Three More Wishes: Be Kind To Your Genie (3 page)

In the front seat of my car, Fatima was rubbernecking like a maniac, and bouncing with excitement. “Look, the jeeps here are all different colors!”

I smiled. “ ‘Automobiles,’ they’re called ‘automobiles.’ ”

“So that’s what ‘automobiles’ are! Also called ‘cars,’ right? And jeeps are ... military cars?”

“Close enough,” I said. “American 1940s military cars, basically.” Then I remarked, “You seem to be really looking forward to tonight.”

“Dinner and a movie? I bet my ration, Jackson, I’m excited! I especially can’t wait to see the newsreel before the movie.”

“Um, we don’t have newsreels anymore.”

She sounded worried. “Then how do I see what’s going on in the rest of the world? The photos they print in newspapers are so
tiny
.”

I laughed. “Trust me, we have much better ways of keeping informed than by newsreels.” Then I had a thought: “So what’s the last movie you’ve seen?
Casablanca
?”

“I’ve never seen a movie before. This will be my first.”

“Then how can you talk about them so knowledgeably? And about newsreels?”

“When I first came out of my lamp in 1943, I quickly realized that I did not understand my master’s language. So I asked by gesture if I could touch his forehead. By doing that, I learned his language—but I also learned much about his world. But I never got to
see
his world.”

“So Uncle Warren rubbed you out of the lamp, made his wishes, and
bang
, back into the lamp you went? Is that normal for you?”

“Oh yes. Since the day that King Solomon imprisoned
djinn
, only twice have I spent more than a tenth of an hour in the presence of any one master.”

“The first time being the lifetime of Ali the Goat-Herder, and the second being right now?”

“
Yes!
” She was looking at me now with a big grin. “On the day that God frees
djinn
from bondage, I will tell God and all the
djinn
of the Green Tribe, of your kindness.”

I very much wanted to say
Aw shucks, ’tain’t nuthin’.
Instead I asked, “So how did a powerful genie like you wind up in a brass lamp?”

“Long ago, there was a War of the
djinn
. The Tribe of the Blue Djinn were powerful, and its
djinn
thought they would win; but we of the Tribe of the Green Djinn made alliance with the blond-haired Tribe of the Pink Djinn. We all knew that God was angry at us for making war, but we didn’t care. But then God sent to us a human, King Solomon—”

“And he stopped the war?”

“King Solomon used God’s power to capture and Bind one
djinni
from each Tribe, who would serve puny humans until God saw fit to release him or her. But then, instead of stopping their fighting, the three Tribes united to destroy King Solomon and to rescue their tribes
djinn
. That backfired: Unharmed King Solomon again captured and bound a
djinni
from each Tribe. I saw my best friend in the Pink Tribe bound into a bottle, then I myself was bound into your lamp. But ha, Kharmesh of the Blue Tribe also is stuck in a lamp!”

By now, we were in the movie theater. Once we’d parked, and walked into the theater lobby, I bought tickets to the 3-D blockbuster
Rubert’s Village
. As I was being handed the tickets, my parents walked through the theater lobby. They looked startled to see me with a beautiful woman. (Hell, they looked startled to see me with
any
woman.)

The movie’s start-time wasn’t for another forty-five minutes, so I took Fatima into a nearby restaurant. I felt underdressed, but Fatima got many favorable looks. Perhaps it was because she was wearing a green dress and matching heels; or perhaps it was because of all the tan breast skin showing.

Fatima had never before tasted ketchup (or tomatoes, for that matter), or potatoes (which are grown in cold climates). So she treated me like a conquering hero, just for ordering her a Hamburger Plate. I wish every girl were that easy to please!

After a leisurely conversation (mostly about my life at school and my plans for college), I paid the restaurant check, and then we went to see
Rubert’s Village
, starring Emma Watson and Megan Fox.

****

Rubert’s village, Tinkerham, has a mine nearby that is a major source of magic dust. The villagers of Tinkerham sell the magic dust fairly—the same price whether a buyer is expert or novice, male or female, good or evil, living nearby or from far away.

But that isn’t good enough for sorcerer Malmajj. Malmajj is evil—he burns the king to death with fireballs in the very first scene—and he wants to seize the magic-dust mine, and be the only one to possess its magic dust. He cooks up a plan to zombie-fy the villagers so that they will work at nothing but mining magic dust and giving the dust to Malmajj.

Malmajj flies around riding Sonic, a giant vampire bat. Malmajj looks fearsome.

But Malmajj’s first Zombie spell is accidentally reversed by a Tinkerham youth, the handsome journeyman tool-handle-maker, Rubert. When Rubert realizes that nobody else in the village will stand up to Malmajj, he moves from being the evil wizard’s accidental bad luck to becoming Malmajj’s sworn enemy.

Rubert doesn’t seem to be a worthy hero. His only weapon is a woodsman’s axe. And his only exceptional feature is his willingness to let old people talk about olden days. Rubert listens to old men or old women tell stories when nobody else will.

Rubert has only two allies in his fight against Malmajj. The first is Pendlenerk, a baby dragon who can’t fly well—to put it mildly. Rubert’s second ally is the village maiden Heather (Emma Watson). Rubert thinks of Heather as a good friend.

But Heather is in love with Rubert. And if Rubert doesn’t realize that, Nakeda certainly does.

Nakeda (Megan Fox) is the evil daughter of Malmajj. Nakeda tries to lure Rubert into betraying everyone and everything that he holds dear. At times, she forgets to wear much clothing when she’s around Rubert.

When Nakeda can’t sucker Heather into believing tomcatting rumors about Rubert, she tries the reverse. Nakeda slips Heather a Lust Potion, than Nakeda hooks Heather up with Granddik, the blacksmith’s son. Then, to put icing on the cake, Nakeda convinces Rubert that he has to deliver a message to Granddik in his shack. Rubert comes upon Heather and Granddik fucking (loudly), as Nakeda watches through a window.

Seeing the energetic sex, anguished Rubert says to Heather, “I thought you were a
virgin
! Do you love him?”

To which Heather replies, “I don’t love
him
, I love
you
!” And with those words, the Lust Spell is broken.

Nakeda sashays in, holds up the bottle of Lust Potion, and explains what she did. All this was a diversion, Nakeda explains, to keep Rubert and friends away from the mine, because Malmajj plans to attack it in an hour. And the villagers won’t help, because Nakeda made sure to tell them that Heather is a promiscuous slut.

At these words, naked Heather runs up to Nakeda, her hand open, and it seems that Heather plans to slap Nakeda across the face. But once she’s close to Nakeda, Heather grabs the bottle of Lust Potion, throws away the stopper, and throws the bottle’s remaining liquid in Nakeda’s face. Then Heather yells to Rubert, “Turn your back on her!”

Nakeda makes eye contact with Granddik, and starts a hip-swinging walk toward him. Rubert, realizing what has happened, tries to “save” Nakeda, even as Heather is gathering up her clothing and pushing Rubert out of Granddik’s shack. “Nakeda, who do you love?” Rubert yells.

Nakeda yells back, “I don’t love
anyone
! All men are bastards or fools. Now Granddik, you big man, get over here and—”

Heather yanks the shack door shut, so that we can’t hear the rest of Nakeda’s words.

By the time Heather is dressed, Rubert has a plan how to protect the mine. He wants to dash straight from Granddik’s shack back to Tinkerham, to carry out his plan, but Heather says, “Wait.” He turns back to her, about to ask “Why?”—and Heather gives him a hot kiss.

Part of Rubert’s plan is weird, and a little disturbing. An old man sits, bare to the waist, in a chair. Rubert makes a cut near his left wrist, so that blood runs down the old man’s arm. Heather picks up a slice of bread, wipes off the blood running down the man’s arm with the bread, then delivers the bloody bread slice to Rubert. As Rubert is eating the blood-soaked bread slice, Heather brings him a second such piece.

Malmajj shows up, attacking the mine’s defenders (our three heroes, plus twenty villagers) with zombie eagles. The villagers destroy one zombie eagle by fire, but by then, all twenty villagers have been killed.

Rubert uses magic dust to turn clumsy baby dragon Pendlenerk temporarily into a powerful and experienced adult dragon. Adult-Pendlenerk flames all the zombie eagles and kills Malmajj’s giant vampire bat, but then Malmajj uses five kill-spells, close together, to kill Pendlenerk. Dying, Pendlenerk turns back into a cute little baby dragon, living only long enough to say goodbye to Rubert and Heather (who are holding hands).

But soon Rubert is holding his woodsman’s axe in a two-handed grip, and he and Malmajj (whose hands are moving sinuously) face each other, five feet apart. Suddenly Malmajj throws a kill-spell at Rubert. Rubert staggers, and then—

—stands straight again. Malmajj is so shocked that Rubert isn’t dead that he just stands there as Rubert rushes up to him. Rubert puts the axe-head deep into the middle of Malmajj’s chest.

Over Malmajj’s corpse, Rubert explains: Men who mine the magic dust build up an immunity to magic, over many years’ time. “If you’d have talked to the oldest of the magic-dust miners, you’d have known that.” Rubert figured out that by eating the blood of one such magic-immune man, Rubert gained enough immunity that the kill-spell didn’t kill him.

Weeks later, at the wedding of Rubert and Heather, Nakeda steps into the back of the wedding chapel, accompanied by Granddik and two other young men. She is just beginning to show her pregnancy. She is there only briefly before she grabs Granddik’s hand and tries to drag him out of the wedding chapel. Granddik gives her a disgusted look, then pushes her toward one of his two buddies. Nakeda’s second escort rolls his eyes, then pushes her toward the third guy. She takes the third guy’s hand, and tries to drag him toward the wedding chapel’s rear doors. The third guy lets himself be led out.

****

In the movie theater, Fatima several times pulled off the polarizing glasses to look at the IMAX screen with naked eyes. Of course, as soon as she did that, the 3-D effect disappeared. After doing this several times, she leaned over and murmured, “This is not a magical illusion?”

I replied, “Oh, it’s an illusion, but definitely not magical.”

“Amazing,” she said.

Later she whispered, “I feel sorry for Sonic.”

“Who’s Sonic?”

“The big bat. Do you think he
wants
to fly that nasty human around?”

****

When we’d returned to my car, but before I started the engine, I asked, “So, are you enjoying the sights and sounds of 2010?”

“Definitely, Master. I bet my ration, Jackson, I’m having a
wonderful
time!”

“That’s, uh, great. Fatima, I want you to do something for me.”

“Yes, Master?”

“I want you to touch my forehead, do whatever you did with Uncle Warren.”

She looked at me, puzzled. “But I already know your language.”

“You know my language
as of 1943
. You have no idea what a ‘CPU’ is. And frankly, it’s weird for me to hear a girl who looks like she’s my age, use an expression that only my elderly uncle used.”

Fatima reached out a hand and touched my forehead. I didn’t know what to expect when the hand was actually green smoke, but it felt like a regular girl’s hand, soft and warm. Then the memory-reading began.

It was like my whole life was recorded on a 200-foot-diameter DVD, and Fatima played the giant disk on Very Fast Forward. By the car clock, only five minutes passed, but I relived every day of my life in that time.

She smiled when she took her hand away. “Having just seen my first movie, now I want to Netflix my second one.”

“Oh? Which movie do you want to see?”

Her green eyes gleamed with glee. “That Robin Williams cartoon. I want to see how much those Disney artists made the bound blue
djinni
look like Kharmesh!”

Then her expression changed to a frown. “That Hank Miller, he is not nice to you.”

****

After my “date” with Fatima, I realized that I had a problem: I had to get Fatima back into her lamp. Which was in my bedroom. If my parents had gone to bed when I got home, no problem. But if my folks
weren’t
in bed—

What were the chances that I could walk in my house with a woman who looked twenty years old and who had a killer body, and waltz her past my parents, up the stairs, and into my bedroom?
Zero
, that’s what the chances were.

I mentioned my problem to Fatima. She replied, “I have an answer,
if
you can roll up your windows, Master.” (It was a muggy May night, and my clunker’s AC didn’t work.) I rolled up the windows, and she said, “When you get in your bedroom, open a window and hold the lamp out.”

Then she ... I guess the best way to describe it is, she silently exploded in slow motion. She was sitting within the shoulder harness—then seconds later, the entire cab of my car was filled with a faint green tint and an exotic smell. Then both the smell and the tint vanished, and I was seemingly alone.

My precaution had been wise. My parents were downstairs when I walked in. I suspect that they were staying up just for this chance to pounce on me.

My mother soon asked, “How did you meet her?” Clearly understood in her tone was the question,
Is she a crazy axe murderer?
My father asked the same question, “Yes, Marvin, how did you meet her?”—but
his
tone of voice carried the implication of
How did you score such a hot babe?