Adjusted for daylight saving time
The cell phone alarm goes off. (Do. Do! Do-do-dee-do! Do. Do! Do-do-dee-do!) I’m lying on my stomach, face mashed into the pillow. It feels as if I've already been half-awake for hours. I reach out to silence the thing: 8:30, it says. And then, too cheerfully: “Adjusted for Daylight Saving Time!” “I know,” I think. “I adjusted you yesterday. Yesterday, when you didn’t bother to adjust yourself, you useless thing. But thanks for the confirmation.” I wonder, for a moment, if this could mean that — but no, my cell phone wouldn’t be that cruel.
The light in the room is strange, too young, but it is, after all, technically earlier than usual. I roll over in bed. No reason to linger here. And so I haul myself out, head to the bathroom, and get ready to face the day. I’m supposed to be to work by 10.
I do all those morning things one does, and at 9:08, by my phone, I step outside. Birds are chirping, and I am bleary. The air feels early — crisper than usual. Everyone headed to the subway is bundled up tight against the cold, half-awake, heads down. I descend to the subway. There’s a smattering of people. Either I just missed a train, or they’re running so regularly that the commuters haven’t had time to accumulate. Excellent. But the Q pulls up, and it’s packed. Strange. Did the people deeper in Brooklyn all oversleep? It’s too early to care.
I step onto the train. It’s shoulder to shoulder all the way to Midtown. I try to peer at people’s watches. They all say different things. At Times Square, a flood of people get off the train. So many people, so many of them running late.
I walk to the coffee cart. “So early!” the lady tells me. “I know,” I say. “It does seem too early. Daylight saving time.” I shrug my shoulders and raise my hands because it seems the thing to do.
I usually get a small coffee, but I decide I need a medium.
I enter the building. A man in a suit precedes me through the security turnstile. And that is all. Odd. There are usually more people here. More people, more casually dressed. The man gets into an elevator — all his own — before I even have time to push a button. I push the button (E, it says). The doors of E bank open immediately, and I step inside. I have the elevator to myself. It goes straight to my floor. I step out and turn the corner. The lights over the first set of cubicles are off, and every desk is empty. I walk past, and the lights, sensing motion, go on overhead.
By now, of course, I already know what has happened. I look at the clock on the first wall: 8:48. I knew, I think, as soon as I woke up. I look at the clock on the next wall: 8:48. I knew, and yet — “Why stay here?” I thought. And so I got to work at 8:48, and sat down at my desk, and began to write.
“Adjusted for daylight saving time.” Twice.
