THE GENIE OF CENTRAL
A love story
By
John William Tuohy
\“Someday you will be old enough to starting reading fairy tales again” C.S.Lewis
CHAPTER ONE
“There are good days and there
are bad days. And this is one of them” Lawrence
Welk
“To everything there is a season,
Henry,” Doctor Shay said softly, soothingly “A time to be born and a time to die”
“And
this is my time” Henry said through hallow words as he stared at the vague
pattern in the white tile floor. Sitting upright now on the examining table
hoping against hope that the Doctor would tell him that it was not his time.
That that was not what he meant, Henry had misunderstood him.
“And
this is your time” the Doctor repeated softly.
“Damn it” Henry thought.
“Is there anyone I contact? Family?”
“No” He didn’t like this question
and wanted to get part if quickly “I’m alone.
It’s just me”
The Doctor had not expected that
answer and he stumbled for the next thing to say and both men looked out the
window, across Central Park and then returned their view to the sterile but
neatly appointed room.
“Maybe” the Doctor said “Maybe
social services. Maybe they can arrange
for you to talk with someone about this”
“How long?” Henry asked
The Doctor hesitated to
answer. All Doctors hesitate when they
don’t know the answer, Henry thought.
“How long?” Henry asked again.
“It’s….it’s difficult to tell, Henry.” He answered without lifting his eyes from the
white tile floor. “Bronchial cancer, it
spreads quickly, very quickly. It kills
over 500 people a day. I’m sorry, Henry,
I can only imagine the horror of it all.
I’m sorry, I just don’t know”
The Doctor tilted
his head to the side and said “Into every life a little rain must fall”
Henry had
been staring at the tile floor but hearing that he lifted his head quickly and
looked at the Doctor in bewilderment “A little rain? You call this a little
rain?”
The physicians
face grew taught. Metaphorically speaking, yes”
“Well then, what’s
metaphorical idea of a tsunami?”
The doctor
placed his hand on Henry’s shoulder and guided him towards the door as he sighed,
and patted him on the back and said “You have no idea how much this destroys me
Henry”
When opened
the office door to leave and the Doctor assumed Henry was out of ear shot said
to his nurse “All right, that’s a wrap, we’re out’ta here”
Henry decided to walk to his home
on the West Side. He strolled up Park
Avenue and seeing an open door to an Episcopalian church he stepped inside. The
Donick’s weren’t Episcopalian. They were Dutch Reformed of course. Dutch
Reformed before it was reformed as his Knickerbocker mother said once. But the
Donick’s were, in those early days when Manhattan was still mostly forest,
social climbers and belong to the Dutch Reformed church was something to climb
away from.
Inside the vestibule, Henry came
across an elderly Priest. Approaching him, Henry said “I just found out I’m
dying and I’d like to talk about
it”
“We
are all dying my son” the Priest replied.
“Yes”
Henry answered “But metaphysics aside, I mean it, a doctor just told me I’m
done for”
The
Priest placed his open palm on Henry’s shoulder and said “Death is not the end.”
“Especially
in my case” Henry said “I’ve written a will. The litigation over the estate
will go on forever.”
The priest, seemingly hadn’t
heard a word Henry said and offered “Deep
sorrows and afflictions often touch the lives of Christians during their
sojourn on the earth—and death is one of the major sorrows”
“Boy,
you’re not kidding about that….I think” Henry said “I don’t really know what
that means. Anyway, look, do I have to die? I mean what about God the loving, caring father, the one who hears our pleas and
grants wishes. Can you arrange a meeting or how ever this is done?” Another
thing, what should I expect? What about hell? My guess is hell will be like
living Junior High school over and over again And then there’s whole heaven
thing. You know, I always thought that if
I lived a good life, I’d die and go to a nice duplex chalet in Switzerland, is it
like that? Do you have any input on that? Its how I imagine it to be, but you
know, the universe is made up of so much more than I can imagine. Do they send
someone to pick you up? I’m rambling aren’t I?”
“I
will never leave you nor forsake you” the Priest said.
“Your
dying too?” Henry asked. “I appricate that, its very kind of you, but I’m
talking about God, loving, caring and all that.”
“He
is all that.”
“Whose
he?” Henry asked.
“God”
the priest replied.
“So,
your familiar with him. Well, can you talk to him?
“Have
you spoken to him?” the Priest asked.
“Well
no, not really a religious type” Henry said sheepishly And I have a lot on
plate right now. I’m sure he’s busy too, I mean, in all due respect, isn’t it
part of your job? You know, interceding and all that? Look, I’m sorry to sound
so self-involved, I know everybody has to die, but I always believed an
exception would be made in my case, I don’t know why I believed that, I suppose
we all do. Well, I’m babbling again.
“Jesus”
the Prist said softly “was willing to die so we can have eternal life”
All
right I’d like to cash in on that if I could. I mean, you know, maybe not
eternal life, which would be awful, I mean, you know, a few more decades. Eternity’s
a terrible thought. I mean, where’s would it all end?
“The
righteous shouldn’t fear death” the Priest said
“Well,”
Henry said “Let me be clearer, it’s not the fear thing, its simply not wanting
to die. I don’t want to die”
“We
live only as long as it takes to fulfill God’s purpose.”
“Gods
purpose?”
“Yes”
“What
has killing me got to do with fulfilling Gods purpose? I mean, he’s God, what
does he need me for?”
“You
are part of his purpose”
“But
I don’t want to be a part of his purpose”
“We
must take a positive approach to death my son”
I
have a positive approach to death” Henry said “I'm positive I'm going to die
and I’d like God to look into that for me.”
“God”
the Pries said with a condescending smile “does determine to allow you to
die—because He knows we are ready and His purpose for us in this physical life
is fulfilled”
Well,
in all due respect, God should mind his own Goddamn business and let me decide
when I’m ready to go”
My
son” the Priest said “It’s a wonderful thing to know that we are in God’s hands
for eternity”
“Well,
it was before I talked to you.” Henry said and excited the church and continued
his walk home. He absentmindedly turned in to Central Park, and
walked across the grassy knolls where he had frolicked as a child.
There is something very special about central
park on a brisk fall day and Henry felt it now and he was genuinely surprised
at his own calm, at how well he had taken, and was still dealing with, the news
of his impending death. Then he spoke
the words out loud to himself “You are going to die very soon”.
It
was his loneliest moment made worse by the fact that as his world came apart
all he could do was stare blankly and watch it happen. On the other hand, he thought
it almost comical that the one time in his life he desperately needed someone
came at the same time he so desperately needed to be alone. Then he
panicked. He started to shake and he
couldn’t breathe and he stretched his neck high into the air and took enormous
gulps of breath. When he started to
breathe again, he bents over quickly because the park was spinning around
him. He staggered over to bench, sat on
it, and wrapped his arms around his ribs.
He felt pale and he was certain he would faint.
A homeless man pushing a shopping
cart overloaded with rags, bottles and two car tires wheeled up to him and
stopped.
“You okay, Mister?” the man
asked.
Henry was so relieved to hear the
kind words of another human being that against his will, his eyes flooded with
tears, and he quickly brushed them aside.
“I’m dying. I’m going to
die and I’m scared”
There was a
pause between them and then the homeless man reached out and gently placed the
very tips of his filthy fingers on the back of Henry’s hand and said “It’s okay
to be scared. I’m an old guy, older than
you, and I’m scared a lot and dying, heck, don’t blame you for being scared a
lot. Dying’s a scary thing for everybody no matter who you are”
More tears
came to Henry’s eyes, and he hated himself for it.
“It’s not
that” Henry said “it’s……” and then he looked around the park as if the words he
needed were hidden behind a tree, but they weren’t. He laughed but he didn’t know why and he said
“I don’t want to die, not now”
The homeless
man hung on Henry’s every syllable, for people, especially people dressed as a
nicely as Henry, rarely spoke to him and if they did it was never of things so
emotional or true. This was a very important moment in this man’s life.
When Henry
was finished speaking the homeless man leaned into him and whispered “You have
to look for a miracle, they are all around, and you just have to look for it to
see it”
Miracles.
Henry Donick did not believe in miracles and the sly smile on his face said as
much.
The homeless
man knew their moment had passed and Henry needed to be alone so he took his
cart and pushed his way down the black tar path through the park. Henry watched him leave and then the depth of
the man’s decency and concern seared its way into his mind and he called out
“Sir!”
But the
homeless man kept walking and so he called again, louder this time “Sir!”
This time
the homeless man stopped and turned and looked at him.
“Thank you”
Henry shouted and then added in a lower tone “Thank you for your kindness”.
Henry
reached into his jacket pocket and took out his black leather wallet opened it
and realized he had no cash. In that he
respect, Henry was like the rest of the truly rich, he never carried cash.
“Thank you”
the Homeless man waved back with a shout.
“For
what?” Henry asked
“For calling
me sir. Remember, look for the miracles” the man said with a strange, knowing
smile. In fact, there seemed to be such knowledge in his smile that Henry was
forced to ask “How will I know them when I see them?”
The man
laughed. “Oh, you’ll know them, you’ll know them” and with that he turned and
walked down the snow-covered sidewalk
“Wait!”
Henry called out “What do you know?” but the man was gone, vanished into the
whiteness of the snow that covered strawberry fields. Looking just past
strawberry fields he could see his home, the
Majestic, on West 72nd Street. He didn’t want to go home, not right
now. He needed to talk to someone, to
get an answer that would explain it all, someone that could give him a reason.
He thought about it. He had no friends, not really. He was a man who had
acquaintances, but not friends.
CHAPTER TWO
“Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.” Isaac Asimov.
Henry walked through the grand
old buildings majestic arched main entrance, a porte cochère large enough to accommodate
the horse-drawn carriages that once entered there. Although these magnificent
entrances were largely lost in the city, the Majestic still retained hers and
unlike so many properties in New York, the majestic had kept all of its original glory.
It was the last of its kind in Manhattan, a
small apartment building, three floors and sixty-five units with four to twenty
rooms, no two being alike. It was situated on a cozy, tree lined corner of West
72nd Street and Central Park West in Manhattan.
Although the building had gone condo forty years before, most of the
original tenants from Henry’s childhood still lived in there.
Henry Donick had lived there most
of his adult life, in fact he had grown up only a few blocks away, the son Sam
Donick, a corporate raider and a fifth
generation New Yorker, and Mildred Donick, also a deeply entrenched New Yorker who could trace her ancestors back
to the Knickerbocker Dutch.
After his father Sam Donick died
and Henry was out on his own, living in a flat in Soho, Mildred Donick sold
their brownstone and moved into The Majestic, to be close to her friend, Mrs.
Edith Wheeling, also a widow. When his
mother died, she left Henry her spacious 14 room apartment in the
Majestic.
No room in
the apartment was smaller than 40 feet long, with the longest, the main pallor,
being 50 feet long. The ceilings were a magnificent 14 feet high, and the
floors made of mahogany, oak, and cherry although Henry’s dining hall
floor was distinct in that parts of the floor were inlaid with sterling silver.
The main
parlors and master bedrooms boasted high gables, balustrades, and terracotta spandrels
and fine hand carved panels and was located in the front of the apartment
facing the park while the other twelve rooms overlooked the courtyard in the
center of the building which was a patchwork of small gardens,
one of which belonged to Henry, a croquet lawns, and a tennis court. All of the
major rooms were connected to each other and were also accessible from a hall
for servants.
Henry entered the Majestic’s
large Victorian lobby and walked briskly passed a large group of elderly
tenants who spent most of their day sitting in the big over stuffed leather
chairs and couches that lined the wall. Most of them had knew Henry. They knew he was a solitary man of forty
years, a loner who was content to watch the parade of humanity pass by his
window. He had never married although
there had been opportunities to take a wife, but it never happened.
In the silence of the elegantly
designs elevator, he fumbled with his house keys as a way to a void looking at
his reflection in the mirrors that lined each wall. When the lift opened its thick oak doors on
the fourth floor, he felt a great sense of comfort and safety fall over him.
He unlocked his apartment door
and let himself in. It was a large
apartment with high ceiling that captured the sun on two sides. There was an expansive dining room done in
crystal and white marble, a fine kitchen, several bedrooms, a drawing room, a
main parlor and a sitting room.
The apartment also had a den, a
cozy one where Henry had installed bookshelves on every wall so that the great
works surrounded him at every turn and gave him a great sense of calm and
safety. It was here that he plied his
trade as editor-in-chief of Modern
Curator Magazine, an annual publication he underwrote.
Although he was successful in his
profession, finances had never been an issue for him. On his father’s side, he was a direct descendant
of Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck, a lawyer and landowner in New York in the
1600’s when the city was called New Netherland.
It was from van der Donck title that the city of Yonkers, New York, took
its name. Later generations changed the
name to Van Donick but that was changed with the event of World War One to the
less distinguishable Donick.
Adriaen Cornelissen van der
Donck, in addition to being a leader in the political life of New Amsterdam was
also the first lawyer to live in the United States and through his considerable
connections within the powerful Dutch West India Company; he was able to buy up
enormous tracks land on Manhattan, Brooklyn, Yonkers, and Long Island on credit
The original family estate, Colen
Donck, was a massive 24,000-acre piece of property that ran along twelve miles
of the Hudson River, then known as the North River, making up what would become
the Bronx and southern Westchester County.
The estate was so large that Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck came to
be called Jonkheer, a title equivalent to the Anglo-Saxon title of
Esquire. From van der Donck title, the
city of Yonkers, New York, took its name.
As for the Bronx, took its name
from another family member, Jonas Bronck, who had married into van der Donck
clan and moved to what was then the wilds of the area of the Harlem River
Randalls Island. There he built a 680-acre farm on what is today Bruckner
Boulevard. In 1624, another relative
established a settlement he called Vlacke Bos, which became Flatbush in an area
the Dutch called Breukelen, or Brooklyn
Henry’s mother was a Van Rensalers and a very distant relative to his
father. She was also, on her mother’s
side, a direct descendant of Peter Minuit who had, in 1626, so famously bought
Manhattan Island from the locals for 60 Dutch guilders, what was then about $24.
Mother’s more direct ancestor was
Killiaen van Rensalers, a diamond merchant in Amsterdam and member of the board
of directors of the West India Company.
The family had earned its first great fortune in Jamaica, on their vast sugar
plantation.
Killiaen van Rensalers purchased
most of northern New Jersey and then sold it off at a considerable profit to
become a merchant’s banker in Manhattan.
He married the equally wealthy Margaret De Peyster, and the couple kept
a mansion on what is now central Broadway as well as "Rose Hall" at
Flatbush, Long Island NY.
Their son, Nicholas Bayard van
Rensalers increased the family fortune through a series of fraudulent land
grants and protection money from pirates in partnership with the notoriously
corrupted Governor, Benjamin Fletcher.
His son, John van Rensalers, was
a businessman who invested the family money into flourmills, wholesale merchandising,
and shipbuilding. He would eventually
become the first Colonial Mayor of New York City
John van Rensalers son was
Frederick Philipse van Rensalers; a staunch loyalist during the war for
Independence had the good sense to switch sides in mid-battle and as a result,
avoided having his land and fortune taken from him. In 1785, Frederick Philipse
van Rensalers daughter, Marie married Andrew van der Donck, who now used the
family name Van der Donck and the vast fortunes were merged.
In the late 1850’s, some two
hundred years after Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck had died, the van der
Donck and Van Rensalers were still the
largest land owners in New York City.
But the value of land rents diminished and it was more profitable to
sell the lands rather than keep them and in 1860, the families sold off all of
their lands for $610,000.00 for a modern value of about $30,000,000.
As
the generations of the van der Donck and Van Rensalers grew smaller, the family fortunes increased,
trust funds grew, and now Henry Donick was the last of both lines. There were no brothers or sisters or
cousins. Just Henry Donick. The extremely wealthy and well insulated
Henry Donick.
CHAPTER THREE
“Where
your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” The
Bible King James Version
Henry removed his tight leather shoes and his tie and replaced them with a pair of friendly, well-worn slippers and an equally worn cardigan and at exactly noon, he entered his den and soaked in its comfort while he stared out across Central Park and tried to make some sense out his dismal news.
It took him five hours to consider
every angle of his predicament, but the bottom line was always the same, he was
going to die in a few months and that was that. There was no one to share the story with, and
that, he knew, was the sad legacy of his life that he was, despite all of his
fortune and position, absolutely alone in this world. Of course he always knew
he was lonely but he was comfortable with it, but this was different. This time it was a gnawing loneness because
he was comfortable with it.
He had few friends, none of whom
were close. He just wasn’t that sort of man, the sort that makes friends and
keeps them through the years and confides in them. Still, it would be good to
speak to someone about his pending death, anyone really. He raised his eyes to
the ceiling and studied it while he searched for a name of one person he could
talk too. And the name Monica Kloss
entered his mind.
She worked as a private financial
adviser at his bank and they had dined together several times in the past year,
always discussing his fiscal matters but more and more recently, they had talked about other things. She liked to talk about other things and so
it came to her naturally and while she spoke she had the most delightful habit
of lowering her eyes, which, he had noted were intelligent eyes but also soft
and light in their blue color. She twirled her blond hair in her fingers, he
liked that.
She was 38 years old, never married. She lived
in a one bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, only blocks from his
apartment. She had goldfish but wanted a cat but she worked late hours and
though it would be cruel to leave the poor thing alone for so long.
He was surprised at how much he
remembered of what she had told him. She enjoyed reading, he knew about her,
romance novels mostly. She enjoyed Beethoven and bluegrass and yard sales and
when she drank too much wine her face went ever so slightly crimson in
color. He was fairly positive she wasn’t
involved with anyone. But he couldn’t
call her, not about this, in fact, he thought not about anything, theirs was
not that sort of relationship.
He sat up in his chair and
whispered to himself “Come on old man, snap out of it” and reached into his
desk drawer and removed a vile of mild sedatives that had been prescribed for
him several years ago. He didn’t use
them often but he kept them in the event of a crushing attack of self-imposed
anxiety that he sometimes suffered from.
He swallowed two of the pills and promptly fell asleep.
Waking from his nap two hours
later, he was refreshed but kept his eyes closed until he was fully awake but
then he caught the glimpse of his worries coming at him from a far corner of
his mind and braced himself for the next attack. Then he heard his mother’s words “Keep your
mind busy dear and all that is useless falls away”. He stood from the chair, the first time he
had been on his feet since noon.
He would have to start by getting
his affairs in order, his finances, legal matters, that sort of thing. He shook
his head to dismiss the thought; he had people to do that sort of thing but
then reconsidered since so much of whatever was stored in the house were
personnel items. He should at least look at what was there.
He walked down the long, wide
hallway to the spare bedroom that he had converted into archive. In it were rows of neatly stored boxes of his
mother’s most cherished belonging, personnel papers and, he suspected, a fair
amount of junk. He had never opened the
boxes or examined the papers. He feared that one day all of his memories would
be here one day, in dusty sealed boxes that no one would ever see and he thought
that to be such an awful thing because memories should to be shared.
The first few boxes contained
hand writer letters, in cursive and set in a rich dark ink. Some of them dated back almost two hundred
years and appeared to be from various Van
Rensalers and Donick mothers to their daughters. After that, the next several dozen rows of
boxes were filled with reams and reams of legal papers detailing family holding
back to the 1600’s. Then came the boxes
of photographs, at least a thousand of them, capturing the usually unsmiling
faces of his ancestors.
It was all enthralling to him, as
a historian, every piece of paper, every document, and every photograph so that
when he looked out the tall, brown draped window at the end of the room, he was
surprised to see that night had fallen.
He looked at his watch; it was 10:30 in the evening. He had no appetite for lunch and he had
absentmindedly forgotten to have diner but he felt better, less lost and
overwhelmed and decided he would finish perusing the last few boxes on the
shelf and then treat himself to a late but luxurious diner.
He opened the next box and found
it filled with women’s jewelry that was encrusted with diamonds, rupees, pearls
and all of it trimmed in fine, rich gold.
The next box was also filled with fine jewelry, men’s jewelry.
The next box was marked
“explorations”. Inside were very old
black and white photographs of exotic places with camels and ruins. There was also a long elegant colt 45 pistol,
a fine leather holster and some ammunition. He guess the items belonged to one of his
mother’s great-uncles, Hillyard Van
Rensalers, a noted Middle East explorer in the early 1900s.
Under the weapons was an
exquisite blue glass bottle, lavishly decorated with gold painted decorative
patterns. With his considerable
knowledge in antiquities, he judged the bottle to be 7th or 8th
century and definitely Middle Eastern. He
lifted it slowly from the box and admired its beauty and decided to take it to
the kitchen to clean and perhaps place it in his den.
He stood in the center of the
large roomy kitchen and realized he had absolutely no idea where any of the
cleaning products were kept. He seldom
entered the kitchen since it was the sole domain of Esmeralda, the Peruvian
housekeeper-cook. He opened and closed a
few cabinet doors and did a halfhearted search before deciding to leave the
project to Esmeralda in the morning and gently placed the bottle on the kitchen
counter.
The bottle had left his hands
filled with dust and washed them in the sink and then took a wash towel, wet it
in warm water and dabbed some of the dust from the bottles neck, revealing a
splendid deep blue color he had missed before.
He wet the cloth again and gently and slowly rubbed the bottle down from
to top to bottom.
When he reached the base on the
third stoke, the bottle started to shake violently and he immediately assumed
that rodent of some kind had somehow made its way into the bottle but that
couldn’t be, he noted, because the top was sealed with top.
Nonetheless, he stepped backwards
from the bottle and as he did, its top blew off and flew across the voluminous
kitchen. Suddenly a fantastic cloud of
grey smoke lifted from inside the bottle and made its way a few feet across the
room where it stood motionless for a minutes before the figure of a man
appeared. He was tall, perhaps six
feet, slim but muscular and wore a sky blue knee long cloak, pants, white silk
shoes that came to a point and a turban.
“What are you? Who are you?”
Henry asked as he took several steps backwards.
“I am
Fakrash- El Aamash. I am of the sacred
tribe of the Suret al-Jinn, in service to Sultan Zabibe of
Qedar.” His voice
was booming and deep. Then he leaned forward and asked in a hushed tone “He is
here, the Sultan?”
“Not that I know of but it wouldn’t surprise me, you’re
here after all” Henry answered. “How did
you get in here?”
“Are we in the
Kingdom of Qedar?” he asked looking around the room.
“No” Henry said, “This is New York. How did you get in here?”
“It is a very small place, New York,” the Jeanie said.
“This is a room in an apartment in the city of New York”,
Henry answered “How did you get in here?”
“And in what Kingdom is New York?” the Jeanie asked
“The Kingdom of crazy” Henry said extending is open palms
to the Jeanie. “What do you want? I
don’t keep any cash in the apartment”
“I want nothing from you.
You have freed me from my prison. “The man said and pointed to the
bottle on the counter “I will now grant you one wish, anything you desire,
anything at all”
“One wish?” Henry
asked skeptically.
“One wish” the Jeanie answered dismissively.
“I think I’m supposed to get three” Henry said.
“No” the Jeanie answered in a voice that sounded nothing
like the deep booming voice he had just used
“You get one. I am not empowered to give you three”
“I’m pretty sure it’s three” Henry countered.
“Well” the Jeanie said with a tilt of his head, “You’re
wrong. Now, what is your wish?”
“What happened to your voice” Henry asked
“Nothing” the Jenaie said defensively.
“Your voice changed”
“No it didn’t”
“Yes it did. A
second ago you were talking in that deep voice the movie announcer uses when
they show the previews and now your talking regluarly”
The Jeanie smiled sheepishly and shrugged “It’s really
hard to talk in that deep voice for along time”
There was a brief silence between them and then Henry
smiled.
“You know what you are?”
Henry said pointing finger at the Jeanie.
“What am I?” Jeanie
asked retuning Henry’s smile.
“You’re a figment of my imagination brought on by the
stress of the illness.” Henry said
“That’s all this is. I took a pill earlier and that’s what brought this about,
the pills”
“Okay” said the Jeanie “That’ll work. Now if you would just make your wish, I’ll be
on my way”
“That’s all this is, a figment of my imagination, drawn
up under stress” Henry muttered
“You can have riches” the Jeanie counting off on his
fingers “There’s beauty, talent, wisdom” he stopped and said as an aside “You
don’t get many requests for wisdom”
“I realize you aren’t real” Henry said “But I have to
ask, how do you know there aren’t many requests for wisdom for wisdom?”
“Well” the Jeanie said with a guilty expression “Let’s
just say this isn’t my first time out of the bottle and leave it there”
“See?” Henry said
to himself soothingly “A repeat offender Jeanie, there’s no such thing”
“How about power” the Jeanie said with a squint of his
eye “Power is always a big hit, you want endless power?”
“I made this up” Henry said “Invented this to keep my
mind off of my problems”
“All righty then” said the Jeanie clasping his hands
together “You need a minute right? I
understand completely, take your time” and left the kitchen.
“My figment just walked out of the room” Henry said and
followed the Jeanie into the main pallor.
“You have no harem?” the Jeanie asked.
“Yes but they‘re off on Mondays” Henry said as the Jeanie
sprawled across the couch.
“Make yourself comfortable, don’t be shy” Henry said
The Jeanie looked around the room with narrowed eyes “And
your servants?”
“Esmeralda” Henry answered. “She doesn’t work nights. She barely works days actually”
“I have arrived in the house of a peasant” the Jeanie
said dismissively and then turned to Henry and smiled “So be it! But with you wish, all of that will change
perhaps, have you given it anymore thought?”
“No I haven’t “Henry said “I’ve been sidetracked, what
with a talking, judgmental figment of my imagination strolling around, I’m sure
you understand”
“I hardly think I was being judgmental” the Jeanie said
obviously displeased.
“I have a splendid idea” Henry said.
“I just have a few observations” the Jeanie said and then
looking around the apartment “Astute observations I might add”
“Why don’t you leave?” Henry smiled and started to walk
towards the apartment door “And I’ll get back to you later on that whole wish
thing, doesn’t that sound peachy?”
“You know” the
Jeanie said making his way into the den “I’d love to, I really would, I mean
it’s not that you’re not just great company and all, but I have to stay”
“Why?” Henry asked
“It’s a genie thing” the Jeanie said with an exaggerated
shrug “I have to stay within the reasonable confines of your home until you
make your wish”
“And what would happen if you left my home without my
making a wish?” Henry asked.
“Well that’s the thing of it” the Jeanie replied “I mean literately
can’t leave your home. The powers won’t allow.
I’m trapped here”
“You seem to get trapped a lot” Henry said.
“I know! Right?” the Jeanie laughed
Henry rolled his head backwards in thought and said “You
know how we can solve this?” and he picked up his cell phone and pushed a speed
dial number and waited for a few second. When it was answered, he said “Mr.
Ozturk, Henry Donick, 4-a, would you be kind enough to come up here for a
moment?”
He waited for the reply and said “Yes, I know it’s late.
It will just take a moment.”
After a few seconds, he said “Thank you Mister Ozturk”
and hung up the phone. Turning to
Jeanie, he said “Demir Ozturk, building supervisor. He’s on his way
up”
The Jeanie shrugged in boredom.
“So” Henry said “you say you are from Qudar, you say?”
“Yes, Qedar” the Jeanie replied
“Why don’t we take a look at that?” Henry offered and walked to his desk and
typed the words “Kingdom of Qedar” into his computer. After several seconds, he leaned into the
screen, he read aloud “Kingdom of Qedar. Circa 8th century BCE. The Qedarite were the most organized of the
Northern Arabian tribes, at the height of their rule in the 6th century BCE;
the Kingdom of Qedar spanned a large area between the Persian Gulf and the
Sinai. An influential force between the
8th and 4th centuries BCE, Qedarite monarchs were eventually subsumed into the
Nabataean state after their rise to prominence in the 2nd century CE.”
“The Nabataean” the Jeanie said
in low awe.
“You know of them?” Henry asked.
“No” the Jeanie said in equal
awe.
“Then why……” Henry began to ask and then thought better of
it.
“You are a Sultan?” Jeanie asked.
“No” Henry answered “I’m a
publisher. How long have you been in the
bottle?”
The Jeanie rolled his eyes
upwards, used his fingers to calculate, muttered numbers and said “I have no
idea”
“Who put you in the bottle?” Henry asked
“The great and glorious Sultan
Zabibe” the Jeanie replied
“Why?” Henry asked “What did you do?”
“Some said that perhaps I had
slept with the wife of the Sultan” the Jeanie replied looking around the room
and trying to avoid Henry’s gaze.
“And who” Henry asked already
knowing the answer “Were the some who said that?”
“The wife of the Sultan” the
Jeanie whispered “She was a very vindictive woman”
“You slept with the guy’s
wife?” Henry asked
“He had many wives” the Jeanie
responded.
“You slept with the guy’s wife?” Henry
asked again
“He had 150 wives” the Jeanie
said “He was a very selfish man”
“You slept with the guy’s wife” Henry
said flatly
“You make it sound” the Jeanie
said and then searched for a perfect word to weasel his way out of the dilemma
he was in
“Underhanded” Henry asked. “Slimy?”
“Well” said the Jeanie slightly
offended “When you put it that way.”
“So he put you a bottle?” Henry asked
“Yes” the Jeanie said lowering
his head.
“Seems a bit harsh” Henry said.
“I agree!” the Jeanie said,
“Especially when he did nothing at all the first ten times I was caught”
“How does one go about putting a
grown man, a large grown man such as yourself in a bottle?” Henry asked.
“Ancient ritual” the Jeanie
answered “If you know the ritual, it isn’t all that difficult”
“Of course” Henry said.
There was an exceedingly loud
knock on the door. Henry knew the
knock. It was Demir Ozturk, the
buildings perpetually displeased and exasperated supervisor. Ozturk purposely slammed each door with his
ham fists as a way to intimidate and it tended to work especially on the
elderly tenants. For years the
condominium board had contemplating firing him because of his obnoxious ways,
but for some reason, Ozturk outlasted them and survived another year at the
Majestic.
“Now” Henry said with a knowing
smile, “Now we’ll get to the bottom of this”.
He walked to the door and opened
it “Please come in Mister Ozturk”
“You know what time it is,
Donick” Ozturk sneered “It’s ten PM!”
“Silence knave!” Jeanie yelled
with a wave of his hand.
“What did you call me?” Ozturk
roared and moved several feet towards Jeanie but Henry stood in his path.
“So you see him?” Henry asked
Ozturk.
“Who?” Ozturk asked “See who?”
“You tell me” Henry said with a sly smile.
Ozturk pushed him aside and stuck
a thick, hairy finger into Jeanie chest “You call me a knave again, clown and
I’ll flatten you”
“So you do see him?” Henry asked.
“Clown?” asked Jeanie
indignantly.
“Yeah” Ozturk said looking over
Jeanie’s attire “Clown”
“Mr. Ozturk” Henry interrupted
“Do me a favor, please”
“Depends” Ozturk said without
turning to face him “What is it?”
“Pinch that fellow would you?” Henry
asked “I want to make sure he’s real”
“What?” Ozturk and Jeanie asked
at the same time.
“Pinch him” Henry said “Or slap
him if you prefer, I just need you to touch him”
Ozturk turned his considerable
girth on Henry and pointed a finger in his face and said
“Look Donick, I always figured
you were some kind of weirdo-sex pervert guy, but I’ll tell you now I’m not,
you got that? So don’t try to get me involved in your sad and masks sex”
“Sadomasochistic?” Henry asked in
his deadpan fashion
“No, not that either!” Ozturk
yelled “I don’t do none of that weird stuff you got that? I’m no homo sap e in”
Ozturk stormed to the door,
opened it and gave them both one last, long disgusted stare and then slammed
the door behind him.
“Why did you do that?” Jeanie
asked but Henry turned and walked into the dining room, and called the police.
“911 what is you emergency?” the voice on the bored other
end of the one droned.
“There’s a loon in my apartment 807 West 72st
street 4-a” Henry said frantically
“By a loon sir, are you referring to the large bird or do
you mean loon as in loony-tune crazy person” the voice asked.
“Are you serious?”
Henry asked “Why would I have giant bird in my apartment?”
“It’s New York.”
The voice answered tiredly “You got a giant bird, I send a guy with a
large net, you got a loony-tune crazy person, and I send a guy with a much
larger net”
“I’ve got a loony-tune crazy person in my apartment” Henry
said.
“I’ll have car there in a few minutes” the dispatcher
said before he hung up.
By then the Jeanie had entered the room. Henry closed his phone and gave him an uneasy
smile.
“Would care for a glass of
something?” Henry asked
“Of what?” the Jeanie.
“Well anything, you like, really”
Henry answered
“It’s just that you made it sound
like you had one specific thing in mind” Jeanie pressed.
“How did you come to that
conclusion?” Henry asked
“Well you said ‘glass of
something’ I though, you know, what the something was, but you weren’t going to
tell me until it got here, because you were afraid that if I knew what it was I
wouldn’t want it” the Jeanie said.
“Well” Henry began and realized
he had absolutely no answer for what the man had just said. Instead he said “Well,
I suppose you’re famished, what with not having eaten in four thousand years”
“Sure” the Jeanie replied “I
could use a little something”
“What would you like?” Henry
asked walking towards the kitchen with the Jeanie following him.
“Some Kibbeh would be good,
perhaps a Gauss” Jeanie said.
“Peanut butter and jelly?” Henry
replied “No problem”
“No, no, no, “said the Jeanie
“Kibbeh or Gauss”
Henry stopped and turned to look
at the Jeanie and said “You know, we’re fresh out of Kibbeh or Gauss”
“What a shame” said the Jeanie.
“I know, right?” said Henry and
went about the business of building the Jeanie sandwich.
When the Jeanie was half way
through his sandwich, the awkward silence that was broken by a heavy knock on
the door.
“Who is it?” Henry called across the room.
“New York City Police Department,
answering complain call”
Henry opened the apartment door
and showed in two burly cops. One was
slightly older than the other.
“I’m Henry Donick, I called” Henry
announced. “That was fast”
“Yeah, we were parked out front.
We spoke to your building super down in the lobby. The older cop said.
“Mister Ozturk” Henry said.
Mister Unhappy Turk is more like
it” the other cop said “He says you kiddies wanted him to play”
“What can we do for you today,
Mister Donick?” the older cop said wearily.
“Well” Henry said “This man
claims to be a Jeanie”
“Well that’s nice” the cop
said. “What can we do for you today,
Mister Donick?”
Henry was momentarily
dumbfounded.
“Well, I just think that” he
stumbled and then paused “You don’t find that unusual?”
“I been a New York City beat cop
for twenty three Mister Donick” the policeman said “You’re gonna have to do
better than a guy who thinks he’s a Jeanie”
“There’s three guys over on 48th
Street who say their God” the other cop added “They throw invisible lightening
at each other all day”
“That’s actually more
entertaining than unusual” the older cop rejoined.
“Yeah” the young cop said “You’re
right”
“So did you get your three wishes
from the Jeanie or what?” the older cop asked Henry.
“It’s one wish” Henry said.
“It’s one wish” the Jeanie said.
“No, I think its three” the older
cop said and then turned to the younger cops and asked “its three, right?”
“I’ll have to check the Jeanie
Handbook when I get back down to the patrol car” the young cop answered “But,
yeah I think it’s three”
“Look” Henry said “Let’s get back
to the point, this man is a Jeanie”
“Of course he is” the cop said
with a soothing smile.
“I’m not some kind of a nut, he
is a Jeanie, a real Jeanie” Henry said.
“And how do you know he’s a
Jeanie sir?” the young cop asked.
“Because I rubbed that bottle and
he came out of it in this, well, puff of smoke” Henry said.
“And” the older cop said “You
asked him for your three wishes”
“I didn’t ask him” Henry
said
“Well, you did actually” Jeanie
said “You brought it up. Remember? You asked about your three wishes and I said,
no there’s just one and …”
“This is a really a case for the
Jeanie squad” the older cop said
“Now hold on, Bill,” the young
cop rejoined “Since this involves a wishes dispute, it could be a case for the
Tooth Fairy squad”
“You’re right” the older cop said
cautiously “We don’t want to get on the wrong side of those Tooth Fairy goons,
they play rough”
“All right” Henry said “Have your
fun, but I think that you should at least file a report of something”
“Your right” the older cop said
taking out a pad and pen “Alice and the Mad Hatter will want a complete run
down on this”
“You got any ID on you pal?” The younger cop asked Jeanie.
“No” he answered
“Where do you live?” the cop
asked
“Here” Jeanie said.
“How long you lived here?” the
older cop asked
“At three thousand years, maybe
longer” the Jeanie replied.
“Are you a foreign national sir?” the cop asked
“I am of the Kingdom of Qedar” Jeanie answered proudly.
“Can I talk to you out in the
hall?” the older cop asked and then Henry followed him out to the hallway where
the cop leaned in closely and said in a low voice “Are you in an abusive
relationship with Jeanie?”
“What?” Henry squawked “No! No, for God’s sakes, we’re not involved”
“Hey” the cop said holding up a
finger “You don’t have to be sexually caught up with a guy for the relationship
to become abusive”
“We’re not Gay” Henry said “Well I’m
not Gay, I can’t speak for him. I don’t
know if they have Gay Jeanie’s”
“Yeah” the younger cop replied
thoughtfully “I should think they would. Look, if you want, I can make him
leave for the night, have the folks down at Bellevue check him”
“No” Henry said shaking his
head. No one deserved a night in the
Bellevue mental ward. “He can stay here”
The older cop called for his
partner to join him and as they walked towards the elevator he shouted to Henry
over his shoulder “Play nice, kids”
Henry walked back into his
apartment and said to Jeanie “Well, it appears that you are real. Either that or the whole of New York is
insane, both are real possibilities”
“Your name is Henry?” the Jeanie
asked.
The question surprised Henry and
he realized he had not introduced himself “Yes” he said with a nod “I’m Henry
Donick and this is where I live”. He
sighed heavily “It’s been a long day; long day and I’ll have to deal with this
tomorrow. You can take a guests bedroom,
if you like. I’ll show you”
They walked down the long hallway to the
bedroom, the last room in the house “There’s your bath” Henry said flicking on
the light to the toilet “and here is your porch” and opened the veranda doors
to a small balcony that looked over the 72 street. Stepping back into the room he pointed to a
small alcove and said “You’re dressing area, bed and TV”
“What is a TV?” Jeanie asked.
It took Henry a while to answer
because he pondered whether he should answer.
He was still convinced he was talking to a figment of his imagination
that was somehow visible to others.
Instead of answering, he took the remote, turned on the set and floated
across the channels. He handed the remote to Jeanie and before leaving the
room, he said “There are pajamas in the closet somewhere” and then left and
closed the door behind him.
As he walked down the long,
nearly sound proof hallway, Henry worried
that he wouldn’t be able to sleep and stopped by his desk and took two sedatives
“If one makes me see Jeanie’s” he thought “Two should put me to sleep”. And they did, several minutes after his head
hit the pillow, he was sound asleep.