The kitchen was dark when Al unlocked the door. Dark and cold and full of the faint smell of yesterday's flour. He lit a single candle, placed it on the counter, and stood there for a long moment, just breathing. The hourglass sat where he'd left it.
Glass, sand, wood. Silent. He picked it up and turned it over. The sand began to fall.
---
The bell was easy. He learned that in a single afternoon. Paul rang; he moved. Simple.
His body understood reaction — wait for the signal, then act. Three hours of drills, and he could hit the window consistently. Not perfectly, but close enough. By the Grand Opening, he never missed a single ring.
The hourglass was different. The hourglass demanded he act *before* the signal. Sauce within the first interval. Cheese within the second.
Oven within the third. He had to *feel* when the time was right, not wait to be told. He couldn't feel anything. His whole life, time had been a fog.
He checked the sun. He listened for town bells. He guessed. Everyone he knew guessed.
Nobody among the common folk could feel the seconds slip past. He'd never known it was a thing to miss, because nobody around him had it. But Paul had it. Paul could stand at the oven, eyes closed, and say "ninety seconds" without counting.
And he was always right. Al wanted that. Not for himself — he knew his brain would never work that way. But he wanted to *simulate* it.
To build a version of himself that could move through the intervals without burning everything he touched. So he started coming in before dawn.
---
The first week was a disaster. He'd prep a pizza. Stretch the dough. Sauce it.
Then he'd freeze, staring at the hourglass, watching the sand fall. His eyes flicked from the hourglass to the oven to the hourglass again. Second-guessing. Recalculating.
He had no frame of reference. No internal metronome. He waited too long. He pulled too early.
He forgot the cheese. He put the cheese on twice. Every pizza was wrong. Different wrong, but always wrong.
"Again," he said.
---
The second week, he stopped sleeping. He'd lie down, close his eyes, and his brain would start counting. One. Two.
Three. How long was a second? He had no idea. He'd lie there in the dark, listening to his own heartbeat, trying to feel the passage of time.
He couldn't. So he got up. Dressed. Walked to the pizzeria.
Lit the candle. Flipped the hourglass. He tried to move with the sand. When the top chamber was full, he stretched the dough.
When the first grains fell, he added the sauce. He tried to match his movements to the flow — slow and steady while the sand ran even, quick when it thinned near the end. It didn't work. His hands didn't know what his eyes were seeing.
He burned twelve pizzas before the sun came up.
---
One morning, Paul found him on the floor, back against the oven, hourglass in his hands.
"How long have you been down here?"
"I don't know."
Paul sat down next to him.
"I have to get this right," Al said.
"You're going to burn yourself out."
"I pulled sixty pizzas this morning. All of them wrong. Some burnt. Some raw. Some under cheesed because I forgot to add it before the oven. I'm not getting better. I'm getting worse."
"How many pizzas did you watch me ruin before I got the first one right?"
Al was quiet.
"A few."
"A few. And I'd been cooking for years before we left Bolexe. You've been doing this for a week. In a world where your brain can't tell what one minute means."
Al looked at the hourglass.
"Time. That's the one thing I don't have."
"You have it. You just can't feel it. That's different."
---
The third week, something changed. Not the results. Those were still terrible. But Al stopped fighting.
He stopped trying to *feel* the interval and started trying to *see* it. He timed his breathing to the fall. Inhale while the top chamber empties. Exhale when it was time to move.
He wrote it down. *Interval One: Sauce. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Breathe in. Flip.* *Interval Two: Cheese. Breathe in.
Breathe out. Flip.* *Interval Three: Oven. Wait for the ring.
Don't look at the pizza. Look at the sand.* *Interval Four: Rest. You did it.
Now do it again.* He filled pages with tally marks. Each mark was a pizza. Each pizza was a failure or a near failure or a "close enough."
His body started to learn.
---
The fourth week, the rhythm clicked. He didn't notice at first. He was mid-motion — reaching for the sauce, eyes on the hourglass — when he realized his hand had moved *before* his brain decided to move it. His body knew the interval now.
It had memorized the fall of the sand through weeks of repetition. He finished the pizza. It wasn't perfect. But it wasn't burned.
He made another. Better. He made another. Better still.
For the first time, he didn't check the hourglass mid-interval. He just moved, and when the sand ran out, he was ready.
---
The fifth week, he made three. Three pizzas. Lined up on the counter. Steam rising.
Cheese bubbling. Crusts golden. Identical. Same size.
Same crust. Same cheese distribution. Same three basil leaves, placed at the same angle, pointing inward. He stood there and looked at them.
Paul came down. Stopped in the doorway. "Al. These are perfect."
"The hourglass works," Al said. "The hourglass works." "Doesn't need to be faster. Doesn't need to be bigger.
Just needs to be consistent." Paul was smiling. Al saw it. "Don't get emotional.
I'll lose my lunch."
---
The kitchen was dark when Al turned off the last candle. The hourglass sat on the counter. He picked it up. Felt the smooth glass, the warmth where his hands had held it all day.
Wood. Sand. Glass. Four intervals.
He'd mastered four intervals. It wasn't time sense. It was muscle memory. A workaround. A crutch. But it was his.
He put the hourglass down. Walked to the stairs. The apartment above was quiet — Paul already asleep, the embers in the hearth still glowing. The steps creaked under his weight, a familiar sound now, part of the rhythm of this place.
He was still smiling. He didn't try to stop.