““We each had our own clocks on either side of the bed. They were old wind-up clocks from our Ann Arbor days. His was a Big Ben and mine a Little Ben. Naturally the Big Ben’s ticking was lower than mine, and louder, the father of the clock family. Mine was staccato, shrill, as if it was panicked by the passage of time. They didn’t tick in sync, and Howard’s was always set fast. I remember waking up and thinking the clocks were sparring, that they would battle over their precious minutes and the way to tick until they exhausted themselves and wound down and just quit.””
