Silas Sharp and the Case of the Missing Tuesday

 

CHAPTER ONE (MONDAY): A CUP OF JOE

The Perpetual Egg isn’t a diner so much as it’s an anomaly. A backwater dimension you’ve never heard of occupying space and time in ways you can’t fathom. They serve eggs that taste like rubber gloves and an open-faced roast beef sandwich that will leave your digestive tract asking what it had done to piss you off. You could spackle the side of a Herpezoid Junkcruiser with the mashed potatoes. That’s something Herpezoids would do. The Perpetual Egg is the kind of place frequented by men with pockets full of expired metaphors, women who speak fluent déjà vu, and one guy who swears he's the original concept of the weekend before it got commercialized. But I didn’t frequent The Perpetual Egg for its culinary malfeasance or its clientele. I came for only one thing: a cup of Joe.

***

I slid into my usual booth at this eatery wedged between dimensions and overdue health inspections. The lighting was fluorescent and unkind, like a truth-telling ex-wife who gave zero shits. The place hadn’t changed in fifty years, mostly because change gets lost on its way here. The Perpetual Egg looked like way the song “Stray Cut Strut” sounds.

“Silas Sharp, as I live and breathe,” said the waitress, pulling a pencil from her blonde-from-a-box beehive. Her name tag read ROWENA in the same cracked plastic it had for as long as the Cold War lasted.

“Mornin’, Rowena,” I said, tipping my fedora before removing it because I’m a guy with some goddamn manners in an increasingly tacky universe. “Feeling dangerous today. I’ll have the special.”

“We’re out of the special.”

“Then I’ll have a cup of Joe.”

She paused. “You sure?”

I nodded. “Extra hot. Tell him I need to talk.”

She scribbled nothing on her pad. “One scorched soul, coming up.”

I smiled. She didn’t. Not even a twitch. A man can dream. A man can also read signals, and Rowena’s were lit up like an EXIT sign over a bear trap.

While I waited, I surveyed the people tucked into booths and hunkered over plates of corned beef hash and existential dread. The usual collection of malcontents, ne’er-do-wells, and freighter pilots hauling contraband metaphysical furniture were present.  Some poor slob stared at his breakfast as if deciding whether the toast was still bread or already regret when Rowena arrived with my cup of Joe.

Joe, a sentient cup of black java, was poured fresh, steam coiling like the last breath of an idea that died in committee. The sultry, sassy Rowena set him down and walked away without looking back, hips swaying with attitude. A class act, that one.

Joe exhaled. Literally. A puff of steam rose from the sentient mug of black java and formed a friendly face that floated above the mug’s rim.

“Well, if it isn’t my favorite metaphysical detective,” he said, voice percolating through the aroma of scorched bean and confidential files. “How’s tricks, Silas? I see you’re in Rowena’s section again.”

“She has my heart wrapped her around her finger so tight it’s cutting off the circulation,” I said. “Her fingertip is turning purple and so is my affection.”

“What the hell does that mean?” asked Joe, his goofy grin changing to furrowed brow.

“What does anything mean?” I countered, pulling a cigarette from my trenchcoat pocket and lighting it up.

“That’s your job,” Joe said. “And that’s why you’re here.”

“I hear you gotta case for me.” I leaned in. “Please don’t say it’s another dame who thinks her husband is cheating but turns out he is only attending weekly support groups for people haunted by decisions they haven’t made yet. I’m sick of those.”

Joe burbled. “Worse. You’ve got a skipper.”

I groaned. “A what?”

“A skipper,” Joe said. “We found a guy. Randy Ellison. Data reconciliation specialist for a mid-sized insurance software company.”

“A human? This isn’t some existential crisis, is it?” I take a long drag from my filterless cigarette. “Shit. They’re so boring.”

“It gets better,” Joe warns. “Turns out this guy discovered a way to skip Tuesdays.

“Skip Tuesdays?”

“Like a scratched record.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Rowena dropping change in the corner jukebox. It coughed up “Come on-a My House” by Rosemary Clooney. Rowena shot me look that said she was possibly playing that song as invitation to me. Or, it could have been saying, you don’t have a chance, you poor bastard, and I’m messing with your head.

The puff of steam named Joe gurgled again. “Randy possesses real khaki energy. Works in data reconciliation, which is either a job or a confession. One day he stops showing up on Tuesdays. Apartment untouched. Digital records blank. Time itself starts showing bruises.”

I paused. “Bruises?”

“Temporal contusions,” Joe said. “Reality takes a hit every time he skips. You start pulling Tuesdays out of the week, the whole calendar gets itchy. Wednesdays start to unravel. Mondays flare up in protest. Fridays throw tantrums and become Mondays in disguise. It’s chaos.”

I nodded slowly. “Skipped emotions. Unprocessed pain. Time loops looking for narrative closure.”

“Exactly,” Joe said. “Like tearing out a chapter and expecting the ending to still make sense.”

I stared into my cup. Joe stared back. I saw caffeine, courage, and maybe a little pity.

“He do this on his own?”

Joe crackled. “Nope. Had help. Dr. Calico Verde.”

“The chrono-shrink? Haven’t heard that dame’s name in a long time.”

“She’s hard to track down,” Joe said. “She doesn’t practice out of the usual brick-and-mortar. Her practice manifests in transient, liminal spaces—the kinds of places that already feel out of sync with reality. Some say she rents time, not property. You don’t find her so much as you align with her.”

“So how I align with her?” This conversation was dragging, making my head hurt. You’d think I’d be used to this kind of stuff after all these years. I needed a whiskey. N’jiiliarian nectar to be exact.

“Word on the street is she’s currently accessible via a vortex in a laundromat on the other side of town. Go there between 2:03 a.m. and 2:07 a.m. Rowena will drop the particulars off with the check and the Ellison file.”

“What’s the ask?”

“Find the day he skipped,” Joe said. “Not just the when but the why. We can’t have people just willy-nelly skipping days of the week.” And with that, the puff of steam called Joe faded. Conversation over.

Rowena sashayed over to me, plopping down two manila folders filled with more documents than I cared to read. On top of those, she placed the check face down. She picked up Joe.

“When you coming back this way again, Silas?” she asked. Was that a twinge of anticipation I heard in her voice? Or was it dread? It was as if my answer would determine whether she worked that day.

“I never know, sweetheart,” I said. “I’m not the kind of man who plans his life.”

“What kind of man are you, Silas Sharp?”

“I’m a man who doesn’t deal in facts, Rowena,” I said, smashing my cigarette out in the ashtray. “I deal with what’s trying to be true. And, baby, some days the truth is just a rumor with better shoes.”

“Anyone ever tell you you’re weird?” Rowena asked before walking away toward the table where the guy was still studying his toast.

I dropped a few items on the table—some cash, my business card, a button from a coat I don’t remember owning. I looked toward the big window at the foggy, gray surroundings. Not a city, but definitely a place and a time. Outside, the sky hung low like it was nursing a secret. Somewhere in this city, a man had torn Tuesdays from the fabric of his life. But time isn’t made of fabric.

Time is made of glass.

And you can only chip away at it for so long before something shatters.