"2:10"
by
William H. Chang

---

We marched up the stairs, hand in hand. My high heels clattered against the cold marble floor, the sound carried down the flights of stairs, becoming a whisper as it reached the deserted ground floor. He held up the Zippo lighter like a torch, leading me through the slowly spiraling darkness that just kept going higher and higher up, seemingly without end.

"Almost there," he said as if predicting my growing impatience. I grunted in reply, a low-pitched noise that was barely audible over the clattering of my shoes or the beating of my heart.

I looked up at the walls. They were made of smoothed wood that had been painted a glossy white that had since faded to a dull gray. Pictures were hung in equally spaced increments, with a few breaks in the pattern where a door was placed or a picture had fallen from the wall. Most of them were reprints of famous paintings by Van Gogh, Dali, and others; cheap copies anyone could pick up at a poster store for $5.

My legs began to cramp. He looked determined as ever to drag me to the top of the staircase, unmoved by the haunting noises or the pitch blackness that surrounded us. In fact, he was smiling like a giddy little schoolboy who had a juicy secret he couldn't wait to be rid of.

"Are we almost there?" I asked, the question coming out a bit like a whimper. He stopped for a moment and turned around to face me. Standing a step above me, he towered above me, and I looked up at his face, glowing red from the lighter's flame.

"Getting tired?" He reached his free arm around my neck and pulled my head to his chest. Sweat was beginning to seep through the front of his t-shirt, and I recoiled from it at once. "Sorry," he uttered quickly, turning back in the direction of our destination.

"I don't know why you can't just tell me now," I said after a slight moment of hesitation. By that time I didn't care about the sentimentality of keeping secrets and looking for the perfect atmosphere, the right mood. I wanted to find out what he had to tell me and then go home and go to bed.

He didn't turn around when he replied, "Because."

I retracted my hand from his grip and crossed my arms over my chest, rooting myself to the stair below his. "Why not?"

This time he turned around. He wasn't smiling anymore. "I told you. It's very important, and I need the proper setting to express myself. You know how I am." I did know how he was, and truth be told I was beginning to get a little sick of it. Five months had taught me a lot of things, not only about him but about myself, about what I really wanted and needed. And he wasn't in the near future, though he was unaware of it.

Still, I wanted to hear what he had to say.

"Come on, let's go. We're almost there, I promise." He held out his hand to me. I looked at him for a moment, pursing my lips before I reluctantly took it.

We continued climbing the stairs. Five grueling minutes later we reached the landing at the very top. The ceiling stood high above our heads, disappearing into a gaping void. We were both exhausted, our foreheads glistening with sweat. He flipped the lighter shut, and I now saw that moonlight was flooding in through windows above and around us. It was full, and looked down at the earth from a cloudless sky.

There was a doorway a few feet in front of us, and he quickly led me over to it, opening it and ducking his head down in a mock gentleman's gesture. I really hated when he did that, though I never bothered to tell him because he seemed to think it was funny.

I stepped out onto a stone ledge that stretched out about five feet and then disappeared into nothing. Fifty stories below was the concrete sidewalk and the boarded-up entrance we had passed through to get into the building. About ten stories below was the gigantic face of the clock that had stopped decades ago. Time was forever frozen at 2:10, though no one could ever figure out if that was AM or PM.

Gasping at the sight, I jumped back through the doorway, bumping into him. He wrapped both of his arms across my chest and lowered his head onto my shoulder.

"It's alright," he whispered. "It's safe. Just don't get too close to the edge, because it's a long way down." Obviously.

We stepped forward, two feet moving for each step. The air was frigid, stabbing at my face like a cold knife. I shuddered even in his arms, which also felt as cold as ice to me.

"Look." He pointed out to the horizon. I looked.

The view was stunning, especially in the moonlit night. From the top of the abandoned clock tower we could see to the edge of town and beyond, into the grassy valley and all the way to the mountains miles away. The sky was equally beautiful, absolutely littered with stars of all sizes, complimented by a perfectly round moon.

I turned around suddenly, my face inches from his. His eyes were still on me, and I don't think they ever left me during that time I was looking towards the horizon.

"What is it that you wanted to tell me?" I asked, curious to know and eager to leave.

"Goodbye."

I could feel the force of his push, and I could feel the ground beneath my feet disappear as I tumbled backwards into the cold, dark abyss, looking up at the face of the clock and its arms that would forever be frozen at 2:10. AM or PM.

---

Afterthought: The third and final story written for a fiction blog that never picked up back in June 2006. The inspiration behind the setting was a picture I took of the clock tower of the Ferry Building in San Francisco, California. Although the setting in the story isn't the same place, the idea of a clock tower that had broken down and gone out of use was intriguing to me, and complicated relationships have become a trope that I now use repeatedly.

November 29, 2007