The Request Book

Evening with Vishnu

I leaned over to Vishnu, and I said, "That was _so_ after the bell!" I mean, it was clearly after the referee stepped in to break it up. Vishnu just smiled at me with the exact expression I was expecting. That cheese-eating grin. But Vishnu's like that, he's a steady dude.

"Vishnu, do you need to stay here tonight?" I asked. He wouldn't say yes, but he certainly wasn't going to say no so I handed him a blanket and got up and went to turn off the kitchen lights. I found myself standing in the kitchen then for no reason. For ten minutes. I returned from the kitchen to find a silent room. I sat down again because I didn't know what else to do.

The room seemed a bit dark, and there was an eerie blue tint to the light that spilled off the couch and just pooled there, clearly having nowhere to go. For a minute I thought about whether I should get up and do something about it but then I realized that if I didn't do anything then nothing would happen. So I left it. Vishnu's eyes were closed and his mouth was open, snoring. His right upper arm hung behind the couch and his right lower arm wrapped around a bowl with only a few chip crumbs left in it. His left arms were limp, a fistful of chips in each of his left hands.

I moved my foot from across my knee to the floor and let it stamp onto the floor. Vishnu opened his eyes and his two left hands collided with each other, both carrying chips toward his mouth. He sat there with chip crumbs on his hairless chest in the pale blue light. Or maybe it was white light. I can't recall now.

"Well, good night," I said and I got up.

Vishnu looked at me with a gripping expression. He put down the chip bowl and leaned forward. "You're doing it all wrong," he said. "You're doing everything in the order in which it appears to you. But you're only looking at things in the order that you expect them to occur. Stop doing this. You must look at everything as it approaches you. Do this and the order of time will be permanently changed for you."

I wanted to say something smart but I knew he was dead serious, and that any argument I could make would only help him. And I knew I could do as he said.