The Grandfather Clock Read Online Free Page B

don’t worry.
Yeah, I swear Danny comes in here every time he has a new girl,
just to show her off to me.”
    “ Oh, right,” I said. “I
forgot you guys dated. We didn’t hang in the same
circles.”
    “ Yeah, you were always out
here at the beach. I was doing theater and Danny was driving around
in that stupid Camero. Wasted my first two years of college on that
guy.”
    “ Where’d you go?” I
asked.
    “ UCI. I’m a teacher by
day. Fifth grade.”
    “ Nice. You must be
exhausted.”
    “ I bought a house,” she
sighed. “Overpaid for a house.”
    “ Bummer. Hey, I just broke
off an engagement, so, cheers,” I offered.
    “ No way. With that chick
you were with last time? She seemed...”
    “ You remember
that?”
    “ Yeah. My life is pretty
boring.”
    “ New tattoo?” I said,
observing a dark line curving out on her shoulder blade. It was
still red and puffy.
    “ Yeah, I keep it covered
at school. It’s a Gaelic symbol for water. I think.” She craned her
neck to see it. “It looked cool on paper.”
    A group of four guys filed in the door
and she took menus to them. I recognized one from my volleyball
days, but I didn’t remember his name. We exchanged a
nod.
    The time change was getting to me. It
was almost two in the morning back home. “Erica,” I said, leaving
five dollars on the bar, “I’m beat. Jet lag. You working
tomorrow?”
    “ No.
Wednesday.”
    “ I’ll try to stop in,” I
said.
    “ Good to see you, Mike,”
she said with a smile. Pretty girl. Dark hair to her chin. She had
the same raspy voice in high school.
    As I walked out the door I heard,
“Hey, brah.”
    It was the mop-headed guy from my
beach days. “You playing still?”
    “ Um, here and there. I’m
just visiting town.”
    “ You should come out to
Huntington Beach tomorrow. Got a regular game going. We’ll find you
a partner.”
    “ I’ll try. Thanks for the
invite. I’m Michael. Uh, Mike.”
    “ Lucas.”
    Lucas Wright. I remembered him
now.
     
    I woke at 5:30 and couldn’t get back
to sleep. I felt good. I took a shower and lingered over breakfast.
I read the Orange County Register and had three cups of coffee. The
morning sun was bright. I had the entire day ahead of me, and I
hadn’t been this upbeat in months.
    One thing I missed about California
was hills. They gave me a sense of location as I moved about. They
provided compass points and a constantly changing beauty, even as
rows of identical houses crept higher and higher up. I made my way
to the storage unit on Grand Avenue, where nothing would indicate
that Tustin had ended and Santa Ana had started. In fact, you could
drive for an hour north and never notice leaving one city and
entering another. It all ran together forever.
    I checked in at the office and told
the manager that I had hopes of having the unit empty that day. He
directed me to Unit 419. I pulled the van in front of a door, about
half the size of a single car garage. Stale dry air hit me as I
opened the door.
    There it stood. A full foot taller
than me, it had a blue moving blanket draped over the top. There
were a half dozen dusty boxes stacked next to it. I took the
blanket off. The dark wood was still in perfect condition. Over 100
years and it had been cared for meticulously by my grandfather, who
had inherited it from his father. He passed away a decade before my
grandmother. After that, the clock would fall out of use when my
brother couldn’t stop by to make sure the weights were set
properly. I remembered that you could only set the time at certain
times of day or the chimes wouldn’t ring properly. I’m pretty sure
there was a special key to wind it as well. My chances of getting
this thing working were slim, but it was as beautiful as I
remembered. The gold in its face was real; its simple curves carved
into the top made it look like a tall stately gentleman.
    I opened the top box. It was full of
tiny plastic boxes. In each was twenty or thirty photo slides.