By Sunday evening, Arthur Bellweather had developed a dangerous new habit confidence. It arrived still, slipping into his posture, uncurling his shoulders, persuading him that maybe, just maybe, he understood how time worked now. He stood in the kitchen preparing regale at a reasonable hour, humming vocally, checking the timepiece not with fear but with mild curiosity. The alarm timepiece rested on the counter, angled just enough to suggest mindfulness, its steady ticking filled with the subdued tolerance of commodity staying for a mistake. “ You’re veritably relaxed, ” the alarm timepiece observed. Arthur smiled. “ I’ve grown. ”

By the third successive morning of promptitude, Arthur Bellweather began to suspect that reality was setting him up for commodity. He woke before the alarm, eyes snapping open at six fifty- eight with the startled alertness of a man who had accidentally wandered into someone differently’s routine. For a moment he lay veritably still, harkening to the apartment

That night arrived with an air of dubitation as if darkness itself had heard rumors about Arthur Bellweather’s bedtime reform and was eager to witness the disaster firsthand. The living room lights were bedimmed to what Linda called “ sleep-friendly air ” and what Arthur called “ the lighting of an interrogation room for tired people. ” The settee had been cleared of its usual archaeological layers of snack wrappers and unlettered correspondence, the TV was out

By the time morning decided to arrive duly, it did so with all the confidence of a cat knocking a glass off a table and pretending it was an accident. The sun crept through the curtains in thin, hypercritical stripes, illuminating the battleground known as Arthur Bellweather’s bedroom, where socks lay like fallen dogfaces, books lolled open in countries of untreated study, and the alarm timepiece sat on the bedside table with the rigid