Escrow Didn’t Happen
10.
 Here we are,” Major Jarlid finally said. He parked under a towering billboard advertising Rose Attar’s Grand Self-Storage. There, they stepped from the car and bundled their collars against the cold. Arthur looked up at the glittering sign whose frame was filled with snow. His breath escaped in ragged wisps. Jarlid, meanwhile, entered the well-lit office to get a key at the service desk.
Arthur trudged after Jarlid, to a storage unit far back amid snowy hills and pine forests under moonlight. Without knowing how he knew, Arthur knew what that building was. It was a time storage. It was a building that stood alone, shrouded in night, with nary a light inside. It was one of those buildings whose insides changed every time you came to it. One time your unit was on the ground floor, and the next time it was far away through a rabbit-warren of dusty wooden stairways. Nothing ever stayed the same, just as time flowed ever onward, like a river whose waters never pass any place more or less than once.
They stood before a simple rollup door overlooking a side driveway. Jarlid opened the padlock with a rattle of chains and key, and lifted the rolling gate. There, wrapped in blankets, stood a tall object, glittering in diffuse light from stars and snow outside. Jarlid walked around it, pulling the covers off.
“It certainly is beautiful,” Arthur said, breathlessly, as they stood looking at the magnificent Louis XIV clock. In his right hand, in the warmth of his pocket, he tightly held the trainman’s watch Major Jarlid sold him. Arthur started to forget his doubts. He was excited by the night’s adventure and looking taking home his greater acquisition.
“I’ll need the money right now,” Jarlid said. He gripped Arthur’s upper arm in a vise-like grip. “I have no more time to waste on idle conversation. My time is running out.”
“Ouch! I beg your pardon.” Arthur was stunned. He’d had visions of calling an escrow firm the next day to arrange a proper, supervised exchange. The clock would stand on a carpeted floor, and Arthur would sit with his check book at a table right next to it, and Jarlid opposite Arthur at the table. Jarlid would have to wait a bit in his impatience. He shook Jarlid’s iron grip away.
Major Jarlid, however, was insistent. He stepped in front of Arthur and regarded him with large, hypnotic eyes. “My dear Latchloose,” he said, “you will write me a check, and you will do so right now. Then I will disappear from your life, and you will forget all about me. You will be busy with a whole new range of things you had not imagined.”
“I will do no such thing,” Arthur said, weakening.
“You have become a cranky, selfish old man,” Jarlid said. His eyes bored into Arthur’s soul like glowing red-hot embers. “You had a beautiful wife, and you ignored her in your rise to the top of the financial pyramid. You had two beautiful if not exactly perfect offspring, and you live alienated from them. Those are your problems, Latchloose. I have too many problems of my own to worry about yours. This I can promise you, however. With this clock you are buying, you won’t be able to run from your own miserable selfishness much longer. You will have to be honest with yourself and others. Time would have it no other way.”
“I—“ Arthur started to say, and no more words came out of his mouth, so he snapped it shut. Instead, in a dreamy state, as if he were moving slowly in molasses, he took out his plastic bag of bills, and handed it to Major Jarlid.
Jarlid scribbled out a receipt, using a stubby pencil on a piece of cardboard torn from a dusty box. Without a word of thanks, Major Jarlid handed the shred of cardboard to Arthur. Jarlid turned and vanished amid a whirl of snowflakes. Arthur looked on in stunned silence, and when he snapped his mouth shut, he had forgotten all about Major Jarlid. He was, however, filled with anticipation at taking home his new grandfather clock—to his office, that is, to gloat over it, alone and in the dark. To keep the magnificent clock safe, he rattled the door, slammed it shut. He clicked the lock in place, and carried the key back to the office. The heavy silver watch throbbed in Arthur’s hand inside his coat pocket.
Already, the tire tracks of Major Jarlid’s car had almost entirely disappeared under wispy new snow. The city skyline glowed, a haze of stained-glass and neon, just visible through a cleft in some dark hills. It seemed as if angels were singing with frosty voices under the stars and above the falling snow.
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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