The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven (2006)

Alan Warner's fifth novel, first published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape in 2006, is narrated by Manolo Follana, a forty-year-old Spanish designer with a thriving company, Italian linen suits and two ex-wives, who is told by his doctor and friend that he is dangerously ill. He walks the familiar haunts of his hometown by the sea, recalling his life and unable to tell anyone his news. (Open Library)

Watches

Omega (unidentified model): Manolo has looked through Teresa's design portfolio and, instead of taking her to a restaurant, buys two fresh sole at the pier and invites her to his apartment for lunch. His wristwatch tells him it is twenty minutes to the hour, when the commuter train the locals call the lemon express leaves, and he describes it in passing: an Omega so heavy that it once blackened the nail of his big toe when he dropped it in the bathroom. Later, going into a dark building with an underwater speargun to confront the man he calls the Moor, he notices the moonlight has lit its fluorescent hands (p. 110). The Moor's own story of crossing the sea includes fake Omegas that stopped in the water (p. 120). The maker is named; the model is not.

Source text: My wristwatch, an Omega so heavy it once blackened the nail of my big toe when I dropped it in the bathroom, was at twenty minutes to: there was a lemon express on each hour. (Alan Warner, The Worms Can Carry Me to Heaven, scan cataloged as Jonathan Cape, 2006, p. 62; Internet Archive scan OCR)