Hold the Seven

The clock over the platform is a clock of flaps: each numeral is a flap hinged at the top, and it drops to show the next. A runner of passionflower has grown in through the side of the case and wound twice around the minute drum. A man on a stepladder is cutting it with shears. It is halfway through, and the vine is all that is holding the seven.

Hold the seven, he says, and does not look down.

You take the seven between two fingers. Behind it a spring pulls against them. On the side of the case a thumbwheel turns the drum by hand, and the numerals around its rim face the wrong way. On the top step is a tin of spare flaps, and he goes through it with his free hand, naming what he finds. Nine 9s. Three 4s. A 3. A 0 with a crease. No 8.

I need something stiff behind it, he says. About this size.