Charlie and the God Watch

He didn’t know how it worked, but even an idiot could tell it was out of place in his hands.

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Charlie and the God Watch

The God Watch of legend is said to have made its mark on pivotal events of human history. Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

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SLOPPY, SLIGHTLY SEEDY Charlie Mills, new shoes creaking, tramped the six-foot-wide sidewalk with a vague notion of the corner where he hoped a cab was waiting.

He was dressed airport-anxious-casual: stained golf shirt, wrinkled business chinos, fly yawning wide.

His mind trilled still, soaked through by the odd stories delivered by the antique dealer’s incessant jabber.

He had the pocket watch, finally. But the so-called quick pick-up job had lasted two hours.

His attention was drawn to a grey Audi SUV parked next to the curb across the street, wedged between a black van and a grocery delivery truck.

The hairs on his arms stood. Two dark shapes in the front nodded, deep in conversation.

What was it the antique dealer Mr. Benjamin had said?

“The God Watch draws a crowd, a cult of zealots and crazy people who will do anything to possess it. Take precautions.”

Charlie studied the shadows in the vehicle as he closed the distance, ready to retreat at the first sign of trouble. But the two shapes never looked up, immersed, Charlie imagined, in friendly banter about sports, betting, breakfast, sex.

False alarm. He shook his shoulders and rebuked himself for allowing Mr. Benjamin’s warnings to control his mood.

Steady on, Charlie boy, he thought. Don’t think too much or stupid rumours will sink their teeth into you.

He had told Mr. Benjamin to cool the bullshit. “Jot down your notes and send them to the buyer,” Charlie said during the pickup earlier. “I’m just the delivery guy.”

But Daniel Benjamin, proprietor of Daniel Benjamin Ltd. Antiques and Fine Art, a business dealing in the rare and exotic, was an apostle for full disclosure. He never, ever, “jotted” anything. It felt careless, half-assed.

Charlie sighed, relieved that at least that part of the job was done. Part two, delivering the God Watch to his client, should prove less complicated because he knew Julienne.

It’ll be easy, squeezey, like butter and eggs, he thought.

He slowed, set a casual pace. Should the two figures in the Audi glance his way, they’d take him for a regular Joe out for a stroll.

The figure in the passenger seat threw back its head as though it had heard a joke. The silhouette in driver’s seat pivoted its head and locked in on Charlie’s location.

Charlie crouched, too exposed to hide. Panic vibrated through him. He was on the verge of dropping to the concrete and going full-fetal. He’d just let them have the parcel. Julienne had told him the watch was a fake anyway. What’s the big deal?

“The denial of the watch’s authenticity adds to the attraction. It feeds the conspiracy theories, and the crazies want it all the more. It draws them like snakes to warm stone.” That’s what Mr. Benjamin had said.

Charlie swore under his breath. He should have stuck to his original vacation plans. He never should have agreed to do this “one little thing” for Julienne.

Too late. He had signed up to deliver the watch to Henri, Julienne’s brother. That made him responsible. They had paid already. He’d accepted the free flight to Vegas, the hotel stay, the full gear.

Charlie steeled his resolve. He had his honour to protect so he’d see the job through. Besides, it wouldn’t hurt to impress Julienne with his tough guy prowess.

He scouted ahead, spied a concrete wall to his right. He might duck behind it, follow it and see where it led.

Nope, Charlie thought, my best bet is to make it to the cab I ordered when I stepped outside the antique store.

He picked up the pace and calmed his nerves. He shifted the backpack and felt for the bulge of the parcel through the canvass, just to be sure. He wore the pack backward, over his stomach, shoulder straps tight, ready to sprint.

Paranoia was a good defence, he thought.

He stomp-footed hard, projecting strength and purpose to his way of thinking.

The SUV would be directly across the street soon. If they were coming for him, they’d come now.

He huffed for confidence, gripped tight to the watch. The doors of the SUV opened and two glass-tinted shapes rose, took corporeal form.

This isn’t happening, Charlie thought. If the old legends are true, if the powers of the God Watch are real, please get me the hell out of this mess.

“The God Watch manipulates time and space.” That’s what Mr. Benjamin had said.

That would be pretty perfect right now, Charlie thought.

Unfortunately, the legends were only hype and the watch he carried was just a copy. No, he’d have to save himself.

He struggled to focus as a yellow truck rounded the corner ahead and coughed down the street toward him. It slowed, jerked, then rattle-stopped, blocking the sightline between Charlie and the two men.

A sudden jolt staggered Charlie. It shocked like electricity, buzzing the back and sides of his head.

The scene lurched and Charlie felt his body being swooped up as though in a hurricane. Moments later he fell back to Earth, speeding away in the backseat of the cab.

He slid low on the seat, pulled the parcel from his pack and rested it on his thigh. He twisted and looked through the back window. The two men were already out of sight.

Charlie possessed no thoughts whatsoever about what had happened. He was a clean slate, his mind spent. It was simply inexplicable and out of his control and therefore undeserving of more brain power. He must have run and escaped. What other explanation? He grew tired of concentrating and gave up.

Instead, he brought his thoughts around to Mr. Benjamin and the antique store run out of a renovated, old house on the fringes of Las Vegas.

The moment he entered, Charlie smelled the rich wood and leather. Mr. Benjamin motioned for him to take a seat in a tanned leather armchair on the opposite side of a large counter at the front of the room.

Charlie raised his hands, palms out—a signal.

“I’m in a hurry. If you don’t mind, please, let’s do the business and I’ll be on my way.”

Mr. Benjamin frowned. “You’d best take what I am telling you seriously because the watch is famous in certain circles. Many people will test you and try to take it. Mark my words.”

He had presented the parcel to Charlie with a flourish of hands and a wave of his business card and after Charlie breezed through the appropriate security checks, the God Watch was released into his care.

“To be clear, my boss, your buyer, told me it’s just a fake, right?” Charlie asked.

Mr. Benjamin slid the box across the desk in Charlie’s direction. “Not a fake, a replica. And just because it’s a replica that doesn’t mean it’s a cheap knock-off.”

Charlie nodded. “Why is it called the God Watch?”

“The name,” Mr. Benjamin said, “was bestowed upon the original watch in the late nineteenth century as a tribute to the watch’s rare complexity and beauty.”

“How old is it?” Charlie asked.

Mr. Benjamin hummed, dawdled while uncapping and recapping his pen, scratched a finger down the page of a big green book on the table in front of him, scribbled notes in a pocket-size notepad and picked his beard.

Charlie sighed loudly.

Mr. Benjamin ignored him and, unhurried, unspooled the research he’d uncovered.

“Mystery aficionados and alternative history enthusiasts, date the God Watch back to the Pharaoh Narmer, the first king of Ancient Egypt. They claim Narmer, the Scorpion King, unleashed the power of the God Watch to unite the North and South into one mighty civilization that dominated the known world for 2,000 years. The God Watch, it is said, enabled Narmer to travel time and space, to see everything, be everywhere. With it, he became omniscient.”

Mr. Benjamin paused for breath, searched Charlie’s face for reaction and seeing a blank, he continued. “Then it vanishes, lost in time, until it reappears 1,500 years later in scholarly writings of Ancient Greece. One mythological account reports that Cecrops, a half-man, half-serpent god, stole it from Osiris, god of the Egyptian underworld and took it across the sea where he delivered civilization to the Mycenaeans.

“It disappears after that, for 600 years until we find mention of it again. Ancient Greek scholars claim Zeus, the king of the gods, gave it to Miltiades, who applied its powers to circumvent time, reversing decades of Persian supremacy over their lands by marking precisely when the Persian calvary left the field of play to tend to other deeds. Then he launched his assault at Marathon.”

“Marathon?” said Charlie. “Like a race?”

A person less composed might have rolled their eyes.

Mr. Benjamin merely continued. “The battle of Marathon,” he said, “is a defining battle of western civilization. The outnumbered hoplites of Athens sent the undefeatable Persian empire packing. That victory sowed the seeds of western democracy and free-thinking citizenry.”

“Oops,” Charlie said. He couldn’t recall ever hearing Marathon used for anything other than a 42-kilometre foot race.

“After that,” Mr. Benjamin continued, “mentions of the God Watch become even more rare. However, Callisthenes, who accompanied Alexander the Great on many military campaigns, mentions a device handed down from the oracles, which Alexander would consult for days, weeks even, alone in his tent, rejecting all hints of conflict without first getting the device’s approval.

“No writings mention it after that. It disappears from the Earth, other than a few rumours from Ancient Carthage of something vaguely fitting its description, which was destroyed in a fit of Roman vengeance.”

Charlie’s thoughts might be slow as lava, but he knew enough to know the watch was a bigger deal than Julienne had let on.

No problem, he thought. He’d put it in the hotel safe while he played cards. It would be fine.

Mr. Benjamin had more. “If you ask me though, those stories are nothing but fairy tales. They would make the God Watch about 5,000 years old. A thing that old would have crumbled to dust by now.

“I’ve checked with dozens of people in the know. I’ve asked the experts, archeologists, historians, you name it, and there is zero chance this technology existed that long ago.

“Do you want the truth, Charlie? Do you want to know what I think? I think the truth is far more interesting.”

Charlie didn’t want the truth. He wanted to leave. Casinos were calling.

“The original,” Mr. Benjamin continued, “was made in Austria in 1887 and sold for more than $30 million several years ago to an anonymous buyer.

“Now, the incarnation of the God Watch you have in front of you was listed in our catalogue as an early 20th century replica, probably made in the 1920s,” he said. “Swiss design, meticulously crafted with 1,060 moving parts, 87 wheels, 140 removable parts and 72 jewels.

“It is an exceptional replica. Made of gold, with a face on each side. It, of course, tells regular time, but it also tracks celestial bodies in relation to Earth. It tracks times for sunsets and sunrises and it accounts for variances in the Earth’s orbit, the equation of time.”

Mr. Benjamin could have been bragging about his oldest child.

“This version of the God Watch has a perpetual calendar. It tracks dates, the days of the week, the months, it has a star chart, and it can tell you the phases of the moon.

“And if all of this isn’t amazing enough,” Mr. Benjamin traced figure-eights in the air like a conductor as he spoke, “the watch is also a true chronograph with a stopwatch. It can summon the Westminster chimes and the smart people, who take time to learn its workings, can have it keep track of train schedules for them.”

Mr. Benjamin rose to his feet, his declarations complete, arms high in the air, facing Charlie and an empty room.

He poured like water down into his seat. Done and spent. “And all of that, you see, is why they call it the God Watch. I have never seen the original, but it is a known fact that the original has all the complications I just mentioned and more.”

“Where is the original?” Charlie asked.

“In the hands of a greedy owner who hides its beauty from the world.”

He smiled. “Maybe he’s watching our every move right now, like we’re part of his private ant farm.” Mr. Benjamin sniggered.

Charlie huffed. Ridiculous child stories, although Mr. Benjamin was starting to creep him out. It was time to assert himself and get out of this store.

“Yeah, well, whoever happens to be the master of this so-called God’s Watch, they’ll soon get to enjoy the sight of me winning at the card tables. I have to push on. Thank you for your assistance and the interesting stories.”

“It’s called the God Watch, not God’s Watch,” Mr. Benjamin cleared his throat.

Charlie picked up the box. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind. I really have to go. Time waits for no one,” he laughed. “

Charlie stowed the parcel in his pack and headed for the door. Outside, he texted for an Uber and made for the corner.

*****

Sitting in the cab, Charlie considered that he had no proof the two men from the grey SUV had been chasing him. They had simply exited the vehicle and started toward him when, zap, he wound up in the back of the Uber.

The cab sped through traffic.

“Open it,” a voice rang in his head. “Open the box. You deserve it after what they’ve put you through. Do it. Dooo eeet.”

Charlie reached for the box on his knee. Put it down, he scolded himself.

Open it, screamed the first voice.

I can’t open it, his rational voice clamped down firm. There were alarms.

Julienne had warned about the alarms—one linked to the cable tied around the outer box, and a magnetic one attached to the lid of the inner box, which would send out alerts when the clasp was broken.

Charlie felt Julienne’s warm voice next to his ear. She was technically only his real estate agent but he hoped more beautiful things would germinate between them, if only she’d give him another chance.

Charlie had blown it. He jumped the gun and cringed at the memory.

He and Julienne were perusing homes one afternoon, the fourth place she’d shown him that day, when he invited her to accompany him to Vegas for a weekend trip—separate rooms, all virgin and pure, he said.

She rejected him cold.

“But would you do a job for me while you’re there? If you can pick up an item for my brother, Henri, he’ll cover your expenses: flight, hotel, plus $500 cash.”

Julienne had squashed Charlie’s romantic dreams and convinced him to work for her almost in the same breath.

Saying no never occurred to Charlie. He had to prove his balls clung beneath him still, despite such a harsh rejection.

Besides, it sounded simple. He’d pick up the fake God Watch for her brother and claim his free trip.

Ooopeenn-iiit, the voice in his head screamed.

Charlie saw a paring knife in a plastic lunch container on the front seat of the cab.

“Can I borrow that?” he asked the driver. “I have a package I’m trying to open.”

The driver handed him the knife and Charlie started sawing. The cord around the box snapped free easy.

The alarm sprung. Henri and Julienne would receive notifications in seconds, as would a hired security agency.

Charlie moved quickly and removed a smaller black box from the outer box.

He pulled hard on the lid. It clicked free, the second alarm tripped, surely, although there was no sound. They weren’t those kinds of alarms.

He cradled the God Watch clone in two hands. It was slightly larger than a palm, its face inclined upward at the precise angle to catch him full purple sun, dead on.

Its face gleamed yellow-white with black lettering. It possessed two smaller dials at the bottom and a cerulean half-circle near the top centre. The outside was finished in flat gold.

It was called a pocket watch but it was too large for any pockets Charlie knew. And it lacked a cover to snap open and closed, to Charlie’s disappointment.

Charlie bounced it for heft, feeling it out. It was heavy, but nothing special. There were four buttons, two on each side.

He turned it over. On the back, the watch contained a second face sprinkled with symbols Charlie failed to recognize. Although, he acknowledged, what he called the back could very well be the front.

I’m no expert, he thought.

He turned it over to the first side and peered into the cerulean half-circle. In it, a crescent moon lit from the bottom gleamed yellow.

The sight of it stole Charlie’s breath. His mother, who he hadn’t seen since he was a teen, called this a Cheshire moon, appearing like a smile in the velvet night.

The memory crushed his heart. He grieved for his mom, the hard-scrabble life she lived with Charlie and his brother, Will, in the chilled Scottish Highlands.

She appeared to him suddenly, as though in a waking dream and Charlie fell into the glens and gullies of her nature, studied her in the garden, at sewing and as she canned peaches in the cold cottage of his childhood.

He floated into the yellow stars above the Cheshire moon, discovered the cosmic wheel to be a mere mechanism of the watch, keeping constellations in beat with time.

He tumbled into the golden swirls of its Milky Way and far out to beyond, where he witnessed the fire of first light. Planets coalesced. Creatures scrambled from the seas.

Charlie felt a crush, a body blow to his ribs as the side of the taxi crumpled and something tried to cleave a Great White bite from his midsection.

A collision. His eyes flickered, on the verge of passing out, and as he left consciousness, he watched universes blink out, one by one. Every one.

Another tremor, less harsh than before, and Charlie found himself reborn and rushing across a casino floor carrying the watch in a paper vomit bag he’d found in a seat pocket of the cab.

He pulled up, ducked behind a pillar. He needed to process. Charlie cached slow-fired ideas, stored them up toward an eventual conclusion. The God Watch he carried was no replica.

He didn’t know how it worked, but even an idiot could tell it was out of place in his hands.

His mind screeched near the blow-up point as the scope of what he possessed became clear, the power, the things he might do with it.

Charlie jumped from his hiding place and hurried toward the poker tables. He would be rich by hour’s end.

It never occurred to him that using the God Watch to cheat at poker was debasing and offensive.

It could cure cancer, once Charlie learned to properly work it. It could undo the most destructive events in history.

But Charlie wanted to unleash its power to steal an advance peek at the river card.

Partway across the room, Charlie pulled up, side-stepped into a lounge and sat at a table keeping this head down, pretending to play video poker.

He’d spied the two men from the grey SUV ahead, standing next to the dollar slots.

Charlie set a plan. He left the lounge and turned a sharp right, heading for the elevators, but found that route blocked too. Three more men waited. Charlie recognized their type from their husky builds and bouncer-like poses, hands clasped to wrists, ready to cover crotches.

His phone vibrated again. Relentless. Fucking Julienne. She was texting, demanding information. Where was he? Did he have the watch? What set off the alarms?

Charlie turned off the phone. They were probably tracking him.

He spun away from the elevators, hurried across the floor and kicked out the back door. He waved for another cab, planning to ride it to the Orleans Hotel, a place off the main strip where he reckoned he’d be more difficult to find.

The hotel’s image had hardly coalesced in his mind and he found himself inside the Orleans casino. The jolt and tremors he felt during previous time jumps were only tingles now.

He found an empty table, pulled the watch free of its bag and stared into its face, determined to unlock its tricks.

He saw his mother again, limping across the cold stone floor, fireplace flickering orange onto the walls.

Charlie, contrite in the rocker, sat before the flames watching her out of the corner of his eye. Even in the low light, he could make out her black eyes, the shaven spot on one side of her head forming a circle around a stitched-up gash.

Charlie’s own legs were bound in casts.

“You were supposed to look after him,” she said weakly. No tears. She was too exhausted for that. “You’re the older brother, I told you to look after him.”

Charlie nodded. She did tell him. But since Dad died last year, it fell to Charlie to teach Will. Dad had taught Charlie to drive when he turned 16, so it was Charlie’s turn now.

Besides, Will had begged Charlie to let him try.

“I thought it would be all right,” Charlie said too quietly for his mom to hear. “We were sticking to the yard.”

Until the yard got boring and Will fired the jeep through the opening in the stone wall, out onto the single-track road that led to the Mackintosh farm. The weather was warm, the road was dry, the chores were mostly complete. Charlie, riding in the passenger seat, saw no reason to stop him.

His next memory is of drowning. Freezing water, head bleeding from cracking the windshield.

He awoke floating in silence, upside down, bubbles rising around him. He remembered how it felt—nice, peaceful.

Will wobbled in the driver’s seat next to him, hair upright, waving in the current.

His mother’s face popped up beside him. She reached through the open window and yanked, trying to pull Charlie free. Then she reached further, clicked him free of the seatbelt and shook his chin to wake him, so he might help with his own escape.

Charlie fought and scuffed his way to the surface. Coughing, spitting, he trudged to shore. The river wasn’t deep but the banks were steep.

His mother, frantic, rushed back to save Will, still trapped in the upside down jeep, the wheels exposed above the water line amid rocks and a spring-strong current.

As she rounded the front of it, the vehicle lurched, jostled by the rapids. It broke free of the rocks and tumbled down a stoney slope, pulling Charlie’s mother under, dragging her downstream, tearing her apart.

The river banged and kicked the jeep along, crashing it violently against boulders and bottom until it crashed into the abutment of an old arch bridge, where it came to rest.

Charlie saw his mother’s head poke above the surface, gasping. She made it to shore bloodied and howling. She tried two more times to reach the jeep, until the neighbour Mr. Mackintosh, wrestled her up the bank.

Rescue teams found Will’s body the next day further downstream, hung up in cattails.

Charlie and his mother cried separately in the same house for weeks.

“I thought it would be OK,” he muttered and looking around, suddenly realized he was back in the casino.

He stared into the God Watch again, shaking it to make it take him back. I can fix everything, he thought.

Instead, he emerged inside the Area 51 Flooring store where he worked. I don’t want to be here.

Bonnie Lott, vice-president at Area 51, was giving him the bad news.

“You can’t sleep in the warehouse any more Charlie. We’re installing a new security system and you’ll set it off.”

How did she find out about his nest in the back corner, Charlie wondered? He’d hidden it carefully, behind a child-like fort of boxes in bunker 49A.

Guess it doesn’t matter, he thought. She was throwing him out regardless.

And after everything he’s done for her. Only three or four weeks ago he’d hand-delivered to her a box of chocolates as a congratulations gift for her promotion to vice-president.

I guess friendship counts for nothing, he sniffed. She wouldn’t tell one simple lie for him.

He’d had been sleeping in the warehouse of Area 51 Flooring for a few months.

It began as a place to hole up for a day or two, until he sorted a new place to live, after his landlord sold his rented home out from under him.

But living in the warehouse, turned into a week, then a month, then three months.

Bonnie tugged Charlie’s sleeve to gain his attention.

“You’re a good salesperson, Charlie, but this, um, this living arrangement has to end.”

She pulled Julienne’s card from her wallet. Her cousin the realtor could help him out, she said.

It turned out Bonnie, indirectly at least, helped Charlie find the God Watch. He’d be nicer to her from now on, he thought. He reached out to touch her arm.

He felt the tingle and he was sitting at a card table in a place that looked like the Orleans. He caressed the stacks of chips in front of him. He’d never seen this much on the table within his grasp before. Luck was with him, or something else.

Noises crashed behind. Shouts of police. The sky burst to flames. Charlie burned to a cinder. He passed through and rose up omniscient. He saw all and sulked in disappointment. To Charlie, existence was an endless nothing. Space, time, dimensions. Empty, blank-white.

He felt pressure on his living shoulder, on the arm of the body he’d left behind. The God Watch was being yanked from his grasp.

A voice, his own voice screamed. “Light it up. Burn everything down to the tiniest quantum particle. Do it. Every possibility, every future. Doo-eet!”

*****

The cab dipped and rose, riding the undulating tarmac of East Flamingo, delivering Charlie to the hotel. There was cash in his account and card tables waiting.

He skipped through the entrance, vowing to be more careful this time.

Charlie fell, taser shot with one foot in the door.

*****

Charlie stirred and mumbled a song he had forgotten.

“The waiting is the hardest part,

Every day you see one more card….”

Thoughts were like that now. They would crowd unbidden into his head. Things he’d long forgotten. Other things he’d never known.

Not for long, though.

The God Watch was gone, stolen by police moments before they locked him in this cell.

Where was it stashed, he wondered? He could find it and perhaps keep the newfound pool of knowledge in his brain from draining, if he could get out of jail.

A stubby bearded cop led Charlie to a small room furnished with a steel table, two chairs and a phone.

He instructed Charlie to make a phone call to get someone to pick him up.

“The owner of the watch declined to give a statement against you,” the officer said.

Beard cop stepped outside to give Charlie a few minutes of privacy. Charlie used the time scheming to get the God Watch back.

The officer returned minutes later and Charlie, still plan deficient, could only vacantly stare.

“Phone a person to help get you out, or I’ll put you back in the cell,” the officer said.

Charlie had a big problem. Since creation was a mere shard of energy in his daydream, none of the events happening now could possibly make a difference. Any decision could be reset in a blink.

Eventually, Charlie came around, thought it best to comply if only for the chance to clear his head in the outside air. For that, he needed someone to come and claim him.

He arrived at Bonnie. He wished Julienne could be his saviour, but he knew she wouldn’t come and he couldn’t make her. Not without the God Watch.

Bonnie was the only person who might make the effort.

Three hours later, Charlie was roused from sleep by a rattling at the cell door. A different officer led him to the same room.

Bonnie peered up over the brim of her coffee cup from behind the steel table, red-eyed and bleak looking.

Charlie rushed to meet her, relieved despite his newfound belief that existence was irrelevant.

Bonnie had come through.

“Oh, my God. Thank you,” he said. “I can’t thank you enough for this, Bonnie. I didn’t know who else to call.”

He reached out to hug but suddenly embarrassed, he cut it short and sat.

Bonnie gazed silently at Charlie for a long time, worn out.

“Here’s the deal, Charlie,” she said. “Henri and Julienne have advised police they don’t believe you were involved in an attempted theft. They believe you were forced to open the box by someone else. That’s what they told the cops.”

“Mmm?” Charlie shrugged, detached. “The watch. What happened to the watch?”

“The police have it. Once everything is wrapped up, they’ll give it back to Henri.”

“Oh,” Charlie said, disappointed. “Can I see it?

“Now?”

“Well, yes. It’s not like I can snatch it from police custody, right?”

“No, Charlie, you can’t see it. You shouldn’t have looked into the box in the first place. It’s not yours.”

“I just want to see it, that’s all.”

“Not going to happen, Charlie.”

“But I want to look at it one more time to see if it happens again.”

“If what happens again?”

“I don’t know. Nothing, probably. I don’t know. But there’s something I need to do.”

I can wish Will back, he thought. Mom, too. She had died a sleepless month after the accident. He could fix her and Will both. He could fix all of it.

Bonnie scrunched her face. “Charlie, the God Watch is just a name. It does nothing except tell time in fancy ways. And the one you were carrying isn’t even the original.”

“But I saw.”

“What did you see, Charlie? You’re so hyped up on something, you’re lucky to be alive. You probably downed some pills or some other shit, didn’t you?”

“No drugs. I’m telling you I saw it all. I wasn’t alive but I wasn’t dead either. And everything, all the people and all the worlds that ever were, I touched them all. Everything in existence was my creation. It was like,” he hesitated. “It was like being God.”

Bonnie chuckled. “Yeah, right. And how was it?”

“Lonely.”

She laughed, louder this time. “Vegas has the best shit, doesn’t it?”

Charlie’s face dropped. “I’m not kidding.”

Bonnie slapped his arm. “Charlie, relax. Whatever is knocking around in your head, it will wear off before long.”

Charlie tried again. “I want to see the watch.”

“No. The police are holding it. I imagine Henri isn’t prepared to trust you with it.”

“Just for a second,” Charlie said. “I need to find out.”

“It’s the drugs talking, Charlie. You’re tripping balls. You need to give it time.”

He hadn’t taken drugs, Charlie knew that much. It had to be the watch.

“Let’s go home,” Bonnie said.

Charlie’s options sluiced away. Earlier, he had what he believed were the beginnings of a plan to regain the watch, but those thoughts were gone. He had to trust Bonnie.

“I guess.”

Bonnie and Charlie exited through the back of the police station and climbed into a taxi. Bonnie directed the driver to the hotel where they collected Charlie’s things, then headed for the airport.

“You’re a good shit, Bonnie. Thanks for coming to get me. I don’t have anyone else.”

Bonnie looked out the window. “That makes two of us, Charlie.”