Day One

I remember fireworks outside my window woke me up. Kids in the alley behind the factory. At three in the morning. I couldn’t get back to sleep, had to be up at five to drive my father to the airport. He worked at the airport for forty eight years but got laid off last year for falling asleep on the floor in front of the main entrance at midday. Nobody knows what happened, he says he wasn’t even tired, but an old lady tripped over him and broke her hip. Missed her grandson’s wedding. He had an appeal that morning, but he was only going through the motions. He got the job in the seventies when he retired from boxing, almost undefeated. He became the airline’s mascot, he’d greet people at the door and there was cardboard cut-outs of him beside a picture of a plane; ’Knockout Prices!’ and things like that. But for the last twenty of those years he was just an anonymous person who walked around the airport helping people with their bags, or directing them to their gate. He was actually glad he got fired I think, he got to spend more time in the garage working on the submarine. Its at least eight hundred miles to the ocean but he’d been working on his two man submarine for six years now. I thought there was too much weight on one side, the thing would just keep rolling around, but what do I know.

This is Donnie by the way.

Back then I lived in the room above the factory floor, my uncle let me convert it to a bedroom while my house was being rebuilt. It was okay but there was bats in the attic and I could hear them flying about. And I could hear the machines on the factory floor creak and squeak and groan all night. My house should have been finished soon though. It caught fire about four months before, I don’t know how, I was at work. It was only a small fire, but a man passing by saw it and panicked. He chopped into one of the legs of a water tower in the yard behind the house with an axe, hoping it would tip over and spill water onto the flames but it actually washed away most of the house, and what it didn’t wash away, it collapsed onto. I don’t know who this guy was who tried to rescue the house, one of my neighbours saw him do it. When the fire was out, he hopped back into his car with his trusty axe, sped off and was never seen again. So I had to rebuild the house, as well as pay for a new water tower.

Vinyl

I worked for my uncle; my father’s sister’s husband. His name is Leonard Nalfen and he’s a moron who fervently thinks he isn’t one. I worked for him at Nalfen Novelties, a large factory on the outskirts of Carton, where I was born and raised. We made novelty clocks mainly, and I worked on the assembly line, position eight, Quality Assurance. I was the last person to handle the clocks before they were packed and shipped. I tested that the clock works; I wound it a quarter turn, checked that it ticks and that the alarm rings. Because of this I had a permanent ringing in my ears, which generally, one would be able to grow accustomed to, but, it being a novelty clock factory, the ringers changed, they cycled through about twenty variations, one a week. So by the time I got used to one sound and was able to ignore it, a new one took its place, fresh and deafening. I hadn’t slept more than an hour a night in four years. Why didn’t I quit? I don’t know.

The daily routine of the factory was as tedious and monotonous as you would imagine. But on January 12th, two days after my birthday, there was a slight change. The chain of assembly was disrupted. Mr. Salt, position seven, had no clock to hand to me. We investigated. Turns out Mrs. Daldry, position four, whose job it was to install the hour, minute and second hands, had suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and dropped dead. So we finished early.

The next day when I arrived into work I noticed that uncle Leonard had put a sign on the door of his office; "Interviews" it said. He didn’t intend to waste time replacing Mrs. Daldry. Mrs. Daldry’s eleven year old boy Cyril replaced her for the day, which was awful really, certainly his hands were small enough but he really lacked the dextrousness of his mother, and progress was slow.

Then at about two, my life changed forever. A girl with skin like porcelain and black hair so sleek and beautiful it looked like vinyl floated up the stairs and glided across the floor to my uncle’s office and knocked politely. Mr. Salt nudged me out of my stupor and handed me a clock.

Like vinyl.

Like on a record.

Black as crude oil.

Incredible.

I dropped the clock on the ground, and grunted at Mr. Salt when he pointed it out to me. I stood up from my position. I tucked my shirt into my trousers. I wanted to rush to the bathroom to check myself in the mirror but I was afraid I would miss her coming out. So I inspected myself in the reflection on the face of a Wilma Flintstone alarm clock, adjusted my fringe, and stood at the wall by uncle Leonard’s office waiting for her to come out. I could hear her laugh inside. Lovely. Then it suddenly occurred to me. What the hell would I say or do? What the hell was I thinking? The clocks were building up. I had nothing to say, do or offer. So I returned to position eight behind a pile of untested clocks.

I was right, I thought. I’m better off. I just would have made a fool of myself. I probably would have shat myself or accidentally punched her in the face or something. So I tried to get back to my clocks.

Then she came out of the office. And an elephant sat on my chest. I watched her, my mouth hanging open. Vinyl. She glided again across the floor towards the front door. She stopped half way. I closed my mouth. She had her back to me. I was sweating, another elephant joined the first on my ribcage. She turned around. I swallowed hard, I felt like my Adam’s apple was the size of a coconut. She looked at me. The corners of my mouth nervously twitched upwards into a smile. She smiled at me. She smiled. At me. Definitely. Right at me. There was nobody behind me or anything, I checked. She saw me, then she smiled at what she saw. What she saw being me, Donnie Primus. The front leg of my chair suddenly snapped and I violently collapsed forwards into the pile of clocks, and bounced onto the floor. I leapt up quickly. I don’t know if she saw that. She was already out the door and on the stairs. I took a deep breath and made a quick decision. I decided to chase her. I stumbled out the door and began descending the stairs six at a time. I heard the door on the ground floor open and close; she was outside. My heart beat faster and faster with each step, and looking back on it now, I was probably sweating horribly. I took the last flight of stairs in one heroic leap and landed at the door. I kicked the door excitedly, forgetting it opened inward, I think I broke a toe. But I didn’t feel a thing. I pulled the door open, and scanned the car park. She was walking out the front gate and was about to cross the road. I though I better calm down a bit. I didn’t want to come up behind her at speed like I was either going to rob her purse or try to vault over her. So I cooled out and began sashaying towards the front gate, cool as you like. She crossed the road, I never took my eyes off her. She was sailing down the footpath on a breeze. Then she stopped. I wasn’t sure what to do, I thought, worst comes to worst I can just walk straight past her, pretend I’m on my way somewhere. So I keep sashaying. Then she looks at me. Right at me again. My legs began to turn to jelly. Then she smiled again. At me. I tried to smile back. Her expression changed to horror suddenly. "Is my smile that bad?" I remember thinking. Then I realised it was because of the truck.

Considering I was hit by a truck, I was doing pretty well. My nurse was nice but her breath was awful, and my bed was comfortable but I could only see the left third of the TV in the ward. But I supposed I could be dead. And at least it got me out of Mrs. Daldry’s funeral. Awfully morbid affairs.