Seven O'clock, or Whenever

“Seven O’clock… or Whenever”

When Matt rolled over in bed the beam of early Spring sunlight hit him right in the face. He put his hand over his eyes and let out a long sigh. “Well,” he thought, “Daylight Savings Time or not, if I have to turn the clock ahead and lose an hour of sleep, I’m glad it’s on a Sunday.” He lay there staring at the ceiling for a few minutes. Before he could relax completely his alarm clock buzzed at the usual seven o’clock setting. He reached over and turned it off. Reluctantly, he got out of bed.

He’d been divorced for only a couple of months, but he’d already developed a new stripped down morning routine. It included a small pot of coffee, a quick read of the online morning paper and half an hour to shower and dress. Breakfast was usually found at a drive-through window on his way to the office.

His coffee in hand, he stood for a moment looking out the window at his freshly mown lawn. He’d always taken a lot of pride in his yard and gardens, especially in the spring. The neighbors often commented on how perfectly he maintained things. He confessed, only to himself, that it was an obsession. After another minute of taking in the view he sat down at the counter, turned on his iPad and opened the paper.

Before he even saw the headline the date in the upper left corner caught his eye; Tuesday, March 10. “No, it’s Sunday,” he thought, “what’s up with this?” He slid his phone closer and looked at the screen; Tuesday March 10. “This can’t be right.” he muttered. He stood up and stared at the phone again. “It was only Daylight Savings Time, one lousy hour ahead,” he thought, “how could I have slept for forty-eight hours?” A quick look at the local TV news only confirmed what he’d already feared; two days had passed.

He hurried into the bedroom and in fifteen minutes he was putting on his last clean shirt from the closet. Five minutes later he threw his laptop bag into the backseat of his car and headed downtown. The heavy freeway traffic was another sign that it wasn’t Sunday. The drive-time DJ on the radio confirmed it with the greeting, “Happy Tuesday, everyone!” The closer he got to his office the more confused he became. “What in the hell happened?” he muttered to himself.

As he got off the elevator and headed down the hallway it seemed as though he was being ignored by his coworkers. The usual greetings and nods were missing and it made him both curious and uncomfortable. He was no sooner settled at his desk when his assistant walked in. “Morning, Anne,” he said, trying to sound normal.

“Good morning, Matt, and I sure hope it stays that way.” She dropped slowly into the chair in front of his desk. “Mind telling me why you didn’t return any of my calls and e-mails yesterday? Everybody was wondering where you were. McClain is really pissed. The CynTech account is the biggest priority around here.”

Matt hesitated, trying to get his bearings. “Yeah, well I uh, I wasn’t feeling well and I stayed in bed all day.” He didn’t like lying to her but it was all he could come up with on the spur of the moment.

“And you couldn’t at least call me and tell me?” Before he could answer she added, “Never mind, let’s just try to pull things together. We only have until tomorrow at two. Laurie and Dave are waiting for your direction, and I’ll need everything from you by nine tomorrow morning so I can put the Power Point and Zoom agenda together.” She leaned back in the chair and looked at him without expression.

The strangeness of his situation still swirled in his head. He waited a moment and then replied, “Thanks, Anne, and don’t worry, even if I have to work all night at home,I’ll get it done.”

The rest of Matt’s day was full of tension and pressure. His mind was constantly switching back and forth between the presentation and his lost two days. He worked until six and then packed up his files and laptop. The Tuesday rush hour traffic was starting to thin out and he pulled into his driveway earlier than he expected. Dinner was a reheated piece of leftover lasagna, his first attempt at post-marriage cooking. For the rest of the evening he dug through his notes and struggled to focus on the project. It was nearly midnight when he sat back in his chair and stared at his laptop screen. The presentation looked clear and strong. Anne would add the graphics in the morning and they’d be ready to make their two o’clock pitch to CynTech. He rewarded himself with an extra-large pour of his usual bourbon nightcap. As he lay in bed his thoughts returned to his two lost day mystery. When the bourbon finally kicked in those thoughts faded away.

He was already sitting on the edge of the bed when the alarm went off at seven. He’d awakened around five and couldn’t get back to sleep. Worry about his presentation had made a good night’s sleep impossible. He took his phone and iPad from their chargers and walked into the kitchen. It was important that he got into the office early so he’d decided against making coffee.

There was just enough time to sit at the counter for a quick scan of the newspaper. When he saw the front page he gasped audibly. The date said it was Monday March 16th. He was shaking as he grabbed his phone for verification. It also read Monday March 16. Whatever confusion and worry he’d experienced from his lost two days suddenly seemed like nothing. He had gone to sleep and when he’d awakened it was six days later.

He sat there, frozen in place, unable to move or process what was happening. If the dates were right on his I-pad and phone there could only be hell to pay at the office. It meant that he’d missed the presentation and probably lost a potential client. His shower and dressing routine happened in a fog. Was there something wrong with his health or was he losing his mind? All kinds of strange questions popped into his head as he finished getting dressed. If he’d been asleep for six days, why hadn’t he peed in his bed? And why wasn’t he hungry from not eating for so long? Having just shaved the day before, why had there been only the normal, daily stubble and not almost a week’s worth of beard? None of it made sense and he felt totally powerless to change it.

The morning commute took about as long as it usually did but it seemed like hours. Twice he’d considered turning around and driving home in an attempt to postpone the inevitable blow-up at the office. He stayed on course and finally pulled into the parking garage. The elevator was crowded and he avoided making any eye contact. The walk down the corridor brought the same chilly indifference from his colleagues that he’d experienced the day before, or what he thought had been the day before? There was no doubt in his mind that he’d broken the world’s record for work-related screw-ups.

It felt like a gut punch when he walked into his office. A large cardboard box sat on his desk, full of his personal items and everything that said the office had once been his. Even the framed photographs of his fishing trip to the Caribbean had been taken off the wall and placed in the box. He laid his laptop bag on the desk and collapsed into his chair. He felt sick to his stomach. Before he could fully grasp what was going on, Anne walked in. He tried to read her expression and decided it was a mix of anger and sadness. “Morning.” was all he could get out.

“Matt, I couldn’t be sorrier about this, but you gave Mr. McClain no other choice. Your little disappearance from the planet cost us any chance to get the CynTech account. You were missing in action for six days. You let down your team and the company.”

Matt straightened up in his chair. “I wish I could explain this to you. Something is going on that I don’t understand. It’s like time is different for me than everyone else.”

Anne stood there frowning and shaking her head. “What’s that supposed to mean? Are you okay? Some people are wondering if you’ve got a drinking problem or something. They say you’re the one that always wants them to join you at happy hour, that you’re the life of the party.”

“It’s nothing like that. I don’t really drink that much. I’m just as confused about the way things are happening as you are, about how time is passing. I don’t know what else to say.”

Anne sighed and said, “Well I don’t think Mr. McClain is going to understand that any more than I do. He wanted to talk to you but since we didn’t know if or when you’d ever step foot in the office again, he scheduled a trip to Seattle.” She saw Matt look over her shoulder and when she turned around a very large security guard was standing in the doorway.

“I’m supposed to escort someone to the front door,” he said gruffly, looking right at Matt. “Would that be you?”

Anne started to tear up and said in a shaky voice, “Matt, I am so, so sorry about this.”

He looked at her, a lump in his throat and replied, “Me too, Anne, I’m sorry”

Matt walked back down the corridor, his laptop bag over his shoulder, the box in his arms and the security guard a few steps behind him. The coworkers who had ignored him on his last two trips down the hall were now staring and whispering. It was as though he was doing a long, slow perp walk like the bad guys in a movie. The corridor seemed a mile long.

He drove home in a daze. When he pulled into his driveway he didn’t even remember making the trip from the office. Before the garage door closed he looked out and saw that his lawn looked like it hadn’t been mowed in a week. That was the least of the problems that filled his mind as he walked into the house. It was only nine-forty-five in the morning, but he poured himself a small and totally inappropriate glass of bourbon and dropped down on to the sofa.

He took a long, slow sip and closed his eyes, struggling to put his thoughts together in a way that could make any sense of what was going on. When he was home it seemed that everything was normal. Time passed at the usual pace. He felt okay physically. There was no sign of a problem or that anything was different or out of place. But now every night he went to sleep, and when he woke up to what he thought was the next day it was really days into the future. After an hour of confusing and unsuccessful analysis along with a second glass of bourbon he’d come to the conclusion that he’d lost his mind. It wasn’t a conclusion based on science or fact, but it was all he could come up with. It was pure emotion. He didn’t bother to finish his bourbon. He set the glass down on the table and laid down on the sofa. By eleven o’clock he was sound asleep.

He didn’t remember getting into his bed but the sound of garbage trucks on the street out front woke him up at seven-fifteen the next morning. He knew it wasn’t the right day for the garbage pickup but after all that had been happening to him, he wasn’t really surprised. He saw himself in the hallway mirror as he headed to the bathroom, still wearing his slacks and shirt from the day before. “Or was it really from the day before?” he wondered. He went into the kitchen and as much as he didn’t want to know he picked up his iPad and clicked on the morning paper. The dateline read April 14, nearly a month from when he’d fallen asleep. He moaned and put his hands over his face trying to hold back tears. “My god,” he thought, “is this my new life?”

He went through the day in a haze. He was unemployed and an online look at his bank account showed that a small severance check had been deposited to his account the day after he’d been fired. To him that was today, and the deposit hadn’t yet happened. His April mortgage and car payments had been deducted. Outside of his house the world seemed to be turning at its normal pace. Inside his house everything seemed to be happening the way it always had. But the two timelines were frighteningly out of synch.

Matt’s life settled into a bizarre routine of constantly trying to catch up. Every day he’d wake up when the alarm went off on a date that was further and further away. His mailbox filled up every afternoon and the mailman had left handwritten notes for him to bring his mail in daily because the box was too full to fit any more. His beautiful lawn had to be mowed every day in response to multiple notices of violation from the HOA that his property had become an eyesore. Trying to watch his beloved Padres on television was pointless because the baseball season was ending. It had happened in what had been just a few days to Matt. Football season had begun. He couldn’t call a friend to schedule a get together to watch a game at his favorite bar because he knew his call and their gathering would end up being on two different days. He felt totally isolated.

His attempts to find a job online had been pointless because any replies to his search arrived weeks into the future, not the day after he’d sent them. The worst part of his ordeal was that bill collectors were hounding him for payment on his house and car. Two of his credit cards had been cancelled after what had felt to Matt like just a few weeks since the last payment. His trips to the grocery store had to be pared back because of his dwindling bank accounts. Being penniless seemed inevitable and there was no way to predict the day when it would happen.

A few days into his entrapment an idea had come to him and he’d wondered if he could break the cycle that had torn his life apart. He’d tried a couple of times to stay up all night, thinking that somehow staying awake would bring time back to its normal movement. All he got for the effort was exhaustion. It was the first time in his life he’d felt totally helpless and so disconnected from anything normal. Despite that, he knew he couldn’t allow himself to give up his struggle to regain his life.

Almost in a masochistic way he had tracked the time, counting each of his days and comparing them to the dates that came up each morning on his phone and laptop. It was a maddening exercise that he couldn’t resist. After a few weeks, his weeks, he’d decided it was borderline self-destructive, and he’d stopped. There was nothing to do but try to get through each day one at a time. No looking at dates, just the day of the week. It was the only way he could hang on to what was left of his sanity. He’d made that decision one Friday night and awakened on Saturday feeling only a little better.

Just like way back when he was working, Saturdays had always lifted his spirits. Now that he was single again his recreational options had expanded but he couldn’t ignore the life maintenance that everyone had. After an arduous turn mowing the lawn that was always overgrown and pulling long-dead vegetables from his garden he showered and sat on the sofa. He remembered Saturdays with his friends; friends that had drifted away because they lived in a different time. His television had become his only constant companion. Whenever he turned it on it was always today.

It was hard to figure which college football game to watch but he’d chosen one simply because there was a commercial playing,and he could avoid making a decision. That was just enough time to use the bathroom and open a beer. He settled in and by three beers and a whole game later he picked up the remote control hoping to find something more stimulating.

He found a local news station with a very attractive weather girl talking about what was coming. He didn’t pay much attention because he knew when he woke up the next day her forecast would be weeks or months in the past. A commercial allowed him enough time to use the bathroom and when he walked back into the living room he heard her enthusiastic pronouncement: “And remember everyone, tonight is Daylight Savings Time, so before you go to bed make sure you turn those clocks BACK one hour.”