I was, in typical fashion, late for my own death. This had become something of a habit of mine or, let’s say, a defining personality trait. But it's not how I started. I was born right on time, nine months from conception down to the very second. I walked at one, talked at two, and by three had mastered the complexities of indoor plumbing. I never once missed the school bus, even that Monday one October when the driver forgot to fall back. I can’t tell you how I did it. It just seemed I was made to be pathologically punctual.

My parents, on the other hand, were not. They were always late. They didn’t meet until their forties, had me in their fifties, and arrived everywhere thirty minutes behind schedule. They tried little tricks like setting their clocks ahead, or having friends and family extend invitations skewed accordingly, but it never worked. Watching them shout into phones they were only ten minutes away while cutting themselves shaving or burning themselves with sloshed coffee even brought on a period of angst-ridden teenage rebellion where I did everything in my power to be early. It didn’t last long.

In my third year of college I was a second late for my Pchem lecture. The professor was two minutes late and the rest of the class stumbled in over the next seven so it went unnoticed. By everyone else. I was flabbergasted. Where could I have lost that second? Was it in the six minutes and forty-three seconds I needed to shower or in the two minutes and eight seconds I needed to brush my teeth? I couldn’t have lost it in the three seconds I needed to pull out a pair of pants and the one and a half I used to put them on. I couldn’t concentrate on the lecture—something about entropy—as my mind spun from one mismanaged time scenario to another. Had I given my reflection in the bathroom mirror a final glance for more than two seconds? Or lost precious time picking up that sock and putting it in the hamper? And didn’t I always account for inevitabilities like that by slipping on Crocs instead of sneakers?

Back in my dorm room I walked through my morning again, second by second, keeping track of the time so I knew how much to shave off of lunch. But try as I might I could not figure out where that precious second went. Imagine my horror when I was a second late for my study group that afternoon, and again for dinner, and again for my bed. And it seemed I was even a second behind in any conversations I had, the other party starting to speak again just as I answered. So with a shaking hand I set my alarm clock a full second forward and lay in the dark with a sense of dread. It was not unfounded. The next morning I woke up one second late.

I did what I could. I shortened my morning routine, set all my devices ahead, and tried to hide my shameful secret from my classmates and professors by pretending to ponder deeply before I spoke. At first they noticed nothing but slowly, surely, a kind of sloth seeped in like sewage from a sluggish pipe. By the end of my senior year I was almost five seconds behind and unable to hide it any longer. I laughed at the wrong time, continued conversations after they’d died, and gave emotional support when everyone else had moved on. Driving became impossible and crossing the street death-defying. I was in a state of constant delay: by the time I reached for the proverbial ball it lay yards behind me. I was sent to an audiologist, then an ophthalmologist, then a neurologist. Finally I saw a psychiatrist.

After the second session I was diagnosed with conversion disorder. But there was nothing about my former punctilious self I wanted to convert! I protested but the doctor had already left the room. Soon after my parents sent me away to a wilderness retreat. “A graduation present,” they said, and about five seconds later, even though I knew they were lying, I thanked them.

The wilderness retreat was a map, compass, sleeping bag, and tent all contained in an awkward backpack a long-haired guy named Steve gave me before dropping me off in the middle of the Adirondacks. “Everything you need is right here,” he said and spun around with his arms outstretched. Five beats later I asked him about food, but he’d already driven off. It was on my third day in the woods, starved, brush-tattered, tick-ridden and tired, that I realized it wasn’t all the smart phones, smart watches, and regular watches that had let me down. And it wasn’t my internal clock either. Away from any schedules or time keeping devices, even through the shaking chills and wracking hunger, I knew my perfect intrinsic sense of time was intact. I wasn’t late. It was the world that was faster.

I tried to explain this to my parents after my rescue when they rushed into my hospital room thirty minutes later than the nurses told me to expect. “I’m like the beam of light in a moving train. You know, relativity. And you’re watching me, from the outside,” I said.

“Oh honey, you rest now,” my mother said. “We have plenty of time to talk about this later. Here, eat more of this soup. It’s from Posen’s, your favorite. That’s why we’re so late. Had to drive out of the way to pick it up. We can’t believe this happened to you!”

“The website said restorative. Restorative!” my father said. “That quack recommended them. Or someone like them. The original place was filled up. How were we to know! That guy Steve seemed nice enough. Certainly enthusiastic. We just thought you needed a break.”

“From all the stress,” my mother said. “You’ve always been so hard on yourself, honey. Our little perfectionist. We used to call you Big Ben, remember? Always on—”

“Listen,” I said. “I want to talk about this now. It’s really important. I know what’s wrong. And it isn’t me. I’m exactly the same. I’m still the same beam of light, traveling from the ceiling to the floor. But to you it looks like I’m traveling farther, because you’re seeing me from the outside and I’m moving and you’re standing still. Or are you moving and I’m standing still? Wait—”

“Don’t worry about that now,” my father said and my parents nervously looked at each other. “You just eat that soup and rest. After you heal up you’re coming right back home with us for a while. We know what the job market is like out there and the pressure you kids are putting yourselves under today. We’re going to get you through this thing together. Okay? I could just kill that idiot Steve! Do you know they told us that by the time they found you, you were so dehydrated you probably would have died in another five seconds?”

Well, they were wrong about that.

 ✷

My parents did try, I’ll say that, but I continued to fall behind. Soon I communicated only by text so the delay seemed more built-in. I began to take my meals in my room. Who wants to sit and eat with people who finish and then watch you and cry? When I finally found a job with a government agency customer service line—my skill set being just what they needed—I moved out. 

A week later my parents died when a tsunami hit the coastal town where they were vacationing with only a twenty-five-minute warning. Why couldn’t it have been at least thirty? I tried to ask that question at the funeral but by the time I got up to speak everyone was already filing out of the chapel. No one noticed. Perhaps slowness does look like sadness. As I still thanked an empty room for coming, the sound of car engines firing up in the parking lot outside, I realized I was truly alone in the world.

But not for long. A few months later I met someone while waiting for the elevator in my apartment building. I was always waiting for the elevator. There’d be the inevitable shouts of “Are you coming?”, which I always was, and then the metallic shush of the doors closing as I finally arrived. Eventually I got wise and just took the stairs, but before then I met Barbara. She’d just missed the elevator too, and when it came back around she jammed her foot between the closing doors to keep it open for me. Then she waited, heel in toe out, as the doors spasmed back and forth, until I was on.

She wore rose gold scrubs and a badge from Quiet Acres nursing home that kept up its pendulum swing even after we’d been standing side by side for a while. It made a very slight brushing sound punctuated by a click that felt professional and reassuring. I liked her immediately. She was about my age, ambitious, putting herself through nursing school as a certified nursing assistant, and loved to take on big projects. I turned out to be one. She bought an old-fashioned watch just so she could set it back and tried slowing her pace to match mine.

“It’s so refreshing,” she said that first Sunday as we strolled through our neighborhood park. “Everyone should live like this. Take time to really smell the roses, you know?” It was the wrong season for roses but there was a nice patch of tulips coming up on our right. By the time I pointed them out though Barbara had already walked on.

“I love really taking my time to eat,” she said later that week as we sat eating Chinese takeout in my kitchen. “Everyone’s always in such a rush, ready to get on to the next thing. No one really dines anymore, appreciates the food before them!” She sat with me through the whole meal, even after the beef and broccoli had transformed into a cold fat jello and the rice had dried out and hardened. Next we tried salads and sandwiches and cold summer soups, but nothing stayed appetizing as it continued to sit. Within a month we went back to eating alone.

The bedroom was worse. My timing was all off. As ardent as our texting was during the day our nighttime endeavors consistently fell short. At first her patience was indefatigable. “What’s the rush?” she said. But by month four she stared at the ceiling and swore.

“Look,” she said. “I deserve better than this. If you really care about me then you have to try harder. I’ve changed everything in my life to accommodate you and you’ve done nothing in return. In fact, you’re getting worse.”

This was true, as I’d warned her.

  “If you love me,” she said, “you’ll change.”

I wanted to. But I couldn’t. So after another month she split. It hurt, because not only did I love her, I loved having someone to love. 

After Barbara, life seemed to weld together so that each day stretched out into the ones before it in an endless onslaught of time I could not catch. Acquaintances aged rapidly and even my building seemed to be degrading before my eyes. Soon the government let me know I could retire with my full pension but I didn’t look a day over thirty. I started to spend more time sitting outside in the park where the crocuses budding through the last spring snow, or the sun-blistered boughs of summer, or the rustling leaves of fall, or the stark sky of winter made more sense than the faces and buildings crumbling around me. It was during one of those long days in the park I first met Death.

He was, surprisingly, beautiful. Long and dark, with almond eyes and glacial cheeks, he had the kind of look that took your breath away. He scowled down at me on my bench.

“You’re not eighty-seven,” he said. 

I couldn’t really say if I was or wasn’t. I’d long ago lost track of the years.

“What’s going on here? Is this a joke?” Death didn’t look accustomed to being wrong. His lithe form twitched in irritation and he folded his graceful arms. “Now you listen,” he said. “I’m never late so I can’t stand around all day and try to get to the bottom of this. You were due to come with me seven days and fourteen hours and fifty-three minutes and twenty-six seconds past your eighty-seventh birthday, which was one second ago. You’re obviously not ready. But don’t you worry. I’ll be back.”

Of course I wasn’t ready then either. Or the next time. Or the next. But I didn’t mind my continual encounters with Death. He wasn’t just a pretty face. We had a lot in common. We both believed in the inviolate power of time even as the universe continued to prove us wrong. We loved black raspberry ice cream with peanut butter topping and how fat squirrels looked in the cold. He was charming and affectionate and it was only natural that our relationship progressed. After all, who else was able to hang around long enough in his presence to even complete a conversation? Unlike Barbara, Death seemed willing to meet me where I was. At least for a while.

Finally, or inevitably, even Death couldn’t wait.

“It’s just that I’m so busy,” he explained one cloudy spring day when the wind blew winter’s leftover grit in our faces. “It’s impossible with how things are scheduled now. Even with all the creative rearranging. I can’t make up the time on the back end and things are starting to fall through the cracks. A woman in Crete just made it to her 114th birthday! If this keeps up you people will think you can live forever. But, I promise, when I can make time, I’ll find you. And we’ll always have seven days and fourteen hours and fifty-three minutes and twenty-six seconds past your eight-seventh.”

But I’m no fool. How could Death love me then, wrinkled and wizened and wasted with age? Beauty was fleeting; it fled all around me. My apartment building was condemned; my last acquaintance died of advanced age; I drifted to a new building, a new park. The seasons remained, an anchor, as faces and styles and designs disappeared only to reappear an age later, refreshed and renewed. I missed the company of Death, but I found solace in eating peanutty sundaes and watching cold, fat squirrels until even those things no longer existed.

I saw Death again, a thousand years later, or so, across a crowded corridor in the spacecraft I called home. He seemed to be heading towards me, the same agile stride, the same striking face, and with a shock I realized I might have finally caught up. Hadn’t my skin turned ashen and my face fallen and my spine curved like a hook? Still I straightened the best I could and patted down the remaining wisps of my hair. But Death passed me by, without a glance, and walked on towards the Schrodinger Pod that exploded a minute later with half of existing humanity inside. Later historians would say it was an intentional culling, resources being low, but at the time it felt too personal for such cold rationalization. How could so many go while I still remained?

So now I sit, in a new park, on the new planet, that is our new home. The air is pink, the ground is blue, and thin orange stalks reach up into the sky like psychedelic weeds. There are no seasons, just switches from stillness to roaring surges of dust and back again. Everything familiar is long gone. Worst yet, the days stretch like weeks and the months are years.

Somewhere, in the future, is seven days and fourteen hours and fifty-three minutes and twenty-six seconds past my eight-seventh birthday. I wait.

And hope.