quiet.â
âYou asked me a question.â
âDid I? Sorry.â Jane closed her eyes and tried to clarify her mind. âWill you help me with this?â she asked.
âDepends,â Kiss replied huffily, âon whether Iâm allowed to talk.â
âOh, stop being aggravating.â Jane took a deep breath. âThere I was,â she said, âan ordinary person -â
Kiss cleared his throat. âJane Wellesley,â he recited. âAge, twenty-eight. Height, five feet one inch. Weight -â
âThank you, yes. Following a distressing scene with someone I had thought really cared about me -â
âVince. Vincent Martin Pockle. Age, thirty-one. Height, six feet two inches. Eyes a sort of -â
âEither help,â Jane snapped, âor go and empty the dustbins. Following a distressing scene, I resolved - stupidly, I admit - to kill myself. When I opened the aspirin bottle, out jumped a genie.â
âAt your service.â
âOr so it seemed. At any rate, at the time I accepted you at face value, and Iâve been doing so ever since.â
âSo I should damned well -â
âEver since,â Jane went on, âIâve been ordering you to do seemingly impossible things, and youâve apparently been doing them. The things you bring appear to be real.â
âYou and I are going to fall out in a minute if you carry on with all this seems-to-be stuff,â Kiss growled. âThe last person to call me a liar to my face, namely the erstwhile Grand Vizier of Trebizond, spends most of his time these days sitting on a lily-pad going rivet-rivet-rivet and wondering why people donât bring him things to sign any more. I invite you to think on.â
âAnd now you tell me,â Jane continued, âthat another genie - was he one of the ones we met at that peculiar night club?â
âNo.â
âAnother genie is planning to destroy the human race, using overgrown carnivorous plants. And itâs not,â Jane added, after glancing at her watch, âApril the first. Now then, what the hell am I meant to make of all that?â
Kiss shrugged. âThe best you can,â he replied. âItâs called coping. Like I said, some people find it helps to posit the existence of an omnipotent supreme being. I know for a fact He does. Other people,â Kiss added, materialising a decanter and a soda syphon, âget drunk a lot. It all comes down to individual preferences in the long run.â
âLook -â
âAs a matter of fact, Heâs all right, and soâs the second one, Junior. Itâs the Holy Ghost youâve got to watch out for. Forever walking through walls with its head under its arm, which for someone in its position is taking light-hearted frivolity a bit too far, in my opinion. Still, there it is . . .â
âKiss . . .â
âNot to mention,â the genie continued, âjumping out during seances and banging things on tables. And, of
course, trying to exorcise it is an absolute hiding to nothing. Sorry, you were saying?â
âWhat is going on?â
The genie shrugged. âCanât rightly say,â he replied. âBy the looks of it, some raving nutcase or otherâs decided to annihilate his own species. When youâve been around as long as I have, you get used to it. You get used to pretty well everything eventually.â
âI see.â Jane started to pick at the stitching on her shoe. âHappen a lot, does it?â
âOnce every forty years, on average. Usually, though, itâs just a war. When We get involved, it tends to get a bit heavy. Still, like I told you the other day, for every genie commissioned to destroy the world thereâs another told off to save it, so things even out in the long run. Last time I looked, the planet was still here.â
Jane opened her eyes. âI think Iâm beginning to see,â
John B. Garvey, Mary Lou Widmer