It’s 7:34 in the morning, and the water has reached the edge.
My alarm went off four minutes ago, just like I told it to, but my position has not changed.. This is not unusual, and it is in fact exactly why I set my alarm for half an hour earlier than I need to get up. You do what you gotta do.
It’s also why I have problems sleeping with anybody else since bedmates are usually shaking and kicking me by the time I’ve hit the snooze alarm three times. Especially since, well, you know those alarm clocks that wake you with the gentle sound of soft summer breezes whispering over a bubbling brook? Mine isn’t one of those alarm clocks. Mine is the kind you could put on the bank of a rocky coast to warn off approaching ships. I have it on my headboard, about six inches from my ear, and even with that I still wake up once or twice a week when my neighbors bang on my walls or the police intervene.
It’s 7:36, and the water is starting to drip.
I left a glass of ice water on my nightstand last night and the condensation from the sides has puddled and spread. My glasses are adrift. At this angle my car keys rise from a still pool like lightning-struck trees from a swamp. I let my mind drift, picturing birds flitting from key to key as the eyes of the crocodiles float by.
It’s 7:39 and my alarm is blaring again, startling me into wide-eyed panic. I have the briefest memory of swimming through a murky swamp and something about a man-eating human resources manager, but it’s gone now. The water has stopped at the edge of the nightstand, I guess from surface pressure or whatever. I’m fascinated. It look like it should have spilled over by now but it’s just building up, as if hitting an invisible wall centimeters high. I try not to blink. Any second now it will drip and release the pressure, and that’s when I’ll get up.
I make a lot of deals with myself in the mornings. I’ll sleep until 7:42 and then get up. I watch the second hand like a hawk following a scurrying breakfast, willing myself to leap out of bed the instant, the exact instant, it hits 12, and then the alarm surprises me from a deep slumber seven minutes later.
Maybe someone on Death Row watches minutes as closely as I do but it couldn’t be with more interest. And I’ll bet they don’t make deals with themselves. “OK, when it reaches fifteen after, then I’ll get up and go get executed.”
Einstein knew. Time is relative, he said, and he wasn’t just talking about experiments with clocks and rocket ships. The minutes before I get up are the longest and most precious minutes in the day, and I part with them reluctantly, one by one.
I’ll bet Einstein was a late sleeper.
The alarm goes off and I slap it quiet almost before I wake up. It’s 7:48. The wave has not broken on my nightstand. I spend almost thirty seconds staring at the rounded edge, willing it to break and spill so I can get up. It’s not a deal anymore, it’s an obligation. I can’t move until the water spills. My boss will understand.
Even if it is relatively useless in actually getting me out of bed, my alarm has nonetheless conditioned me. Once I was eating at Wendy’s with some friends and the fryer buzzer went off in their kitchen, and faster than snake bite I threw my arm over my hand and sank it deep into the flower planter behind me. My girlfriend at the time lost it completely, laughing and doubling over and trying not to shoot an entire Biggie drink out of her nose. I just smiled sheepishly and tried to look as if I hit imaginary snooze alarms all the time.
She left me a month later, I think, because I’d never get up in time and I was always late to… late!
My body jerks, straightening convulsively to its full length. I snap my head to the side, utterly convinced that it’s 10:00 or something and I’m late again. It’s 7:51. In two minutes I’ve been to Wendy’s and relived a month, perfectly clear, incredibly detailed. The dreams you have just before waking are the ones you remember, which just makes me wonder how much detail goes on in my head during the night that slips away before morning. I could be dreaming epics! Vast sprawling works filled with derring-do and emotional turmoil, 12-part miniseries of action and love and the human condition, whatever that is.
The water is noticeably taller. For a brief time I consider getting up so I can see what it looks like from the side. I don’t want to rise, that would show me how trivial my pool is and ruin it completely. I want to see the profile and see if it really does build to a ridge along the edge the way it appears to head on. But not enough to actually move, apparently. Instead I find my spot on the potential tsunami and focus all my mental powers on it. Break, I think at it. I’m going to be late and it’s your fault. Spill! Ooze! Drip! Something!
I could always nudge the nightstand and force the issue, but that would be cheating. I have my integrity.
It’s 7:52.
Sometimes I wait for interesting numbers before I get up. 7:43, or 7:34. Something that makes a pattern. I tried only getting up at times that were divisible by 3 but I kept falling back asleep while doing sums in my head.
I’m amazed at people who can just get up. Somehow they go from asleep to awake without a middle ground, a transition period. My girlfriend-but-one was one of those. She was up and in the shower before her pillow bounced back. She could even wake up on time without an alarm clock, a feat I had always thought possible only for trained yogis and wizened monks. For a time I assumed she had merely adapted sleepwalking for her own purposes, waking gradually in the shower during her rinse cycle, but no, she was awake and alert on the spot.
We broke up within three weeks. Mixed marriages rarely work.
She told me over and over that I needed to go to bed earlier. Since I was usually asleep by nine anyway this seemed unlikely, but I gave it a shot. For a week I headed to the bedroom earlier and earlier, finally crashing right after I got home. No luck. She still almost threw her back out shaking me the next morning. When she left she told me that it wasn’t really the alarm that bothered her, it was lying awake wondering what would happen if the apartment caught on fire. She knew I would never wake in time, and that haunted her for days until she finally dumped me over linguini Alfredo at Olive Garden.
What would happen if the place caught on fire?
Do I have a warning system in place? Some kind of innate survival mechanism that would force me to consciousness and remind me to stay near the ground and roll a lot? Would I awake instantly, with my escape route glowing in my mind? Or would I lie there and roast?
Now that I think about it, I’d probably lie there in the flames, promising myself I’d run for safety as soon as the second hand hit 12.
I could always throw my water on it.
The alarm went off again, and this time I didn’t flail about as much when I awoke. That’s a good sign, it means I’ll be getting up soon.
It’s 5:59. 6 o’clock is my deadline, the time I Absolutely Have to Get Out of Bed to have time to shower, shave, and get dressed. Breakfast isn’t an option unless traffic treats me nicely. In less than thirty seconds I have to get up and begin my day.
But the water hasn’t dripped yet. You see my dilemma.
It was time to get serious. I made the unheard-of commitment to roll over so I could focus more clearly on the nightstand. Break, dammit, I thought at it. I’ll get fired and it’ll all be your fault. Then who’ll pay for water, huh?
I stared. I glared. I furrowed my brow and concentrated as hard as I could, to the point of neck strain and headache. And, helpless before my mental onslaught, the water broke.
It didn’t spill, the way I expected. Instead a single drop developed on the edge, morphing from the line of water. It ballooned before my eyes and hung there, sparkling in the morning sunlight.
It was beautiful.
Reflections danced across its surface. A single burst of light shone from its face, and I could almost see myself in it. The water along the edge drew back as if feeding it, forcing it bigger and rounder. The drop swayed towards me and then, dramatically, it streaked down the edge of the nightstand faster than I could follow, pulling its army behind it.
Feeling as if I had just completed a long race, I sat up and turned off my alarm. Morning sunlight had drilled through the dust and splashed across my bedcovers. I looked around, pulling my faculties together and ignoring the banging on my wall from my neighbor, and then I rolled over to grab my phone and call in sick.
After that kind of stressful morning, I was exhausted. They’d understand.