Michael Smith - One of Us

‘Oh, hello,’ it said, into the quiet. ‘Thought you hadn't heard me.’

‘What,’ I said, ‘the fuck do you want?’

‘It's time to get up, Hap.’

‘I am up,’ I said. ‘I'm in a bar.’

‘Oh,’ said the clock, looking around. ‘So you are.’ It paused for a moment, before surging on. ‘But it's still time to get up. You can snooze me once more if you want, but you really ought to be out and about by half past nine.’

‘Look, you little bastard,’ I said, ‘I am up. It's a quarter past nine in the evening .’

‘No it isn't.’

‘Yes it is. We've been through this.’

‘I have the time as nine-seventeen precisely–a.m.’ The clock angled itself so that I – and everyone else – could read its display clearly.

‘You've always got the time as a.m.,’ I shouted, standing to point at it. ‘That's because you're broken , you useless piece of shit.’

‘Hey, man,’ said one of the tourists at my table. ‘Little guy's only trying to do his job. No call for language like that.’ There was a low rumble of agreement from nearby tables.

‘That's right,’ agreed the clock, two square inches of injured innocence on two spindly little legs. ‘Just trying to do my job, that's all. Let's see how you like it if I don't wake you up, huh? We know what happens then , don't we?’

‘What?’ asked a woman at the other side of the room, her eyes sorrowful. ‘Does he mistreat you?’ With my jaw clamped firmly shut, I grabbed my cigarettes and lighter off the table and glared at the woman. She stared bravely back at me, and sniffed. ‘He looks the type.’

‘He hits me. He even throws me out the window.’ This was greeted by low mutters from some quarters, and I decided it was time to go. ‘… Of moving cars .’

The crowd stirred angrily. I considered telling them that having a broken AM/PM indicator was the least of the clock's problems, that it was also prone, on a whim, to wake me up at regular intervals through the small hours and thus lose me a night's work, but decided it wasn't worth it. Trust the little bastard to catch up with me in the one bar in the world where people apparently cared about defective appliances. I pulled my jacket on and started shouldering my way through the people around me. A pathway opened up, lined with sullen faces, and I slunk towards the door feeling incredibly embarrassed.

‘Wait, Hap! Wait for me!’

At the sound of the clock's little feet landing on the ground I picked up the pace and hurried out, past the pair of armed policemen moonlighting as guards in the short passageway outside. I clanged through the swing doors at the end, hoping one of them would whip back and catapult the machine back over the bar, and stomped out into the road.

It didn't work. The clock caught up with me, and ran by my side down the street with little puffing sounds of exertion. These were fake, I believed, little sampled lies. If it had managed to track me down from where I'd thrown it out the window (for the last time) in San Diego, a quick sprint was hardly going to wind it.

‘Thanks,’ I snarled. ‘Now everyone in that fucking bar knows my name.’ I swung a kick at it, but it dodged easily, feinting to one side and then scuttling back to face me.

‘But that's nice ,’ the clock said. ‘Maybe you'll make some new friends. Not only am I a useful timepiece, but I can help you achieve your socializing goals by bridging the gulf between souls in this topsy-turvy world of ours. Please stop throwing me away. I can help you!’

‘No you can't,’ I said, grinding to a halt. The night was dark, the street lit only by stuttering yellow lamps outside Ensenada's various bars, food rooms and rat-hole motels, and I felt suddenly homesick and alone. I was in the wrong part of the wrong town, and I didn't even know why I was there. Someone else's guilt, my own paranoia, or just because it was where I always used to run. Maybe all three – and it didn't really matter. I had to find Laura Reynolds, who might not even be here, before I got shafted for something I hadn't done, but remembered doing. Try explaining that to a clock.

‘You've barely explored my organizer functions,’ the clock chimed, oblivious.

‘I've already got an organizer.’

‘But I'm better! Just tell me your appointments, and I'll remind you with any one of twenty-five charming alarm sounds. Never forget an anniversary! Never be late for that important meeting! Never …’

This time the kick connected, and with a fading yelp the clock sailed clean over a line of stores selling identical rows of cheap rugs and plaster busts of ET. By the time I was fifty yards down the street the mariachi band was at full tilt again behind me, the businessman's voice soaring clear and true above it, the voice of a man who knew who he was and where he lived and what he was going home to.

I'd arrived in Mexico late the previous evening. That, at least, was when I'd woken to find myself in a car I didn't recognize, stationary but with the engine still running, by the side of a patchy road. I switched the ignition off and got out gingerly, feeling as if someone had hammered an intriguing pattern of very cold nails into my left temple. Then I peered around into the darkness, trying to work out where I was.

The answer soon presented itself, in the shape of the sharply defined geography surrounding me. A steep rock face rose behind the car, and on the other side of the road the hill disappeared abruptly – the only vegetation bushes and gnarled grey trees that seemed to be making a big point of just what a hard time they were having. The air was warm and smelled of dust, and with no city glow the stars were bright in the blackness above.

I was on the old interior road that leads down the Baja from Tijuana to Ensenada, twisting through the dark country up along the hills. There was a time when it was the only road in those parts, but now it's not lit, in bad repair, and nobody with any sense drives this way any more.

Now that I was out of the car I was able to recognize it as mine, and to dimly remember climbing into it in LA much earlier in the day. But this realization faded in and out, like a signal from a television station where the power is unreliable. Other memories were trying to shoulder it aside, clamouring for their time in the spotlight. They were artificially sharp and distinct, and trying to hide this by melding with my own recollections; but they couldn't, because the memories weren't mine and they had no real homes to go to. All they could do was overlay what was already there, like a double exposure, sometimes at the front, sometimes merely tickling like a word on the tip of your tongue.

I walked back to the car and fumbled in the glove compartment, hoping to find something else I knew was mine. I immediately discovered a lot of cigarettes, including an opened pack, but they weren't my brand. I smoke Camel Lights, always have: these were Kim. Nonetheless it was likely that I'd bought them, because the opened pack still had the cellophane round the bottom half. It's a habit of mine to leave it there, which has given my best friend Deck hours of fun taking it off and sneaking it onto the top half of the pack when I'm in the john. The memory of his trademark cackle as I yanked and snarled at a pack after such an incident suddenly bloomed in my mind, grounding me for a moment in who I was.

I screwed up my eyes tightly, and when I opened them again felt a little better.

The passenger seat was strewn with twists of foil and a number of cracked vials, and it didn't take me long to work out why. A long time ago, in a past life, I used to deal a drug called Fresh. Fresh removes the ennui which comes from custom and acquaintance, and presents everything to you, every sight, emotion and experience, as if it's happening for the first time. Part of how it does this is by masking your memories, to stop them grabbing new experience and turning it into just the same old thing. Evidently I'd been trying to replicate this effect with a cocktail of other recreational pharmaceuticals, and had ended up blacking out. On an unlit mountain road, in Mexico, at night.