You no longer fear the kiosks, which seem now harmless enough, and when you find the old watch in the box your grandfather left behind, it makes sense to take it to the mall, where you notice the gates rising before you, the white sneakers squeaking over the checker-board tiles of the great hall, death impossible here, where the man uses tiny tweezers to set the battery in place, and when you walk back out into the hard bright day you look among the countless absurd colors and shapes of cars for the equally absurd color and shape of your own car, and putting the car into reverse you see the second hand of the watch now sweeping over its face and you imagine the battery a lozenge under your tongue keeping your brain alert to stoplights, each its own kind of lozenge, tart-apple green moving you forward, and notice, too, how the sun off the windshield makes its own claim as the earth’s giant charger—the pleasant, sour taste of time dissolving.