The Time Keeper

Victor visits a clock shop and requests the oldest pocket watch they have. It is a few weeks before Christmas, and he has decided to buy himself a timepiece. He will have it stopped when he is frozen and then restarted when he is reanimated. He thinks it will be a good investment, since if it is an antique now it will be worth more in the future. The old man at the counter calls his apprentice to help. The apprentice (Dor) appears to be in his mid-30s with uneven brown hair. The apprentice closes his eyes and thinks about the oldest pocket watch they have, and Victor, somewhat impatient, asks that the man to “not take a lifetime” and then chuckles to himself, “[o]r another lifetime” (110). The apprentice, recognizing the phrase “another lifetime,” opens his eyes.

At the homeless shelter, Sarah notices that Ethan isn’t as attentive as he had been. She wraps a little red bow on some peanut butter crackers for him as a little joke, secretly hoping for a kiss, but he just smirks and says thanks. She tries to carry on a conversation with him, but he keeps giving clipped responses. Finally, she asks what’s wrong, and he says that he’s tired. When he goes to leave, he says goodbye but forgets to add her nickname, “Lemon-ade.” Sarah accidentally says it aloud, and he repeats it and then leaves. That afternoon, Sarah withdraws money from her bank account without telling her mother and goes to New York City to buy him a special watch.

The apprentice finds a pocket watch, trimmed in 18-karat gold, made in 1784 France depicting three people—a father, mother, and child—under the stars. The apprentice tells Victor that they’ll need to keep it for a few days to ensure its operation since it is so old.

Victor remarks that he, like the watch, is from France and the apprentice says that he knows. Victor is puzzled since he doesn’t have a French accent. Once back in the limo, Victor realizes that he didn’t ask how much the watch costs, but it doesn’t really matter. He swallows several pills and drinks the rest of his ginger ale. His stomach and kidneys are throbbing, but he has a meeting with his legal team to review the cryonics documents. He is struck by the difference between himself and Grace. She, trying to feed him healthy meals, is trying to extend his life by a few days, while he is planning to extend it by centuries without her knowledge.

At the train station, Sarah hears a newscaster on TV talking about how, according to Mayan calendars, the end of the world is scheduled for the following week. She wants to tell Ethan because she wants to tell Ethan everything. She texts him, but he doesn’t reply. She gets on the train and wonders how much the watch will cost.

Even though it’s a weekend, many people are at work in Victor’s office. His assistant, Roger, pushes Victor’s wheelchair into the conference room where five lawyers are waiting for him. One explains that normally his estate would pass to Grace and that the law is not at all clear about leaving an estate to someone who is dead and going to be revived.

Victor tells them that he plans to be gone by New Year’s Eve. He looks out the window and sees a man sitting on the ledge of a skyscraper across the street, cradling something in his arms. Victor stares at the man who seems to be staring back at him. Victor lowers the shade and returns to the table to discuss his portfolios.

Sarah goes to the same clock shop that Victor went to. The old man who owns the shop gets his apprentice to see if they have the watch she’s looking for. She tries to explain the watch to him but winds up explaining why she thinks it’s the perfect gift for Ethan. The man behind the counter listens patiently. When the cuckoo clock chimes five, Sarah puts her hands up to her ears and asks for time to “stop,” like the voice Dor heard in the pool.

There’s an awkward silence, and then the man goes to the back of the store. While he’s gone, Sarah sees the watch that Victor is going to buy and imagines that it’s expensive. The man comes back with a box with a photo on the cover from the movie Men in Black. It is exactly what she wants. She says that she’s happy, but the man then asks, “Then why are you so sad?” (121). The question confuses both her and the man who owns the shop. The price on the box is $249. It makes her uncomfortable, but she decides to pay it and get out of there. The man asks if Ethan is her husband and she laughs, explaining that he’s her boyfriend. This is the first time that she’s ever used that word. At first it feels a little awkward to her, but then she realizes that it fits perfectly.

Each evening at sunset, Dor climbs a skyscraper and uses his hourglass to slow down time, imagining Alli by his side. He wishes that he could talk to her about his journey. He doesn’t understand why the people he has been sent to help are singled out from everyone else. He looks at the hourglass and all the symbols he had drawn on the cave wall that are now along the ring, between the upper and lower bulbs. The hourglass with his story is the only possession he cares about, and he recites his life aloud, using the symbols as his guide.

Victor hates going to dialysis. Instead of staying with other dialysis patients, he pays for a private suite and spends the four hours doing work. He decided that he is only going to do dialysis for another week and then he’ll stop and prepare for “the new world” (124). For a moment, he sees a shadow, Dor’s shadow, but when he blinks, it’s gone. Dor is still mystified by modern medicine and feels that it’s unfair that a person’s death depends so much on when that person is born. Victor seems like Nim, powerful and treated better than others. Even though Victor has already lived a long life, he seems angry, or impatient.

Sarah keeps texting Ethan, but he doesn’t respond. He wants them to ignore each other at school and keep their relationship a secret. Sarah doesn’t feel like she fits in in high school. She thinks that others see her as “too smart, too fat [and] too weird” (126), but the fact that Ethan wants her makes her feel like she wants to brag. Sarah decides to wait outside the gym to “accidentally” bump into him after his indoor track practice, but she becomes self-conscious and realizes that it might look like she’s chasing him, so she leaves.

When Victor wheels into his private office, the apprentice (Dor) is there with his watch. Victor wants to know how he got in, but the apprentice explains that he wanted to give Victor the timepiece himself. Dor asks Victor why he wants the watch, and Victor tells him that he’s going on a journey for some rest and relaxation. Dor doesn’t seem to understand, and Victor asks how he knew that he was from France. Dor says that he just did, and Victor presses him until Dor admits that he heard him as a child asking for more time, just as he is asking for more time now.

Sarah’s mother, Lorraine, mentions that she and some friends are getting a bracelet engraved for a friend who is turning 50. Sarah decides that she wants to get the watch for Ethan engraved. The next day, she skips her last two classes to go back to the clock shop in the city. Sarah asks if the man who helped her before, Dor, can engrave the watch for her. Sarah tells him that she wants the phrase “[t]ime flies” on the back of the watch. Dor is confused by the phrase, and Sarah has to explain what the expression means.

When Victor’s father died when Victor was still a child, he hoped that somehow he might still return. He prayed to reverse time, to make it yesterday, the last day his father had come home.

Dor remembered Victor’s voice, and even though Victor’s voice changed as he aged, Dor recognized it like a fingerprint. That was the last time Victor prayed. Dor tells Victor that he heard him ask for time as a child and tells him that, though all people yearn for what they’ve lost, people forget what they have. He then points to the pocket watch.

When Victor looks back up, the apprentice is gone. Victor wheels himself out of the office, looking for Dor, but he doesn’t see him. He goes back inside and his phone rings: It’s Grace asking him to come home. He tells her that he’s going to stop dialysis, and she gets upset and repeats her request for him to come home. He doesn’t tell her about his ultimate plan to freeze himself into a new future.

Sarah still can’t reach Ethan by text. After leaving the clock shop, she sees another gathering about the supposed end of the world in Washington Square Park. She decides to call him. He picks up the phone, not realizing it’s Sarah at first. She tells him that she has something she wants to give him before the end of the world. Ethan tells her that she doesn’t need to give him anything, but she insists on meeting. They settle on Christmas night at Dunkin’ Donuts, since he has a party to go to near there. She tries to ignore his distracted tone and hopes that he’ll be happy once he sees her present.

She thinks back to when he kissed her and revels in the fact that someone wants her. She tells herself that this time she will be more relaxed about the physical stuff. Sarah picks up a pamphlet about the end of the world that asks, “[w]hat will you do with the time you have left?” (137). She decides she’s going to try to lose a pound or two by the end of the week.

Grace is waiting for Victor to come home. She wipes tears from her eyes and cuts vegetables. Lorraine is waiting for Sarah to come home. She’s vacuuming and smoking a cigarette. Soon, everyone in the world will stop aging, and one person will start.