Gretchen raised two children, prayed in the right manner, did all the good and proper things, donated to charity, and supported worthy causes. In recent years Mr. Latchloose had a series of heartbreaks—Gretchen died of cancer, his children grew up and moved away out of contact, and it seemed to him the world had passed him by. He had memories aplenty, wonderful ones, of Christmases and other holidays when the children were small and Gretchen was still young and beautiful, but it had long since faded like the leaves on an autumn tree. He didn’t think of himself as bitter, but more like disappointed. Some would say he was just sad, others that he was depressed, others that he was just a cranky and self-centered old man.
Arthur Latchloose did have one joy in life besides counting his money. He had a hobby—collecting antiquities; not antiques, because those were just recent bric-a-brac, but really old and very valuable stuff. He had long since stopped sending or receiving Christmas cards, and he had not exchanged gifts in a number of years since his grown children had abandoned him. Every year, however, he rewarded himself with a fine present. This year was going to be the best, for an old Army acquaintance had just offered to sell him a rare and unique clock. Latchloose had been waiting all evening for the other man’s call—so long that he’d forgotten he was waiting.
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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