He walked onto the metro bus, it was a brisk morning and he was glad that the bus driver had turned on the heat. He looked around for a seat on the bus; luckily it was early enough that he could get a window seat to himself. The city was still such a new thing to him, and he still loved to see the tall buildings on his way to work. He knew his stop wouldn’t come up for a while so he watched out the window at the city awaking from its slumber.
He stretched his legs, looked out the window he saw a doorman open the door for a young man probably the same age as him. The man was well groomed and tailored in what looked to be an expensive suit. After seeing the mans outfit he looked down at himself, all he was wearing were the same faded blue jeans as yesterday, a white t-shirt, a battered Mackinaw jacket and an old gold watch.
The watch was probably the only thing of worth that he owned. Passed down from his grandfather to his father to him, he kept the timepiece clean and finely tuned. His father gave him the watch as an 18th birthday present right before his death. It made a very distinct noise and would tick loudly every evening around 5pm, the end of his workday.
As the bus got closer to his stop the city began to rise. The bus filled with more and more people. After about ten more minutes he reached his stop. He walked down the street from his stop until he reached his job site.
He clocked in around 9am and he knew that he would be counting down the hours on his old watch until 5pm. Working with his hands was nothing new to him, with little education, construction seemed like the best option for him. He headed up to the second story of the building where he had been putting in windows on the floor.
Sometimes during his lunch break, he looked across the street at the jewelry store. He studied the customers as they walked in and out. They were all well dressed like the man he saw earlier that morning. Every day he wondered how much money people would spend in that store, it was hard to tell from his spot on the second floor since all the jewelry came in small boxes anyways.
One day after work before his bus arrived, he walked across the street and into the jewelry store. He seemed a bit out of place in the fancy shop and received some awkward glances from customers. He studied the watches in their showcases, fine watches they were. They looked much nicer than the one he wore on his own wrist, but after seeing the price tags on the watches, he realized that he was quite out of place in the store, and before he knew it he found himself back on the metro bus heading home.
For days and days after his visit to the shop, he thought about those beautiful watches. Shiny and new, the image of them stayed in his mind like a bad dream. Instead of looking out the window at the awaking city each morning, he thought about the watches. He couldn’t get the image out of his head, he didn’t even know why he wanted the new watch so bad but he just did.
He decided after a week of thinking about the watch that if he could save his money over the next couple of months and sell his father’s old gold watch, then he would have enough money for the shiny new watch that had caught his eye. He felt that he deserved this gift for himself. After all he worked hard everyday at work and felt that a new goal in his life could help change his future.
Over the next few weeks he worked diligently at his job. So diligently that he was promoted by his foreman and received a pay raise. He no longer noticed to the city’s big skyscrapers and to the people whom he passed on the way to work. Instead, he focused on his new promotion and his special goal of getting that new shiny watch. He had calculated that at the rate he was going he could have the watch by Christmas time.
Everyday for the next month his father’s old watch would tick at five and he would go down to the jewelry store across the street after work and look at the watch he planned to purchase. It was shiny, new and had many different features. Though it was expensive everything seemed to be going according to plan for him. Christmas was coming closer and so was the day when he would be able to purchase the watch. He had talked to the jewelry store owner, who said he would accept his father’s old watch as partial payment for the new watch.
Finally the day came on December 24th. He rode the bus to work that morning with a smile on his face. He didn’t get his window seat, but he thought to himself what did it matter, he would be getting his new watch today. Work went by slowly and the cold winter wind ran through the city streets making work almost impossible. But because it was Christmas Eve, he was allowed to leave work early. He walked down and across the street into the fancy jewelry shop, which he had grown, accustomed to. He made a check to the shop and handed over his old gold watch to the jeweler.
He picked out his new watch and happily put it on as he left the store. As he got on the bus he looked down at his shiny new watch. Its hand struck five, and his ears waited for the old distinct tick, but there was no tick from the watch today.
His face looked at the watch and then out the window of the bus in despair. Only now did he realize what he had been working for all this time. Just a shiny new watch and nothing more.