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I was looking up at the mountain when the watch man brought me back down. I was dreaming about making the climb when he opened his case and I thought it would be nice to own a Rolex Oyster. Maybe Diana would like one. She was already fingering someRolexes and asking me if they were real. “380 pesos,” he said. I offered 200.
He chewed through some tough English and out came 350, his best counteroffer. I fumbled my glasses on and peered intently at the face of the Rolex in my hand. The printing was blurred under the word Rolex. Was it ‘Osterizer?’ On the back there was a poorly stamped ‘Rolex’ in the metal and nothing else. Why was I fascinated with this name when I have always despised brand-name snobbery?
Back home a few years ago a man who lived in the next town, a churchgoing man who had gone to my high school with me, set himself up as an investment counselor. He was a failed student, with little training, a lazy mind, but with a gift for talking smoothly and brilliantly. He dressed well, clothing himself as smoothly as he talked. He had a wife and three daughters, a fine old stone house not far away, and he taught Sunday School. But things went wrong. His wife saw the truth under the smooth cover, and she stopped getting under the covers with him. They split up bitterly and he took millions of his friend’s dollars and his fifteen-year-old daughter and disappeared. In England he took on the name and identity of a duped friend there and lived quietly with his daughter-wife and had two daughters with her. He set himself up as a marriage counselor.
One day his duped friend without a name was dredged up from the sea. He was wearing a Rolex Oyster. On the back of the watch was the unique number stamped on every Rolex. The police used this number to identify him. His last address was the cottage where the smooth-talking marriage counselor lived with his wife-daughter. When they knocked on the door, they discovered a second Ron Platt, this one still alive. His young wife was stuffing gold bars into a garbage bag when they raided the house. He had left the Rolex on his friend’s wrist when he had killed him in a frenzy of fear and panic at being found out. Ironic that he had thrown away this ostentatious sign of success, and that it had led to his ruin.
Now, the watch man smiles and hands me another watch. On the face: Rolex, under that, Oyster. On the back, in fine print, the word ‘Swiss’ among other words, and then a number inscribed. The real thing? But it’s only 350 pesos. Maybe it’s hot. I’m brought up from the depths of my reverie by friendly, familiar voices: Jack and Betty. I’m embarrassed. The watch man’s wares are spread across the sidewalk in his open case. He has opened another bag in his eagerness, fílled with a jumble of watches. I laugh uneasily, holding the watch.
“No, but at that príce, who cares?” jokes Jack.
I hand back the watches and turn away from the watch man. I’m facing unconsciously toward the lake, thinking of an ocean still, joking with Jack. The watch man can sense a change, a catch slipping away. I can hear Diana refusing her watch and handing it back.
“It’s not auténtico,” she is saying. I want to caution her. The watch man is down on his knees, angry, humiliated, his hands fiercely stuffíng his watches back in the bag, then the case. He’s muttering angry things. He’s directing them at Jack, spitting out his words. Jack is talking loudly with me, bantering, but becomes aware of the man’s hate hitting him. I should do something, tell the watch man that it’s not Jack’s fault that we are not buying, but I feel paralyzed by his hate. How can I tell this man that it is all about a fascination I have with getting close to an object that might explain the incestuous, murderous actions of a man far away in prison in England, a man who shared the same space, the same experiences with me back home. Diana and Betty are oblivious, talking loudly. In his stream of rough English, I hear the two words he uses to finish off Jack, the two words that everyone uses to “kill” someone with words. Violent words, spit out, as he walks away. Diana and Betty are safe above the tide of hate that drowns Jack, and paralyzes me.
In the night I practice a phrase in Spanish to speak to the watch man when I see him again: “Escúcheme, el otro hombre no dijo nada contra los relojes.” Even if my Spanish is bad, he should get it. I add to my fantasy speech, “No esta culpable” to try to save Jack from something, some rage that may destroy. But even if I meet him again, I cannot add the long story about my fascination with a man who would do anything for the appearance of wealth and success, my fascination with something in me, a caution in a strange country that turns to cowardice. And a craziness underneath, which could turn to a life on the run, illicit wealth, and danger.
Tossing and turning through troubled sleep, I see my friend in danger. It may be me. An oyster is circling him with arms and hands to strike him. The oyster and I tick away, closer and closer to some decisive moment, to some alarming sea change.
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