If Wishing Made It So Read online

  ‘‘It’s happening. Denial doesn’t help. Maybe we need to talk.’’

  ‘‘We are talking. That’s what’s upsetting me. I feel as if I have a unicorn in the garden.’’

  ‘‘I don’t understand,’’ the man said, looking at her as if she were mentally deranged.

  ‘‘It’s a short story by James Thurber. I’m an English teacher. I tend to make literary references.’’ Hildy thought for a moment, the linoleum cool against her back. ‘‘Here’s a reference you should understand, if you are who you say you are: ‘Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.’ ’’

  ‘‘Ah, you are a grammaticus. Are you testing me? That is easy; it’s the opening of Julius Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic Wars. ‘All Gaul is divided into three parts.’ ’’ His voice became annoyed. ‘‘I am an educated man. Did you assume I was born a plebeian or a slave?’’ His chin lifted, his pride evident. ‘‘My father was a Roman citizen.’’

  ‘‘I really need to get off the floor,’’ Hildy murmured to herself. Aloud she asked, ‘‘What did you say your name was?’’

  ‘‘Antonius Eugenius. You can call me Tony G. Should I call you master?’’

  Hildy moved abruptly into a sitting position. Her head swam but she remained upright. She put her fingertips to her forehead. ‘‘Master is the wrong gender and quite inappropriate.’’

  ‘‘Mistress, then?’’

  ‘‘Absolutely not.’’ She adopted the voice she used for dealing with wiseacre teenage boys. ‘‘You shall call me Ms. Caldwell.’’

  ‘‘As you wish, Ms. Caldwell.’’ A pained expression crossed Tony’s face. As a Roman centurion, he led a cohort, nearly one hundred and sixty Roman soldiers. Now he had to obey this slip of a girl. But he accepted the cards dealt by fate. He had no choice. Some battles are best left unfought.

  ‘‘Now, Tony, if you will offer me your hand, I want to stand.’’ He did, and she did, swaying slightly. As soon as she felt steady on her feet, she dropped his hand. She tipped her head back and looked up at him. Her eyes narrowed. ‘‘You look familiar. Are you sure you don’t work for the casino?’’

  ‘‘I am positive that I do not,’’ he said.

  Hildy remained skeptical. She suddenly knew who this man resembled: Tony Curtis in Spartacus. His name in the movie was Antonius too. Her suspicions grew that she was the target of a scam, although she couldn’t imagine for what purpose someone who worked at Caesar’s would pretend to be a genie in a bottle. She decided on another test for this Tony G.

  ‘‘ ‘Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit litora,’ ’’ she recited.

  The Roman’s face lit up with delight. ‘‘You do know Latin! Shall we speak it then? It has been centuries since I’ve conversed in my native tongue.’’

  ‘‘No, we shall not speak Latin. To paraphrase your own words, ‘I am an educated person.’ I had four years of Latin study, but I’m far from fluent. And if you really are an ancient Roman, as you say you are, I would like you to identify the line and give me a translation.’’ Hildy’s voice was arch.

  ‘‘You really should choose a more obscure quotation,’’ Tony commented. ‘‘Every boy at the gymnasium must memorize the first line of Virgil’s Aeneid. In English, the line would be something like, ‘I sing of war and the man’—he meant the hero Aeneas, you know—‘who, exiled by fate, first came from the coasts of Troy to the shores of Italy and Lavinia.’ ’’

  But as Tony finished his answer, his voice caught in his throat. The light in the room dimmed. And the Roman who had stood so solidly in front of Hildy began to fade away, his outline softening and his body first becoming insubstantial, then transparent, until only a wisp of smoke remained where the large man had been.

  ‘‘What’s happening? Where are you?’’ Something must have gone terribly wrong, she thought.

  Only a moment passed, although it seemed much longer, before the brightness returned. Tony G. changed again from smoke to flesh and blood. His eyes held a great sorrow, his mouth turned down at the corners, his shoulders sagged. He sat down heavily on the step stool.

  ‘‘I must ask your forbearance, mis— I mean Ms. Caldwell. I am a stoic man, but hearing you speak in Latin touched my heart, awakening such memories. Then the import of Virgil’s words suddenly struck me, reminding me that I too am in exile, wandering farther from home than Aeneas ever did.’’

  He shook his head, overcome by weariness and grief. ‘‘I am a warrior, but I am also a man. You might say I began to fall apart.’’

  He sat there on the stool an arm’s length away from Hildy. He wasn’t a vision, a hologram, or a dream. Hildy felt confused. The situation was fantastical, but this man had feelings, a past, a life. He was undeniably real. She groped for an explanation. ‘‘Tell me again, you were in the bottle and you’re a genie? How can that be?’’

  ‘‘I don’t care much to talk about it,’’ he said and sighed. ‘‘But to give you the short version of a long story: I was to be executed— You wish to know why?’’ He paused as Hildy made a noise and held up her hand like a stop sign.

  ‘‘Yes, yes, I would. Why don’t you give me the unabridged version? I think I need to hear it.’’

  The genie gave another deep sigh, and his eyes got a faraway look. ‘‘It was a case of being blinded by love, I suppose. I had been in Judea for some time when I met a beautiful woman near a well where she waited for an elderly servant to fetch her a drink. She was a lovely thing with flashing eyes and a smile that made my heart race. Her hair was black and interwoven with jewels. She smelled of sandalwood and she dressed in silks.’’ His voice trailed off and he smiled at the memory. Then he continued.

  ‘‘I looked at her longingly and she looked back. I ventured a greeting. She responded in kind, and with her first words, I was smitten. I approached closer. I took her hand and brought it to my lips. She didn’t resist. In fact, I felt her quiver when I kissed her palm. I suggested that, if she was thirsty, we could visit a nearby tavern and have some wine together. She giggled and said she couldn’t possibly.

  ‘‘I dropped her hand and bowed. I turned to leave. Her voice stopped me. Perhaps I could come back to her rooms, she whispered just loud enough for me to hear. She had some very fine wine there. I couldn’t believe my luck.

  ‘‘And I shouldn’t have believed it. Her rooms were in the palace of Herod the Great, a blood-thirsty tyrant—’’

  ‘‘I’ve heard of him,’’ Hildy interrupted. ‘‘He’s the king of Judea who ordered every child under two who lived near Bethlehem to be murdered. He feared the Messiah, said to have been born there, would usurp his throne. What a monster.’’

  Tony G. nodded in assent. ‘‘You don’t know the half of it. He had an obsession with threats to his kingship. Just the year before my own, er, situation, he had executed two of his own sons because he thought they were planning to overthrow him.’’

  Hildy’s eyes got bigger. She urged the genie to get on with his tale.

  ‘‘As I was saying, I retired to the rooms of this alluring young female. She ordered wine to be brought, along with some meats and fruit. We ate, we drank, we talked for a while. I told her of my life. She said little of hers, but I was too dazzled to notice her reticence.

  ‘‘Finally she dismissed her servant, leaving us alone in her chamber. We kissed. We … well, we got to know each other better. Dusk fell. The room filled with shadows. I had stayed too long, but I lay there in a stupor. I was intoxicated with more than wine and careless when I should have been cautious.

  ‘‘The lady’s servant reappeared suddenly, throwing aside the curtains that surrounded the bed. The old hag warned that Herod was approaching. I must flee. I grabbed my sword and my toga. I was in the act of putting on my sandals when the palace guards crashed into the room and seized me.

  ‘‘King Herod himself came in behind them. ‘Kill him,’ he said without any emotion. ‘Bring me his head on a platter,’ he added.

>   ‘‘The sweet lady’s hair was a mass of tangled curls and her feet were bare—as was the rest of her, to tell the truth. She threw herself at the king, falling to her knees before him. I didn’t see what followed because the guards were dragging me away. I fought like a madman although I knew escape was futile. I felt humiliated. I should have died on the battlefield, with honor, not because I was dipping my …’’ The genie remembered he was speaking with Hildy and stopped himself mid-sentence.

  ‘‘I’m not a child,’’ Hildy said, her voice cross. ‘‘I know what you two were doing. Go on, please, with the story.’’

  Tony G. gave her a wink, some of his good humor returning. ‘‘I was more angry with myself than with Herod, to be honest. I had been drunk on lust and desire. Now I was determined to go down fighting, not be executed like a common criminal. I lashed out with my feet. I struggled with the strength of ten men, conscious of nothing but the need to break free.’’

  Tony G. puffed up his chest as he spoke.

  ‘‘Then in the midst of the melee, I heard the old servant’s voice shouting at the guards to return me to the chamber. She screamed out that Herod had changed his mind. Bloody and battered, I was brought before the king and thrown down on the hard stone floor. A guard put the point of his sword in the middle of my back, its tip piercing my flesh. He put his foot on my neck so I could not lift my head to see, but I smelled the woman’s perfume. I knew she was there.

  ‘‘Herod began to speak. He was just a puppet ruler, appointed by Rome after all, and I was a Roman centurion, as the lady must have told him. ‘You aroused my anger, perhaps too quickly,’ the king said. ‘You are a Roman citizen, I understand, and well-connected in the senate. Explaining your execution would be tiresome; you do have such bothersome laws in the empire. Besides’—his voice became taunting—‘being served another head on a platter has lost its satisfaction.’

  ‘‘He laughed then, a cold, cruel laugh. ‘My lady here has suggested it would be more amusing to give you a different kind of fate, worse than death perhaps.’

  ‘‘My heart froze at his words. I did not fear beheading, which would have been quick. I cursed myself and my stupidity as I wondered what vile torture he had thought up in the few minutes since I was seized. He soon told me.

  ‘‘ ‘I have a visitor from Egypt, a famous magician, or so he says. So far his tricks have been rather ordinary. He claims he casts spells and enchantments. Let’s find out if he can entertain me with your fate.’ ’’

  The genie looked at Hildy then, his eyes sad, his shoulders sagging. ‘‘The magician put on quite a show for Herod the Great. First he drugged me, assuring my cooperation. Then he produced clouds of rainbow-colored smoke and made marvelous music from invisible instruments ring through the ether. He opened a great book and began reading out a spell. Suddenly I was a few inches tall and imprisoned in a bottle.

  ‘‘Herod himself was the first to pull the cork and request three wishes. As he already had great wealth and power, his wishes were grandiose, but frivolous. After his third wish—a golden chariot pulled by golden horses—I found myself back in the bottle, adrift in a vast blue sea, the Mediterranean, I believe. And that, Ms. Caldwell, is my tale.’’

  ‘‘Is it the truth?’’ Hildy challenged him.

  A twinkle lit up the genie’s eyes, which were as blue as the sea he had just mentioned. ‘‘For the most part,’’ he said. ‘‘I was not executed as you can plainly see. And I truly am a genie, created by enchantment and cast upon the waters to wander forever.’’

  Hildy gave him an appraising look. This Tony G. was not a figment of her imagination, of that she was certain. She had always been a sensible person, not given to visions or flights of fancy. But her belief system most definitely had not included genies. ‘‘I always assumed genies were mythical creatures,’’ she offered, feeling uneasy.

  ‘‘People assumed Troy was a myth too,’’ Tony pointed out.

  ‘‘Yes, until Heinrich Schliemann followed the clues in Homer’s Iliad, found the original city in Turkey, and dug it up.’’ Hildy talked more to herself than to Tony. She looked at him then. Anxiety spread like a sudden frost inside her. The appearance of this genie had shaken the very foundations of her world. And right now she had other priorities in her life that she wanted to deal with. She straightened her shoulders, determined to dispose of the whole problem.

  ‘‘I’m really very sorry, but this is absolutely one of the worst times you could have showed up. I may be on the verge of—’’ She stopped. She had no intention of revealing her deepest hopes. ‘‘Never mind that. In any event, I feel very uncomfortable having you here, even if you are a genie. What am I supposed to do with you?’’

  ‘‘Help me escape.’’

  ‘‘From the enchantment? Of course, I’d be glad to.’’ Hildy felt an immense relief. She’d do whatever she had to and this unusual man would be on his way or disappear, or whatever, but he’d be gone.

  ‘‘Ummm.’’ Tony cleared his throat and avoided eye contact. ‘‘Not from the enchantment. I need you to help me escape Jimmy the Bug.’’

  ‘‘You need to escape a bug? What are you talking about?’’ A bad feeling started blossoming inside Hildy even before the genie began to answer.

  Her misgivings grew progressively greater after Tony G. started talking. According to the genie, his previous master, who had found the bottle while vacationing in Miami, was Jimmy ‘‘the Bug’’ Torelli, a convicted murderer, thief, racketeer, extorter, and well-known mob boss. Earlier today Torelli had taken Tony G., riding inside the bottle, to the slots in Atlantic City so that the genie could help him win a jackpot.

  That piece of information brought Hildy up short. She interrupted the genie. ‘‘You could do that? Make the machine hit the jackpot?’’

  ‘‘The machines are already programmed by the casino, you do know that?’’ Tony G. talked with hand gestures and body language. He turned his palms up and shrugged his shoulders. ‘‘If it was going to hit the jackpot it would without my help, but I can nudge my master to the right machine and help things along a little, you might say.’’

  ‘‘I hit the jackpot. After I put you in my bag.’’ Hildy became quite agitated. She never cheated at anything, ever, not even her income tax. ‘‘Did you? I mean, I didn’t wish—’’

  Tony G. looked at her and cocked his head. ‘‘ ‘I am fortunate in every way and I wish to be lucky today.’ I am quite sure I heard you say that.’’ He spoke without guile.

  ‘‘Oh no, I didn’t mean … now I feel terrible. I won the jackpot because I wished it. I will have to return the money. It’s only right.’’

  Tony G. gave her a pitying look. ‘‘You do not have to return the money. You won it fairly.’’

  ‘‘No, I didn’t. I wished it to happen!’’ Hildy protested.

  Tony G. laughed. ‘‘And don’t you think that everyone playing the machines also wishes it to happen? How do you know that’s not why they win?’’

  ‘‘Because—because—you just told me you did it.’’

  ‘‘I said the machine was already programmed to win. You chose to sit there. I had nothing to do with that. And what would you tell the casino, ‘I’m returning the jackpot because I wished I’d win and I did’? That’s ridiculous.’’

  Hildy felt confused. His reasoning was flawed and self-serving, but she couldn’t get her mind around exactly how to counter his argument. ‘‘I still think it was cheating somehow.’’

  ‘‘You are definitely splitting hairs about this. Are you always so tiresome? Besides, worrying about that win is the least of your problems. You need to focus on what is really important here.’’

  ‘‘What do you mean?’’

  ‘‘Your ownership of the bottle has put you in harm’s way.’’

  Hildy felt her heart start to race. ‘‘What exactly do you mean by that? How am I in harm’s way?’’

  ‘‘Because the well-known South Jersey Mafia boss, my former master, Jim
my the Bug, who not only has eyes that pop insectlike from his head but is what you in this century might call ‘one can short of a six-pack,’ is going to be looking for me.’’

  ‘‘How hard is he going to be looking?’’ Hildy asked, but thought she knew the answer.

  ‘‘I imagine he’s working on it already. He had big plans for using me to expand his territory, to become the boss of bosses. He sees me as his ticket to taking over Atlantic City, Las Vegas, and who knows what. The world? He dreams big.’’

  The blood had drained from Hildy’s face.

  ‘‘You’re not going to faint again, are you?’’ Tony G. asked, ready to grab the paper plate again.

  Hildy shook her head no. ‘‘Could you do that? Make him that powerful? I’m afraid I don’t know what you can do and can’t do.’’

  Tony G. nodded yes. ‘‘I can make him capo di tutti capi, boss of bosses. I don’t want to. It goes against my nature, and to tell the truth I think he’s an idiot, although a very dangerous one. But if he possesses the bottle, I have to obey him. He gets three wishes in any event—you’ve already heard about genies and the three wishes. Everybody knows that.’’

  ‘‘Don’t be patronizing. I heard about that in fairy tales. My life never depended on what I thought was a story. Please spell it out for me.’’ Hildy felt agitated. She needed all the details she could get.

  Tony G. gave her a little nod. ‘‘As you wish. As a genie, I have to obey whoever owns the bottle. I can do errands, grant petty desires, that sort of thing, and it doesn’t count against the three wishes my master gets. Maybe I should call the three wishes ‘big wishes.’ A big wish might be if you said, ‘Tony G., I wish to be president of the United States.’ That’s huge, a life-changing desire. Do you see?’’

  ‘‘Was my jackpot win a big wish? I mean, I didn’t even know I was making a real wish at the time.’’

  Tony G.’s manner became gallant, charming even. ‘‘No, it wasn’t. You weren’t asking me directly for anything. I just felt like giving you a smile. I like seeing those dimples, by the way. Just like that Mike fellow does—’’