Troublemakers

“Ten bucks.”

The little man moved with the agility of a ferret, and whisked the te

He spun around once, and when he faced them again, the ten dollars was out of sight.” And a steal, though Allah be the wiser; a hot deal, a veritable steal, blessed sir!”

Da

The little man’s wrinkled face drew up in panic. “Out! Get out, quick! The time-frame is sucking back together! Out! Get out now if you don’t want to roam the eternities with me and this shop... and I can’t afford any help! Out!”

He shoved them forward, and Co

“Out! Out! Out!” Mukhar kept yelling.

Then they were at the door, and he was kicking them-literally planting his curl-slippered foot in Da

Then the shop was gone, and they got to their feet in front of an empty, weed-overgrown lot.

A lame piece of goods?

“Are you asleep?”

“Yes.”

“How come you’re answering me?”

“I was raised polite.”

“Da

“The answer is no. I’m not going to talk about it. ”

“We have to!”

“Not only don’t we have to, I don’t want to, ain’t going to, and shut up so I can go to sleep.”

“We’ve been lying here almost an hour. Neither one of us can sleep. We have to discuss it, Da

The light went on over his side of the bed. The single pool of illumination spread from the hand-me-down daybed they had gotten from Da

It would be better when the furniture they’d bought today was delivered. Later, it would be better. Now, it was the sort of urban landscape that drove divorcees and aging bachelors to jump down the airshaft at Christmastime.

“I’m going to talk about it, Squires.”

“So talk. I have my thumbs in my ears. ”

“I think we should rub it.”

“I can’t hear you. It never happened. I deny the evidence of my senses. It never happened. I have these thumbs in my ears so I ca

“For god’s sake, Squires, I was there with you today. I saw it happen, the same as you. I saw that weird little old man and I saw his funky shop come and go like a big burp. Now, neither of us can deny it!”

“If I could hear you, I’d agree; and then I’d deny the evidence of my senses and tell you...” He took his thumbs from his ears, looking distressed. “... tell you with all my heart that I love you, that I have loved you since the moment I Saw you in the typing pool at Upjohn, that if I live to be a hundred thousand years old I’ll never love anyone or any thing as much as I love you this very moment; and then I would tell you to fuck off and forget it, and let me go to sleep so that tomorrow I can con myself into believing it never happened the way I know it happened.

“Okay?”

She threw back the covers and got out of bed. She was naked. They had not been married that long.

“Where are you going?”

“You know where I’m going.”

He sat up in the daybed. His voice had no lightness in it. “Co

She stopped and stared at him, there in the light.

He spoke softly. “Don’t. I’m scared. Please don’t.”

She said nothing. She looked at him for a time. Then, naked, she sat down cross-legged on the floor at the foot of the daybed. She looked around at what little they had, and she answered him gently. “I have to, Da

They sat that way, reaching across the abyss with silent imperatives, until-finally-Da

“Shine the damned thing, Squires. Who knows, maybe we actually got ourselves a 24 carat genie. Shine on, oh mistress of my Mesopotamian mansion.”

She held the lamp in one hand, the rag in the other. For a few minutes she did not bring them together. “I’m scared, too,” she said, held her breath, and briskly rubbed the belly of the lamp.

Under her flying fingers the rust and tarnish began to come away in spots, “We’ll need brass polish to do this right,” she said; but suddenly the ruin covering the lamp melted away, and she was rubbing the bright skin of the lamp itself.

“Oh, Da

AH-HA! It screamed, louder than a subway train. AH-HA!

FREE AT LAST! FREE-AS FREE AS I’LL EVER BE-AFTER TEN THOUSAND YEARS! FREE TO SPEAK AND ACT, MY WILL TO BE KNOWN!

Da

Da

“Knock off that noise! You want to lose us the lease?”

CERTAINLY, OFFSPRING OF A WORM!

“I said: stop that goddam bellowing!”

THIS WHISPER? THIS IS AS NAUGHT TO THE HURRICANE I SHALL LOOSE, SPAWN OF PARAMECIUM!

“That’s it,” Da

He stopped. He looked at Co

“Oh, my god,” she said.

“It’s real,” he said.

They got to their knees and crawled over. The lamp lay on its side on the floor at the foot of the daybed.

“Are you really in there?” Co

WHERE ELSE WOULD I BE, SLUT!

“Hey, you can’t talk to my wife that way-”

Co

“Yeah? Well, nobody talks to my-”

“Put a lid on it, Squires. I can take care of myself. If what’s in this lamp is even half the size of the genie in that movie you took me to the Thalia to see...”