State of DisorderAnd thus the whirligig of time brings in his revenges.
—Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Tick.
In the banquet hall of a sprawling castle of a house, the woman looks up, startled. The dishes of the night’s dinner still litter the long table before her. At the evening’s outset, the table had been so clean, its settings so precise. She tries to recall each step in its journey from order to chaos but fails.
Tick.
She jumps again at the sound. A man’s wristwatch lies at the table’s far end. He has left it, forgotten or unwanted. Or for another reason. The watch is old with a broken strap; the woman young with a broken heart. The watch lies face down, but she knows it is the old-fashioned kind with hands. A date will show in a little window. A date from a time long ago. Two lives
