The Alarm Clock Goes Upstairs, the Phone Sleeps at the Counter

"You're leaving your phone downstairs? Who's going to wake you up?"

Mẹ stood at the top of the stairs with one hand on the railing, looking at the little clock I had tucked under my arm.

"I've got this, Mẹ."

"That thing can't call anybody."

I had no answer, so I smiled and went up.

Ours is a narrow tube house, and the ground floor is the shop: photocopying, printing, binding. The clock came off the shelf next to the box of binder clips and the reams of coloured cover paper. A tabletop kind, battery-run, hands that glow a little in the dark, the sort I sell to students at exam time. I have sold who knows how many and never once used one myself. This is about the first mornings after that night: my hand reaching into an empty place, and what I put there, including the times I put the wrong thing.

It is not about quitting the phone. The phone is how the shop earns its living, I pick it up every morning, and I hold it a good while. It is not a rule for any household either: if someone in your home needs to reach you in the middle of the night, the phone belongs by the pillow, and you can skip all of this. As for sleep, this piece stays out of it. I measured nothing, and I would not presume to speak for anyone else.

Twenty past ten, and I plug my phone in behind the counter

The last copier was cooling down, warm air still breathing out of the paper slot, a faint smell of burnt toner on my shirt. I took the phone out of my pocket and plugged it into the socket behind the counter, right next to the tin of small change. Two batteries into the clock. The alarm hand set to five-forty. Then I met Mẹ at the top of the stairs.

The next morning it went off. One dry rattle, like a bean rolling around in a tin can. My right hand reached to the right of the pillow, the spot it had reached for years, and touched a rough plastic edge, cold.

Not the phone.

For three seconds I lay still, my hand resting there, waiting for something that was not present.

I thought I was putting the phone away to stop scrolling. That was just the easy way to say it, because on those earlier mornings I was not scrolling for fun at all. I opened my customers' messages: three or four people had sent files overnight, one asked whether the order could be picked up this morning, one changed the paper size. I answered every one, before I had even sat up. Which means the shop opened at five-forty, in bed, in my pyjamas, and nobody pays you for that hour. And the person who set that hour was me, though I could not remember ever setting it.

A student had said it to my face the week before:

"Hey, I sent the file yesterday at five in the morning and you never answered."

"The shop opens at half past six, you know."

"Yeah, but the last few times you replied right away."

She was right. I was the one who had trained my customers to expect that. Nobody forced me. I answered fast because answering fast meant they did not have to ask twice and I did not have to feel guilty.

I do not know how many customers truly need something at five in the morning. I have never counted. Maybe a few, maybe none. All I know is that since the phone started sleeping at the counter, every message that comes before half past six has still been sitting there waiting, and people still come for their copies on time.

The method is so short I am almost embarrassed to describe it. Just one thing first: if anyone in your home needs to reach you in the night (a child away from home, a relative who is ill), skip this part entirely.

The first morning was mostly restlessness, like walking out of the house and remembering halfway down the lane that you forgot your keys. I went down the stairs faster than usual. Three mornings in a row were the same. It took my hand eight mornings to stop reaching to the right, and I never saw the moment it stopped, I only realised that the day before had probably been the same. Some people get used to it in two or three days. People differ.

Mẹ mentioned it only once more. On the morning after that she was already sitting at the table downstairs, peeling an egg, and said without looking up:

"Your father had one just like it once. Wound it every night."

"Why are you telling me now?"

"Nobody asked."

I stood there holding an empty glass, working out that I had lived in the same house as her for decades and never once asked where Ba's clock had ended up. And when I asked now, she said she could not remember where it had gone either, and handed me the second egg.

On a day when the battery has died, or I am sleeping at someone else's place, I keep exactly one thing: the phone out of arm's reach, on top of the wardrobe if that is all there is. It is not as good, but it beats nothing.

On Wednesday I slipped. I came downstairs before brushing my teeth, pulled the phone off its charger, stood on the fourth step with cold bare feet, and scrolled through messages for a full fifteen minutes. All I had done was move the scrolling from the bed to the staircase, twelve steps away. The clock could stop me upstairs, but once I reached the ground floor nothing stopped me at all. From the next morning I switched on the copier first. It takes nearly three minutes to warm up, a number blinking on the screen before the green light comes on. In those three minutes my hands had a job: a cloth over the glass, where yesterday's customer left fingerprints. The phone I picked up only after the machine gave its small beep.

Ten spare minutes upstairs, and what are they for?

"So what now."

Ten to six, Thursday morning. The second hand on the clock went round and round, and I stood in the middle of the room with empty hands, as awkward as someone who has arrived too early for an appointment. I went out onto the balcony. Tư's bread cart was already set up under the tree at the mouth of the lane, the glass still fogged, and he was packing loaves into the box one by one. I watched him for a while and then felt bored, and then felt strange that I was bored.

People assume that putting the phone away gives you ten extra minutes. Ten minutes do not arrive like a gift. They arrive like a hole. All those earlier days, every gap in my day had been filled by a screen: waiting for water to boil, waiting at a red light, waiting for the machine to finish the last stack. So I had never found out what I would do with nothing to do. It turned out I truly did not know. Take something away and put nothing in its place, and the place calls the old thing back. That Wednesday I called it back exactly that way, on the staircase.

I do not know whether those ten minutes changed my days. I only know they were different: some mornings I stood and watched Tư pack his bread, some mornings I looked at nothing, and both kinds of morning were over before they could turn into anything.

On Friday I fixed it with a bigger plan: ten minutes of stretching along to a video. The video plays on the phone. The phone was down at the counter. I went down for it, and ten minutes later I was deep in customers' messages without having stretched a single arm. I had put a screen job into the exact spot where I had just taken the screen out, and thinking back, it is funny.

What I kept was much smaller: pouring boiling water into the thermos flask. A job for the hands, under two minutes, finished when it is finished, no screen. The sound of water going into the flask changes pitch as it nears the top, low and then rising, and you have to stand and listen to know when to stop. I do it upstairs, before I go down to the shop, and that is all.

The first days it felt unnecessary, like something staged. The Wednesday of the next week I forgot, got to the counter, remembered I had not filled it, and had to climb back up. By the second week there were mornings I stood waiting for the water to fill without glancing at the clock. Some mornings I still glanced.

On a day with thirty seconds to spare I only pour, then go down. If you have no flask, any job will do as long as both hands are in it: some people choose making the bed again, some people open a window and stand there. And if you would like a longer stretch than ten minutes, there is a separate piece on fifteen minutes in the morning without a phone.

If the clock does not suit your household

Hoa from the grocery next door bought a clock exactly like mine. Three days later she brought it back and set it on the counter.

"I can't stand it. My daughter works far away, she often calls in the evening, and with my phone out there I'm on edge."

I refunded her and said nothing more, because she was right. In her house, the phone by the pillow is where it belongs. This is not for someone who has somebody needing them in the night, and nobody has to do it at all costs.

And if nobody in your home is like that, yet two weeks on you are restless every morning, still reaching, still going downstairs at a run, try the half-way version: the phone stays in the room but sits on the wardrobe, an arm's length away, far enough that you have to sit up to get it. Some people try that and then go back to the pillow. I do not count that as failing, only as a try that is finished.

One more thing, so you do not blame yourself: the little clock I sell has a ring that is only loud enough for someone already half awake. If you sleep deeply, pick one with a louder bell, or set two five minutes apart.

I do not know how long I will keep this up either. By now several weeks have gone by, and I have not counted.

Twenty-five past six, the copier gives its small beep. I put the cloth down, and only then reach for the phone.

This article was created with AI assistance.