Three Wishes

I see Sol before he sees me. He's hunched in the shade of a fir tree, smoking. He looks terrible.

He turns at the whsh of my feet approaching through the grass. "About time," he says. His gaunt, discolored face splits in a mad grin, the same grin he always used to flash when he'd squeaked in under yet another project deadline.

"Hey Sol," I say. "How long's it been, four years or something? And you complain about five more minutes."

"Sit down, slacker, sit down," he says, thumping the packed earth beside him. "Smoke?"

I hesitate at his offer. "No offense, but you've sort of taken the joy out of nicotene for me, buddy."

His laugh collapses into a horrible wracking cough, but when he looks up again his smile is as wide and wicked as ever. "Oh, don't worry about me, Nick. I'm about to beat this cancer permanently."

"Oh?" He doesn't exactly look like a man on the edge of recovery.

"Sooner than you can imagine. But shall we begin the polite way? Good to see you, Nick. How ya been? How's Marie? Any life news that didn't make it into your blog?"

I look at him blankly. "Fine. We're fine. Look, Sol, you don't have to play that game. I know you've got something up your sleeve. You don't just call a guy up after four years of silence for no reason. I mean, some people might, but you don't." That thing he said a moment ago about forever condenses into a fear in my mind. "Tell me you're not... considering...."

"Buying a gun? Jumping off a bridge? Pills for dinner? A long intimate chat with a razor blade? Believe me, I have considered those, and up until yesterday they were answers to a multiple-choice question. But listen to you, Nick. That's what I like about you. You think things through, and you really care about other people. An alternate solution has come my way, and I knew you were just the guy I needed to help me out with it."

"E, none of the above?"

"Exactly." He chuckles. "You've always been pretty bright for a straight guy. But I guarantee you did not see this coming." He reaches into his jacket, pulls forth a strange object, and hands it to me.

The object is a worn brass carving of a voluptuous woman, in snugly joined segments. She is jubilantly naked, toes pointed like a ballerina, holding a covered bowl over her head which opens in the same direction as her beatific face. It's so intricately molded that it takes me a moment to recognize it as a chamber pipe. "Oh, come on, Sol, what is this? Cannabis is now a miracle cure for lung cancer?"

"Oh, it's far better than that, my friend. Suspend your incredulity while I explain the full significance of this little antique. Remember Aladdin and his smoky friend in the lamp?"

"Uh-huh."

"That's the same face I made yesterday, when my landlady asked me down for a chat over coffee. You don't know her, but she's been pretty generous to me these past few years. Medical bills like mine can make it hard to pay rent, insurance or no insurance. I figure the least I can do is listen to her bitch about her ex, and look at pictures of her grandchildren. She always had a bum leg, an old knee injury that never healed up right. Arthritis got into it and she had a pretty hard time getting around."

"Sol. What the heck does your landlady's knee have to do with your lungs?"

"Patience, my friend, patience." He waves his cigarette hand, trailing a faint haze. "Yesterday she showed me this little treasure. It was a gift from her brother, she said. It has three wishes in it for me, she said. But no genie. You be the genie, she told me, then you get three wishes."

"Riiiight," I say, wondering what kind of pain medication he's on.

"Exactly. So she called up her brother, put me on the phone. He said he was answering from a small island in the Azores, which he now owns. I said how long had he owned it? He said about forty-eight hours. And how did you get this island? I asked, because I knew he was a hotel clerk. He said, I wished for it. My sister made it happen. It's the pipe, he said. It really works. Try it. I hung up, and my landlady said, what have you got to lose?

He's obviously lost it. I laugh helplessly. Sol continues, "She was right, Nick. Even if she was planning to steal my kidneys, my credit card number, what have you, none of them were doing me much good anyway. So I gave it a try. It was wilder than the weirdest trip I've ever been on, but it worked, I kid you not. I granted her wishes."

"Oh yeah? What did she wish for?"

"Her leg, healed. Her daughter, rid of an unwanted pregnancy. The second Korean war, erased as though it never happened."

"Second Korean War? There was no second Korean War."

"Like I said: it never happened. I undid it."

"Look, Sol, it's a great story and all, but I'm not buying it."

"A perfectly reasonable response. But listen, this is what I want from you, Nick. I want you to swallow your disbelief and trust me... as though your life depended on it. As though my life depended on it, which, in fact, it does. The way it works is simple: the pipe is lit. The wisher exhales into it. The granter of wishes inhales, and is given the power to make three requests come true for the wisher. Then the one who granted them gets three wishes from whoever he can convince to be the next giver."

I yawn. "Yeah, yeah. Even if I did believe you, I've read that monkey paw thing. I know these stories always have a catch."

"Surprisingly, this doesn't seem to have one. I didn't suffer any ill effects from granting my landlady's wishes, and she sure wasn't harmed by them. There are limitations, of course. You can't use it more than once. You can't wish for more wishes. And if someone refuses to grant a wish, it will supposedly lose all its power. But who would refuse, with their own three wishes on the line?"

I turn the pipe over in my palm, flip open the lid of the bowl. The inside is blackened but clean, with a pungent odor. I tap it in my palm (nothing rattles or falls out) and try to unscrew the chamber.

I try harder to unscrew the chamber. Sol laughs.

"She's not sharing her secrets with anyone," he says, and points to a few gouges around the middle of the pipe. Someone has obviously tried steel pliers on it.

"Did you do that?"

"Not me. Why kill the goose that lays golden eggs, eh? So are you game, or what?"

"You can't expect me to take this seriously, Sol."

"No? Not even to save my life, Nick? Then think about three wishes of your own. What would you ask for? The sky's the limit, my friend. Do you want a rocket ship? A harem? A career as a pro snowboarder?"

I laugh, but I already know exactly what my wishes would be. I've always known. The idea of them actually coming true is as tantalizing as it is ridiculous. "Why me, Sol? Why call up an old co-worker you haven't seen in years to make your dreams come true?"

"Because I know I can trust you, Nick. Because you've always been a square guy. You know I dropped out of the scene when the cancer hit. Who wants to hang out with a dying man? So out of an admittedly limited range of options, when I thought of the few people I wouldn't mind calling up and asking a favor of, you topped the list. That, and you strike me as more deserving of wishes than most people. I know you won't waste 'em."

"Well, thanks for the compliment and all, but this is bullshit." I snap the lid shut and hand the pipe back to him.

"So you'll do it?" he says. "Look, if it's bullshit, you're taking one hit off a pipe that's as good as empty. If I'm telling you the truth, this is the chance of a lifetime. And I am telling you the truth, Nick. Dying man's honor."

I sigh. "What the hell."

He nods, opens the lid and pulls a lighter from his pocket. "Best decision you ever made," he says. "Watch this." He holds the lighter over the empty bowl of the pipe, sucks at the mouthpiece to pull the flame in. After a moment it catches -- on what, I have no idea -- and flickers green for a moment before one last sip pulls it out of sight. A thin wisp of grey curls up from the bowl. He raises an eyebrow at me, then puffs into it, a gentle exhalation that sends the smoke curling out. It twists and fades around us, smelling of things I can't quite name. It's sweeter than weed smoke, but darker than tobacco. Sol hands me the bowl. I take it and inhale, cautiously. It reminds me of cloves, but then again it doesn't at all. I wait for a buzz and get nothing.

I look at Sol. "Now what?"

"I want to be cured of cancer. Forever."

I'm about to say "Dammit, Jim..." when I realize I know exactly what's wrong with his body, and exactly how to fix it. His clothing, skin, and ribcage have become not so much invisible as irrelevant. I can see his tumors, see into his tumors, see into the very cells to the DNA that has set everything off kilter. I know which genes to nudge to reverse the cells' mutation back to healthy function, to reinitiate normal apoptosis, to prevent them from ever rebelling in this way again. I can see how this change will affect all the other systems of his body. I can also see that his lungs are still blackened with decades of smoke, and I realize there's nothing I can do about that, even if I wanted to; he didn't wish for it.

"Done," I say, because it's true.

Sol takes a few experimental wheezes. "I don't feel any different," he says.

"It'll take a few days for the tumors to diminish. You should take it easy for a while, give your body time to recover." I stretch. "That was insane, Sol. What's next?"

"See? I wasn't lying, was I?" he says, and the wicked grin returns. "Now I want to invent a web app that will change the internet forever, and make me very rich and very famous."

"When?"

"Anytime in the next year is fine. Surprise me."

Again, I am still wondering how in the world I'm going to do this when I realize I already know how. There are a set of ideas standing around Sol's mind like dominoes; all I have to do is line them all up in order and he'll do the rest. The "change the internet forever" part is a little more complicated, and involves a lot of close attention to the future, making sure all the right influences come together at the right time, that the right people take notice and react properly. But by the time this is set up I have the hang of it, almost like mastering a new programming language, so that chaining up the rich-and-famous events isn't hard at all.

At the same time, though, I can see some things that make me uneasy about what I'm doing. From this vantage point, it's obvious that Sol won't handle his fame and fortune very well. And the changes his new application will bring to the internet are not all positive. It's going to cost a lot of people a whole lot of time and money; there will be lawsuits, and fortunes will be lost. It will absorb the attention of millions, while ruining several lives and saving none.

It's hard to shrug something like that off when you can see it so clearly, see that you are the one causing it to happen. I balk for a moment -- Is this really a good idea? -- but then I think of my own wishes and how they will make the world a better place, in really significant ways. The net result will be positive, I decide, and go on making connections and setting up coincidences so that everything Sol wished for will happen.

"Good luck with the celebrity life," I tell him when I'm finished.

"Yeah? Don't worry, I won't forget you when I'm on top of the world."

That's not what I'm worried about. "Thanks."

"So, are you ready for wish number three?"

"Yep. What do you want?"

He takes one last drag off his cigarette and stubs it out in the dirt. "I want Craig back, and I want him to stay."

"Oh no." I know Craig fairly well; he tends bar at a little place Marie and I like. He's in another relationship now, and he seems very, very happy with it. I think he and Sol were together for two or three years; Craig still gets tight-lipped and tense when that part of his life comes up in conversation. "Come on, Sol. You're going to have so many options when this web thing goes down. Craig will just get in the way."

"You don't understand, Nick. Craig and I had something great together. It was totally unique, totally brilliant. I've never gotten over him, and I never expect to."

"Can't you just use your wealth, influence, and natural charm to win him back?"

"Not when he won't speak to me."

"Sol. Has it occurred to you that there might be good reasons for that?"

"Hey, you're not going to refuse me this, Nick. You're not. Remember what I said about how the pipe loses its power if someone won't grant a wish?"

"You gotta wish for something else. I haven't even started looking at it up close yet, and already it seems like a terrible idea."

"Like I said, you don't understand what we had. To pass up an opportunity to get that back is unthinkable. I would never forgive myself. I need Craig."

"Sol..."

"Wait, wait, maybe I haven't explained this clearly enough. If you refuse to grant my wish, not only do you forfeit your own wishes, you also cancel my previous ones. If you say no, you're killing me."

The taste of the smoke is still strong in my throat. I look down at the pipe in my hand, and up again at Sol, whose expression is painful to see. And I know what I have to do.