After the mirror incident, Bob came to a decision. If time insisted on folding, melting, looping, skipping, and delivering objects before they were found, then he, Bob the Black Cat, would at least know which hat he was wearing when it happened.
Not to control time. Just to politely label it.
So, he opened a small notebook titled: The Hat Index: For Sanity, Sort-Of.
On the first page, he drew a rough calendar grid, seven uneven boxes, labeled loosely:
- Moonday
- Twostay
- Wobbleday
- Thornsday
- Faraday
- Saturnight
- Someday
Note: These were not the train’s official days. The train didn’t believe in official anything.
Next, Bob laid out his hat collection in the corridor between Cars 8 and 9½.
- A Lethe Hat: brown, slightly damp, memory-charged
- A cowboy hat that read “Big and Beautiful”
- A Philosopher’s Beret: possibly borrowed indefinitely from Car 3’s library lounge
- A Green Velvet Top Hat that made people confess things when he wore it
- A Striped Circus Cap for emergencies
- A Plain Gray Cap that mysteriously attracted fog
- And a Hat with No Visible Shape, only a sensation of “being early”
He assigned them like so:
- Moonday: Lethe Hat, to reflect on what I haven’t forgotten yet
- Twostay: Gray Cap, it smells like decisions I didn’t make
- Wobbleday: Striped Circus Cap, just in case!
- Thornsday: Velvet Top Hat, to hear strange truths in passing
- Faraday: Big and Beautiful Cowboy Hat, confidence, false or otherwise (still need to obtain it)
- Saturnight: Philosopher’s Beret, to say nothing and be misunderstood with flair
- Someday: The Shapeless Hat, for what hasn’t happened yet
Each morning thereafter, Bob would stand before the mirror in Car 2¾, blink once, tip his selected hat, and announce the day out loud, even if no one asked:
“It’s Wobbleday. You’ve been warned!”
Bearton began carrying extra honey on Wobbledays. Just in case.
Ms. Understood once wrote in her journal: “I trust Bob’s Hat calendar more than the stars.”
Horatio, upon seeing the beret, simply nodded and said: “Ah. A thinking day.”
And strangely enough, it helped.
The train still lurched sideways into memory. The clocks still wilted. But Bob had anchors.
And sometimes, that’s all you need, when reality won’t sit still.
One hat.
One day.
One version of yourself at a time.
“You don’t wear a hat to keep your head warm,” Bob writes. “You wear it to know who your head belongs to today.”
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