Page 8 of Fated

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If the caseof a watch is its body, then the dial is its face. We humans gaze into the luminous hand-enameled surface, mesmerized by the fragile metal disk that translates the secrets of the hundreds of mechanisms beneath it into a simple message: 11 a.m. or 3 p.m. or Monday or the twelfth of June.

When the universe of wheels, pinions, levers, and springs inside is in working order, then the dial translates the watch’s secrets into a language we can all learn to read.

Even a complicated timepiece, requiring three times more parts than the simple self-winding caliber, can be read by a child.

When a watch hand points to a baguette diamond applique number, you know, for example, that it’s three o’clock. A watch in working order doesn’t lie.

Perhaps that’s why for months after Christmas Eve my brother, Max, the employees at Abry, even Mila, watched my face as if they could read me as easily as a watch.

Daniel’s gaze roamed over me, continuously on edge, searching for signs of fatigue or pain. Max watched me with a hawklike intensity, as if he was afraid I’d disappear on him. Even Mila would startle and turn to me quickly, as if she had to check on me every few minutes to make certain I was okay.

Their concern was worse than being shot.

So I gave them all a face as brightly polished and luminous as a cream-buffed dial, hand-enameled in opal and pink, hand-set with diamonds and eighteen-karat rose gold.

There’s a technique we use at Abry called guilloché. Lathes engrave grooves that are three hundredths of a millimeter deep, forming a patina of geometric patterns that catches the sunlight and reflects it back in brilliant rays. I imagine my smile in guilloché, reflecting all the light back into the world.

And when I smile at them they all relax, as if like a watch my smile accurately reflects the heart of me.

A dial at Abry can take up to two hundred intricate operations to create, from blanking the dial to milling and guilloché to electroplating and varnishing. I only required two operations, which I think shows great restraint on my part.

The gunshot hit my spleen and, being a pseudo-vestigial organ, it had no apparent purpose other than to cushion the rest of me from a bullet.

I was up and walking within a week and back at my desk after two weeks. I learned years ago that the best way to deal with things you don’t want to think about is to keep so busy you don’t have time to think at all.

So I crammed my schedule, filling it daily from 5 a.m. until midnight. So even if I wanted to ponder being shot in the middle of my Christmas Eve Gala, I didn’t have time—unless I penciled it in.

Days look like this:

5 a.m.–6 a.m. Cardio.

6 a.m.–6:30 a.m. Shower, dress.

6:30 a.m.–7 a.m. Mila up, dressed, breakfast.

7 a.m. Mila to school.

7:33 a.m. Arrive at Abry HQ.

It goes on from there, broken into fifteen-minute segments, including meetings with the casemaking production team for cases and bracelets, initiatives with post-production managers, a search for a new industrial facility for components production, meetings with the quality control team, updates on new technologies/tools/productions in our sphere, data on reserves and revenue, focus on clean air technologies for the white rooms, etcetera, etcetera. Until:

6 p.m. Home, dinner with Mila, homework help, soccer practice.

8 p.m. Mila to bed.

8:30 p.m. Back to work until I collapse into bed at midnight.

Some days Max or Daniel come by for dinner or a night out. The point is that I stay so busy I don’t have time to think, and at night I’m so tired I don’t dream.

Unfortunately, this strategy doesn’t always work, and my dreams are haunted by a woman with a blurred face urgently repeating, “Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve.”

I always waking up gasping and clutching my chest. It feels as if I’ve been plunged under a giant violent ocean wave and I can’t break through the surface to find air.

Luckily, though, no one knows I dream about the woman or that I dread the mention of Christmas.

The woman was never found. No one even knows who she was. She disappeared in the chaos after she shot me. If I didn’t have the nightmares and the raised sunburst scar on my abdomen, I’d almost believe she never existed.

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