The faint image of a clock in a remote window snagged Larynn’s attention. It was a grandfather clock, she realized, which she thought quite peculiar. She questioned what it was doing leaning against the window, its face pressing against the glass as its bottom half disappeared off in the other direction. Larynn could make out the dark numbers set on an ivory background, but not much else; but it was a clock, that she was sure.
Her eyes fled to a different wall of windows as the mundane meeting dragged on in her own stagnant conference room. The filthy windows belonged to an office across the avenue. A light went on and a girl appeared. Ponytail and black turtleneck were all she could make out as the girl bobbed about the office. The girl’s ponytail busied itself from the desk to the filing cabinet to the computer, briefly glancing out the second story window across the way to where Larynn sat. She wondered if the girl pondered what Larynn was thinking or if the girl simply saw a bug flee across the outside of the glass. But Larynn tried to focus on the issues at hand. The meeting had only been going on for thirty minutes and yet she was more engrossed in the ponytail’s bobbing than the conversation making its rounds among the table participants. But as if unable to control her actions, her eyes once more flew to the clock.
Why would someone discard such a thing, she wondered? It appeared one of beauty encased in wood of some kind, but hidden partially behind the dirty glass of the obviously unused office space. It looked like it was staring out, watching the cars and people bustling to work and to the university. It appeared to be looking for something. Maybe someone to take it away from its ugly little home, hot and sticky above the bagel shop that flurried with activity. She wanted to free it but had no idea how to get to that office. And she knew she’d look like a fool to even entertain such an endeavor.
The ponytail jogged again, distracting her back to the other window. Was that a printer that the girl retrieved paper from, she wondered? Larynn speculated if there was a boss that the ponytail had to take coffee to; someone who was requesting those papers to be printed or filed. She wondered if this invisible boss was female like her or a male who had secretly longed for the ponytail to flap in his face after a long day of work. She wondered if maybe the ponytail was the boss. A lawyer preparing for a case? A die-hard activist getting ready to bomb the local abortion clinic? And then the ponytail stopped its springy movements as the girl sat in front of her computer and didn’t move.
Larynn’s wonderment escaped for a few moments back to the meeting continuing with or without her attention, jotted down a few notes while agreeably nodding her head in true corporate fashion. She made eye contact with at least two of her co-workers, which she knew they liked, but within moments her eyes fled again to the clock in the distance.
Poor thing, she thought. Trapped. Caged like a looming, gloomy bird wishing for an open window to fly through. She thought its lean could have been a good thing, had the lean been completed with a little more force. Hard against the glass, she imagined the clock shattering the window into pieces as it plunged into the street, hoping that its casing would not break, but that something soft would cushion its fall. But she knew that would not be the case. She knew it would shatter, its casing splintering into toothpick-sized pieces and chunks as big as small hope chests. Springs and numbers and little clock hands would be strewn across the avenue and people would just walk around them. The clock would not be admired; it would be destroyed and people would only be grateful that they weren’t hit with any of its useless parts.
She picked up her pen again and wrote a note to change the backup batteries in her alarm clock. She heard the radio announce on her way into work this morning at 6:15 that thunderstorms were expected to belt the city hard. Power outage was not an excuse that her boss would likely appreciate. Larynn counted down how many eight-hour days remained until her vacation to The Keys. She felt as if last year’s vacation had just ended; shocked at where the time had gone. One eight-hour shift after another, she thought, until a year’s worth slipped by her without as much as a blink.
She refocused her attention on the woman talking about budgeting in the pink, awful earrings too childish for her age and continued to nod her head in unison with the others as she took one last glance at the ponytail. The girl was still sitting in the same place. What was she doing, she wondered? How could someone sit so still for so long?
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