10:43½ a.m. — Café Orlando

There’s a clock on the wall. I look up from my coffee for a moment and watch the second hand beating against the 22nd tick mark over and over again, like a wave throwing itself fruitlessly against a rocky coast it can never overwhelm. It’s just like that moment when a clock’s battery is so worn down it can’t advance the second hand anymore, but it still has enough juice to keep trying for a while. Except it’s like this for all clocks. Everywhere.

I can’t tell you how long it’s been like this. Obviously. How could I? My own watch demands that it’s 10:43 in the morning, August 18th, and has steadfastly done so for quite some time, despite the fact that I’ve slept soundly three times since I started noticing that nothing was changing. So I guess it’s been three days now. Maybe four.

I’m really losing hope.

I drain the coffee cup. I put it down. The guy behind the counter, whose name, unfortunately for him, is Gayle, pours me another cup. I stand up. Turn my back. Step over to the window. The blue Datsun blows past the café window, left to right. I turn away for a moment. I look back outside. The same blue Datsun blows past the window outside, left to right.

I flick the door open, but don’t step out. I move as though I were entering. I head toward my open seat. My coffee cup is gone; so is the greasy plate of bacon and eggs I’d not quite finished. As I sit, Gayle plunks down a clean white cup before me and pours me a cup of coffee. “What’ll it be, mister?” he says.

“Bacon and eggs,” I say. It’ll be my third plate today, maybe my tenth since this all started, and I haven’t paid for one of them yet. As far as Gayle’s concerned, he’s never seen me before in his life. It’s quarter to eleven in the morning for him, and I’ve just walked into his restaurant for the first time. “Sunny side up, please.”

“Sure thing.”

“So what’s there to do around here?” I ask him. This is one of the rules. No one notices the passage of time, but it will pass for them if only I keep them engaged. If I turn my back, they’ll just keep doing whatever it was they were doing, in short little loops of a few seconds, forever. Or at least till this spell or whatever it is is broken.

“You new to town?” He breaks a couple of eggs. The bacon hisses on the skillet. To my right, a man named Chester turns the paper to page A9. Again.

“Yeah, I just got in last night,” I say. Chronologically, this is true. At least for all of them.

“There’s a railroad museum down the east end by the tracks,” he says. “A good place to kill a couple hours if you like that kind of thing. A lot of people come through for that,” he says. Of course, I already know this. He’s informed me a half a dozen times. I have to keep him busy or the meal will never get finished.

Chester turns to page A9. A woman whose name I haven’t learned yet stirs her 90th spoonful of sugar into her coffee and sips it. Talk about your bottomless cup. She sets it down with that same, perfect lipstick mark on it. If I look away, it’ll be gone.

I gaze at the phone. I’ve tried. Janice doesn’t answer. She never will. She’s in traffic somewhere, hundreds of miles and two time zones away, on her way to work. The phone could ring for a thousand years for me, but she’ll never arrive to answer it. I ache inside, thinking I might never see her again; she is trapped forever in a car traveling 120 km/h and she doesn’t even know it.

“How those eggs coming?” I ask Gayle.

“Pardon me? Oh, I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t see you…” Shit. I look past him; the eggs are gone, the bacon still raw on the sideboard. Gayle plunks down a clean white cup before me and pours me a cup of coffee. “What’ll it be, mister?” he says.