Making Time For Her

The problem with realizing you were falling in love was that the physical universe remained infuriatingly indifferent to the revelation.

The sun still rose over the eastern hills at dawn. The blast furnaces at the basin still consumed their daily quotas of metallurgical coke. Coal still came out of the northern pitheads by the trainload. High-tensile steel rails still rolled from the continuous stands with deafening regularity, and locomotives still departed Helmarte Central with absolute disregard for the emotional condition of the company Chairman.

At exactly seven-thirty on Monday morning, Ernest Teucher had twelve dense operational dossiers waiting upon his desk.

He stared at the parchment folders. Then he looked at the brass wall clock ticking toward seven-thirty-one. Then back at the ledgers.

Everything was normal. Completely, mechanically ordinary.