Now, there were some people later on who would say that it was all Simon’s fault. Which was unfair, because it clearly wasn’t. Stuff just sort of happened to him, that’s all. And the first thing that happened was his mother told him he’d better help out and shovel snow Thursday morning, before school.
“Why?” asked Simon.
“Or I’ll disown you,” said his mother.
“Okay, okay, fine,” said Simon. And he made a little note on his schedule there.
The second thing that happened was he went into school and found out that he had three extra-length exams at once on Thursday due to a last-minute rescheduling. Chemistry. Computer science. Some really complicated stuff with math in it.
“Any questions?” asked the teacher.
Simon stuck his hand up.
“Good. See you tomorrow.”
Simon made another note on his schedule, along with some other words.
The third thing that happened was that Simon’s girlfriend texted him about how they would be spending their Valentine’s Day. Which was Thursday. She had a restaurant.
“k” said Simon. And he made another note. His calendar was now full, and he went home making lists in his head over and over again.
Then the fourth thing happened. Simon walked into the house and was informed by his mother, as she juggled the laundry in one hand and the cat in the other, that he had to feed the dog dinner.
“Can’t Susan do it?” asked Simon.
“No,” said Simon’s mother. flipping the contents of each hand into separate baskets. “Don’t be dense.”
“Okay, all right,” said Simon. He made a note on his schedule as he walked to his room, then looked twice.
“Hey,” said Simon’s dad.
“Huh?”
“We’re moving the fridge tomorrow night, remember?”
“Whuh?”
“Great!” said Simon’s dad, and he gave him a friendly whack on the shoulder and went downstairs.
Simon made another note, then looked at his schedule. He thought about meals and sleep and studying and school and then he did some math. And did it again. And then he triple-checked it on his calculator.
“Well FUCK,” said Simon, and he meant it.
“Fuck in a bucket with fries,” clarified Simon. And he meant that too. Because he’d checked three times and it all added up: he was an hour short on Thursday.
Now, this was a problem. And not even the kind where the solution was “get up earlier.” No, Simon had things that had to be done at the same time as other things, things that were unskippable colliding with things that were unskippabler, immovable assignments colliding with unstoppable dates. He was as trapped and timeless as a mosquito in amber, and he could see only one way out: through the dinosaurs.
So he phoned grandpa.
“Hey grandpa,” said Simon.
“Well hello there how are you doing my how you’ve grown you look just like your mother nice weather isn’t it why back in my dad it was much nicer,” said Simon’s grandpa.
“Yeah,” said Simon.
“Good! Now that THAT’S all out of the way, what’s up?”
“I’m short an hour on Thursday,” said Simon.
“Shucks and much stronger language,” said Simon’s grandpa. “You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You checked? Double-checked?”
“Yeah yeah.”
“Checked with a calculator?”
“Checked with a calculator.”
“Well hell.” Simon’s grandpa clucked his false teeth, juggling them idly against the tips of his lips in a way that had always made his wife poke him in the ribs. “I guess I can spare an hour or so. Not like I was planning to do much come Friday evening anyways.”
“Thanks a ton, grandpa.”
“Ah, don’t mention it. You have a good Thursday now, eh? And get some rest on Friday.”
“Got it.”
Click went Simon’s phone, and Simon felt like he had a good handle on Thursday now. Click went Simon’s grandpa’s phone, and just when he felt like he had a good handle on things ring ring it went.
“Hello?”
“Hey there, it’s Edna.”
“Well hey there Edna. What’s going on?”
“Poker night is what’s going on. Friday night is poker night, and that means time for some beer and time for some bad grease and time for you and me to play darts after the game until we’re both sick.”
Simon’s grandpa swore very loudly.
“Sorry now?”
“Aw hell Ed, I just gave away that hour to my grandkid.”
“Now why would you do that? You know those kids don’t appreciate a good hour like they should.”
“It doesn’t matter. Listen, can you cut me an hour off’ve your Sunday? I know you’re never awake in church around then anyhow.”
“Well sure I can do that now for you Gunther, don’t you worry.”
“Ah, you’re a peach.”
“Sure am. But I’m gonna have to cut into my breakfast for that. Unless…wait, it’ll be fine. Sure, take the time.”
“Thanks a bunch Ed.”
“No problems.”
Edna hung up and gave herself a few thoughts. She was going to have pancakes Sunday morning. That was worth lingering over, worth fighting for. Even if she had to call in a favour…
So she called her son-in-law.
“Hello?”
“Horace, it’s your mother.”
“Ah. Hello.”
“You listening to me Horace? You sound a bit distracted.”
Horace Sweet had his left hand slipped inside a tiger’s guts with a velvet touch as his other stroked the big cat’s velvety nose with all the tenderness of a nursing mama. The phone was wedged between his cheek and shoulder, the sheets of surface bone supporting it with such tenseness that the keys were in grave danger of snapping in.
The tiger’s eye was still dilated, despite the half-empty syringe. When this was over, he and the pharmacist were going to have words. “No, no. What is it?”
“Can you give me an hour or two?”
“Maybe. Maybe.”
“Only I need them for Sunday morning. Pretty soon rather than later, is what I’m getting at. Hey, you sure you’re not busy?”
The tiger twitched, exposing a canine for a glimmer of a second’s reflection. Horace’s stroking became a tiny bit infinitely more soothing. “No, no.”
“Mind if I just take ’em off your hands right now then?”
Horace Sweet thought about what the next hour could contain and weighed the odds.
“Sure. Sure. No rush.”
“Awfully fine of you, Horace. You give Mary a kiss for me now, you understand?”
“Absolutely.”
Edna hung up and Horace’s next hour was mercifully over in an instant, down to the very last stitch.
“Bit rough on the knots, though,” commented his doctor.
“Couldn’t be avoided,” said Horace.
“Looks worse than it is, anyways. Get some sleep is what I recommended. Twelve hours minimum.” He caught Horace’s wince. “What is it?”
“I’m down two hours. Mother-in-law.”
“Say no more, say no more. Got a few to spare from my vacation coming up Sunday. I’ll just take them out of the snorkelling. Kids insisted on it, but it’s not really my thing anyways.”
“You’re a lifesaver.”
“My job.”
And as Horace slept that evening, as peaceful as a baby, his doctor went home and made dinner and performed a quick, expert diagnosis of a common cold on his youngest.
“Mostly in the head,” he opined.
“Icky,” said Tina.
“Yup. Just keep a bunch of kleenex at hand, take these decongestants, and all’s well.”
“What if I get water up my nose?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Will it feel gross?”
“Nah.”
“It’ll feel gross.”
The doctor could feel what was coming next in his marrow, superstitious bastard of a tissue that it was. “No baby, it’s not-”
“It’s gonna feel GROSSSSSSSSSS!”
And after a while it turned out that they wouldn’t be snorkelling, they’d go to the zoo. It was on the doctor’s mind anyways, after the veterinarian incident.
He liked the zoo. So he phoned up his stockbroker.
“Clarence?”
Clarence put down his ping-pong paddle and held up a finger to the heavily-armed man across the table from him. “Doctor Ramesh, man, what’s up your face tonight? Ain’t the kids gotta go to bed in a coupla minutes?”
“Five minutes ago. Probably get there in an hour.”
“I’m tellin’ you Doctor, I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a nanny who could just solve this whole issue for you right-”
“Can you get me two hours for Sunday?”
Clarence risked sucking in some air over his teeth, and managed to avoid choking on the fumes. “Tough call Doctor, tough call. You’ve got solid credit, but that’s a bit hard to shake on a nice weekend like this. I’ll have to pull some shenanigans.”
“Not up for shenanigans, Clarence?”
Clarence laughed and spun his chair around in a little circle. “Ah you got me up and down there Doctor, you got me. I’ll do it. Just expect my fee to take a little kick-over next time around, okay? You’re buying grey hairs off me by the fistful, man, and they ain’t all on my head if you know what I mean when I say what I mean.”
“Too clearly.”
“Aw you take care of yourself.”
“You too.”
Click.
Clarence let out a whistle from one lung and sigh from the other and forced the resulting crossbreed alone and friendless into the world. “Right, right,” he said. “Right!”
He looked at the man opposite him, absently tried for the fourth time to count the number of probably-legal firearms he was holding, and lost track. “So! How’d you like to diversify that portfolio a little?”
“I’m listening.”
And that was how twelve hours of April ended up being sealed inside a condom and stored in a man’s gut as he headed through customs, safe and smooth and without a hitch. It was retrieved in California, sold for a pittance on a market that had grown unexpectedly inflated, and prepared for use in prolonging pre-production on a major blockbuster, all in less than two hours.
“Looks good,” said the accountant.
“Damn straight,” said the producer.
“Where’d you get that time from?” asked the acountant.
“Um,” said the producer. He drummed his fingers on the table. He coughed nervously. He adjusted his collar. He whistled lightly and laughed nervous. Then he leaned back in his chair, gave the accountant a wink, and hurled himself through the window and into a dumpster. They caught him five months later, living in a tent under a different name on Santa Carolina, Mozambique.
In the meantime, of course, the film had gone bust. All that time sitting around had to go somewhere, and it went on auction, where, as happens with most things, a man bought it cheap and sold it dear. Some forty-five minutes later, an investment set of forty-eight hours had changed hands eleven times and was safely stowed away in the guts of a package being tended in the careful nest of Walton-Meyers insurance, Ltd.
Leasing took place. Investment. Diversification. Perhaps…loans.
And then it all ended up in the lap of Wendy Chalmers, at eleven minutes to midnight. Wendy was tired. Wendy was feeling like the suit she was wearing was worth more than she was. Wendy was sick and tired of other people’s money and other people’s time and she had just about had enough.
She looked at her keyboard. Seventy-two billion hours of other people’s time was dancing out there. A hundred thousand and twelve hours of mixed April time was on her desk, the last of a workload that had been ten times too large six Fibonacci sequences ago.
Wendy picked a random number, then picked the first stock that came up on Google.
“Hell with it,” she said as she hammered enter and turned her back on her office. “Not like it’ll make a difference.”
Ten minutes later, the clocks of half the planet ticked that last second of Wednesday off their to-do list, some really complicated stuff with math in it happened, and then they moved straight on to Friday.
Saying it twice now: it made no sense that those people said it was all Simon’s fault, because he explained everything. Stuff just happens, and it tends to happen more and more the farther it goes.
So failing him on those exams for being ‘late’ was just plain out of grounds.