Three More Wishes: Be Kind To Your Genie (15 page)

My dad said, “
Whoa!
King Solomon, like in the
Bible
? It was
him
who set up the genies?”

I said, “Yep, ol’ Baby-Splitter himself. He made up the rules, and he personally stuck Fatima into her lamp.”

I thought about Fatima’s request, while everyone was silent. Then I asked, “Will it violate genie secrecy to tell my folks how common six wishes is? How many genie masters have there been, and how many got six wishes because of you-know-what?”

Fatima summoned her scrying ball (which startled my parents), and spent twenty minutes working it. Then she turned her face toward mine. She said, “You are the 147th master since King Solomon bound we six
djinn
into Vessels. None of the 146 other masters have earned six wishes—in fact, the one other master who is alive now, forfeited two of her three.”

I turned to my mom and said, “Sorry, Mom. Fatima has never asked anything of me before, and she makes a good argument.”

Dad laughed. “Fatima made a
very
good argument, son, because she had to speak it in code around your mother and me.”

Fatima said, “But Mrs. Harper, while we won’t answer your question, know that you can be proud of your son. He’s done something that no other genie’s master has ever done.”

Fatima and I stayed at my parents’ house till shortly before noon. The reason for such a long visit? My parents were fascinated to hear “the real truth” about all the genie stories, especially “Aladdin”—while Fatima pumped my parents for everything they’d spill about me in my younger days.

Shortly before noon, Fatima and I left my parents’ house and got in my car, with me intending to drive to the high school for my final costume fitting. I told Fatima that she had permission to “foom off somewhere,” but she smiled and told me that she was enjoying being with me.

When Fatima and I walked hand-in-hand into the Home Ec Lab, Mrs. Williams sighed and rolled her eyes. But Ilyana smirked and said, “
Another
one, Marvin? She makes six in your harem?”

I smirked right back and said, “Eight. Yesterday I recruited Anna Kay Henderson and a substitute teacher.”

Ilyana laughed and shook her head.

When Mrs. Williams announced that Ilyana earned an ‘A’ on her project, Fatima pulled a digital camera from her purse, and took pictures of Ilyana and Mrs. Williams, each standing next to “Captain America.”

Minutes later, Fatima and I were back in my clunker, with the Captain America costume in my trunk.

Next stop: checking up on my locker-neighbor, Janice Wesley, who had missed the last three days of school.

****

Janice lived in a shabby trailer park. Anything wooden that I could see, was gray; anything made of steel was rusty; anything painted had paint coming off; and anything living was overgrown.

In other words, my clunker had finally found a home.

So you can imagine my alarm when I got close to Janice’s trailer and discovered a shiny, metallic gold, late-model Mustang GT convertible parked in front of Janice’s trailer, and a man’s yelling coming from within the trailer.

I shut off the engine and rolled down my and Fatima’s windows, the better to hear.

The man was yelling, “YOU THINK I’M GONNA LET MY CAR GET REPOED BECAUSE OF SOME UPPITY CUNT WHORE? I’M NOT GONNA HEAR THIS SHIT
ANY MORE!
YOU ARE GETTING YOUR ASS BACK ON THE STREET
TONIGHT
, AND YOU’RE GONNA BE NICE AND HAPPY FOR THE MEN, GOT IT?”

I asked Fatima, “Who’s in there besides Janice?”

She summoned her scrying ball and seconds later told me, “A young man named Gregory and a young woman named Holly.”

“What are their relationships with Janice and each other?”

“Gregory is Janice’s pimp. She thought he loved her, but now she’s wondering if she was tricked. Holly is another of Gregory’s whores. Gregory brought Holly to clean Janice up, because Janice is filthy and Gregory doesn’t want to touch her. Janice and Holly don’t dislike each other, but they’re not close.”

“And Janice’s mom and dad, where are they?”

Several seconds later, Fatima replied, “Mom’s at work. She has two jobs. Right now she’s waitressing. Janice’s parents divorced three years ago—her father lives in South Dakota and drives a garbage truck.”

I nodded, thought a few seconds, then asked, “How many doors does this trailer have? Just this one?”

Fatima moved her hand sideways through the air. Where her hand had been, the air turned into a floating light-green slate. Fatima gestured, and on this floating slate appeared a map of the trailer, marked in dark green. Three flashing green lights, marked ‘J’, ‘G’, and ‘H’, showed where the people in the trailer were.

Fatima’s magic map showed another door on the back side of the trailer. The magic map also showed that Holly was in the master bedroom’s bathroom, at the far west end of the trailer—while Gregory and Janice were in the bathroom at the far east end of the trailer. Since Gregory was still yelling, he and Janice clearly weren’t taking a sexy shower together.

I pointed at the other door on the map. “Is this door locked?”

Fatima replied, “Yes.” Then her eyebrows shot up. “The front door is locked too.”

I nodded. “That would give Gregory the few seconds he needed, if Janice made a run for it.”

I said, “Fatima, please unlock both doors without Gregory knowing. Also, I want to be able to walk through this back door and make no noise. No door squeaks, no door slams. Will you do that for me?”

She gestured. “I’m putting a Space of Silence for a cubit around that door. Meaning that nobody will hear whatever noise the door makes. But Master, that same magic means that when you step through the door, you’ll be deaf.”

“I’ll be careful,” I said. I kissed Fatima, then I stepped out of the car and walked around the west side of Janice’s trailer, far away from Gregory and Janice.

The wooden steps going up to the trailer’s back door were lying in the grass, two feet from where they needed to be. I smiled, as I put the stairs in place: Gregory wouldn’t expect anyone to come through
this
back door.

The back-door stairs had three steps. I heard my feet hit the bottom two steps, but not the top step.

Just before I stepped up to that top step, I heard a woman’s scream from inside the trailer, to my left.

Where Janice was.

****

I jumped up onto that top step, and all the sounds that I was hearing—Gregory’s yelling, a sports announcer on someone’s TV, birdcalls, and a motorcycle moving along a street—all went completely silent.

The back door opened inward. I stepped into a narrow walkway by a compact washer and dryer.

And instantly I discovered that I had a problem.

Ten feet in front of me, Holly was rummaging through the refrigerator. Her back was to me, but her head was turned to the left, where the scream had come from. Now there was a good chance that she’d see me, and there was no place for me to hide.

I stood still, not giving her any motion to notice. After a few seconds, her head turned forward, facing into the open refrigerator.

So I was lucky, Holly didn’t know that I was behind her. No problem, I would just sneak up on her, make her my touch-slave, and she wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

I took a step toward her. And then all the sounds that had been silenced out, came back.

Plus a new sound. I hadn’t realized it till that moment, but the same magical transformations that had made me able to bench-press the trunk of my clunker, also made me
heavy
. And I was walking on floor that was two feet above the ground.

When I took a step toward Holly, the floor creaked. Loudly. Holly spun around, spilling soda from the can she held.

She gasped. She inhaled deeply, clearly about to yell or scream.

I walked toward her, not so fast as to scare her, but fast enough to not waste precious time. As I walked, I pointed to her, then put my finger to my lips.

She stood there, staring at me, her body rigid.

As soon as she was within reach, my hand shot out, quick as a snake, and touched her bare arm. “I claim you, Holly,” I said.

Holly’s muscles relaxed. “I am yours,” she told me.

Then I heard Greg yell. “HOLLY, WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE.”

I pointed to the back door and whispered to Holly, “Walk out this door, walk around
this
side of the trailer”—I pointed west—“and by Gregory’s convertible you’ll see an old blue car with a woman in the front seat. Get in the back seat. Do not come back in this trailer unless I tell you to.”

“Yes, sir,” Holly whispered, and hurried away.

Okay, the little problem was taken care of. Now for the big problem: Gregory.

****

I haven’t mentioned the smell. As soon as I’d opened the back door, I’d been unable to ignore the reek of vomit and diarrheic shit. And to all the human misery that those smells meant, new misery was being added: I was hearing a woman’s sobbing.

I realized that I had no idea when Janice’s fated death was.

From where I was, looking beyond the living room was a narrow hallway, which was to the right of anyone stepping in the front door. Off that hallway were doors to two smaller bedrooms, I knew, and at the end of that hallway was the door to the other bathroom.

Standing by the refrigerator as I was, I could see Gregory clearly. He was standing in the bathroom doorway, his attention on something happening in the bathroom itself.

And if I can see HIM...

I zoomed away from the fridge toward the kitchen table, onto the worn living-room carpet, and then around the living-room couch. Gregory wouldn’t see me before I appeared in the hallway, no more than thirteen feet away from him.

Well, that was the plan, anyway. Did you know, Reader, that they have a saying in the military?
The first casualty in any battle is always the battle plan.

As I was walking in the living room from the recliner to the television, I heard Gregory’s voice: “GODDAMNIT, HOLLY, WHERE ARE YOU?”

I walked around the TV and into the children’s-bedrooms hallway. Only to discover that Gregory wasn’t standing in the bathroom doorway anymore. Nope, he was in my end of the hallway, (only three feet away, in fact), and he was walking toward me.

Gregory stopped, jumped back, and drew a snub-nosed revolver from his waistband. “Who the fuck are
you
?” he demanded.

I looked at the gun in his hand, I looked in his face, and I smiled. “Thank you.”

“ ‘Thank you’? Are you some kind of retard?”

I smiled at him again. “Your gun—whatever I do now is treated as self-defense.” Then I kicked him in the jaw.

(Which is cool, when before, I’d only seen that stunt done in movies. Remind me to give Fatima a big kiss sometime.)

Gregory wound up lying on his back, momentarily dazed. I planted my right foot by his waist, and my left foot kicked down onto his right forearm. At least one bone broke. Gregory screamed.

“Who’s there?” Janice’s voice fearfully asked. “What’s going on?”

I called back, “Janice, it’s me, Marvin. Everything will be fine now.”

“No it won’t!” she said, sobbing. “He shot me up. I was clean for four days, and then five minutes ago, he shot me up!”

Gregory sneered at me. “She was getting full of herself. A man’s gotta control his bitches.”

I looked at the human filth on the floor, and I thought,
I could kill him. I’m strong enough, and I don’t think I’d need Fatima’s magic for a jury to acquit me.
Let me tell you, Reader, that oh, I was tempted.

Instead, I knelt down, yanked the revolver from his hand, then walked into the living room and hid the revolver under the couch. By the time I returned to the hallway, Gregory was sitting up, wincing with pain.

“Stand up,” I said.

He did. And I discovered that, in the few seconds that I’d been out of his sight, Gregory had pulled a trick on me.

There was a split second between the time that Gregory lifted his legs and hips off the carpet, and when his left hand came off the carpet. And in that moment, I saw something laying there by his good hand—

When Gregory stood up, he was holding a knife in his left hand.

He smiled at me. “Well, Marvin, you got a problem. You try kicking me again, you’re gonna get your leg sliced. But walk away, and I promise Janice won’t get hurt.”

“Gregory, you’re stupid if you think I’ll believe that promise.”

“Doesn’t matter, big man. Because you’re there, I’m here, and there is no one and no thing between my blade and her throat.”

I said, “Thanks for reminding me.” And then I
leaped
.

I leaped a pimp in a single bound. I just barely cleared him, too—not because my legs weren’t up to the challenge, but because the trailer’s ceiling was so low. Anyway, as soon as my hands hit the carpet behind Gregory, I pulled my legs in, then shoved them out
hard
, toward where I’d come from.

“
Oof!
” I heard Gregory say. A moment later, something heavy hit the ground several feet behind me.

For a moment, I felt danger. I was off-balance, and my enemy was behind me with a knife. But on the other hand, I’d just given my enemy a new problem of his own to deal with.

When I was on my feet and facing Gregory, I saw that he was lying on his stomach, still clutching the knife in his left hand. I’d shoved him far enough that only his feet still touched the hallway carpet, while his upper body was blocking anyone from opening the front door.

He was trying to get up off the floor. I couldn’t have that. I leaped on him, my thighs straddling his hips, and I grabbed his skull between my hands.

He froze, except for his knife hand. He moved the blade from pointing forward or to the right, to pointing backward or to the left.

I said conversationally, “Gregory, I paid close attention in high-school biology class, because I was hot for my teacher. And one of the things I learned from her is that the braincase isn’t one big round bone, like an egg, but eight bones. The frontal, the occipital, the left and right parietal, and I forget the other four. Point is, guy, these eight bones are welded together. Know anything about welding, Gregory?”

Silence.

I squeezed his skull some. “
Know anything
about welding, Gregory?”

“Yes! Did some in high school.”

I relaxed my squeeze. “Then you know that the weakest part of any object is where parts are welded together.
Right?
”

“Make your point, Frankenstein.”

“Now, you have a choice: You can toss that knife a few feet away, so that it’s out of your reach,
or
you can swing your arm back and stab me somewhere. But I don’t recommend Plan B.”

“Eat shit, guy. There’s no fucking way I’m giving up my blade.”

“Suit yourself. But as soon as you move that arm toward me, I’m gonna start squeezing. And holding your head are the two most powerful hands in the world. But maybe your skull is stronger than I think it is, or maybe I’m not so strong as I think I am—or maybe your skull cracks into pieces like a Hershey Bar, and then I squeeze your brain down to the size of a walnut. So you’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”

“Fuck you, Marvin.”

I laughed. “By the way, if you don’t toss your knife by the count of ten, I stop waiting and start squeezing. One...”