Under the Clockface

The shop smelled like burned coffee and brass. Morning light cut through the grimy skylight in a thin diagonal and caught on a dozen tiny teeth, a constellation of sprockets and pinions tagged and hung on the pegboard like medals. Eli Navarro moved through them with the certainty of someone who had taught himself every angle of his own shadow. He put a loupe to his eye, braced a handheld escapement in the bench vise, and listened as if his ears were another set of calipers. The tiny tooth he was filing needed one millimeter of relief; he could tell that by the way the filing rasp grieved against the metal and then sang smooth. He twisted, filed, and breathed oil-scented air into the afternoon, his hands making orders the rest of his life had accepted without complaint.

Outside, the town was doing its Saturday: the market stalls unfurled red-and-white awnings, the baker two doors down sent out warm parcels of cinnamon flatbreads that people called clock buns because they were shaped like small gears, and the weather had that soft, sea-burnished quality that made even slow things feel deliberate. Children ran past with paper kites for a weekend festival that had nothing to do with bells or hours, and a delivery cart jingled a wooden bell twice at the corner — Route Seven’s odd salutary rattle, a custom that started when the route first ran through town and nobody could agree on a proper horn.

Eli hunched over his bench and worked the file with wrist muscles wired to memory. He tamped a tiny bubble of solder into a fractured tooth and watched it pool and draw like a small, obedient moon. Tomas Alvarez hovered at the doorway, all eagerness and scuffed sneakers, a pair of brass goggles jammed on his forehead like a crooked crown.

"That's not how my uncle did it," Tomas piped, eyes scanning every tool as if each had a biography to be read. "He used a grinder and then sang to the teeth."

Eli glanced up without looking up. "Your uncle sang to his teeth. Lucky bastard. Don't try that on my pieces. Songs have been known to warp brass."

Tomas grinned. "Worth the risk."

Mrs. Henson's footsteps were softer than the kettle's hiss when she arrived with a thermos of lentil soup and a pocketful of opinion. She had an unofficial municipal license to complain and a walnut tray of admonishments on standby, which she set down beside Eli's oil-stained rag.

"You finally remembered to open by proper light, Eli? Or are you courting shadow hours now?" she asked, peering at the bench.

"The skylight does most of the courting, Mrs. Henson. I supply the coffee." He lifted the soldering iron like a small, durable baton. "What's the gossip?"

She sat on a stool and placed the thermos between two spool ends. "Centennial's in three weeks. Clara wants the town clock checked. She says the mayor's giving a speech and everyone expects it to chime on the dot. You should do it, dear. It would be a shame otherwise."

The word sat in the air like a misplaced screw. Eli felt it, the way a machinist feels a burr under a file: irritating, and not necessarily catastrophic. He had lived under the town clock long enough to know its moods; for reasons he preferred not to rehearse, he liked the clock to be a creature of its own dignity rather than a public performance. He let the solder cool, clamped the piece, and wiped his palms on his apron as if preparing for a meditation.

"Clara can ask," he said. "And she can ask again. But I keep my shop work separate from municipal ceremonies. People like their pomp; I like my quiet."

Mrs. Henson made a sound that was a cross between a chuckle and a small, practical grumble. "Don't be coy. You like having something that keeps track of you. Admit it."

He gave her a look that said he liked a good clock the way a cat likes a windowsill: useful, predictable, unremarkable. Tomas, meanwhile, was already meddling with a screwdriver and a pocket-sized alarm clock he'd found at a stall, trying to prove he could crack its back without breaking its dignity.