The Watchmaker’s Hand

Like a weather vane, it rotated slowly so that the massive crosspiece faced into today’s steady breeze. This happened automatically, it seemed. The mechanism apparently loose. No one was in the cab. In fact, no one was in the jobsite, other than a few men at the entrance. Guards. The mayor had ordered all construction sites shut down until the terrorists were captured.

Could it be this one is targeted next? Simone wondered, recalling the deadline was ten tomorrow morning.

Looking up once more.

And what did it remind her of?

She was close, but the memory remained elusive.

She turned her attention back to what she’d just unloaded from the rental van. A half-dozen open-top boxes containing packets and canisters and jars and other smaller appliances. Sealed cartons. A heavy box, on whose side were the words: “KitchenAid Bread Maker Deluxe.” These sat on the sidewalk beside the van.

This was a familiar sight. She came to the city infrequently, but one observation she’d made was the many moving boxes stationed in front of apartments and town houses throughout the city, waiting for Allied Van Lines, for Mayflower, for brothers-in-law, for sorority sisters to assist in a relocation.

Some people would be moving up. Others, hard with luck, down. Some out of the five boroughs altogether. New York City can gut you, she supposed.

Simone lugged the hand truck from the back. It dropped to the concrete with a clang. She shoved the lip of the cart under the big appliance and strapped it to the back with a canvas tie-down. She began rolling it toward Number 744. This unit was identical to the other structures on this largely deserted avenue on the far West Side. A former industrial block, it was now filled with empty lofts, raw space. Seven Forty-Four was 2,200 square feet of beautiful, ancient oak floors, a working toilet and sink, an overhead bank of lights and zero else.

“Hey, neighbor.”

She turned to find herself looking at a man in his late twenties walking slowly down the stairs of the structure next door to hers.

He was handsome, with sculpted features, thick hair rising confidently skyward, a popular look. Jeans and a T that said something, but had been through the wash a dozen too many times for legibility.

“Hi.” A smile. One of her more entrancing features, she’d been told. She looked past him to his apartment. “The broker told me none of the other places on the street were rented yet.”

“Well, here I am. Your lucky day.” Not quite a flirt. He was being cute. His voice suggested he’d been raised in New England.

He flexed and unflexed his right hand. He seemed born to team sports. “Moving day. Cool.”

“Just a few things I had at my old place. Uptown. The big push is next weekend.”

He subtly examined the blond hair, twined into a perfect braid, the lengthy fingers (bearing no jewelry), the trim figure — though with hips a touch more ample than she, on a bad day, would have liked. He would get nowhere in a scan of any other part of the physique, as she sensed he was inclined to do; she was covered from waist to neck with an excessively large, deep blue Royals sweatshirt. He settled for her heart-shaped face. One of Simone’s avocations was poetry, writing as well as reading, and there was certainly an element about her that suggested a demure Elizabethan literata from England’s Lake District. Mary Shelley, Annabella Byron... She nurtured the look.

Even in the sweats she was a shining lamp for men like this one, particularly those a bit younger than her. And he hovered close, right on the edge of that invisible but well-defined comfort perimeter that surrounds us.

He looked up at the building she was parked in front of. “Yours raw too?”

“Empty as a...” A laugh. The poet within her failed at simile.

“As Shea Stadium in October.”

Sports, right. That’s what she got for wearing a team sweatshirt.

He became the enthusiastic tour guide. “Up the street, the corner, there’s Chinese. It’s okay. Nothing to write home about. Next to it there’s a deli, Mideastern. And two Indian places.”

Her eyes revealed interest. “I love Indian. I dated somebody from New Delhi. That man could cook.”

Orientation had been established, pleasing him no end. As did the fact that the boyfriend was affixed to a past-tense verb.

“How ’bout a gym?” she asked.

“You totally work out,” he said. An excuse to scan her, top to toe. “Yeah, not bad... Health club, I mean.”

She gave no response to the unwieldy flirt, and he continued, “When’re you going to start the buildout?”

“Getting estimates. You?”

“Three, four weeks. Lemme help.”

“You don’t have to. Seriously.”

He assumed a grave look. “I’m afraid I’ll have to insist.”

“What’re you, a lawyer?”

“Broker.”

She frowned. “Do they do much insisting?”

“What we do for a living. You can’t say no to a broker.”

“Just be careful, please.”

He took over on the handcart and rolled it, step by step, up the stairs — yes, carefully. Simone carried boxes up behind him. At the top, she unlocked the door and swung it open. She followed him inside.