The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | John D. MacDonald |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Science fiction |
| Publisher | Fawcett Gold Medal |
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Publication date
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1962 |
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The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything (1962) is a science fiction novel by American writer John D. MacDonald.
The protagonist, Kirby Winter, is a young man living in Florida, full of anxiety and feeling no confidence in his ability to face life, either professionally (he had in fact not chosen a clear profession) or sexually (all his encounters with women, since puberty, ended disastrously).
Kirby's life had been overshadowed by an uncle who had been a mathematics teacher and suddenly developed an uncanny talent for gambling, broke several casinos and made himself a millionaire. The uncle seemed disappointed with Kirby's inability to make something of himself. At his death it turns out he had left Kirby none of his wealth – nothing but an antique gold pocket watch to which a toy telescope is attached, showing a pornographic picture.
An older woman, quite attractive, shows up and makes clear her interest in Kirby. He is attracted to her but feels too insecure to respond to her attempts at seduction – which turns out to be fortunate, as she is a hardened and ruthless criminal, who had been his uncle's arch-enemy. The uncle many times thwarted the plots of her and her male partner, got away with quite a bit of their ill-gained money and avoided with contemptuous ease all that they tried to do against him. Her interest in the nephew derives from the vain hope of learning the uncle's secret (of which Kirby still has no idea).
Kirby's luck turns when he sleeps in the bed of a friend of a friend who is away for the weekend. In the middle of the night, a naked young woman gets into the bed and makes love to him in the dark, mistaking him for the bed's usual occupant. Caught in the middle of sleep, all of Kirby's sexual hang-ups disappear and he performs quite well. Discovering her mistake, the woman – named Bonnie Lee Beaumont – is at first furious but within minutes the two of them fall deeply and enduringly in love with each other and consummate their new-found love for the rest of the night.
On the following day, spent on the seashore, Kirby plays with the watch and accidentally finds out his uncle's secret: the watch can stop time for everybody but the holder, leaving him in a peculiar red-lighted world with everybody around "frozen", and effectively placing everybody else in the world at his mercy. Kirby and his newly found girlfriend only use this awesome power for relatively innocuous practical jokes such as completely undressing women who "tease men by wearing very small bikinis" and laughing to see them escape in panic.
The woman criminal, who meanwhile discovered the watch's secret, has far more sinister plans for its use, and succeeds in capturing Kirby, who comes near to being killed - but he manages to turn the tables on her with the help of the watch. He can quite easily use the watch's power to kill her, but decides that using it to kill anybody - even those who deserve it - would "take away the fun"; he settles instead for stripping her and putting her in a truckload of Navy sailors, with the resulting experience causing her to lose interest in the watch (and everything else) in favor of sexual trysts with sailors.
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