Several points are worth mentioning about No Clocks.
The conversation with the Sorceress in No Clocks was actually a series of e-mail exchange a couple of months after the Weather Report scene, but I moved it to the end of Destination Unknown. Chronologically, it occurred around Chapter 11. With Jane having distanced herself, I had set out to find a different confidant-in-high-places but became frustrated at my inability to find one, and I reached out to the Sorceress.
I told her about my Asperger’s diagnosis and the rationale for finding a mentor/work buddy/explainer-of-things among the brokers, and she retorted with the customary two-by-four to the face, which she always used even before I told her about the diagnosis. That’s why I liked her and have worked with her for so long, which makes sense if you think about it.
I wrote No Clocks long before I wrote Work Stations, the opening-scene prologue. I wrote the prologue scene with Carol the psychologist after I decided that Grim Anniversaries couldn’t be the opening scene.
I had the fictionalized opening scene mirror all of the advice the Sorceress gave me, and perfectly bookended Destination Unknown. I really like how it turned out. After I came up with the ‘secondhand on Carol’s clock’ thing, No Clocks became the obvious choice for the title. The song is grinding but bright and ends with a flourish. Very epiloguey, I think.
“Damron, yoou are an idiot. To the brokers, you are an errand boy .”
At the law firm where I worked with Marie (discussed in Chapter 12, Mixed Drinks About Feelings), I became friends with a paralegal at the office who grew up in London. She was a young black woman (to describe her as African-American would be wrong on both counts) and quite fetching, as they say across the pond, and her thick English accent added to the allure. We were wasting time yapping and talking about going out to bars (we were both single at the time), and she said “I don’t go to bars much. I mean, two drinks and I’m anybody’s,” which I thought was the funniest thing I ever heard.2
After I sent out the announcement of the book’s publication, that young woman, now married with a family, was among the first to reach out to congratulate me. We hadn’t spoken in at least 12 years. I pointed her to No Clocks and told her I never forgot that line. She and I had a nice reunion drink a few weeks later.
2 Yeah, yeah, I get it now. She was giving me a flirty invitation, and I totally missed it. What more proof do you need? A great feature of missing flirty invitations is how the fetching invitor then either thinks I’m a clueless dork or a total jerk. Meanwhile I merrily go about my way, unaware of how her impression of me has changed. Much more discussion of this in Gray Rock and beyond.
Best Places To Work! 