Just Jelly Beans and Jealousy (9 page)

1. Get a tattoo
   

2. Ride a horse-drawn carriage in the
   snow
   

3. See a Broadway play
   

4. Buy hot chestnuts from a street
   vendor
   

5. Eat a one-pound burger at Rocko’s
   

6. Drink hot chocolate on a bench in the
   park
   

7. Fix my watch
   

I look around the shop. There’s a bunch of
interesting art on the wall, and a little pixie of a woman
approaches me. She’s dressed in a retro style, and her hair is all
curled up and pinned like she’s a sixties model. Her nametag says
Friday. It fits her. “What can I do for you?” she asks, and she
blows out a slow breath. She looks tired and I immediately wonder
what happened to her to put that look in her eye. But I don’t dare
ask.

“
Did you leave Wednesday
and Thursday at home?” I blurt out.

Her right eyebrow arches and she looks down
her nose at me. I immediately wish I could take it back. But then
she starts to laugh. And it’s not a little laugh. It’s a great big
belly laugh. She shakes a finger at me and motions for me to follow
her. She sits across from me at a table and says, “I assume you’re
here for a tattoo?”

I look around the shop. “Actually, I thought
this was a brothel. Am I in the wrong place?” I move to get up, but
my stupid prosthetic leg won’t let me play around the way I want
to. It clanks against the table and I grimace.

“
You okay?” she says
quietly. Her eyes don’t drop to my leg. She looks me in the face.
Most people at least glance at my leg before they jerk their eyes
back up to meet mine.

“
Fine,” I bite
out.

“
Well, we can’t help you
out if you were looking for a brothel,” she says. She looks toward
the men who are doing tats. They’re all big and blond and a little
bit intimidating. And they don’t seem to like my brand of humor as
much as she does. She drops her voice to a whisper. “The last time
I tried sell my body in here, the boys didn’t like it.” She laughs.
The men scowl even more, and I wonder if I should leave.

I glance down at my watch. I don’t know why
I still look at it. It hasn’t worked since the blast in Afghanistan
that took all my friends, my leg, and my sanity. I still wear it
like I expect it to start up any second now. But that’s not going
to happen. My life is over. Or at least it will be at midnight
tomorrow tonight. I glance at the clock on the wall. Twenty-three
hours and fifty-two minutes from now, I’ll get to finish what fate
started. I’ll get to right the wrong.

Friday waves a hand in my face and jerks me
from my thoughts. “Hello-o,” she sings.

“
Sorry,” I murmur. I heave
in a sigh. It’s so easy to get sucked into the memories. The
screaming. The hurting. The chaos. I look into her beautiful face.
“I’d like to get a tattoo,” I say. “A clock, maybe. One stuck on
midnight. With fireworks shooting off around it.” Fireworks. Bombs.
It’s all the same thing.

She nods. “We can do that.” She starts to
draw on a piece of paper. After a few minutes, she turns it to face
me. It’s pretty fucking perfect, actually. “Like this?” she
asks.

I nod. I can barely speak. By the time on
the watch, I’ll be gone. “It’s perfect,” I croak out. I look down
at my watch. It’s what I do when I’m nervous. I don’t expect to see
the time change.

Friday calls over her shoulder and one of
the men responds. He’s cleaning his table, and he motions me
forward. She shows him the drawing and he nods, chewing his pierced
lip thoughtfully. “I can do it,” he says. “This is the last one,
though, for tonight.” He grins at me. “I have a hot woman waiting
in my bed at home.”

“
Gee,” Friday chirps. “So
do I.” She grins at me.

One of the men, the biggest one, shoves her
playfully in the shoulder. “You’re every man’s fantasy, Friday,” he
says as he sticks out his hand toward me. “Paul,” he says. He talks
to Friday again. “Cut it out, or the man’s going to get all
excited, thinking he has a chance in hell of joining you.” He
narrows his eyes and leans toward me. “Not going to happen,” he
says quietly. “I’ve tried for years.” He motions for me to sit
down. “Where do you want it?” Paul asks while the one whose nametag
says Pete washes his hands.

I lift the edge of my sleeve. My upper arm
is one of the few places on my body that’s not scarred up from the
burns. “Here?” I say.

“
You might want to take
that off so it won’t be in the way,” Pete says. He motions to my
shirt.

I was afraid of that, but this is my last
day on earth. Who cares what my chest looks like? I reach behind me
and pull my shirt over my head the way men do, and I hear Friday
gasp as she sees my naked chest. It looks a lot worse than it
actually is.

“
Sorry,” Friday murmurs
when Paul shoots her a glance. She sits down across from me, and
her eyes finally land on the thin length of titanium that comes
from my shoe. “What happened?” she asks quietly.

Pete transfers the design onto my arm and
starts to ink the tattoo into my skin. It doesn’t hurt nearly
enough. I heave in a sigh. “There was an explosion,” I say.

“
Was it awful?” she
breathes. She lays her chin in her hand and props her elbow on a
table.

I nod. “It was pretty terrible. Every one of
my men died.” I lift my pant leg. “I lost my leg and was burned
pretty badly. But I lived.”

“
The universe must have
better things in store for you,” she says.

Paul snorts. “Friday, please,” he warns.

I should have died with them. “I doubt it,”
I say. “I ship out in twenty-four hours,” I inform her. That’s a
lie. Well, sort of. But not really. “I’m going to join my
team.”

Friday brightens. “Well, that’s something to
look forward to.”

Yeah. It’s all I’ve looked forward to for a
long, long time.

I want to change the subject, so I think
about the list in my pocket. “Do you guys know where I can find a
clock shop in town? Someone who can fix a watch?”

The men look at one another and one of them
says, “Henry’s?”

“
Do you know if they’re
open tomorrow?” I ask. “Well, today, I guess.” I have to have the
watch fixed by tomorrow night. Midnight. It’s on my
list.

“
Call him, Paul,” Pete
says. He pulls his phone from his pocket and tosses it to Paul.
Paul juggles it playfully until Pete makes a noise and then he
stops.

“
Isn’t it awfully late to
call tonight?” I ask. I look from one of them to the
other.

“
Henry’s wife had a stroke
two years ago. They keep odd hours while he takes care of her. He
might still be up. If not, Paul will leave a message.” He shrugs.
“Worth a shot.”

Paul nods, and I see him smile as someone
answers. Paul tells him I have a broken watch. He puts his hand
over the mouthpiece and looks at me. “Can you go by there when
we’re done here?” he asks. “He’s still up.”

I nod. “Love to.”

Paul talks to him for a minute and hangs up
the phone.

“
How is she?” Pete
asks.

Paul shakes his head. “She’s not doing well,
and she’s ready to give up. I think sometimes she just hangs in
there for Henry.” He blows out a breath. “I’ll write down the
directions for you. It’s right around the corner from here. In the
basement of a building.”

He hands me the directions when Pete
finishes the tattoo. I look down at my new ink and smile. It’s
beautiful. I can cross that one off my list. “You’ll find Faith
there,” he says. “In the clock shop.”

“
Faith?” I ask. I almost
snort. I don’t believe in faith. Not anymore.

“
Faith is Henry’s
granddaughter. She helps to take care of his wife and works in the
clock shop when he’s not there.” He holds up a hand to show she’s
about as tall as his shoulder. “Short little redhead. Really
fucking adorable. In an I-want-to-bang-the-librarian sort of
way.”

“
Faith is a girl?” I ask.
It’s not some mythical state of being?

Paul nods slowly.

“
Oh, okay,” I breathe. I’d
rather talk to a girl than talk about faith or hope or God or any
of those things I don’t have anymore. I pay my bill and walk toward
the front of the store. But as I’m leaving, Friday tugs on my
sleeve. I look down and she stands up on tiptoe and kisses my
cheek.

“
Best of luck to you,” she
says quietly.

“
Thanks,” I croak. I
suddenly have a lump in my throat and I don’t know why.

Pete shrugs into his coat. “I’ll walk with
you to Henry’s. You don’t want to be alone in this neighborhood at
this time of the night.” He looks over at Paul, who I assume is his
brother. They look very similar, but the big one is broad enough to
fill a doorway. He doesn’t smile quite as readily as Pete does.
“You going to walk Friday home?” Pete asks Paul.

Paul grumbles playfully and wraps Friday up
in his beefy arms. “If I have to,” he says. He scrubs a hand across
Friday’s hair. She slaps at his wrists until he pulls her back in
for a hug. She settles against him and exhales. He looks down his
nose at her, like he’s confused. She breathes him in, a smile
softening her face. He sets her back from him. “You ready?” he
asks.

She nods her head and her cheeks color.
“Don’t walk me home hoping I’m going to invite you in,” she chirps
playfully.

“
One day, Friday, I’m not
going to give you a choice about inviting me in.”

She freezes and her breaths fall a little
quicker.

Pete bumps my shoulder as he walks by me.
“You ready?” he asks. I nod, and stick my hands in my pockets. “See
you tomorrow,” he calls over his shoulder.

“
Big plans for New Year’s
Eve?” I ask as we step out onto the sidewalk. The snow is falling
even heavier, and I pull my hood up over my head. I stumble a
little in the snow, and Pete slows down. He doesn’t mention my leg.
He just adjusts his walk. “Thanks,” I mutter.

“
For what?” he asks. He
looks into my face.

“
Nothing,” I say. Maybe
I’m just imagining that he’s adjusting for me. I worry so much
about my disability that I think everyone else does too.

“
I’m taking my girl to
watch the fireworks tomorrow,” he says.

“
Tonight,” I correct. I
look down at my broken watch.

“
Oh, yeah,” he says. He
smiles. “Tonight.” He blows out a steamy breath. Suddenly, he stops
and turns, and goes down in to a stairway. “You coming?” he asks,
when I stand there looking at him like an idiot. “We’re here,” he
explains.

I walk slowly down the stairs. Stairs are
hard for me, and if he wasn’t here, I would just hop on one foot
down them. That’s much easier than taking them slowly, one at a
time. But it’s much less graceful.

We walk through the door and step into a
basement full of clocks. There are grandfather clocks and cuckoo
clocks and desk clocks. A train rumbles by on a track above my
head, and I smile at the noise it makes.

“
Kind of awesome, isn’t
it?” Pete asks.

It really is, in a ten-year-old
most-awesome-thing-ever sort of way.

There’s a long table at the back of the room
and an older gentleman is sitting at it, and he has gears and parts
spread around him. He’s wearing magnified glasses and has a bright
light shining on his workspace. He doesn’t look up, so Pete calls
his name. “Henry,” he says loudly.

The man looks over the rims of his glasses
at us. “Pete,” he says. He sets his tools to the side and wipes the
grease from his hands. “What a nice surprise.” Pete reaches to
shake hands with him, but the old man pulls Pete to him and hugs
him instead.

“
It’s good to see you,
Henry,” Pete says. “How’s Nan?”

Henry shakes his head and gets a far-away
look in his eye. “She’s still hanging in there,” he says.

Pete squeezes Henry’s shoulder.

“
Well, at least she’s
home,” Henry says. He looks at me and points to Pete. “This young
man and his brothers came and moved our furniture so I could bring
my Nan home.”

Pete looks down at his feet and doesn’t say
anything.

Henry extends his hand. “I’m Henry,” he
says. “Who might you be?”

“
Daniel,” I say. “I’m
sorry to bother you so late at night, but Pete said you might be
able to help with my watch.” I take it from wrist and hold it out
to him.

He pulls his glasses down and looks closely
at it, flipping it over. “This is old,” he says. “Can’t say I’ve
ever worked on one of these.”

It belonged to my grandfather. “Do you think
you can fix it?” I ask. He takes it to a nearby table and pops the
back off, appraising the gears inside like he knows what he’s look
at.

“
Maybe,” he
grumbles.

Suddenly, there’s a thump from upstairs and
the old man startles. He lays my watch down and goes to the stairs.
“Do you need some help?” Pete asks.

“
Granddad!” a female voice
calls from the top of the stairs.

The old man goes up the stairs, and Pete
follows him. They both disappear. I shove my hands in my pockets
and walk around, looking at all the old clocks. The man must just
repair them. He doesn’t have a showroom or a place to display them.
The train rumbles by on the track by my head, and I feel a grin tip
the corners of my lips.

The door at the top of the stairs opens and
light feet skip down them. I see puffy bedroom slippers and striped
pajama bottoms, and I’m suddenly staring into the greenest, most
beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen.