16.
 Arthur looked at the photos all around. He had them tucked into niches and nooks everywhere, mostly snapshots showing smiling Gretchen and happy children and a rather happy looking Arthur Latchloose himself. “Could I afford to let go of all my memories?” Actually, all of the photos had either been taken by Gretchen, or by him when she posed with the kids and told Arthur to snap them.
Sounding very legalistic, Cuphandle said: “Looking at the upside of every issue, I should inform you that of course you’ll meet new people, maybe fall in love again, since you’ll start life all over with a blank slate.”
“I like that!” Arthur said enthusiastically. “I wouldn’t have to put up with my father stropping me and my mother yelling at me when I was small? My father used to come home drunk and couldn’t catch me, so he’d beat the dog and beat my mother just to make me cry. And cry I did, all the time!” He did a quick calculation. If he started over, he would buy himself a whole new seventy years or more, starting in a fresh, agile, youthful body at that. “No tricks?”
“No tricks. I’m not a lantern jockey on your lawn, as I already mentioned.”
“Let me be legalistic too,” Arthur said, banging both index fingers on the table in parallel, as if a binding written contract lay between them. “You’re promising that I will have total customer satisfaction.”
“Yes.”
“That would seem to preclude any nasty tricks.”
“Yes.”
“No slips of the tongue, verbal banana peels, oratory mishaps, linguistic linguini, or other traps I could fall into?”
“Mr. Latchloose, the only traps we fall into are those we set for ourselves. Now are you sure you are prepared to part with the memory of your loved ones?”
Arthur thought for a moment, rattling and fluttering brief movies of his long-ago family life through a flickering mental projector. “I have to admit, it’s a tough one. My wife though, she’s been gone a long time, and she’d want me to pick up a new opportunity at happiness. My kids Eddie and Katie had reasonably happy childhoods and they’ve flown the coop never to look back. That leaves me thinking I should feel free to take you up on your offer.”
The djinni spread his hands apart. “There you are.” He rose, and once again snapped open his cell phone. He snapped it to his ear. “Excuse me a moment, I have to call this one in. Give me a few moments. I won’t eat into your clock time too much.” So saying, he strode from the kitchen to seek privacy for his office call, in a large, adjoining bank supply closet. Arthur stayed in the kitchen and had another cracker with potted meat. Moments later, the djinni strode back into. He grinned wide as he put his phone away. “It’s a deal, Mr. Latchloose. I suggest we start right away.”
Arthur rose and started to take the dishes to the sink. “Do I have to sign papers or anything?”
“No, no, not at all.” Cuphandle waved, and the dishes flew away, cleaned themselves, and disappeared into the cupboard. “You signed your contract when you acquired the clock. These are just details.”
“Wait a minute,” Arthur said. “Do I get to keep the clock when it’s all over?”
“Of course. If you play your cards right, you’ll live happily ever after, with a nice clock ticking and tocking away in a corner of your new abode.”
“I have not decided yet.”
“Of course,” Cuphandle said, with a new look as if sweat were popping out under his collar. “I suggest we get going. You need time to figure things out. You have until the last minute of the twelfth hour to change your mind. I want you to experiment with your new life and see if you really want to go through with it.”
“Okay,” Arthur said. “Do we have to go out the front door or something, flap our arms, what?”
“Nothing of the sort. Let’s sit in the living room, shall we? How convenient, to live in a bank.”
They went and sat in easy chairs near the grandfather clock. “Rather a pleasant room in its day,” Cuphandle ventured as he sat a bit stiffly with his hands palms-down on the overstuffed arm rests.
Arthur sat the same way, tapping one hand idly palm-down as if eager to get going to his new adventure. “You have no idea, Cuphandle, how dreary it is to sit here alone, evening after evening, and imagine how it was when Gretchen and the kids and I lived in a nice house in the suburbs. She would come in and say that dinner is ready, or have I checked the kids’ homework, or why don’t I take the evening off for a change and just stay home.”
“It must be painful,” Cuphandle said with deep feeling.
“It is. And I’m ready to let go of it all.”
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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