“Yes, but—”
“But?”
“You’re married,” I say.
“As you are.”
“Yes.”
“And two hours from now, when you leave, we’ll still be married.”
I don’t know how to respond to that, so I just stare at her mouth, wondering how the mere act of speaking can appear so provocative.
“Buddy?”
“Yes?”
She removes her blouse and says, “I want this to be a very special afternoon for you.”
She’s not wearing a bra.
“I’m not super experienced,” she adds, “though to you I probably seem wild on the screen.”
Jinny Kidwell is standing in front of me, and she’s not wearing a bra.
She reaches behind her with both hands and I hear the sound of a zipper lowering. She does a sort of hip shake and her skirt slides to the floor, and…
…She’s not wearing panties.
She says, “All I ask is that you treat me with respect.”
“Huh?”
“With respect.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t do anything to hurt me.”
“Hurt you?”
She blushes again.
Then I blush.
Chapter 16
If I could have a fifth wish it might be that I’m the most amazing lover Jinny Kidwell has ever encountered.
But the truth is I’m unable to perform.
“This has never happened to me,” I say.
“Nor to me,” she says.
“I can’t do this to Lissie.”
“I believe you.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean, Buddy. I was just kidding.”
“Oh. Right.”
We’re sitting on her bed, and we’re both looking at the pathetic, drooping thing between my legs I used to call my “mighty sword.”
“He looks tired,” she says.
I wince.
“What’s the problem, do you think?”
I shrug. “I think maybe I’m just overwhelmed.”
She nods. Then, as if trying to enhance my mortification, she reaches over and pokes it with her finger. Then she lifts it with her thumb and index finger, holds it aloft a second, then lets it fall, and I want to crawl in a hole somewhere.
She frowns. “So what’s the plan, Stan?”
“Excuse me?”
“We’ve got to get this thing done. What do you suggest?”
I’ve never had a woman stare at my manhood as if it were a snail on a plate. Nor have I ever had a conversation with anyone about it, while staring at it. I sigh. “Maybe we should just forget the whole thing.”
A sudden look of fear enters her eyes.
“It doesn’t work that way,” she says. “We have to do this.”
She starts breathing rapidly, as if she might hyper-ventilate. I reach out and place my hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, relax,” I say. “I can tell them we did it. No harm, no foul.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I made an agreement. You have to perform!”
I look at my lap and mentally curse my dick.
Jinny says, “Give me a sec.”
She leaves the room a minute and comes back with a small bottle of water and a pill.
“Here,” she says, “take this.”
“What is it, Viagra?”
“No.”
I stare at the little pill in my hand. “Is it safe?”
“One is safe. Six is an addiction.”
“Will it help me perform?”
“It won’t hurt.”
I look into her gorgeous eyes. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“Please, just take the pill.”
I swallow it and set the glass down.
“Now what happens?” I say.
“You lie down and relax. I’ll turn on some music and we’ll see what happens.”
“Sounds good.”
Some time must have passed. I’m not aware of any time passing, but something must have happened, because I’m suddenly aware that Jinny Kidwell is bitch slapping me and calling me names.
No, wait. That’s not what happened.
I shake my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. I now realize she slapped me once, lightly, and said, “Focus, Buddy!”
“What happened?”
“You’re back!”
“How long was I out?”
“A couple minutes.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Hey, I have an idea!” Jinny says, brightly. “Have you ever acted before?”
“What, like in a play?”
“Uh huh.”
“Not really.”
“Well let me put a thought in your mind.”
“Okay.”
“You know I have love scenes with actors in my movies, right?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, I know I’m married, and the actors know they’re married, but the way we get the public to believe our scenes is to pretend we’re not married.”
“That makes sense.”
“It does. And here’s the thing: Lissie doesn’t know you’re here. In two hours our lives will go back to what they were before we met. Lissie won’t know what we’ve done, and she’d never believe it anyway.”
“That’s certainly true.”
“I’m giving you a gift, Buddy. The most special gift I can give a man.”
I nod.
“And there’s something else,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“We’ve already seen each other naked, so the rest isn’t such a big deal.”
I look at her nakedness some more.
“I’ve got another idea,” she says.
I wait to hear it.
“I think it might help if I show you a view of my body that’s never been filmed.”
And she does.
Two minutes later, meaning our entire romantic encounter lasted maybe half that long—we talk about making movies, and the type of blouse and sandals she’d been wearing, and how hard it is to be her, with cameras in her face and people shouting and pushing every time she turns around. As she talks, her breasts rise and fall and I become swept up in her delicate beauty and—bless her heart—she allows me a mulligan, and this time I’m playing from the championship tees!
As our second hour comes to a close I feel as though I’ve known her all my life. We’re lying on her bed, gazing into each other’s eyes and she seems as if she’s about to cry.
“I’m so sorry,” she says.
“Sorry? About what?”
“What I’ve done.”
“You mean the pill?”
She places her palm on my cheek. “You’re a really nice guy, Buddy. I’m just…It’s…”
Suddenly she says, “Oh my God! I almost forgot!”
She slides off the bed and heads to her closet. It’s the first time I see her standing with her back to me, and she looks like a different person. She’s extremely frail from this angle. Her backbone protrudes like a Rhodesian Ridgeback’s. I’d seen her entire back from a distance on the Academy Awards show, but here, in person, it seemed to belong to a different person. She stumbles and nearly falls into the wall. I sit up, preparing to rush over to help her in case she’s about to faint, but she regains her footing and steadies herself against the doorway of her closet.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She laughs. “I’m terribly clumsy. Promise you won’t tell!”
Her breathing seems shallow and irregular and I wonder if it had been this way the whole time and I simply hadn’t noticed till now, having been so caught up in the experience.
“There it is,” she says, and takes a couple of steps into her closet. She bends over and picks up a briefcase, and brings it back to me.
“Your money,” she says.
Chapter 17
I’m in the limo with Thomas Jefferson, heading
back to the airport. He’s tapping his fingers.
“She paid me the million dollars out of her own money?”
“It appears she did,” he says.
We sit without speaking. The tapping grows louder as Jefferson seems totally consumed by the challenge of moving his fingers faster and faster against the armrest. He’s preoccupied, fidgety, and very possibly angry, which seems completely out of character for the smooth, confident businessman I’d met in the bank.
“Is something wrong?” I say.
“Is something wrong?” he mimics, derisively.
“Is there?”
He stops tapping his fingers and gives me a hard stare. “Was she a good fuck?”
He practically spat the words at me. I’m shocked by his demeanor, which has turned confrontational. I’m trying to decide if Thomas Jefferson is jealous, unstable, or both.
“It wasn’t like that,” I say.
“Care to enlighten me?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
“It was…”
I look at Jefferson’s face. He seems to be fighting to keep his anger in check. He repeats my words: “It was…what?”
“It was…like magic.”
The anger leaks out of him slowly, like a balloon with a small nick in it. His lips press together in a flat line. “Well, how nice for you.”
I nod. “But why would she give me a million dollars?”
“What did she say?”
“Something about paying back into the system that helped her become a star.”
“Makes sense.”
“Who are you guys?”
“Who indeed?” he says, with a heavy sigh.
He closes his eyes and doesn’t speak again until we’re on the tarmac. As the limo pulls to a stop near the jet he says, “You need to use the restroom before we take off?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Then, let’s get you back to your car.”
It’s a quiet flight back to Louisville. When the jet comes to a stop, I remain seated so Jefferson can get out first, but he makes no effort to move. Instead, he gestures at the briefcase in my lap. “You get it all counted?”
He’s referring to the way I opened and closed the briefcase several times during the flight, picking up one brick after another, riffling through them.
“You think the money’s real?” I say.
“I guarantee it. Everything about the Wish List experience is real. Except that I’m going to decline the twenty million dollar loan.”
“Why?”
“You’ll know soon enough.”
I pat the briefcase and laugh. “In that case, how long do you think it’ll take me to quit my job on Monday?”
“I doubt you’ll do much thinking about the bank from here on out.”
“Why’s that?”
Instead of answering, he says, “Does it even bother you that an hour ago you were with another woman, and now you’re heading home to face your loving wife, pretending you’ve been hard at work all afternoon?”
His words don’t hit me as hard as he probably thinks they should. Yes, technically, I cheated on my wife. But it’s not as though I deliberately set out to cheat. In fact, it was Jinny who talked me into actually doing it. And there’s this: I’m holding a million dollars in cash on my lap!
I respond by saying, “How many guys on the planet do you know who’d refuse a million dollars to have sex with Jinny Kidwell?”
Jefferson shakes his head. “You have no clue, do you?”
The way he said it gives me pause, and I wonder again if he’s jealous, or simply trying to rain on my parade.
“What do you mean?”
“Ever heard the expression ‘there’s no free lunch?’”
“Look, this isn’t some huge moral issue. It’s not like I’m having an affair. This was a one-time opportunity that will never be repeated. In any event, there’s no way Lissie will find out about Jinny. And even if she did, she’d never believe it.”
“So, if the positions were reversed, Lissie would have slept with a movie star?”
This time his words take a bite out of my heart. I hang my head. “No, she wouldn’t have done it, even for a million dollars.”
“So how does that make you feel?”
“How does that make me feel? Well, hey, now that you’ve brought it up, it makes me feel like shit. So, thanks for that. But I’ve always known Lissie was a better person than me.”
“Meaning?”
“Should a lesser person be held to the same standard as a better one?”
There’s no way he can hide his contempt. But I stand behind my belief that few men on earth would have turned down an afternoon delight with Jinny Kidwell, with or without the money.
He says, “You haven’t read the fine print, have you?”
“What fine print?”
“No one ever reads the fine print,” he says, as if to himself.
“What fine print?”
“On the website. Wishlist.bz.”
I think about Sunday night, when I accessed the website. I’d been rushing, worried Lissie might walk in on me.
“There was no fine print,” I say, aware there’s little confidence in my voice.
“You can’t type in your wishes until you click the box and agree to the terms.”
He can tell by the expression on my face that I remember clicking the little box.
“What terms?” I ask.
He leans his head back against the headrest and closes his eyes.
“What’s in the Agreement?” I ask.
I notice his fingers have started tapping again. When he speaks, it’s just two words:
“Your life.”
I leave Thomas Jefferson in the jet, thank the pilots for the flight, and walk down the steps toward the limousine. Perkins holds the door open for me, and I slide into the car and notice a guy sitting across from me.
A guy who looks like a gangster.
When he eyes my briefcase, I put both arms around it and hug it tight against my body.
“Who are you?” I say.
“Your worst nightmare.”
Chapter 18
“Here’s how it’s going down,” he says. “We’re going to drop you off at your car, and you’re going to drive straight home, observing the speed limit, and when you get there, you’re going to lock your car in the garage. Then you’re going to enjoy a fun-filled evening with your wife.”
“Sounds good so far,” I say, trying to give the impression I’m not the least bit afraid of him.
“After the concert you’re going to put the wife to bed and you’re going to meet me and another guy in your garage.”
“And why would I want to do that?”
“Because I got a job for you.”
“Not interested. I’m retired.”
“This is non-negotiable.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means it’s time to start paying back.”
“For what?”
“The wishes you received.”
“No one said anything about paying for the wishes.”
“And yet here we are.”
“Just for the sake of argument, what sort of payment are we talking about?”
“You’re going to bury a body.”
“Excuse me?”
“Remember wish number three?”
My boss dies a horrible death.
“Bullshit.”
He puts his hand in his suit jacket, removes a photograph, hands it to me. It’s my boss, Edward Oglethorpe, with a bullet hole between his eyes. I’ve never seen a dead body before, except my grandmother’s, and she didn’t have a bullet hole in her head.
“This could be a fake,” I say.
“You’ll have a chance to see for yourself soon enough.”
“Why’s that?”
“I already told you: you’re going to bury him tonight.”
“I don’t beli
eve you.”
“Do you have front row seats to Springsteen tonight? Did you fuck Jinny Kidwell today? Are you holding a briefcase with a million dollars in it? I were you, I’d believe it.”
The thing is, I do believe it. But I’m busy trying not to be sick. The contents of my stomach are swirling, and there’s a weird ringing in my ears.
“You killed my boss?”
“No, you killed him. By wishing it.”
“But…I was just kidding around! I didn’t expect someone to actually kill him!”
“Oh, really? Gee, you should have said.”
“You’re mocking me.”
“You think?”
“What if I refuse?”
He smiles a fierce, terrifying smile. “There’s no refusing. Ask Pete.”
“Who’s Pete?”
“The guy you been with since noon.”
“You mean Thomas Jefferson?”
“Oh, and that didn’t give you a clue?”
“That’s not his name?”
“Try Pete Rossman.”
“I don’t believe you. Jefferson’s paperwork checked out. I Googled the guy, for Chrissakes!”
“Oh, well, if you Googled him.”
“You’re saying Thomas Jefferson, or Pete Rossman, or whatever his name is—doesn’t work for you?”
“Yes and no.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s in it the same way as you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Pete Rossman. Name doesn’t ring a bell?”
“No. What’s his claim to fame?”
“Pete’s a wealthy businessman, likes to keep a low profile. He’s hardly ever seen in public.”
“So?”
“His wife, on the other hand, is quite well known.”
“Who’s his wife?”
“Jinny Kidwell.”
Chapter 19
Though my car is parked near the entrance to Louis Challa’s, the limo pulls to a stop some fifty feet away. We’re at the far corner of the parking lot, facing the second curb cut.
“Your cell phone no longer works,” he says. “And we’ve tapped your home phone. Your computer, too.”
“Why?”
“We’re a controlling bunch, at least until we get what we want.”
I don’t like the sound of that. Up to now, I’ve been waiting for Perkins to open my door, but he’s still in the front seat, probably scared to move without being told. I shrug and let myself out the door and fish the keys from my pocket. I’ve got the briefcase in my left hand, but it’s feeling ten times heavier than the last time I lifted it. My head is reeling. Why would Rossman set up a line of credit in a phony name and fly me all the way to Hannibal to have sex with his wife? And why would he let her give me a million dollars for the privilege? The whole thing is completely insane.