Daniel wakes up Thursday morning knowing one thing with certainty. It’s time. He knows this because for over the course of the last year he has received a series of phone calls from someone who simply whispers, “It’s time,” and hangs up. Daniel had received such a call Wednesday night, and upon hanging up, realized that indeed, it was time.

He’s unsure exactly what it’s time for, but he reasons in order for whatever it is that it is time for to take place, those things that it is no longer time for must be cleared away. His life then is a teardown, not a remodel.

As he drinks his coffee, his synapses begin to fire, and decisions come, more decisions than he has made in the past five years. He will not return to his job at Clinton, Struck and Moss. He will walk out the door of his apartment and will not come back. He will no longer give a shit about Daphne. He will put behind him everything that has happened in his life so far.

Daniel goes to the closet and removes a pair of moving boxes. He carries these out to the balcony, soaks each in lighter fluid, and sets them on fire. The flames grow higher as he sings, not very well, Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash. Ashes and embers float across the apartment complex, but none seem to do any harm. And so it is that several years of memories are instantly and permanently erased.

Daniel takes a quick shower and dresses. He grabs a backpack into which he stuffs his car keys, the title to his car, his wallet, and his passport. He walks out the front door onto the street, leaving the apartment unlocked, the coffee maker on, the balcony covered with soot and ash. He does not know what is in front of him. He only knows what is no longer behind him. And that is enough with which to get started. It is time.

Daniel sits cross-legged on a smooth cement slab, the former loading dock of a shuttered brick warehouse. “Hart’s — San Jose’s Big Department Store — Warehouse No. 2” appears in white paint on the brick wall above him, in a style that suggests it is at least a hundred years old. There is a heart behind the letter “H.” Graffiti in the area is prolific, but the Hart’s sign has escaped desecration.

Below and 30 feet or so away from where Daniel sits, he has lined up a series of plastic soda bottles and beer cans near a railroad siding. Here and there are puddles of green fluid that look like antifreeze. Daniel is certain someone should be held responsible for depositing these chemicals.

The weather is gray and miserable, but unable to commit itself to being an actual storm. In between throwing rocks at the bottles, Daniel reflects. He wishes he was sitting on the loading dock 40 years ago when Hart’s was still open, throwing rocks at real glass bottles instead of plastic ones. He wonders if he spends too much time reflecting. He wonders what he will wonder about next.

He knows he should go back to his apartment before the rain comes, but he cannot leave the Hart’s loading dock until he knocks over three bottles in a row, because that’s the rules. Daniel likes to make rules for himself, like the rule that determines when he may leave the Hart’s loading dock. And he refuses to break these self-imposed rules, for to do so would show a lack of integrity.

In the distance he notices a mass of cardboard and rags. It is most likely the home of a homeless person. He is at first amused by the irony of this and then tells himself it’s really not that funny. He looks back and forth between the obsolete railroad tracks in front of him, and the street, where an electric light rail train glides by almost noiselessly.

Daniel jumps from the loading dock and walks to his collection of bottles, careful not to step in the acid green puddles. He resets the bottles that he has knocked over, grabs a handful of suitable rocks, and returns to the loading dock. His first throw lands in one of the green puddles. The next two strike their targets, toppling two of the plastic bottles. Daniel knows everything hinges on his next throw. The crowd is silent. All eyes are on Daniel. He checks the wind speed and direction. He scans the horizon. He chooses a perfectly positioned bottle. He squints, winds up, and unleashes his throw, which bounces off the edge of the loading dock, and, miraculously, floats earthward again, knocking over a third bottle, and freeing Daniel from his imprisonment on the Hart’s loading dock.

It was, thinks Daniel, a shot for the highlights reel. It begins to drizzle. Fortunately, Daniel is free to go home.

A winter breeze slips clandestinely under the front door of Clinton, Struck and Moss, causing Daniel to shiver. His desk is not far from the door, in a common area, which was the living room when the firm’s offices were a home.

Daniel is not a winter person, and he is annoyed when friends from the Midwest and the East Coast give him a hard time for complaining about California winters. Daniel prefers hot, dry places. As if in an effort to warm himself, he thinks back to Memorial Day weekend two years ago, when he and Daphne had taken a road trip to Trona, California, a small desert town which has as its nearest landmark a dry lake bed.

They had driven out Friday night, arriving late at a 1950s motel, with a cowboy theme and an aging neon sign identifying it as a “Motor Court.” A small figure of a cowboy with a six-shooter adorned the dashboard of Daphne’s car authenticating her affinity for things western.

The temperature, tolerable when they had checked in, began to rise immediately and quickly with the arrival of the morning sun. By 9:30, it was just hot. They sat in bed, drinking beer, and watching TV. Daphne rolled out of bed, lit a few sticks of incense, and set up her iPod, which played Holst’s “The Planets” too loudly for the small space.

She returned to the bed where Daniel was watching one of the many reruns of Law and Order that seemed to be available 24 hours a day. Daphne climbed on top of Daniel, facing away from the TV, playfully preventing him from watching. He wrapped his arms around her, and they rolled around in the bed, holding each other tightly.

Carmina Burana was playing on the iPod. The ironic juxtaposition of the old motel, the overloud music, the smokiness and smell of the incense, the stifling heat, and the tinny sound of the TV competing with it all, combined to create an intensely disorienting and erotic atmosphere in which they had amazing sex, again and again, finally collapsing in a tangle of sheets and sweat in time to see, through half closed eyes, the beginning of the day’s sunset.

Daniel’s last recollection, before passing out, was of lying next to her, exhausted, happy, smelling the incense, and listening to the comforting sound of one of the room’s venetian blinds, gently banging the window sill, as a slight breeze lifted it and dropped it down again, then lifted it again…

In a classic rude awakening, Daniel’s thoughts return to the chilly offices of Clinton, Struck and Moss. As he contemplates the drive home, he cannot reconcile the elation and happiness he felt that day in Trona, or any of several hundred days with Daphne, and the desolation he now felt without her. How can two people who are so happy together, so meant for each other, not be together? It has been almost a year since he and Daphne broke up, and he is no closer today to understanding the why of it than he was the afternoon she left him.

It’s 4:29. A perfect time for Daniel to leave. And so he does.

On the way home from Clinton, Struck and Moss, Daniel decides to stop at Resurrected Books, a used bookstore that does not specialize in religious books. Daniel parks in a downtown garage with spots too narrow for his car or any other. He walks down three flights to the street, turns left out of the garage and, after walking a four-block gauntlet of panhandlers and leaflet distributors, arrives at Resurrected’s tattered yet suitable storefront.

He passes a two-dollar bargain bin, and decides even at that low price, to pass on a copy of Chicken Soup for the Paranoid Schizophrenic Soul and a biography of Don Knotts.

Daniel’s girlfriend Daphne, a sarcastic waif, and a cashier in the gift shop at an art museum, broke up with him almost a year ago. He still clings to the hope they will get back together, missing her, but even worse, missing the security of having someone like her.

Daniel goes to Resurrected primarily to meet girls, though he does like to read, and sometimes buys a book. Daniel’s strategy of initiating conversations with girls on the basis of what they are browsing is simple, if not transparent. He can hold his own in history, sports, business, philosophy and architecture, and law of course, but there are other subjects that are off limits. Daniel ignores anyone reading a bible or a guide to grooming dogs.

Daniel often met girls in less conventional places. Before Daphne, he had met Paige, a “pre-need counselor,” at the funeral of a co-worker. And he had gone for drinks with Adrianna, who was a process server who had tried unsuccessfully to serve Daniel’s roommate Aubrey with a subpoena.

Looking down one of the aisles, Daniel watches a tall girl with dark, shiny, straight hair, in black boots, black tights, and a sleeveless black dress, cross from one aisle to the next. She is, Daniel thinks, an adult version of Emily the Strange.

Daniel walks to the end of the row of bookshelves, turns right and right again, and as casually as possible, so as not to appear like a game hunter, finds the girl and walks toward her. His heart is beating rapidly, and his vision is blurred. He is nonetheless able to walk to where she is standing and say, with some trouble, hello. She turns and smiles briefly and returns to the book she has taken from the shelf, “The Paradox of Philosophical Hermeneutics.”

This is good luck for Daniel. He is obliquely familiar with the field.

“Are you interested in hermeneutics?” he asks her. It is not an impressive opening, given that she is holding a book on the subject.

“It was my minor.”

“I picked up Gadamer’s Repercussions. Have you read it?” Daniel, who had not read it, asks. He had, as he said, picked it up, read a dozen pages, and found it tedious. But he loved its title, and left it on the table in the living room in his apartment hoping someone would ask about it.

“Yes. I had Krajewski at Georgia Southern.”

“Then there’s very little I could tell you about it.”

“It’s not like I asked you.”

Daniel thus considers a graceful exit.

“Look,” the girl says. “Maybe that didn’t sound right.”

“It’s OK. Really.”

“Seraphina,” she says, extending her hand.

“Daniel. A pleasure.” What a grandiose yet fantastic name, he thinks. “Do you want to get a drink or a cup of coffee or something?”

“I’d like that, but I have a big day tomorrow.”

“It’s OK, I understand.”

“No really, I would. Let me give you my number. Let’s do it some other time.”

She takes a pen and an old receipt out of her handbag, quickly writes her number, and hands it to Daniel. “Thanks,” he says, “I’ll call you.”

“OK, have a good night.”

Daniel leaves the store immediately, because he knows that to stay would make him seem like a stalker, or maybe an opportunist. Once back at the car, he is anxious to add Seraphina’s phone number to the contact list on his phone. He takes the scrap of paper from his pocket. At the top, in handwriting so graceful it could have been calligraphy, is her name. And below it, six digits.

Daniel Kowan was a research associate at Clinton, Struck and Moss, a firm representing defendants in product liability cases. Clinton, Struck and Moss is based in The City. OK, not The City. San Jose.

Clinton, Struck and Moss has its offices in a 1920s mission style home near the Rose Garden. The old house, and its lawns and gardens, are nice enough. Parking is a pain in the ass, it’s hard for clients to find, and there’s nothing decent to eat in the neighborhood.

Daniel provides support to the firm’s attorneys defending corporations against claims of negligence in product design, manufacturing and packaging. Daniel, a self-identified liberal and champion of the common man, isn’t particularly conflicted by this. In fact, he takes a secret satisfaction representing “the enemy.” He enjoys the irony of being a double agent. When his university classmates were looking for internships in environmental law, intellectual property, and entertainment law, Daniel sought out firms that represented tobacco and oil companies.

Just last month, Daniel had been recognized for his work on a case in which a client had been accused of manufacturing an electric stapler with a tendency to spring open on its own and fire off a few dozen rounds of staples into the air when positioned at a certain angle. Daniel had found prior cases in other industries in which defendants were able to secure a dismissal by claiming users of dangerous devices have a safety obligation of their own, and manufacturers alone can not be expected to anticipate all the scenarios under which such a device might be used. Further, no deaths had occurred, and only three people received serious eye injuries, even though the company had shipped several hundred thousand staplers, which was well below acceptable rates for workplace injuries.

Daniel wasn’t thinking about electric staplers. He was thinking about the 19-year-old Goth chick behind the counter at ShittyMart. The name of the store was actually CityMart, which Daniel found too cosmopolitan, and he was fond of inventing his own names for things anyway.

He had a thing for Goth chicks. Had she given him more than a courtesy smile this morning as he stopped for breakfast? He was certain she was interested at some level. Most days he wore a suit to work, which he reasoned might be a barrier, her with her black jeans and t-shirt. He hadn’t said anything to her this morning, other than “thank you,” nor had he any other morning for nearly a year. Perhaps tomorrow would be the day he came up with something clever to say, though probably not.

The clock on the wall indicated something like 3:39. It was analog, making it nearly useless for displaying the precise time. Daniel decided he would leave at 4:42, the model number for a certain classic Oldsmobile. He believed that certain numbers brought with them good fortune.

Daniel looked at the clock on his computer, and at 4:40, he shut it down. He gathered his things, and walked slowly to the door, looking at the time on his phone, making sure to walk out at exactly 4:42.