The Shut-In Detective and the Case of the Missing Minutes

So they’re just gone, huh? No cops on their tails or vengeful unpaid debts but just gone for nothing, good for nothing, just left. But good enough to be found again, like mislaid petty change. You got the right cat for a stake-out, don’t worry, and the fridge is even nearby. Poi-fect.

So we assessed. Not you, me, my ass sitting to assess but (on the subject) you have a fine one too. No, assess. No short ride either but a 24-hour assessing ass, full of coffee and potato chips and stealth. Yes, 24. Minutes, seconds, moments—sneaky devils are hard to pin down. Whoever said that a stitch in time saves nine should have stitched them down better. I tell you, the ticking of that instrument of eternal vigilance is diligent as grass growing and just as entertaining. And for something so regular, it sure does drift through the ear and get lost until you’re not sure if you’ve seen or not or heard or not or dreamed or not or how much of thing you are trying to track has drained away as you found yourself contemplating the uneven drip of the kitchen faucet.

Your friend, the one you suggested might help? Turned out to be quite a lead, quite informative with her little beep and the “at the tone, the time will be…” coded talk. Thanks for her number. I synchronized and waited.

Six hours. I thought you’d lost your marbles since it seemed you weren’t losing anything at all. Twelve and I saw one minute, one after the figure that sexy little stool pigeon on the phone told me. I checked it twice, Doll, and sure enough—one minute and about thirty seconds thrown it to boot. I looked real close at that tiny hand and yup, there were thirty to boot.

But ninety seconds ain’t much to scoff at. Could be a coincidence, right? So eighteen hours rolls around—more than two minutes missing—and I began to see why you called me in on this one. Such a subtle acquaintance is time but one that we rotate everything around, a keystone for the building of our everydays and something to hang our goals on, to compare them with. And this dupe was stealing it from you subtly, dripping it away. Why? Out of forgetfulness? Vengeance? How far up did this cover-up go? Two minutes and fifteen seconds pocketed by the perfidious pilferer. 135 seconds of life sucked away. I began to doubt if this stoolie friend of yours sang the truth. How long you known her and who’s she know and who knows her, and all that jazz. She’s tied up in this time game somehow and who is to know who to trust?

And the big twenty four came. One rule still applied—time did still march on, even if it was missing a few steps along the way—and the grand lost total ran to three. Three minutes. Now three may not seem like a great deal. One, two, three. Peanuts. But let me put the problem into a scale you can understand. That’s three minutes a day, 0.75 seconds an hour. So you just had 2 ½ commercials chopped out of your primetime reality show and how will you know what chocolate snack to crave or what new movie the latest A-list, B actor is in? You won’t, that’s how. Three minutes a day. That means every month, you will lose 1.4 hours (defining “month” to be a set of four weeks of 28 consecutive days instead of some stupid 30 days has September or leap year February crappola). That’s half a good book of time or three batches of cookies. And every year that’s more than eighteen hours, one more hangover you won’t have time to recoup from. Two nights of sleep you won’t get. One season of Dawson’s Creek you just won’t get back.

It’s a backstabber, ma’am, plain and simple, and drip drip goes your blood between your shoulder blades and between the cracks in the floor. And I hate to say it, but I don’t know what to do with that one. This conspiracy runs deep, way too far up the flag pole to be poking your stick at that anthill. Dick is speechless, adviceless. Dick feels powerless. The only thing I can recommend, only one thing to plug that drain in your soul. Buy a new clock, Sweet ‘Art.