The Missing Hour

The Museum of Everyday Marvels sat on a corner where two streets forgot to take themselves too seriously. Its brick face leaned forward like a neighbor willing to eavesdrop. A hand-painted sign above the door promised wonders that were neither priceless nor particularly tidy: “Curios, Contraptions, and Comfortable Nonsense.” The place ran on the persuasive belief that the small, the odd, and the slightly sticky deserved attention. Miriam Park had carved that belief into the museum’s schedule, its grant applications, and the way she ironed her scarves so they looked like calm, practical flags.

That morning a winter light folded neatly into the cafe umbrellas across the street, and the museum hummed with a rehearsed energy. A city inspector was due in two days to judge whether the place merited another year of municipal funding, and Miriam treated the visit like a recital. She had speeches in a folder, rehearsed smiles, and a clipboard full of the sort of small victories she intended to present as proof of the institution’s civic value: visitor counts, local school projects, and the Grand Cockerel’s attendance record. The Grand Cockerel was the museum’s heart and a half of its headline. Brass-weathered, feathered in improbably sunny cloth, it crowed at midday with a trumpet flourish that made toddlers grin and retirees criticize the timeline with affectionate rage.

Felix Ramos, the twenty-four-year-old intern with a permanent streak of flour on his elbow from Sam’s café, was fussing with the museum’s social feed. He knew how to arrange a picture so that a dented teacup looked like an artifact, and he had a habit of writing two versions of everything: the caption that would go public and the private note to himself that included the honest panic. Today he was polishing the caption for the inspector’s post — “Tomorrow we welcome Deputy Briggs!” — while also composing a tongue-in-cheek behind-the-scenes thread about the hidden life of the cockerel.

Greta Holm, skeletal in a sweater that had outlived several fashions and perfectly matched a dozen oil stains, had her hands inside the cockerel’s maintenance hatch. Volunteers arrived in slow, efficient waves; Greta had arrived early and was humming as she adjusted a tension spring. She liked to talk out loud while she worked, narrating the machine’s mood as if it were a neighbor with mechanical indigestion.

Miriam walked the museum on the hour before the rehearsal, reading her lines under her breath as if the walls might memorize them and perform better in her stead. She passed the Grand Cockerel, expecting the soft bruise of brass and the faint smell of machine oil. Instead she found an empty plinth and, where the machine should have been, a small constellation of feathers — a ridiculous scattering of bright artificial plumage that made the floor look as if a craft store had been massacred.

For half a heartbeat Miriam believed she was seeing some theatrical installation she’d inexplicably approved in a sleep-addled fit of creativity. Then logic intruded. The cockerel was gone.