MELAMED WATCH REPAIR. 2 W. 47th St., 4th Fl. Claim No. 30418. Hamilton 992B, 21J, gold-filled, open face. Replace balance staff (fabricated). Replace crystal. Clean, oil, regulate. PAID IN FULL. And on the line marked NAME, in blue ballpoint, in the shaky capitals of a very old man, a name.
SHEEHAN, D.
He read it twice. The light did not move. He was proud of that later, in a sour way, the only thing he was proud of from that night: that the light did not move.
She opened the blue box.
The watch lay on its back on a bed of satin that had gone the color of old piano keys. White enamel face. Black numbers. The little seconds dial at the bottom, and the second hand in it going around, going around, small and steady and unbothered, as if there were no rain and no road and no police car with its engine running ten yards away. The case was worn through to the brass along the edge where a thumb had rubbed it. He knew where the thumb had rubbed it. He knew exactly which thumb.
"Don't," she said, and he realized that his left hand had come up off his belt, and he put it back.
She picked the watch up herself, by the bow, the way you lift a kitten by the scruff, and turned it over in her palm and held it out into the light so that he could see the back.
He did not need to see the back. He saw it anyway.
D. S. — Brewster to Grand Central, 1966.