Time Is Dangerous

More about Time Is Dangerous

Mr. Dharma was a blue bird who worked as Death.

He wore a crown because people took bad news more seriously when it arrived overdressed.

His office contained enough gold to make poverty seem intentional. Leaves curled out of other leaves. Tiny faces lived inside the decorations, paying rent with expressions. The carpenter had died three hundred years ago and was still adding things.

“Churrigueresque Psychosomatic Magicalism,” Mr. Dharma said.

“Does it hurt?”

“Only when you get the bill.”

I had come about Tuesday.

Tuesday had disappeared while I was doing something I cannot remember, and now everybody insisted it was Friday. I wanted those three days returned. I had plans for them, although the plans were mostly sitting near a window.

Mr. Dharma held a black and gold globe in his lap.

“Is that the world?”

“A doorknob.”

“What does it open?”

He looked embarrassed for me.

Below his throne, an owl made of clock parts watched a minute crawl beneath the furniture. Nobody tried to catch it.

“I thought there would be a medicine wheel,” I said. “Or Kalachakra. Something to explain where I am.”

“We stopped putting diagrams on the walls. People kept mistaking them for exits.”

There were no mandalas. Just Mr. Dharma and an appointment book open to a blank page.

A hummingbird hovered beside his sceptre. Its wings sounded like somebody erasing a very small mistake.

“Time is dangerous,” he told me.

“Because it ends?”

“Because you keep saving it for later.”

He took off his crown. Underneath was an ordinary blue head. It made me miss my father for no particular reason.

I asked whether time was an illusion.

Mr. Dharma opened a drawer and handed me a watch.

It had belonged to somebody who was always nearly home.

“An illusion can still make you late,” he said.

Outside, the afternoon was sitting on the steps. I sat beside it. For once I had nothing else to do.

After a while, Mr. Dharma came out carrying two cups of tea.

We drank them before they got cold.