The alarm rang at promptly 5:36:22 AM.

It was a loud alarm and rather

obnoxious in its persistence, making the whole phone—and by extension, the
nightstand—vibrate (as well as that nasty ringing which, Mr. Drury was sure,
would give him tinnitus someday). Like an automaton, his trained arm darted out
to hit “Dismiss,” and the alarm was quiet as a telemarketer whose prospective
customer had just hung up.

The automaton that was Mr. Drury lay shaken for one moment until he noted
that it was 5:37. Drawing one fat hand up to his face, he rubbed his flaky (bald)
pate and swung both legs out of bed in one efficient gyrating movement. His feet
touched the floor, the cold and unforgiving hardwood floor that his mother, the late
Mrs. Drury, had insisted he put in. The late Mrs. Drury. How odd it sounded to say
that in his head, and yet it was true.

He shook his head to clear all thoughts of the late Mrs. Drury, or, as he
remembered her better, his mother, and pulled on with no small effort his socks.
They were standard gray long socks, but he did not have standard gray long feet—
as a matter of fact, he had pasty feet, that were flabbier and fatter than perhaps he
—and the sock—would like. He tussled with the left-foot sock for several
moments before finally getting both on, more or less.

At exactly 5:40 he was fully dressed from the waist up, in his pressed blue
shirt—cell phone in his breast pocket, black suit-jacket, and paisley necktie—he
was inordinately fond of paisley—and he began walking, stiffly, in his white
underpants, gray long socks, and suit jacket, to the bathroom. It was an old, small
house and the floors creaked ahead of him, as though to say hello. But of course
floors were not people, and only people said hello, unless you counted a dog
licking you in the face as a hello…and Mr. Drury certainly did not consider that a
proper hello. He knew well enough from that horrid incident at the park. He
shivered and put his mind back onto issues at hand. He walked into the bathroom,
glad he’d put on socks; the grimy marble floor was cold as ever.

Gingerly he sat down on the toilet and read the news on his cell phone
before finishing, pulling on his pants, and taking a comb to his—oh. He did not
have hair, and he dropped the comb down on the harsh unfeeling countertop with a
small sigh. That was one minute to minus from his schedule, and as he checked the
phone, he noted that it was only 5:43, not the customary 5:44—what a difference a
full head of hair made. So instead of brushing his hair, he brushed his teeth,
cringing a little as he brushed over the sore spot on his gum that the dentist had
said to brush carefully. The dental hygienist, actually. She was a lovely woman
named Maria who, Mr. Drury thought, was congenitally misleading for her job—
how could a patient expect such a beautiful woman to exact such awful pain? Well,
aside from her overzealous enthusiasm at combating plaque buildup…

He spat out the toothpaste, now foul with the dry sour taste of one’s waked-
up mouth, and swilled some mouthwash before padding down the steep wooden
steps to the kitchen. The kitchen was small, bleak, and gray, accustomed to
smaller, bleaker, grayer folk than Mr. Drury. In three steps he was across the
narrow room and at the refrigerator. He produced a carton of milk from the bottom
right of the last shelf in the fridge door, grabbed his box of corn flakes from the
counter drawer, and made the cereal with milk at the counter before putting both
ingredients back in their respective locations and cradling the bowl in his hands to
bring it to the table.

It took him ten minutes to eat, silently, pensively chewing his corn flakes.
The design of the corn flake, he thought, was essentially flawed in that by the time
you had eaten around half of your flakes, the other half was too soggy to be very
tasty—but then again, they were not designed to be tasty, but to—what were they
designed for? He wondered quietly and continued to chew.

At 6:00 AM Mr. Drury had washed out his bowl and placed it in the sink,
retrieved his briefcase from the cramped home office that never served very
official purposes as he preferred to spend time at work, not home, and wrote a note
to the housecleaner to say that the bathroom mirror needed some Windex.

After locking the door (the housecleaner had a set of keys) he stepped out
into the street and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, turning around to look at
his useable if not aesthetically pleasant gray row house, which looked more gray
than ever with the fog.

He opened the car door and sat down on the black leather seat. He turned on
the car while checking the time on his cell phone—it was 6:04 now—and tucked it
back into his breast pocket. Backing out of the parallel parking, he waved
halfheartedly to his neighbor and drove at a reasonable, perfectly average speed
through the city. If all went well, he thought, and there was no reason that it
wouldn’t, then he would arrive at the Fisch Bellew and Mirk office by 6:24.

Such was the traffic on the street, and the unusual crowding in the parking
garage, that he made it inside the revolving glass door by 6:31 AM—and that was
one minute late by his estimation. He raced to the elevators, crossing his fingers
(which were very tightly intertwined around his briefcase) that one would
magically happen to be there. He waited for three minutes before an elevator, fat
and laden with the young people—well, thirty-something’s—down from the JR
office on the twenty-ninth floor. Mr. Drury tapped his feet impatiently as they filed
out, laughing and joking, and walked into the elevator feeling more alone than
ever.

A tall woman in a gray tweed skirt and suit sidled in next to him. She was
somewhat pretty, but not very—she didn’t hold a candle to Maria, the dental
hygienist, the standard against which Mr. Drury measured female beauty. She
smiled at him.

“Busy day?” she inquired.

“Not particularly,” he shrugged as the elevator moved smoothly up the sixth

and seventh floors. “Most of our business was concentrated around last
weekend…”

“Oh, right,” she smiled sympathetically. “I heard, the new accounts.”

“Mmhmm,” Mr. Drury nodded, and the conversation appeared to be over, as

she was busily applying lipstick (looking at herself in the elevator’s mirrored walls
for reference). There was a small ding as it came to the twelfth floor and the
woman made a motion to step out. She turned and smiled again at Mr. Drury.

“I’m Marissa, by the way,” she said, giving a small wave as she stepped out.
“Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you too,” Mr. Drury said, a little shaken by this overly
friendly Marissa, before the doors closed and he realized that he hadn’t said his
name.
 As the elevator went up, past the fifteenth and sixteenth floors, Mr. Drury
checked the time again. It was now 6:38. He thought about Marissa. She had
stepped out on the twelfth floor, which must have meant that she worked at the
Derelli Company. He had an odd sense of relief that the Derelli Company was not
a competitor of Fisch Bellew and Mirk, although he couldn’t fathom why he was
relieved by this.

He took out his phone to check his schedule as he stepped out onto the
seventeenth floor. It was 6:38 still, which meant that he was four minutes late for
his estimated time to arrive at the office—but nevertheless, he decided, it was still
possible to stay on track—so long, of course, as he remembered to step out of the
office by 11:47 to grab lunch. It was very difficult to remember to step out at 11:47
—before, he had stepped out at 11:51, but that was back when he could go to the
cafeteria on the eighteenth floor. The cafeteria workers were on strike and now he
had to take out from the expensive Thai restaurant on the twenty-ninth floor, where
all the loud thirty-something’s ate.

In five hours Mr. Drury replied to several emails, drew up some

spreadsheets, sent a document by courier to the neighboring building, and attended
a rather unproductive meeting with the rest of his group, another group, and that
group’s manager. At 11:38 he walked to the auditorium where Mr. Fisch, the Chief
Operating Officer, was speaking, and fervently hoped that Mr. Fisch did not
ramble as he so often did.

Mr. Fisch did ramble. Mr. Drury could sense the unrest growing in the
auditorium as restless employees shifted in their seats. No one dared leave until
Mr. Fisch finally ended at 11:56. Mr. Drury noted with a sharp twinge of regret
that he was late, according to schedule, for his lunch time.

He ate in a hurry, shoving the coconut curry and broccoli—not his favorite
—down as fast as possible before paying the check, to the surly waitress, and
getting back in the elevator down to the office. It was 12:34.

Mr. Drury worked for four more hours, until 4:34, when he packed his
briefcase, closed his office door, turned off the light, and took the elevator down.
Normally he would work until 5:10 and then drive back home to catch the evening
news, but today was a special day. Today was a Wednesday, and that meant that he
would be going to the blind dating event for those over 40. The very sound of it in
his head made him a little repulsed—blind dating—it sounded so trashy. He shook
his head in silent disgust. It was his mother’s doing, not his—his mother who had
signed him up and told him, in her ugly ward on the third floor of the hospital, that
he had better honor her memory once she was gone and make some effort to meet
a “nice girl.” It was a shame, he thought, that Maria the dental hygienist was
recently married—and besides, he really couldn’t imagine her going for someone
like him.

He shook his head again, feeling very silly afterwards—the people on the
street would have to think he had some sort of odd head condition, that he was
shaking it so much.

It took him twenty minutes to get to the bar where the blind dating event was
taking place. It was a quiet bar, and he liked it far better than the loud dark ones
where the thirty-something’s from his building went. Still, he thought, the fact that
it played host to a blind dating event certainly did not sway him in its favor. It took
away from whatever classiness the bar had had.

Mr. Drury checked his phone. It was 5:02 now, and there were some people
milling around the bar who looked to be over 40, but no one whom he particularly
liked. Oh well. It was like this most times.

He had expected the blind dating event to begin at 5:00—odd how people
had a predilection for whole numbers like that—but now it was 5:03. That meant
that if his date lasted for thirty minutes (and he hoped it did not exceed that) that it
would end at 5:33, which meant that he would be leaving later than he liked. He
would likely miss the evening news.

Finally the mild-mannered bartender, Fred, whom Mr. Drury had gotten to
know too well (while all the women he was supposed to be dating made excuses
that they had to use the restroom, and never returned), stood up and said,

“Who’s here for the blind dating event?”

Everyone raised their hands, Mr. Drury included.

 “Okay, folks,” Fred said, scanning the room, “I think most of you have been
coming here for a little while now…we just pick two slips of paper out of each hat,
one for the guy, one for the lady, and there you go! So, let’s start…it looks like all
of you have submitted your names—fill out a piece of paper if you haven’t already
—” There was some scurrying to submit the slips of paper before Fred’s hand
hovered over the “guy” hat.

“And we have…Kenneth Robbis...!” Fred exclaimed. He reached into the

“Ladies” hat. “And…Irina Chershakova!”

The diminutive Kenneth Robbis looked even smaller than usual next to the
very tall, very severe Irina Chershakova looming over him. Mr. Drury smiled
sympathetically at Kenneth Robbis. He had been on a date with Ms. Chershakova
also. It had not gone well, to say the least.

“Next up!” Fred said. He reached into the hat. “And we have…James
Drury!”

Mr. Drury did not respond for a moment—he was unused to people using his
first name, let alone being one of the first picked out of the hat—before he started
and nodded.

“And…Marissa Brevern!”

Out stepped a smiling woman who, Mr. Drury realized with a jolt, was the
selfsame woman from the elevator at 6:36 AM that morning. Now she looked a
little more tired, but she was still wearing her tweed jacket and skirt.

“Hello!” she said chattily. “I remember you from the elevator.”

“I do too,” Mr. Drury said, his speech coming out in a rather stilted form as
he took a seat at the bar counter next to her. “How has your day been?”

“Oh, not bad, not bad,” she said breezily. “Yours?”

“It was okay,” he said quietly. “Mr. Fisch—our chief operating officer—had
a big speech and went overtime, as usual.”

She laughed, a short tinkling laugh like the sound of water dripping off the
edge of the leaky tap in Mr. Drury’s bathroom, and chuckled, “I know the feeling.
Derelli Jr., our COO—his dad’s the CEO—has a penchant for rambling. How long
did Fisch go?”

“Fish?” Mr. Drury asked, confused, thinking of salmon. “Oh! Yes, Mr.
Fisch. Sorry, I was—uh, never mind. He went—er—” he suddenly realized it
might sound odd to someone not very familiar with him if he said that Fisch had
ended at 11:56, the exact time—most people thought it rather strange when it said
the times like that—so he finished lamely with, “oh, maybe he finished around
12:00. He was supposed to end fifteen minutes earlier.”

“Mmm,” Marissa nodded. “Yeah, probably the worst we had was when
Derelli Jr. went thirty minutes overtime…his dad practically had to take him off
the stage. Poor guy.” She shook her head with a wry smile.

“Ah,” Mr. Drury said hesitatingly. He could think of nothing else to say, so
the two sat content at the bar counter for a moment before Fred came over to ask
them what they wanted to eat or drink. Mr. Drury muttered some water and the
calamari plate, and Marissa ordered a cocktail. She was taking the bus, she said.
The two sipped quietly and conversed about hometowns and college before Mr.
Drury thought to check the time. He thought it would be inconsiderate to check it
in front of Marissa, so he quickly excused himself, saying that he had to use the
restroom, and dashed off to the men’s room.

There he found Kenneth Robbis (whom he had known previously through a

mutual acquaintance) washing his hands in a rather agitated manner.

“Irina Chershakova?” was all Mr. Drury needed to ask. Kenneth nodded
with a long whistle. Mr. Drury gave a chuckle and said, “Been there, Kenneth,”
and the two nodded to each other amicably before Kenneth dried his hands and
walked out. Alone in the large, airy room, Mr. Drury whipped out his cell phone to
check the time. It was now, he realized with a sinking heart, 5:34. He had already
missed four minutes of the evening news.

Coming back he meant to tell Marissa that he would have to go, but the sight
of the unfinished calamari plate—and Marissa’s immediate launch into
conversation—made it impossible for him to say a thing. Marissa paused for a
moment, waiting for him to answer a question, and he felt dazed. He had been
waiting all this time to say that he would have to go, and now he had forgotten the
words he was planning on using.

She looked at him expectantly, her sharp filed fingernails tapping on the
surface of her skirt. Everything about her, he reflected, seemed stretched, pulled,
sharpened. Her hairline rose high on her forehead, pulled back with excessive
force, hair tweezed and teased atop her head in—but no, why was he trying to
make her his antagonist? Her hairline was no more forceful than Maria the dental
hygienists’ hairline, and Maria after all was Mr. Drury’s standard by which he
measured female beauty. The urgency of his situation, he reminded himself, should
not affect how he thought Marissa looked.

When he had checked the time on the cell phone in the bathroom, it had
been 5:34. It had, Mr. Drury thought, now been a minute since he had sat down, six
seconds since she had asked him her question—and if he wanted to get home by
six, he would have to leave sometime very soon…but then he looked up at
Marissa, made apologies for looking rather dazed, and answered the question—
what it was exactly he wasn’t sure, but she again began to speak. Probably two
minutes had passed now, Mr. Drury thought. If only Marissa would have to go
now, then it would spare him the unpleasant exit…oh, why did she have to ask
another question?

But then he looked up at the clock on the wall and saw the time, and realized
with suddenness that it was not Marissa, it was himself—it was his schedule and
his timing and his insisting on leaving at a certain, precise moment. He looked
back at Marissa and began to talk, engage in the conversation again, because after
all (aside from the fact that it was honoring the late Mrs. Drury and her wish that
her son would “find a nice girl”), there was a 5:40 PM and an evening news and a
schedule to follow every day—but Marissas? They came in friendly smiles on
elevators and random picking from a blind-date hat. Marissas, unlike the evening
news and the morning alarm and Mr. Fisch’s rambling speeches, came only once in
a while—and they came only by unsure chance. Why, he thought, ignoring the
clock and focusing, finally, on her eyes (which were prettier, he thought, than
Maria’s), miss that?

THE END.