All The Time In The World

                                                              "Had we but world enough and time…"

"It's 11:19 here in Denver, Colorado, and the party's still going strong!" a television downstairs blared, recounting the various New Year's parties from around the world. In that same Denver home, a grandfather clock hammered out the seconds in the front hallway: 51… 52… 53… Chicago and Dallas had celebrated the new year 19 minutes ago, so the eyes of the world were on Denver, Colorado; Juarez, Mexico; and Edmonton, Canada. The celebration of the new year is one most people associate with life, but this particular year, Carrie and Carl were celebrating death, unaware of its omnipresence in the screaming match they were having in the living room.

Carl would scream about finances and expenditures, Carrie would scream about the fact he was always at the office – Carrie had been shopping that morning while Carl was at the office on a holiday. Carrie would make an accusation that Carl would vehemently deny. They would trade obscenities, insulting their in-law's fidelity and propriety, as well as their own sexual habits. A knock-down, drag-out 15-rounder for the ages that Frazier and Ali would have been proud to own. Verbal blows hammered both combatants, and for one round, the savagery showed no sign of letting up.

Upstairs, a young child stirred in his bed. He was too young to stay awake for the festivities, but he had been awoken once more that night, when his daddy came home around the time the TV cheered for the first time, and all the people in that square sang that crusty old song. Tenderly, his father had carried him upstairs, smelling faintly, very faintly, of something unusually sweet. But not unusual. No, not very unusual at all. If young Gill had been awake enough, and old enough, to think about it, he'd notice that rarely did daddy leave with the scent, but he usually came home with it. The scent reminded Gil vaguely of flowers, Jasmine flowers. But the scent was gone now, carried downstairs on the dress shirt now covering the shoulders of a man who was fighting for the fate of the world, if only in his own mind.

There was once a time when Carl read love poems and Carrie wore Columbine flowers in her hair on long car rides in a convertible up to Buena Vista. Bryan Adams' number one hit played on the radio as the wind flowed while the car climbed the mountain pass on a sunny August day. There was a small hotel in Buena Vista where the right room had a view that displayed the Rocky Mountains in their full majestic glory. Carl and Carrie had used that room twice before in their excursions, but this time would be different.

The balcony opened up onto the majesty of the mountains, the perfect backdrop for what Carl had in mind. He'd had the room service table prepared elegantly. He'd stuck a 2 day old USA Today from August 20th under the short leg of the bed. He'd timed things so the light would be perfect, painting the mountains in that amazing glow of a sunset, but not too silhouetted. The scene was perfect, the food was fantastic, and the ring was unbelievable. Carrie agreed completely. No words were needed as the newly-engaged couple stared at the glory of the mountains. But no silence is perfect. Below, a drunk vacationer stumbling from the hotel bar asked for the time a little louder than normal, "7:15, you jackass!" was the reply from the irate man the drunk had accosted. But not even such improprieties could kill the mood as Carl and Carrie retired to their room with a gleam in Carl's eye and a smirk on Carrie's face that could only mean one thing.

The USA Today held up admirably under the bed. The clock in the hallway did not fare so well. Knocked off the wall, the batteries popped out, and the hands ground to a halt at 7:24.22. The staff would not find the problem until tomorrow morning, but that night Carl and Carrie had no use for all the time in the world.

Years later, another clock would hit the floor and break. But this time, it was a Breitling watch instead of a cheap hotel clock. The woman on the television blathered on about the fireworks scheduled in Salt Lake City that evening over the Tabernacle, but nobody in the house noticed. The watch had fallen to the floor when Carrie hurled it at a door she'd slammed seconds before, cracking the face of the watch and scrambling something small and delicate inside. Carl was oblivious to the events on the other side of the door, screaming about old boyfriends and bad habits while on the other side of the door, Carrie threw more things than a two thousand dollar watch at its beautiful finish. A shoe. A hairbrush. A mirror. The door's finish betrayed the ferocity of the attack: it was not the shiny, majestic object it had been before. While on Carl's side all seemed perfect, cracks and scuffs blossomed like ivy on Carrie's.

A pair of eyes peeked into the living room from the stairs in the entryway. Carl's fists punished the gloss of the bedroom door leading off from the living room. Gill could see his father yelling in vain to open the door. What he couldn't see was his mother polishing off a bottle of Maker's Mark on the other side of the door. Gill could handle what he did see. He'd seen this before; what young child hasn't? Even the best parents fight. But the fights of the best parents don't usually include sudden, titanic crashing noises coming from the other side of locked doors. Gill dashed back to his bedroom, not afraid of the noise – he wasn't afraid of things like noise – but of the possible meanings, causes, and reactions the noise could have. He locked his door and pulled his blankets around him, trying to block out the yammering television and the fight.

Carrie tore the wax off the top of another bottle of the same. Carl yelled self-righteous accusations about alcohol through the door that defined his marriage. Carrie watched her newly-found tears run down a bottle of whiskey to mingle with the broken bottle of whiskey, the broken mirror, the hairbrush, the shoe, and the Breitling, now forever frozen at 11:23.45.

11:54.50… 11:54.51… 11:54.52… Time drags on, but at least it moves. The world is not a VCR clock, perpetually blinking 12:00, no matter how slow the second hand may move in the clock in the living room. The news anchors on CNN talk about Mississippi finally ratifying the 13th Amendment, and Carrie commiserates. Not with the news anchors, but with Mississippi. The clock is more interesting than the television. The talking heads keep talking, no matter how slow time seems to be moving. The clock on the VCR blinks 12:00, and the clock above the TV seems to be doing its best to compete in a contest of stillness. The seconds will not pass. Not for Carrie, who sits wide awake on the couch, watching people ridicule a state they've never set foot in, because her young baby is finally asleep and her husband is still not home.

Society measures women by their beauty, and Carrie knows she is no exception. For the past week, she has had bags under her eyes. She hasn't worn makeup. Her figure is ok, but Carl doesn't seem to care. He's distracted, irritable, and most importantly, not home right now. Click, click, click. Carrie mumbles epithets at the clock above the television, but it's not the clock she's mad at. It's Carl.

On one wall of the living room, there's a wood cabinet with glass windows in the doors. Inside are rows of bottles backed by a mirror. Carrie looks at the cabinet and tries to remember all the times she'd made martinis, margaritas, gin and tonics, and other drinks from its contents, either for her husband or their guests. Oh, she'd drink herself, but not much. A little white wine, a daiquiri, never to excess. But as the time ticks on, each second seemingly slower than the last, that mirrored panel, those glass windows, and the contents between them beckon. Carrie gets up, thinking she'll just have one.

She pours herself a small glass of something clear with a dash of something red for flavor. It burns going down, but it makes the clock move a hair faster. A second glass minus the red mixer – its bottle was empty – goes quicker and burns more. A bit more than is comfortable. Carrie searches the bar for something else and comes across a bottle of whiskey, the label extolling the smoothness of the amber fire inside. Carrie has visions of Carl and his friends drinking from highball glasses, smoking cigars and playing cards. She'd never tried it before, but since they enjoyed it, why not? A glass, some water, and a bit of Kentucky's finest. The glass comes up to her lips, but just as the amber liquid is about to cross those perfect lips, so tired of waiting for their husband to come home, the clock in the hallway rings in a new day. The mild buzz in Carrie's head finds the ringing pleasant and musical. On the tenth chime, she giggles, careful not to spill any whiskey on herself, lest Carl come home. She's feeling a bit better already. But the twelfth chime does not bring Carl. Upstairs, little Gill did not find the chime as pleasant as his mother, and he is now awake and crying.

The glass is full and cool now. It will still be full, but probably lukewarm by the time Carrie comes back from putting Gill to sleep. In a moment of resignation, Carrie tosses back the contents of the glass in two and a half quick gulps; the best she can manage. It is much smoother than the clear stuff, and leaves her with a silly feeling she hadn't had since her freshman year at UC-Boulder. As she ascends the stair to help Gill, she remembers that year and how liberated she felt. She feels a tingling as she remembers her boyfriends, the parties, and the general atmosphere of youth and eternity.

Twenty minutes later, Gill is asleep again, and Carrie is giggling like a schoolgirl, feeling every bit as flirty, sexy, and happy now through her chemical aid as she did when she was a chemically aided freshman.

Two hours later, she is asleep on the floor. The bottle is mostly empty, with some in Carrie, but more on the floor.
Two more hours later, Carl slips in, ignores the mess, and slips straight into his nightclothes and bed, less disturbed and more thankful than he should be that his wife is passed out on the floor and not questioning him about why he's coming in at 4:00 in the morning.

Two more hours later, Gill wakes up, reviving Carrie from her alcohol-fueled dreams of campus past and back into her present. Her head is ringing, and the eager sun and son are of no help at all.

"11:24, only thirty-six minutes away!" the television host exuberantly shouted into a newfound quiet in the house. Carl was tired of beating on the door. He wasn't mad at the door, but the person on the other side. A person who, at this moment, was sitting with her back to the door, sobbing. She wasn't sobbing because of the broken glass around her, but because of the man on the other side of the door who wasn't listening. If he had been, he'd have heard a faint apology between the sobs as a broken Breitling watch slid under the door.

Carl felt something against his foot and looked down. A watch. His watch. Broken. Frantically, he grabbed at the broken crystal, the dented case, but it was damage he couldn't fix. Rage welled up inside Carl. He lived for symbols: the house, the Porsche in the driveway, and the expensive watch. Without thinking, Carl exploded.

Upstairs, the covers could no longer contain Carl's fury. Gill heard every word as his father called his mother all the names he never said around Gill at twice his fighting volume. Gill heard his father screaming about a watch, about carelessness, and drunkenness. He heard threats of divorce – he'd heard these before. But even as the words drifted up to his young ears, Gill could tell something was different. Like an old classic you've heard all your life finally played by a master.

This time, the master added a new variation. Epithets gave way to threats. Gill had no idea what his father was saying, but according to Carl, Carrie was to be left at a cheap motel for her boyfriends one moment, then she was to be dumped in a ditch the next. Gill pulled the covers even tighter. He had no idea what his father was saying, but he knew by the anger in his father's voice this was different.

Carrie sobbed even harder. The fragments of the mirror cut into her legs. The shards of the bottle into her hands. She sobbed apologies, but Carl couldn't hear them over the sounds of his own twisted creativity. Whether Carl's mind had always been this vengeful or whether anger brought out some dark creativity, Carrie didn't know. All she knew were the promises. Promises of loss, promises of death, promises of degradation. She didn't know which would be worse – or worse, which would be more likely – that she would wake up tomorrow with no home, no husband, and no Gill; that she would wake up in a cheap motel with a strange man leaving money on a dresser in a drug-fueled haze; or that she would not wake up at all. Carl kicked at the door; each blow felt like a mallet to Carrie's head. One kick drove the broken watch back under the door, face down. Carrie's trembling, tear-soaked hands picked it up to run a thumb over a well-worn inscription on the back.

The crowd ooh-ed and ahh-ed as the various presents stacked on the table were unwrapped. There were plates, flatware sets, picture frames, a pile of checks, and the requisite dirty gift from an aunt with a better sense of humor than propriety. But now, Carrie, an absolutely stunning figure in a white dress, passed a small black box across the head table to her new husband, Carl. Everyone in attendance murmured appreciatively as Carl withdrew a brand-new Breitling watch and displayed the gold face to the crowd. The men nodded appreciatively at Carrie's good taste, and the women congratulated Carrie on such a meaningful present while Carl looked at the back of the watch. Everybody was too wrapped up in the social element of the moment to notice Carl withdrawing, at least mentally, to read the inscription on the back. A sweet nothing about eternity and love, but original nonetheless. Carl kissed his new wife, then completed that ritual without which no new watch is complete: he asked the time and set it: 11:46 on October 7. At that moment, Carl strapped an eternal sentiment to his wrist and promised his wife he would never take it off, forever trapping those sweet nothings between Carrie and himself.

Screaming at the top of your lungs will really take it out of you, especially if it's not an everyday thing and you've been yelling all night, so Carl's collapse to the floor, too hoarse to yell anymore, was not of his design. He'd planned to keep yelling for at least another minute or two, but his throat just wouldn't keep up. So now he slumped, the mirror image of his wife on the other side of the door. The television announcers droned on with excitement, an interview with some local celebrity marking a half an hour until the new year. But in between platitudes and softballs, Carl's ears caught a faint whisper of an apology between sobs from under the door. Not once, but twice.

Slowly, he pushed open the battered bedroom door and brushed the broken glass away from Carrie. As he knelt beside her, Carrie's sobbing head found his shoulder, and her arms wrapped around his neck in a moment of mutual forgiveness. The broken glass was forgotten. The damages were all forgotten. Even for a moment – maybe longer – the words cruel as serrated blades were forgotten. Their embrace swallowed all.

Carrie had always found comfort in Carl's embrace. It chased away doubt, calmed fears, and made everything seem all right. As the seconds ticked on, the names and threats and violence fled her mind, leaving in their place an intense longing. Through tear-soaked eyes, she reached for the face of the man she loved and kissed him. Seconds ticked by. One kiss turned into two. A minute passes and Carrie's bloody hands are wearing red streaks down Carl's shirt, finding the buttons. Ten minutes pass, and every foul thing and cruel deed is forgotten in a haze of sweat and passion.

Gill came out from his cotton shelter to the sounds of a different kind of battle, one where the odd silence is the norm and the animal noises of the primal replace the shouted anger of sophistication. But he didn't dare to leave his room. Something must be wrong. His mother still screamed and his father still yelled and they both still cursed, although with much less force and venom than before. A crashing brought scenes of illicit late-night television violence to Gill's inner eye, a reminder of nightmares long since calmed by mommy and daddy from a babysitter who didn't watch the television close enough. But this moment of silence was appreciated, and Gill laid his head on his pillow in an attempt to get a little, uneasy sleep.

Carrie laid her head on Carl's arm as they reclined on the living room floor, basking in the sweaty silence of the moment. A moment of peace. In a moment of bliss, Carrie's hand found Carl's discarded shirt and drew it to her face, where she inhaled deeply the scent of the man she loved. She knew his shirts, and in times of trouble, the scent of a long day's shirt was a comfort. But beneath the familiarity, there was an enigma. A scent sickly-sweet that the back of her mind knew it remembered from somewhere, but could not place. But Carl's embrace banished all doubt, so she rolled over to enjoy this moment, praying it could last forever.

But moments don't last forever; only the passage of time is permanent. The clock keeps on ticking, and the hours drain away. One hour of pain becomes two, two becomes five, and five becomes seven hours of labor and pain. But even in a haze of pain and Demerol, it was the proudest moment of her life, lying in that hospital bed. Carl stood nearby, watching her hold his newborn son, a strong, healthy baby boy. He tenderly squeezed her hand as Demerol visions of a wonderful, picket-fence family life danced before her eyes. Carl holding her hand, her newborn child in her arms, and a beautiful bouquet of jasmine flowers on the table next to her bed. "Born June 21, 1994 at 7:03 AM," the doctor nearby mumbled as he filled out the birth certificate, and Carrie lost herself in the wonder of the newborn child in her arms, the drugs in her system, and the sweet smell of the Jasmine flowers.

Carrie stirred as Carl got up to go outside to smoke a cigarette. He liked to have one after making love, and the scent bothered Carrie, so she always made him smoke outside. Carrie remained placidly enjoying the afterglow on the floor, the tingling sensations still coursing through her body, and the smell of her man on his shirt. The bliss was broken by a buzzing noise from Carl's discarded pants. The buzzing removed Carrie from her bliss, so she dug through the pockets to find the source of the offending noise. A cell phone. Carrie wasn't easily impressed, but Carl's little expensive gadget had always had her attention. He always seemed to be on that thing when he wasn't at the office, which was too often. But he never allowed Carrie to answer it, giving the little plastic box a mystique it could have never gained otherwise.

Mischievous Carrie. Sometimes she would play with her voice to fool her friends. She'd practiced playing with her voice and masking it so well that she could imitate her husband. It didn't fly in person, but over the phone line, she could be pretty convincing. So she figured she would have a little fun with the poor professional suck-up with the guts to call her husband at 11:50 at night. But she didn't expect what she got. Her gruff, masculine hello was answered with a hyper-feminine voice, a voice Carrie knew quite well, but never expected. "Hey babe, what's up? Your wife asleep? Gonna swing on by my party tonight?" the sultry voice asked with a simultaneous air of innocence and iniquity, promising everything a man could hope for but never ask.

Time stands still in the good moments in life, but it also freezes the bad, letting us live out our anguish in a slow-motion we wish would just fly by, a kind of molasses of the mind. Carrie sat there in that moment frozen in the same way. No words would come to her mouth, but none needed to. The clock in the hall slowed its hammering second hand to a crawl as Carrie's memory swept back over her husband's life. Whose was this voice? Why did it carry such a promise of ecstasy only imagined in the archives of Vivid Video? Carrie's memory sought a sight, a sound, a smell, anything that would make sense of this moment. A haze of white flowers came to mind, accompanied by a sickly-sweet scent that eluded identification only barely. A Demerol haze.

Who brought the white flowers to her side at the hospital? She couldn't remember. She kept thinking. And in the back of her mind, she knew. Jasmine. There was always a vase of Jasmine flowers on the desk of Carl's secretary, Lola. Visits to Carl's office flooded Carrie's mind as she thought about the flowers. Lola had brought them. Lola loved Jasmine. Absent-mindedly, Carrie lifted Carl's shirt to her face and inhaled deeply, taking in that thick, masculine scent, but underneath: an undertone of that scent she couldn't place that came so readily to mind now. Jasmine perfume. Lola's perfume. "Carl baby, you there? I've got everything we'd need for a party: me, my body, and something sexy for you. Don't you want to come and have me tonight?" the voice on the other end of the cell phone purred. All Carrie could get out was a muffled sob. Lola gasped "Oh SHIT!" on the other end of the line and hung up, leaving Carrie alone with fantasies meant for Carl and a reality she'd always dreaded.

In a second, a heart can break. A flood of emotions washed over Carrie, with rage and sorrow fighting for dominance in a chest that felt utterly empty of anything. Tears flooded her eyes while adrenaline hit her veins. She tried to cry, but all she could do was scream. She tried to scream at Carl, but all she could do was wail inarticulately. Nothing could be said, and even if she could say anything, it wouldn't do anything to calm the ache in her chest that perpetually reminded Carrie that she'd always known. Somewhere deep inside, she had known for years.

"It's 5:43, and you're listening to K-HOW, Denver's only source for news," the radio rambled as Carrie went through the laundry. January 2, 1995 had not been her day. Carl had to leave in the afternoon for a business trip, Gill was at his grandparents' house, and Carrie was stuck doing all the cleanup from their raucous New Year's party the day before. By now, everything was finished except the laundry. Carrie tossed a bundle of whites into the washer, meticulously checking pockets for change and bundles of clothes for color. Carl wouldn't stand his white shirts being discolored. But no color escaped Carrie's eagle eye, not even a red smudge on the collar of a dress shirt. Carrie drew the shirt from the pile to examine it, evaluating it for the purpose of stain treatment. But something didn't seem right about the shirt, and that stain in particular.

It was the shirt Carl had worn for their New Year's party. She recognized a particular stain on the cuff that had happened at dinner that night. But she didn't recognize the red stain on the collar that appeared to be lipstick. Carrie thought back to that night and her makeup. She'd worn something much less vivid than the shade of red here. Her booze-soaked memories of the revelry ended about five after midnight when she stumbled into her bedroom and tried to sleep on the floor. The only other thing she remembered was Carl's new secretary, Lola, hazily checking to see if she was asleep before leading Carl to the bed, kissing his neck, and tenderly removing his shirt. Lola's lips were a very vivid shade of red. The same shade as the stain on the shirt. Carrie tried to stomp down the memory as a booze-riddled dream, but the dirty shirt in her hands mocked her.

Denial is a powerful force. Denial enabled Carrie to finish the laundry and get on with her life. That shirt wound up abandoned in the bottom of the trash can, and Carrie swore it was a booze-soaked dream she would never think of again.

11:50.36. Carl was back from his smoke. He hadn't finished his smoke – he'd barely had time to find his bathrobe and light the cigarette – but had tossed it on the walk when he heard Carrie scream. It had taken her thirty-six seconds to learn the truth.

Gill couldn't sleep that night. Even if he had found some measure of peace and rest, his mother's scream would have torn it from him. From behind his closed door, a new war raged. Coherence had come to his mother bringing a resurgence of profanity and accusations. Carl's every word was an attempt to shout down Carrie's hysterics with denials that seemed less and less genuine with every passing accusation. It was the end of the world that had been promised, at least to Gill. So with all the gravity he could muster, Gill left the safety and comfort of his bed and walked to his bedroom door. With a shaking hand and all the gravity a young child can muster, he did the very thing he'd always been forbidden to do: he locked his door. With such a war raging downstairs, little Gill had no intention of leaving his room, or letting anyone else in, for a long time. After all, who invites the war into his room at the end of the world?

Some wise man once quipped that we are all doomed to repeat history, but this isn't the case. Certain actions echo through time in such a way that it seems history is repeating, but the actions are just reverberating years, decades, or even centuries later. Christmas Day, 1995 at 4:21.01 AM, police were dispatched to a domestic disturbance call in an affluent Denver suburb. Carrie maintained to the police it was just an injury from an accident at a Tae-Bo class, but both Carrie and Carl knew better. Etched into the fabric of both of their minds was a single image: Carrie, three sheets to the wind sitting on a couch and Carl standing above her, a punch locked and loaded at his right shoulder.

"All right everybody, let's start the countdown!" The television in the front room blared.

"10…" Carrie screamed one last epithet at her husband, accusing him of the worst crime she'd accused him of all night: breaking her heart.

"9…" A moment in history reverberates. With his left hand, Carl locks Carrie's arm in a tight grip designed to hurt, and his right flies back behind his shoulder. Time slows to a crawl.

"8…" Carrie turns away from Carl's upraised arm with a whimper. Carl sees nothing but red and hears nothing but the rage in his own ears.

"7…" The revelers next door hear nothing. Gill upstairs hears nothing. But downstairs, Carl and Carrie hear a violent crack as Carrie's nose breaks under the force of Carl's right fist. A little snow begins to drift past the windows.

"6…" The force of the blow and the pain causes Carrie to fall to her knees as Carl loosens his death grip on her arm. A bruise would form there the next day.

"5…" Carrie sits naked on the floor, sobbing. Carl puts on his running shoes – no socks – at the front door.

"4…" Blood comingles with the tears streaming from Carrie's face. They stain the carpet and for the second time that night, a greater pain, not rage or ecstasy, blocks the pain from the cuts on her hands. Carl grabs his keys, flings open and slams shut the front door. He doesn't feel the cold mountain air. He doesn't feel much of anything.

"3…" A Porsche engine refuses to turn over in the driveway. It sounds eerily similar to Carrie's sobbing and choking on the floor of the living room.

"2…" The Porsche engine turns over, roaring to life and tearing out of the driveway in reverse. Carl doesn't bother with a seatbelt. Carrie wipes at her nose and eyes, attempting to stop at least one flow, but all she manages to do is cover her face with teary blood.

"1…" Screaming tires catch the attention of the neighbors and their party guests, all of whom are blissfully unaware of the poor woman next door. Carl screams off into the night in a fast car, going somewhere he shouldn't wearing less than he should but more than he would be later. His thoughts are not with his bleeding wife; they are elsewhere.

"HAPPY NEW YEAR!" Fireworks pop off all over the neighborhood. People at the party next door pop off champagne, kiss their lovers and total strangers. Carrie lets a scream and the occasional moan escape between the sobs as the blood and tears run down her chest, coating her figure in a red stream. In all the sorrow, for a moment she thinks that she finally looks on the outside the same way she feels inside. In five minutes, she will get up, ignoring the blood coating her body and the floor, and grab a bottle. She will pass out around two. Carl will not come home.

His teachers had told him this day was coming, but Gill hadn't understood. Some said the new millennium was a wonderful thing, others said it was the end of the world. With all the screaming, shouting, smashing, and crying, Gill's six-year-old mind could only imagine that this was what the end of the world was like. He knew that at the end of the world, he must be brave. He must stand and fight for what was his. So he went back up the stairs, into his closet, and grabbed his soldier costume he'd worn for Halloween. He cut a strapping young figure in a vinyl vest with a fake M-16 and hand grenade, topped off by a cheap plastic helmet. With the vest back on, the toy gun and grenade in his hand, and the helmet on his head, he felt like he should be ready for anything. But if he was ready for anything, why did the end of the world seem so scary?