Watched

            by Nate Levin

 

            The brown wood of the pier gave a clunking noise as Ted planted his feet at the end. It was a cold, foggy day in the East Bay, and mist hung in the air as if it were purposely obstructing his vision. The sharp smell of salt and the lapping sound of the water softly hitting the legs of the pier only added to the dreary effect.

            The body of a man lay drifting in the cold water only a few feet below. It was still fully clothed, and its face was bloody with the haunting façade of death. On the surface of the water, what must have been the man’s overcoat floated with the tide, and on top of it lay a golden watch. Ted slowly got down on his knees and, reaching through the picket fence, he snatched the watch up with his right hand. He turned it over and over in his delicate fingers, finally placing the trinket in his pocket. It was over now, he thought. It was all over.

 

            Two days earlier, nine-o-clock on a Friday evening, Ted sat on a green bench in the park across from his house, a spot where he had started to spend more time recently. It had been a tough day at work, and despite the cold weather, Ted had decided to go outside and smell the wintry fresh, nighttime air. He did a quick check to make sure that there was no one else was in the park – there were criminals out at this time of night. As he sat back to look up at the stars, he realized how hectic this last year had been. In January he had been promoted to Chief Operating Officer of the sales division at the Butler G-U-M toothbrush company, a position that he had worked long and hard to achieve. Then, only one month later his wife Sarah, while driving back from a spear fishing trip, had mysteriously crashed on a nearly empty freeway. She had been his only family and his only love, someone to whom he could always turn to for help. But now he was all alone, destined to solitude and boredom. Over time, his mind slowly deteriorated until he began to realize that life wasn’t worth living anymore. But as a Jew, his past had taught him to always believe that the Lord is watching over you. Yeah right, he thought.

            The chilly air bit his cheeks, and the trees rustled behind him. The park was relatively small, surrounded by a mesh fence, and consisted of a sandbox in the center filled with broken plastic toys. Three green picnic tables lay sedentary on the cement, chained to the short black fence. Occasionally a low-rider would whiz by, shaking the tree leaves with the deafening sound of its oversized subwoofer, but aside from outdoor noises, the park always seemed rather dull. Tonight however, as Ted scanned the park with his eyes, he noticed the glint of metal. He stood up, wrapped his arms around his chest, and walked over to the bench next to him where what looked like a golden watch lay on the green planks of wood. Ted cautiously looked around to make sure no one was watching and picked up the watch. It was definitely made from real gold, he could tell that from the watch’s weight. TAG Heuer was imprinted on the back. The platinum hands methodically twitched around the diamond numbers, but he realized that the date was off – by two full days. Ted moved under the buzz of a nearby streetlamp to get an even closer look. In tiny jade lettering inscribed between the XII and the minute hand, he could barely make out a series of numbers. Two. Three. Zero. Five. Eight. Nine. Nine. Three. Four. Eight. Zero. Ted read them over and over again, mystified about what they could possibly mean. He decided to split the combination up. The first four numbers were Two Three Zero Five. Two Three Zero Five, he thought, Two Three Zero Five. It hit him like a box of cards. Could it really be just a coincidence? No. February 3^rd, 2005 was the day that his wife had passed away.

            Then someone touched him on the back.

            “Dude, Ted! What are you doing here on a Friday?”  Ted spun around, stuck the watch into his pocket, and stood face-to-face with his friendly neighbor and business partner, Jack. Jack wore a huge grin, obviously glad to see him. Jack was German, or at least his father was, and he spoke with the slight hint of an accent. Ted tried to block the watch from intruding on his thoughts, and gave a rather meek smile in return.

            “I was just taking a breather after sitting in the office all day. My new position is tough. What about you?”

            “I’ve got some crazy rat infestation so I was heading up the street to buy some rat poison. You were here in the park all alone. I thought that you would be at a bar with some friends or having dinner with your wife… Shit. I’m so sorry man, I wasn’t thinking.”

            “It’s alright,” Ted replied. There was an awkward silence.

            “I better get going. See you around.” Jack opened the gate in the black toddler-sized fence that surrounded the park and headed away. Jack lived three houses down from Ted, and the size of his house was three times as large. Suddenly, an icy breeze blew up Ted’s sleeves, causing him to jump. He dug his hands into his pockets and left through the same gate five minutes later. 

 

            His old Victorian house seemed dark, musty, and didn’t provide much more warmth than the outside. Ted tried eating a bowl of Quaker Oats cereal, but the empty chair beside him seemed to ruin his appetite yet again. Everything has grown so dismal, Ted thought. My life is the biggest waste. He stood up and placed his hands on the back of the empty chair, staring down at the seat as if someone were actually there. Then, all of a sudden, he thought he heard a scratching noise under his floor. It’s nothing, he thought, just the roaches.

            Upstairs he tucked himself under Sarah’s quilt, leaving yet another soggy bowl on the kitchen counter. From the spot where his head lay on his pillow, he could see lights of Jack’s house alive with festivities behind drawn curtains. The golden watch lay safely wrapped up in a red handkerchief on the side of the bed.

           

            Someone was trying to open the window to his bedroom. He could hear it rattling as if it were about to slide open. The man’s face was pressed against the frosty glass, and the glint of a knife shone in the moonlight. The man looked strikingly like his neighbor Jack. He could hear the window creaking. Then silence. BAM! His door slammed shut.

 

            Ted catapulted out of bed and grabbed his alarm clock, brandishing it in his left hand, while he held his pillow as a shield in his right hand. Goddamnit, Ted thought when he looked around his empty room, it was the wind again. The odd shape of his neighbors’ homes created a type of wind tunnel through his property which got out of hand in the winter months.

            After showering and shaving, he spent the rest of the morning examining the watch. Why would someone want to plant a golden watch for him with the date of his wife’s death inscribed on the pearl backing? He typed the name of the watch TAG Heuer Medalia into the Google search bar on his computer. A list of blue links popped up and he clicked on the first one.

            The Medalia is an 18-carrot pure gold watch with silver hands, a diamond rim, and a pearl backing. It is said to be the most expensive watch that TAG Heuer ever put through production. Constructed in a special manufacturing plant in Hamburg, Germany, it is supposedly built strictly by hand. The owner’s…

            “DING – DONG!” The doorbell rang. Ted wanted to read the rest later so he pressed command-print. Carefully opening the door to his house, Ted was taken aback by the sight of Jack holding a long spear. He began to close the door but Jack forced it open and stepped inside. “It’s time,” he said.

            “For what?” Ted shivered in fear.

            “What do you mean ‘for what’? Tomorrow is the one day out of the year when we go spear fishing at the Berkeley Pier.”

            “Oh yeah. Sorry, I forgot.” Ted loosened up a bit when he realized that he wasn’t about to be killed. He motioned toward the giant spear. “Is that new?”

            “I thought you would never ask. Yeah, it just came in the mail from Germany today. It’s amazingly lightweight. ” Ted thought that the logo on the side looked an awful lot like a swastika. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow morning at eleven o’clock. Don’t forget. It’s been a while since I last killed. For food.” Jack chuckled, and holding his giant spear, headed out the door and strolled away. How odd, Ted thought. Jack always seemed to surprise him when he was handling the watch.

 

            That night Ted thought over the information about the Medalia that he had read earlier. Nothing made sense. It didn’t seem to help him out with his mystery. But then something clicked in his brain. Germany was the country that someone he knew had come from. Not just anyone, but Jack. Ted’s eyes lit up. Jack was well off; he could have afforded a watch like this. All he had to do was pay someone to inscribe the date of his wife’s death with a few other random numbers, as if in a secret code, on the pearl backing. The anger built up inside him. His wife had died all too mysteriously; in fact, it had been around this time last year. Ever since, Jack had been surprising him when he least expected it. Those Germans are crazy, he thought. Then a new idea struck him. Ted knew that Neo-Nazi’s still existed in various parts of the world, but he never thought that his long-time neighbor might be one. Then it would make sense why he had been stalking him. Ted’s face foamed with rage. The death of his wife, the spear-fishing trip tomorrow – it was almost too obvious. The date on the watch had been set to Sunday when he had found it. That was tomorrow.

                       

            It was early morning, and the mist was denser than ever. Jack honked his horn three times and finally Ted emerged from his house, threw his spear into the trunk, and climbed into the passenger seat. “Hey man,” Jack said in a rather dark tone.

CLICK. The door locks snapped into place.

            Ten minutes later, Ted and Jack grabbed their spears and headed up the Berkeley pier. “Hey, it says no fishing,” Jack laughed. At the end of the pier, Jack took a handful of bait from his pocket and tossed it into the water. Ted tried to do the same, but while pulling it out of his pocket, he caught the edge of the watch and it fell out onto the pier. Jack heard the noise and turned around.

            “What’s that?” Jack asked, bending down to pick it up. He examined it for a second, and then suddenly his face changed colors. “Hey, this look’s like –“

            He didn’t even have time to notice Ted’s quick hand movements before the shaft of his spear stuck halfway out of Jack’s belly. Blood spilled out from the man’s wound as he slowly stumbled backwards off the edge of the pier. Ted got down on his knees. While reaching through the picket fence, he snatched the watch up with his right hand. He turned it over and over in his delicate fingers, finally placing the trinket in his pocket. It was over now, he thought. It was all over.

 

            Back at home, before entering the house, Ted made sure that there were no suspicious cars nearby which had followed him. He walked over to the kitchen, but on the way, the flashing light of the printer reminded him that he hadn’t finished reading about the watch. Besides, it was his now. Ted boiled himself a cup of tea and ate a full meal for the first time in over a year. Then he sat down on his couch and resumed from where he had left off.

            Constructed in a special manufacturing plant in Hamburg, Germany, it is supposedly built strictly by hand. The owner’s personal phone number is inscribed on every model below the diamond twelve.

            Ted read it again. The owner’s personal phone number is inscribed on every model below the diamond twelve. Unbelievable. This must have been a different watch, he thought. He picked up the cordless phone and dug his hand into his pocket, pulling out the golden trinket. Frantically, he punched the number below the XII onto the keypad. Two. Three. Zero. Five. Eight. Nine. Nine. Three. Four. Eight. Zero.

            The phone on the other end rang, rang, rang, rang, and rang. All of a sudden he recognized the pre-recorded voice on an answering machine.  “Sie haben das Haus von Jean Unchenstein erreicht. Lassen Sie bitte eine Meldung.” Over the five-year period that Ted had known Jack, not once had his answering machine sounded like this. In fact, Ted was almost sure that Jack didn’t even speak German.