Suggested Drink: Manhattan (consume before bedtime to erase the day)
Recipe: Use Amaro instead of sweet vermouth. 2:1 ration of Rye to Amaro. Never bourbon. Nothing expensive. Swirl or stir. Pour over ice and let it sit for 30 seconds while you stare longingly and caress the glass. I don't think it calls for a garnish but there are those who put cherries on everything. You know them. They don't know you.
Shortly before 06:00 am today, Mason’s days of killing time came to an end.
These had been long days stretching through each infinite moment. Boring days. Forgettable weeks consumed by vacant hours. Joyless television. Meaningless walks. Vacuous conversations. Wasted time for the singular purpose of wasting it.
Mason held it firmly. Time. Squeezing it tightly. Choking it slowly until the moment that it left him.
The bedside clock, with its stiff red numbers, displayed 05:59 am, as Mason reached over to his nightstand and prevented the alarm from going off. He stared as the 06:00 displayed and became aware of the sound of his own breathing. The simple cadence of his inhales and exhales continued as Mason laid on his side intently watching these numbers drift into the afternoon. The other needs of his own body ceased to exist as his eyes solely focused on the LED’s pushing each minute to the next.
The room’s twilight yielded to darkness as Mason watched the clock display 06:00 pm. With each breath, he knew that his days of abusing time were now at an end. Time had left him. And he could no longer manipulate it, cajole it, or kill it. Time couldn’t stand him anymore.
In the day that preceded this day, Mason discovered that his friend, more of a work acquaintance, had dropped dead in the middle of his life. The guy had just left the cardiologist after a great checkup and stopped for his favorite blue Slurpee at the 7-Eleven on his way home. An hour later, the convenience store manager found his cold dead body on the floor of the bathroom. A heart attack, they said. Only fifty, they said. What a shame, they said.
Mason turned fifty yesterday.
When he came home that evening, his wife told him of a young woman who was hit by two bicyclists while walking in the park today. They were apparently blinded by the glare of the sun and crashed into her simultaneously. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that the woman had some undiagnosed bleeding disorder. After her head hit the pavement, she died of a brain bleed within a few minutes.
Mason liked walking in the park.
On the same day, which was yesterday, Mason’s mother told him that his father had died today. He had always expected his father to die, but not yesterday. And not from a cancer that Mason was never told about. A cancer that his two brothers knew about for over a year.
Mason was a father.
Mason decided that he must apologize to time. How could he have mistreated it so badly? Now each moment must be sliced open and dissected in search of meaning. Nanoseconds would measure his life. Microseconds would define his days.
05:59 am. It was evening. It was morning. Day one. Mason drifted back to sleep.
