Too Much Love

Ian discovers that everything is temporary, even when it seems eternal

Photo by Christopher Alvarenga on Unsplash

“Sir, you have to remove your watch, put it on the tray, and go through again.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Ian said. He shifted his gaze to the red light above him. He figured he must have left some coins in his pocket. Or possibly had forgotten to take out his keys. Or…the metal Amex card in my wallet! It had triggered a metal detector once before.

“It’s my wallet. There’s a metal credit card inside. Whose brilliant idea was that, to make a metal credit card?”

“Your watch, sir,” the uniformed TSA agent repeated, pointing to Ian’s wrist. “You must remove it. Your wallet, too, if it’s still in your pocket. All metal goes into the tray.” She shot Ian a look as if to say, You should know that.

“I can’t take my watch off. It’s valuable, rare, and of great sentimental value. It belonged to my grandfather, and I would feel terrible if anything happened to it.” Ian nodded, hoping the TSA agent would nod back.

“Please remove your watch, put it on a tray, and proceed through the metal detector again, sir.” The TSA agent tapped her foot with foreboding.

“I can’t,” Ian insisted. He’d stepped back and to the side so he didn’t hold up the security line while he pleaded his case. 

Lucy stood behind him with her arms folded across her chest and her face filled with fury.

The TSA agent narrowed her eyes as if she were about to discharge a deadly laser beam. 

Ian glanced at Lucy and then turned back to the agent, having decided he preferred the agent’s face to his girlfriend’s.

“Sir, I’ll ask you one more time. Please remove your wristwatch, put it in the tray, where it will be safe and secure, and proceed through the metal detector again.” The agent had stopped tapping her foot. 

Ian shook his head for five seconds. “No, sorry.”

“Then I’m sorry, sir. You can’t fly.” She beckoned toward the carry-on-laden passengers behind Ian and Lucy. “Next!”

Ian sighed notes of defeat. “Okay. No problem.” He hoisted his backpack off the tray, pivoted, and said to Lucy, “Let’s go, babe. We’re not traveling today.”

The hubbub of a hundred voices silenced when Lucy shouted, “Are you kidding me?” She stomped, a thunderclap that echoed across the terminal. “Just take off your watch, Ian, and let’s go to Greece.”

“I’m sorry.” 

“You and your damn watch. You never take it off. Not for the shower. Not when we have sex.” Lucy shouted the last sentence at an even higher volume.

The TSA agent stepped between the couple. “You two will leave now, or I will call the airport police.” She added in a hushed voice, “I’m in a good mood today because I won the instant lottery yesterday, which is the only reason I haven’t already called the police.” She flicked her hand. “Git. Scoot. Now.”

“We have to go, Lucy. I am really sorry.”

“You’re out of your friggin mind. We’ll talk about this later.” Ian reached for her hand, but Lucy swatted it away, making a smaller but still audible thunderclap.

Except for telling the taxi driver their address, they rode back from the airport in frostbitten silence. 

Ian dropped his keys on the front hall table, which sounded like breaking glass.

“I’m sorry we’re not going to Greece. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.” Ian shuffled along their apartment floor. 

Lucy mumbled, "Make it up to me. How? By taking me to a Greek restaurant? Lucy plopped onto the couch and wiped her eyes with the back of her palm. She rummaged through her bag, found a pack of tissues, and blew her nose. Wavy lines, like on a beach after the tide had come in and out a hundred times, covered her forehead. Her chest heaved as she breathed.

A low rumble of traffic wafted from the street into their apartment. A siren faded into the night. 

Lucy balled her hand into a fist and struck the glass coffee table. "I'm beyond angry with you." 

Ian sat beside her and made himself small. 

“We have to talk about your problem,” Lucy said. “We’re going to talk about this, as much as I hate you now, as much as I don’t want to talk to you ever again, and as much as I don’t want to be in the apartment with you.” Lucy paused. “Or even in the same state.”

“I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“That’s barely a start. We should be sleeping in Greece with a view of the Mediterranean, but we’re not, and it’s entirely your fault.”

“I’m tired,” Ian said. “I’m going to bed.” He went to stand, but Lucy grabbed the back of his pants leg and pulled him down. 

“You’re not going anywhere,” she said. “Not until we have this conversation. We had a nice vacation on Lefkada ahead of us, and you ruined it. For what? Because of your stupid watch obsession? Because you can’t bear to ever take off that—”

“J.W. Benson trench watch.”

“—whatever. You can’t take off your Rolex wannabe. Whoever heard of J.W. Benson, anyway?”

“J.W. Benson was a British jeweler and watchmaker who made exquisite timepieces in the early twentieth century. The watches were instrumental in World War I because they allowed coordinated and precise maneuvers and artillery attacks. Officers especially liked J.W. Benson because—”

“Shut up, Ian. I’m talking and you’re going to listen.”

“Okay.” Ian slid his fingers over the watch's crystal. 

His trench watch, an officer’s watch, was a last-minute purchase from a pawn shop the day before he left for war. Though familiar with everything and everyone in his neighborhood, Ian hadn’t seen that Brompton Road shop before. When he stepped inside, dust stung his eyes and filled his nose, causing an endless cascade of sneezes. Even over his sneezing, Ian heard the watch’s crisp, melodic tick-tick, which drew him to it like a snake to a charmer's pungi. 

The watch, with its bold Arabic numerals, cathedral-shaped hands, white-enamel dial, and bulbous silver case, would be an off-to-war present to himself, perhaps his last purchase on Earth. 

The watch had ticked ceaselessly for over a century. The oils should have congealed, the gears and springs should have worn down, the crown should have snapped off, the crystal should have scratched, and the mainspring should have broken. But they hadn’t. Water from rain, showers, and baths didn’t harm the watch. The J.W. Benson existed in a realm that did not obey physics’ rules.

“This is stupid and pointless. Your OCD kept us from the vacation we’d planned for a year. How could you? You need help, Ian. Serious, immediate help. You wear your watch all the time. I used to think you looked cute wearing a watch naked, but I don’t anymore. It’s abnormal. You’ve got to see a doctor before you get worse.”

Lucy slid to Ian on the couch and intertwined her fingers with his. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m madder at you than I’ve ever been. But I want you fixed. You must see a doctor. Even you know it’s bizarre to cancel a trip because of a watch. You see that, don’t you, Ian? Even through the fog of your obsessive-compulsive disorder, you see that. Promise me you’ll call one tomorrow and deal with this.” 

“Yeah,” was all Ian could say. “I will.”

Lucy leaned against him, mustering enough satisfaction to smile halfway. “You promise me you’ll devote tomorrow to finding a shrink who can cure you?”

“Yeah,” Ian lied again.

Tell her! Just tell her the truth. You love her, she loves you. She’ll accept you for who you are. If you don’t do it now, you never will.

“Lucy…”

“Yes?”

“I—I’ll call a doctor tomorrow.”

Ian recalled the afternoon of June 28, 1916, exactly two years after the Great War had begun. He had been British then, with a thick English accent and a big red mustache, one of four million British men in service of queen and country. A captain in the British Expeditionary Force, Ian had been leading his troops through a landscape in Germany that looked as if it had been dredged from the bottom of the ocean. Thick and wet, the muddy ground tried to suck his boots off with every step. The earth reeked of decay, and Ian was certain the corpses of soldiers who had preceded him filled the ground all the way to the center of the Earth. 

The bullet that entered his chest didn’t surprise him. For two months, he had been expecting a lead projectile to end his life, as it had ended the lives of so many of his friends. He was prepared to join them.

Ian screamed as the bullet tore through his body. 

But he didn’t die. 

He unbuttoned his uniform, slipped his hand under the thick wool jacket, and pressed his fingertips to the bullet hole above his heart. There was no mistaking what had happened—Ian had touched the bloody holes of a dozen other soldiers in the moments before they died. Instead of gushing blood, Ian felt the bullet hole shrink. Ian grabbed the metal mirror out of his field kit, held it above his wound, and watched the hole disappear as if an invisible surgeon were at work. 

Later that day, while eating rations under a soggy cotton tarp, Lieutenant Harrison Balm asked Ian about the hole in his uniform.

“Must have been a hungry moth,” Ian replied. 

If it weren’t for what happened when Ian removed his watch a few hours later, he might have convinced himself that a ravenous moth was indeed responsible for the hole in his wool coat. 

Ian’s body ached as he lay on the thin bedroll. He longed for sleep that wouldn’t come until the war ended. Blisters covered his cold feet. His finger hurt from countless pulls of his rifle’s trigger. Ian wanted to remove his wet clothes and shoes but couldn't because he might need to fight at a moment’s notice. But he could take off his watch and massage his weary wrist. Any relief was better than none.

He unfastened the leather strap and slipped his watch off. Agony instantly savaged him as if he had been shot again. The hole reappeared, blood spilling out. The lantern light in his tent dimmed, and a blanket of darkness covered him. He shuddered and stopped breathing. 

To this day, Ian wasn’t sure how he got his J.W. Benson back on, but as soon as he did, he was fine. His heart beat normally, and his lungs filled with air. 

A month later, when a German mustard gas attack killed the remaining seven men in his regiment, he survived. 

After the war ended in November 1918, Ian removed his watch for the second time. Instantly, his chest erupted in pain. He urgently slapped his watch back onto his wrist, and just as quickly the pain stopped. At that moment, he knew his J.W. Benson had powers beyond reason. For as long as he wore the watch, he was immortal. 

Ian was thirty-one years old. He would not die, and he would not age. 

Maybe I’ll tell Lucy tomorrow. Ian rubbed his throbbing forehead. I am Purgatory. Who wants to be with a man who doesn't age? He hadn’t stuck around in his previous relationships or marriages long enough to learn the answer to that question, bolting the moment his girlfriend or wife asked Ian how he stayed youthful while crow’s feet sprouted around their eyes and their hair turned gray. 

In 1952, Ian left England for America to escape a cauldron of gossip because America was a big country, a better place for an immortal to live.

What will Lucy do if I tell her? Even if Lucy left him, at least she’d know the truth. He shivered. He didn't know what telling the truth felt like.

I’ll tell Lucy everything in the morning.  

He kissed her, and she didn’t retreat. 

An idea sparked. Not a plane—we’ll take a ship to Greece because there’s no metal detector to pass through!

“We’ll go to Greece, babe. Let’s plan a new trip tomorrow. I know how we can do it.” 

Lucy gave Ian a cockeyed look. “Are you going to take off your watch for our supposed redo trip to Greece? Kick your OCD?”

“Maybe we should sleep now?” Ian suggested. 

“Okay, let's go to bed.” She slipped her arm around his waist and led him to the bedroom.

Lucy’s touch filled Ian with optimism.  

Red phosphor from the alarm clock fell on Ian’s face as his chest exploded. The tall digits read 5:14 a.m. A violent cough expelled tissue, fluid, and his soul. His bones were sticks of agony.

Ian’s heart beat wildly as it tried to restore its rhythm, like a derailed train frantic to return to the tracks. His scream woke the night. 

Lucy’s eyes fixed on Ian’s J.W. Benson in her palm, its radium dial glowing in the darkness. 

Ian’s pupils turned chalk white. He opened his mouth but could no longer make any sounds.

“Cold turkey, babe,” Lucy said. “This is the best way, the only way. Go back to sleep, and when you wake, you’ll be a new person.”

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If you enjoyed Too Much Love, I think you’ll like my story, Divorceland.