Elias closed his eyes, counting to ten. A magnet on a mechanical watch was like a flamethrower in a library. "Just... go to lunch, Toby. For three hours."
"No," Elias whispered, standing up. "It is the slow, methodical erosion of another person's sanity. It is a whistle that doesn't know its own tune. It is gum that sounds like a wet boot in a swamp. It is the destruction of a three-thousand-dollar hairspring." Elias closed his eyes, counting to ten
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 closed his eyes