The Hours

Having gone to Richard’s apartment to help him get ready, Clarissa gets no response to her knock. She anxiously unlocks the door with her key and finds the apartment flooded with light and air, revealing the true extent of the chaos. She finds Richard straddling a windowsill, admiring the day. He is emaciated and statuesque in his astronaut-themed robe.

Clarissa begs him to get down from the windowsill. Richard responds that he won’t be able to make the party. Clarissa feels she’s in a moment that has already happened. She assures him he doesn’t have to go. He responds there will still be the ceaseless procession of time to fill: “[T]here are still the hours, aren’t there? One and then another, and you get through that one and then, my god, there’s another. I’m so sick” (218). Richard feels free up on the windowsill.

He asks Clarissa to tell him the most ordinary moment from her day. She recounts the beautiful morning, which he says sounds “[f]resh as if issued to children on a beach” (219), like the morning in Wellfleet when they were young and in love. She agrees. Richard insists he’s failed in his ambition to write something that could compare to that morning or any morning.