It is the counter that draws him, though he dreads what he will find: his watches there beneath shards of glass, like fish in a shattered aquarium. Plucking up a Gruen "Curvex" by its faux-alligator band, he finds it not to be ticking. He sighs. Clarisse has been after him for some time now, to buy a fire safe in which to place his more valuable stock at night. Had he done so, the watches would still be ticking. But this one is, the Doxa chrono with the gently corroded dial, a favorite of his which customers pass over repeatedly. He holds it to his ear, hearing the sound of a mechanism assembled years before his own birth.