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“You’re a what?”
Finn Sella looked down at the small woman who looked to be wrapped in a blanket of some sort and carried a black umbrella with an iridescent handle. Her wizened, wrinkled face was friendly, but her eyes were like fathomless pinpoints behind a pair of goggles that looked as if they’d been fashioned from two shot glasses and a piece of leathery twine.
“You heard me, my boy. I’m a genie.” The woman smiled at him. “You’ve done me a good turn, so I must repay you in kind. What can I do for you?”
Finn checked out her glasses again. Maybe those really were shot glasses and maybe she used them for other purposes, though she didn’t seem the least bit inebriated.
Finn looked up and down the avenue. It was lunch hour and the people who bustled along the sidewalks darting in and out of stores and cafes paid them little mind.
“Look, ma’am, can I call someone? Do you need some help? I …”
She shook her head and made a clucking sound in the back of her throat.
“You’re much too young and handsome to be such a skeptic.” She heaved a great sigh. “Listen, we genies don’t carry union cards or anything, and I know that humans think that my folk are buxom, blonde, and/or blue – and I’m none of the above – but for all that, I am what I say I am, and since you did me a good turn, I can do one for you.”
“All I did was help you get your umbrella unstuck from the grate!”
“Yes! You helped.” The old woman peered peevishly out at the bustling throngs. “None of these lovely people so much as glanced over while I was struggling. But you did, and so you get rewarded with one wish! Only limitations are on immortality and world peace. You wouldn’t want the first one, and the second one would involve having to kill off every human being here and start all over again. So choose wisely for your one wish!”
“One?” Finn’s eyebrows rose. “I thought it was three wishes?”
She shook her head. “It’s always been just one. The whole three-wish deal was the invention of human dramatists. They thought one wish wasn’t enough to impart the tale they wished to tell. They figured there needed to be one frivolous wish, one wish that was the catalyst of the whole story, and then that last wish to set things right and present the moral in a nice bow. Do you know the paperwork involved in granting one wish? And you talk about three? Ha! Anyway, what shall I give you? Unlimited riches?”
“Er, no …” Finn wasn’t quite believing he was having this conversation. He’d just gone out of the office to grab a chicken club for lunch, saw an old woman obviously struggling to get her umbrella unstuck from a sewer grate that had been askew, and now … this.
“No?” She looked surprised. “You don’t want more money than you could ever dream of spending?”
“Not really. Sounds like a waste,” said Finn. “I have a good job that pays good money and lets me have a nice apartment, plenty of food to eat and a good health plan. I don’t like to be greedy.”
“Hm. All right. How about love?” The old woman looked him up and down. “Not that a handsome man like yourself would need the boost, but I could help you attain the love of a princess or a queen … an heiress … oh, yes, I forgot such women aren’t considered quite the catches that they were in olden times. How about a reality TV star?”
“No thanks.” He half-smiled. “I kinda like to do that sort of thing for myself.”
The woman rubbed her chin. “I’d offer to make you the most powerful man in the world, but one of my colleagues already granted that to someone – a real asshole, too. Looks like an exploded yam. Sorry about that. But that gives me an idea! How about making you an amazing businessman? You’d be able to write your own ticket and work for yourself.”
Finn shrugged. “I like working in a team environment. Maybe one day I’ll want to go and do my own thing, but I like the camaraderie of an office and I like to be inspired by older mentors who’ve been in my shoes and worked their way up.”
The woman gave him a long glare, and then threw out suggestion after suggestion. He shook his head at each successive offer: A trip around the world. The ability to win any argument. A pony.
“If you’re serious,” said Finn, when the woman stopped for breath, “and you really can grant me a wish, why do I have to use it on myself? Can’t I use to help someone else? Like you? Can’t I wish you free?”
“Wish … me … free?”
“Yes, so you, uh, don’t have to be a genie anymore. You can be free and do whatever it is you want with your life.”
The woman chuckled softly. “Sorry to have to break it to you kid, but Aladdin was only a movie. There isn’t any such thing as ‘freeing a genie.’ This is my preordained celestial role. And aside from the ungrateful idiots and the large amount of wishes I get that have to do with porn, it’s not a bad gig.”
Finn smiled nervously. “Right. Well, sorry, I don’t want anything, really. I was happy to help, and I have to get back to work, so …”
“Ah.” The woman regarded him gravely. “I see. You’re a tough case. I haven’t had a tough case in eons. We’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way, then.”
“W-What do you mean by that?”
“I’ll have to look into your heart of hearts,” she explained. “Then I will fashion a wish from what I learn there.”
“Wait – you’re saying you’ll make a wish for me?”
“Pretty much.” She shrugged. “We prefer to give folks a choice, but in cases like yours, when you’re a nonbeliever and you think you have everything you could possibly need, we have to get a little more … creative.”
Finn figured that he’d reached his limit of being polite. Probably the woman was just lonely, but things were starting to get a little too weird for his taste.
“Look, ma’am, I’m gonna have to get back to work. It was nice meeting you. I’ve never, uh, met a real-life genie bef—”
His mouth shut with a snap as the woman held out a hand toward him and stared at him with her depthless eyes. Finn tried to speak but he felt much like a worm on the end of a fish hook. He trembled from head to foot and his skin felt too tight over his bones. Warning bells echoed in his head but he could do nothing while the small old woman continued to stare at him with her hand outstretched.
And then, at the point where he thought that he absolutely must explode, the old woman smiled and lowered her hand. All at once the blood rushed into his limbs and his opened and closed his mouth gingerly as if to test it. Then he turned his eyes toward the old woman, whose brow was deeply furrowed in concentration.
“What did you do to me just now?”
“I told you. I looked in your heart of hearts.” Her voice had a musing quality to it. “Some of what you would wish for, I don’t have in my power to grant.”
“Oh, so you’re not all powerful after all then?” Finn didn’t bother to keep the sarcasm out of his voice, though in the back of his mind he realized he was mouthing off to someone who’d had him in a full body bind, or whatever that had been.
“No. No genie is as powerful as all that,” she said gravely. “We cannot raise the dead.”
Finn looked at her sharply. She nodded and smiled kindly at him.
“They loved you very much. They never stopped looking for you. You know that in your heart of hearts. It has sustained you.”
Finn took a few steps backward. A fleeting memory of a kind-faced woman and bright-eyed man flashed into his brain, but the image was submerged by another, that of a snarling, red-faced man and the echoes of screams.
“I-I don’t know who you are,” said Finn in a low voice, his throat aching as he labored to keep the tremble out of his words, “or what you think you know about me —”
“I know only what your heart of hearts tells me, Finn,” said the old woman. “No more, no less.”
He made a choked sound and nearly tripped over his own feet.
“H-how do you know my name?”
“There.” She ignored the question and reached out a hand to him. “It has been decided. I have granted you a wish.”
Despite his shock and more than a little bit of fear, Finn found himself intrigued.
“You did? What is it?”
“I have wished for you … to have comfort on a rainy day.”
Finn waited expectantly and frowned when the woman said nothing more.
“Comfort on a rainy day? That’s it? That’s the wish you made for me?”
“It’s a good wish.” The old woman looked a little offended. “Definitely better than wishing for a bigger you-know-what or for all the knowledge in the known universe. Giving you that last one would make your head explode, FYI. I tried to warn a few fellows, but they had to have their own way.”
“But … I mean, what does that even mean?” Finn’s voice dripped disbelief. “Comfort on a rainy day? I don’t even know what that means?”
“You’ll know it when you see it,” said the woman, looking thoughtfully at her umbrella. “And once you find it, you’ll wonder how you have ever thought it a bad wish. Comfort on a rainy day, and a ray of sunshine to light the way. There now. The wish has been made and granted. Good day, Finn.”
Finn half-expected the woman to blink away into nothingness of maybe turn into a fine mist and dissipate into the air, but she walked off quite normally, swinging her umbrella on one arm. Finn watched her until she merged with the crowd and really and truly disappeared.
He shrugged and turned to resume his walk to the office. The whole exchange had seemed just surreal. Just another day in the city and another … colorful character? Perhaps.
Finn jumped at a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see a young woman looking at him questioningly.
“Are you Finn?”
He stared at her uncomprehendingly for a minute. He knew this woman. Well, sort of. She worked in the office next to his and sometimes they made eye contact in the elevator. She had beautiful eyes.
“Uh, yeah?”
“Oh, then this is yours? I bumped into an old woman who said you dropped it?”
She held out an umbrella. Finn stared in stunned silence at the black umbrella with the iridescent handle.
“I … what?” Finn cleared his throat. “I mean, uh, that’s not my umbrella.”
“It’s not?” The woman sounded surprised. “But she said that you left without it, and that she was late for another appointment and to see if I could catch you.”
Before Finn could answer, a clap of thunder crashed above and he felt the first cold drops of rain on his cheeks.
“Weird huh?” The woman peered up at the sky. “It was so nice and sunny a few minutes before but it looks like it’s going to storm. Are you sure this isn’t yours?”
Finn saw people on the street start to scatter for cover and he looked at the woman and smiled.
“I guess it is now. Uh, don’t you work in the Darklighter Building, too? I’m heading back there. We could walk together, if you wanted?”
She gave him a dazzling smile in return. “Oh, thanks. That would be nice. I don’t mind getting wet, but I’d rather my turkey sandwich not get soaked.”
He took the umbrella, noticing that the handle was warm to the touch despite being damp. Opening it, he blinked several times when he swore he saw the umbrella stretch just enough to cover the both of them completely.
They walked in companionable silence as the rain pelted down, but neither of them so much as got a drop on their clothing. Several times, Finn thought about telling the young woman about the old lady and her claims, but he held his tongue.
As they walked into the lobby amid people scurrying inside, the woman gave him another blindingly brilliant smile.
“Thanks for saving my lunch and my outfit. Working in wet clothes is … not fun. That’s a great umbrella! If you didnt’t lose it, I’m glad the old lady thought you did!”
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling shy suddenly. “Er, well, I’m glad too.”
“Do you have a coffee break?” she asked. “I’d love to buy you a cup in the cantina. It’s the least I can do for you being such a gentleman.”
“Oh. Er, yeah.” His face warmed under her smile. “That would be nice. About 3?”
“Sounds good. I guess I’ll see you then?”
“Wait!” Finn swallowed and scratched his chin. “I mean, uh, yeah, that’s cool, but I just realized I didn’t get your name?”
The woman looked sheepish and laughed. “Oh my god, that’s right, I'm sorry. It’s Rey.”
Finn stared. “As in … ray of sunshine?”
Rey made a wryly amused face. “Well, it’s spelled R-E-Y, but that works too. See you at 3, Finn!”
Finn watched her move off toward the elevator banks. When Rey had disappeared, he looked dumbfounded at the umbrella before slowly turning to the doors of the building, where he could see the rain slowing and the first light of the sun beginning to beam down on the sidewalk.