"Almost, Mr. E!" Toby chirped, followed by a wet, clicking sound as he popped a piece of gum. "Just making sure I get into the nooks. And the crannies. Can't forget the crannies." Snap.
"Toby," Elias said, turning slowly in his swivel chair. "Do you know what 'annoy' means?" "Almost, Mr
"Toby," Elias called out, his voice a low vibration of restrained irritation. "The solvent. Is it applied?" And the crannies
Toby looked at the floor, then back at Elias, his eyes wide. "I... I can help find it? I have a magnet!" "Do you know what 'annoy' means
Elias gripped his tweezers tighter. Focus, he told himself. He lowered the hairspring into place. Wheeze-puff. Wheeze-puff.
The hairspring, a coil thinner than a human eyelash, had Ping-Ponged out of the tweezers and vanished into the shag carpet. Elias sat frozen. The annoyance he had been carefully tamping down suddenly flared into a cold, white heat.
Elias lived for silence. As a professional watchmaker, his world was measured in microns and the nearly imperceptible snick-snick of escapement wheels. He was currently in the final hour of restoring a 19th-century Breguet, a piece of mechanical poetry so delicate that a heavy sneeze could ruin a week's work. Then came the whistling.