The Loudest Clock at the Car Wash

The car wash sits at the end of a slip road. Here the motorway curves away toward the sea. At six in the morning, the lorries already roar past on the bridge above. Their noise falls on the roof like a long, low note that never changes.

Amit has worked there on Saturdays and Sundays since March. He is sixteen, he is saving for a second-hand camera, and he is late again.

He runs down the slip road with his jacket half on. The big doors are open, and the brushes are already turning. Foam drips from the ceiling in slow white strings.

Quentin stands at the first bay with a hose in his hand. He is the same age as Amit, but he looks as if he has been awake for hours. He probably has.

"Forty minutes," Quentin says without turning round. "You missed the whole first lorry."

"I know. I am sorry," Amit says. He reaches for a bucket, because doing something feels better than standing still.

"Don't say sorry to me. Say it to her."

She is the owner, and she is standing in the office window with her arms folded. She does not shout. That is the worst part. She only looks at Amit for a long moment. Then she lifts three fingers, one for each Saturday he has been late.

At the end of the shift she calls him in. The office smells of warm coffee and wet rubber. A small radio plays quietly on the shelf.

"I like you, Amit," she says. "You work hard when you are here. But a car wash opens at six, whether the cleaner is ready or not."

"It won't happen again," Amit says.

"Then it won't." She turns back to her papers. "One more time, and I will have to find someone else."

Amit walks home along the verge with his hands in his pockets. The cars pour past in both directions. Every one of them seems to be going somewhere on time.

The truth is not complicated. He has an alarm on his phone, and he turns it off in his sleep. He does not even remember doing it. Each morning he wakes at seven. The phone is silent beside him, and his stomach is full of cold dread.

On Monday he visits the market behind the station. At the back of a junk stall, he finds the loudest alarm clock he has ever seen. It sits between a broken lamp and a box of buttons. It is round and heavy, with two silver bells on top and a metal hammer between them.

"Does it work?" he asks the stallholder.

"Work?" the man says. "People have complained about it from the next street. That one rings like a fire in a bell factory."

Amit pays four pounds and carries it home like a trophy.

On Friday night he winds it up, sets it for five, and puts it on his bedside table. He goes to sleep feeling like a new person. In the dark, the little hammer ticks softly, almost kindly.

At five o'clock the clock explodes. The noise is enormous. It fills the room, rattles the glass in the window, and drives a pain straight through his skull. Amit sits up, finds the clock with one hand, and presses the button on the back.

The silence is wonderful. He lies down for a moment, only to rest his eyes.

When he opens them again, the sun is on the wall and his phone says ten past seven. He lies there for a long minute, looking at the ceiling. The clock has not failed. He has simply beaten it, the same way he has beaten every other alarm he owns.

This time the owner does not even come out of the office. Quentin finds him at the gate and walks him in without a word. At eleven, Quentin puts a hand on his shoulder.

"You have got to stop fighting it from the bed," Quentin says. "You will always win from the bed."

"What am I supposed to do, sleep on the floor?" Amit says.

"No, but you could put the clock somewhere you cannot reach." Quentin shrugs, as if the idea costs him nothing. "My mum puts hers across the room. She says her feet get angry before her brain does."

Amit thinks about it all afternoon. He thinks about it while he scrubs the wheels of a delivery van. He thinks about it again while he rinses a tall estate car. By the end of the day, he has a plan with three parts.

First, he will go to bed at ten, even though he likes to edit photos late at night. Second, he will carry the clock to the hallway. He will put it on top of the tall bookcase. Third, he will leave a metal cake tin under the bookcase, so that the sound bounces and grows.

On Friday night he follows the plan exactly. It is harder than he expects. His thumb keeps drifting toward the photographs. The flat is quiet in a way that makes him restless. At ten, he switches off the light anyway. He lies in the dark and listens to the lorries far away on the bridge.

At five o'clock the whole flat wakes up.

The noise is worse than before, because now it has a tin to jump on. It crashes through the hallway like a train. A door opens upstairs. Somewhere below, a neighbour bangs on the ceiling with a broom, again and again.

Amit throws off the blanket before he knows what he is doing. He stumbles into the hallway, drags a chair across the floor, and climbs up. The clock is shaking on the shelf, and the silver bells are a blur. He grabs it with both hands and finds the button.

The silence this time is different. He is standing on a chair in his socks, wide awake. His heart is racing and his ears are ringing. There is no soft pillow within reach. There is no wall of sunlight waiting for him.

He splashes cold water on his face, pulls on his work boots, and runs.

The slip road is empty and dark blue when he reaches it. The lorries on the bridge still have their lights on. At the gate, he finds the chain locked and the car wash silent. He sits down on the kerb to wait, breathing hard.

At twenty to six, the owner's small car turns in off the road. She stops, rolls down the window, and looks at him for a very long time.

"Good morning," Amit says.

"You are early," she says.

"I know. I had help." He holds up the clock, which he has carried all the way under his arm. The little hammer is still trembling.

She laughs, a short, surprised sound, and opens the gate. By six o'clock the brushes are turning and the foam is falling. Amit has already rinsed the first lorry. Nobody has to tell him what to do.

Quentin arrives just after, with his jacket zipped to his chin. He stops at the edge of the bay and stares at Amit. Then he looks at the clean lorry, and then at the clock on the shelf.

"Who are you?" Quentin says. "And what have you done with my friend?"

Amit grins and wipes his hands on his apron. Far above, the motorway hums its single note.

"Do you think my neighbours will ever forgive me?" he asks.