The Horologist Read online

  Oliver thought of his time sitting in class. “I guess school has a predictable outcome, huh?”

  “Students are farmed to be full of envy and doubt. Then they go out into the workforce and real world and get stuck in a rut, unhappy and unfuflilled. Education needs to motivate and encourage the youth. It needs to free their minds and nurture creative thought.” Mr. vom Glas sipped his wine. “There was a time when standardized education benefitted society much more than it does now. In the age of industrialism, those without jobs could attend school and receive one. That was fast progress then, but the system has been stagnant since.”

  “So, what will you change?”

  “This is where my resources play an advantage. I want to fix society’s shortsightedness and reliance on the past. We need leaders, not quarterly profit targets and yearly salary increases. We need visionaries, and visionaries are much rarer to come by in a system where the imagination is suppressed and attention-related disorders are over-diagnosed.”

  The heir placed his hands over his face. “My wife, my beautiful wife, is the one who taught me all this. She’s a professor, and it was her dream to revamp education and pump fresh oxygen into the institution. She always said that the real world is far from standardized, and to teach children otherwise is malign. She said that by teaching our children to think within a box, society misses the opportunities that exist outside the models of academia.

  “My wife begged me and pleaded with me to divert my attention away from profit margins and to help her with her mission. But I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t think it mattered as much as my business. I grew so detached from my family that I stayed late in the office just to avoid them. I failed to be a father, and I failed to be a husband. So, they picked up and left. Now, I have to make things right. It’s all I have left.”

  Oliver pushed his chair away, circled the table, and placed his hand on the heir’s back. “You may feel sick today, sir, but that doesn’t mean you’ll feel that way tomorrow. We mustn’t let our past be a sentence for our future.”

  Mr. vom Glas looked up. He knew he had made his point.

  Hours had drifted into the sand. Dusk had fallen, and a volley of mist showered the city. Rain flushed the gutters, and filaments of light dimly glowed, bobbing through the downpour as the drops of rain leapt back up as soon as they hit the street.

  Oliver looked outside with an adventurous mind. “I’m going for it; the water will guide me. You don’t know how much this has meant to me, Mr. vom Glas. I’ll see you again sometime, on this side or the other.”

  “Be a soldier as you go out into the world, Oliver. We need you. Embrace pain while you rest and exhaust yourself while under no attack, so that when a real test comes, you will have already won. Seek to grow every day, and you may find wealth long before I do.”

  Oliver then stepped out into the current, and back into uncertainty.

  THE SOUS CHEF

  OLIVER WAS SURPRISED how cold the air was. It was edging into the eerie part of night, about the time when it seems like there are no rules and the world feels a bit unsafe. The street was mute except for the sound of the black water ricocheting off the pavement. Oliver tossed his jacket on and trotted through the concave avenues of Luxembourg.

  Hunches guided his direction as he navigated in a blind canter. Rounding the curve of a wet alley, Oliver came to a pier along a river. Rows of shadowy barges lined the waterway and stacks of shipping containers sat like coffins to the right. Under a post lamp, shipmen in slickers were unloading cargo from a barge. They must have been at it for hours; on top of the dock sat a large pyramid of cedar boxes, the type with stamped red arrows that had been nailed together by heavy industrial equipment.

  At the top of the pyramid sat the supervisor. The figure perched just beyond the pool of light, but seemed accessible enough. Oliver sailed across the pier and settled near the outermost crate while the crew continued to unload. With his hands cupped into a bullhorn so his voice could carry through the rain, Oliver called, “Where are you headed?”

  The supervisor beyond the light turned and spoke through the drumming water. It was a woman’s voice. “Amsterdam. Leavin’ momentarily. Wha’d’ya say?”

  She then began to climb down from the top. Tied at her waste was a long black raincoat and on her head was a peaked cap. Her neck was a seascape of tattoos, and clutched between her teeth was a hand-rolled cigarette. She was maybe a year older than Oliver. On the pier, she extended her hand.

  Oliver took it as the rain pebbled his cheeks. “Amsterdam. Perfect.”

  She pointed to her barge. “Sure, she could use a lick of paint here and there, but she’s reliable as ever. If you’re willing to pass over a reasonable sum, we’d be glad to have ya.”

  Oliver reached into his coat pocket and withdrew several notes from the disintegrating envelope. She rolled the cigarette like a log in her mouth. “Good to have you aboard. Call me Captain. Captain Devin. This is my crew.” Her voice sprung in decibel, and all the men in slickers tipped a hat in Oliver’s direction. The nearest one plucked the pack off Oliver’s shoulder and, like a production line, passed it down the conveyor of shipmen. Captain Devin and Oliver dipped into the grey hull of the barge.

  “The door on the right leads to the quarters. The door on the left leads to my operating room. And the door straight ahead leads to the parlor, and the parlor is where we go.”

  Captain Devin booted the parlor door open and motioned Oliver to a worn circular table in the center of the room. She dipped behind the bar and tossed her raincoat and cap on the wall while they both cleared their faces of mist. Her arms extended the mural of tattoos from her neck in blue-orange ink. “All right. A wicked wassail is on the horizon.”

  She lined up a dozen square glasses on the counter. “My crew is wrapping up. We set off on the ‘morrow.” Captain Devin took a murky decanter of what looked like lamp oil, and splashed the glasses full.

  As if a bomb detonated, the parlor door burst open and the crew paraded in. They each grabbed a pony off the bar before they enveloped the circular table and their shoulders and elbows collided. Noticing Oliver without a drink, one of the crew yipped, “Look men, we’ve got ourselves a landlubber.” The circle toasted with laughter. “Night’s a moonraker. Get you a pony.”

  Oliver stood to fetch a glass of the lamp oil. There were only three left. One for Oliver, one for Captain Devin, and one for . . . the door swung open again. Tiers of food wheeled in. Behind the cart, a portly, shiny-cheeked fellow waddled along.

  “Sous!” A hurrah came from the table as the cart rolled forward.

  “Groggy already, are we mates?” The cadet spun towards the bar and tapped glass with Oliver. “Call me Sous. Too young to be a chef, so for now, they call me Sous.”

  Captain Devin raised her pony from behind the bar. “To the moonraker.”

  Everyone shot. The swarthy spirit slid down with a biting finish. Then the cart unloaded as platters and basins of food were tossed around the circle in chaos. All the crewmen were in flux as they suspended their faces over their plates, half-sitting, half-standing in a brutish strategy to maximize their intake.

  Four minutes passed before the final bite was taken, and in unison, the entire group cooperatively tossed the dishes back onto the rolling cart before Sous kicked the wheels back into the hall, saying, “The toil is done. Time to dine.”

  He drew behind the bar and revealed a new platter of ponies. As the liquor settled, Oliver looked around in excitement. This was not your quaint, prim dinner party. This was an itemized riot. They proceeded with the booze and delved into anthems and fables, and in true comradery, everyone around the table lent embellished tales to one another. The night kept on and the ponies kept racing until eventually, one-by-one, the crew began to pull themselves out of the parlor room and into a comatose sleep.

  The late night pinched into an early morning, which slid into a tardy lunch. Finally, Oliver roused. He opened his eyes and saw white above him. It
took a moment for him to realize that he was looking at the ceiling above the parlor table. With a pillow beneath his head and a blanket over his body, stirring awake wasn’t too harsh. But the light from outside, the hideously bright light, burned into his skull like a magnifying glass to an ant.

  He cleared his throat. There was no moisture; his tongue, a sand viper buried in dust. Oliver rolled over on the table, and this first action, this first wave of brain activity, came down like a splitting axe. Immediately, it was clear that thinking was going to be a bother for the day. He snapped an eyelid shut, and faced the round window in the hull. The river was traipsing by.

  With effort, he swung his feet to the floor and fell off the table. He landed with a gimp, and lifted a leg of his boxers to find a plum bruise on his hamstring. How it came about, no one knew. These things just happen when the ponies race.

  It took five hours to dress. Then Oliver crawled up to Captain Devin’s operating room. The upper deck was a small, glass-encased galley. Oliver looked out at the river and watched the oval ripples crinkle from the stem of the barge, then moved forward so Captain Devin could see him. She gave a quiet welcome.

  “You need the good coffee. When it comes to things like this, you don’t mess around.” She gripped a thermos and poured a mug halfway to the brim with caffeine.

  Then came a leather-bound flask. She handed the full cup to Oliver. “A day to Amsterdam.”

  Captain Devin then rotated back to her carnival-sized steering wheel, looked to the binnacle of her boat and effortlessly navigated the thalweg of the river channel. Her crew was below on the deck, tending to this and that, and broadly being productive. These shipmen must’ve had guts of iron, because Oliver was battling to keep the stomach acid below his throat.

  But the spiked coffee did wonders. Oliver sipped the brew as quickly as the heat would let him, and when the blackness plunged into his gut, a newfound energy peppered his mood.

  “Oliver, I know more about living on water than land. My crew and I grew up together, and in grade school, we tested well in insubordination, so we left.”

  She took a sip directly from the leather-bound flask. “We’re partial to the river’s current. It’s the volatility of water that we like. The sturdiness of land is maddening.”

  The woody aroma of the coffee swirled up from the mug and refracted off the sunshine daggering in through the glass. Each sip returned a hue to Oliver’s face. He asked Captain Devin where home was.

  “Caledonia. When we left on our own, we spent a few months on odd jobs until we had saved enough up to buy her.” Captain Devin cradled the steering wheel. “So, what really brings you on our ship?”

  “Captain, what’ll it be this evening?” Sous had slipped up the staircase behind their necks. He had on a black chef toque, short-sleeve coat, and trousers.

  Captain Devin thought for a moment, then tossed open a pane in the galley and called down to her crew on the deck. “Men. What’ll it be tonight?”

  They all stopped their tasks, nodded at each other, and roared, “Stew.”

  Captain Devin turned inside to Sous. “Stew.”

  “Stew,” Sous repeated, then turned to the kitchen while Captain Devin refaced the deck. Oliver, however, kept his eyes fixed. He didn’t know why, but something told him to not turn away. And when Sous shifted back towards the kitchen, on the back of his hat was the butterfly. Its fiery, sapphire wings flapped like a lady fanning herself.

  Oliver’s coffee mug slipped from his sweaty palm and shattered on the floor. Sous and Captain Devin jumped at the noise and rushed over to help Oliver, who hadn’t moved even as the coffee singed his ankles. He was immobilized. His eyes gushed with tears as he watched the butterfly flutter off the back of Sous’s hat and out the glass pane Captain Devin had left open. With the other two focused on the spill, no one else saw the apparition drift out into the wind. And thereby, the poltergeist vanished again.

  Oliver’s bodily systems came back on. He felt the white-hot numbness of the boiling coffee seething into his skin and he sprang awake with a cry. Sous escorted him downstairs.

  Oliver came to on a bottom bunk in the quarters. He fingered the bubbling burn under his bandages, flipped his knees over the floor, stood, and took a deep breath. Woozy, he sat back on the bed a minute.

  He sat in silence, and slowly a remnant thought began to stir, as if the butterfly had planted an idea in his mind. Isabella. Oliver imagined her sunning next to the pleasant lakeside air. She surely had moved on by now. There would have been many better looking, better educated, better connected young beaus on her tail. She could relax by the pool with Aisha and take her pick. They girls would wear blue-and-white striped bikinis and size up these callers and make them audition. It would all be a breeze, one big soiree.

  Oliver thought back to their nights together, to the innocence and confidence which could never come again; to the nights which had been so delightful; to the nights so far away. How could she still care for me? It was an impossibility. He was convinced.

  Oliver sighed. He took another breath and gathered himself. What am I even doing here? He had gotten lucky that Gabriel had taken him in, and won the lotto with Mr. vom Glas, but where was his direction now?

  Oliver stood again and moved through the hull to thank Sous. He peeked through a few doors before coming to the kitchen. When Oliver hobbled in, Sous’s elbows were immersed in a sink of suds. He dried his arms and checked on the injury. The burns would heal in a week. Sous smiled and joked about Oliver’s lack of athleticism, then they both moved on. No big deal.

  The whole kitchen was a thick forest of appliances. Sous squatted in front of a cupboard and began rattling around before hurling ingredients over his shoulder. “Catch! Appetizers!”

  Oliver tagged the ingredients from the air and set them on the island counter. When Sous finished, he shuffled over to doctor up a dish. Like a surgeon in the operating room, he took fantastic care as he spruced up his model appetizer.

  “A croque monsieur, wah-lah!”

  He gestured to the large basin of stew on the stove. “Now, I must tend to our entrée—free-range rabbit with lemongrass broth. It will follow your dish nicely.” He dipped a ladle in the nascent bouillon and began educating Oliver on his work. “The secret to cooking is olfactory, it’s the nose. The smell sets up the taste. So, I will deliver the smell, you deliver the taste.”

  Oliver turned to the island. Sous’s model dish stared right back.

  With one eye on the cauldron, Sous coached Oliver, “Make a few trials and eat them yourself. When you are full, start the real ones. It’s the only way to practice!”

  Sous pointed around the kitchen. “My ingredients are everything. At each stop along the water, I try to head into town and find a fresh farmer’s market. The purer the ingredients, the better the food!”

  Sous nurtured his entree, tossing in seasonings and shortenings with exactitude. He then began concocting a tomatillo sauce to lay over his side dish of glazed sweet potatoes. And when the sauce was complete, he handwrote the night’s menu, orating as he went along, “The subtlest difference between an elegant meal and that of a savage is the menu.”

  Oliver had just completed his last trial appetizer. He was preoccupied. His mind raced thinking about the sapphire butterfly. He was sure he’d come across it before, but then again, maybe not. Maybe it was all in his head. No one else had ever caught a glimpse, but still, there was something there. Fear overtook Oliver as he imagined confessing the phantom to someone. Would I not come across as crazy?

  He buried the idea and returned to the task at hand.

  Sous frolicked around his laboratory. “Once a week, Captain Devin and the crew let me keep them mannered. The other six nights are all-out wars for plate space.”

  Sous then prepared dessert; a simple raspberry tart. He nestled a piece of vanilla-bean sorbet to the side of the tart. “Desserts, when exquisite, are the consummation of all that is delicious.”

  Sous and Ol
iver took the remainder of the day to set up the banquet. That evening, the entire affair was proper and relaxing. Each crewmember dressed substantially nicer and seated themselves before the stemware with napkins in their laps. Sous commenced the meal. “Well friends, dig in.”

  Captain Devin addressed Oliver. “It’s been a pleasure. ‘Morrow we reach Amsterdam. And we wish you all the best.”

  Then the ponies raced.

  THE BULLDOG

  THE NEW YEAR was only hours away.

  Bram had already eaten dinner, but the savory aroma coming from the café made him salivate. He sat down along a canal in Amsterdam, then sent for a helping of fish and chips and started on his fourth drink of the night. When the food arrived, Bram’s tongue flopped out of his baggy jowls like a bulldog. Slop and drool flew on the table as he emptied the entire tray then fell back in his chair. Bram then lobbed his tongue above his lips and dragged a piece of cod out of his moustache.

  “Another drink, miss.” He was rattling the ice around his glass when a soft-faced, russet-haired boy walked up and settled in across the patio.

  Oliver was beginning to get tired of walking and not really having anything to do, so he sat down at a café along the canal. He fumbled through his pack and once or twice peeped at his watch to check the time, but mainly he considered where to head next as he sat there awaiting midnight. As he sipped an apricot-colored Bellini, Oliver could feel a heavy set of eyes on him.

  When he glanced up, what he saw baffled him. His spectator was a hairy bulldog man who had squeezed himself into a stone-colored jacket and matching fedora. When Oliver’s eyes met his, the bulldog straightened up, and removed his hat with a wooly forearm to wipe the sweat from his balding head, doing so slowly and solemnly, as if this action was the most important thing he had done all year. Oliver crumpled his face at the sight and turned back towards his table.