slumped against.
“You came!”
“But of course. And you remembered. Quite the punctual one as well. Right on time.”
Colby smiled. “Mommy says always be on time. You’re not going to break my heart, are you?”
“Pardon me?” asked Yashar.
“Well, before I left my house, Mommy said someone will always break your heart.”
“Yeah, Mom’s a keeper.”
“I love her,” said Colby proudly.
Yashar looked down at Colby with a mix of sadness and admiration. “And that’s why I chose you.”
“So, do I get my wish?” he blurted out.
“My, you get to the point quickly.” Yashar laughed. “Just a little small talk then BAM! Right to the point. I bet you’d make a good businessman.”
“My daddy’s a businessman. He sells computers. He travels a lot and isn’t around, but he’s real neat. He brings me stuff from all over the place. I’ve got snow globes and T-shirts and postcards. Would you like to see them?”
“No, thank you,” Yashar politely declined. “I’ve probably been everywhere your father has and snow globes just don’t look quite as pretty as the real thing.”
“Yeah, but did you know that it snows at the Alamo?”
“Yes, but not nearly often enough to warrant a snow globe.”
“Well, I’ve got a whole lot of cool stuff. You could come over and play sometime.”
“Why don’t we play out here?”
“What would we play out here?”
“Anything you wish,” said Yashar in a lyrical manner, as if he’d uttered the phrase a thousand times before. He even managed to gaily swoosh his arm through the air, as if conjuring happiness with it as he spoke.
“Oooh! When do I get my wish?”
“Such impatience.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. Patience is a virtue. You adults always say that. But how do I know you’re a real genie? You don’t even have a bottle.”
“Quit it with the bottle stuff, kid. It’s insulting.”
“What?” asked Colby, confused.
Yashar collected himself after slipping out of character. “It hurts my feelings.”
“Why?”
“Let me tell you a story.” Yashar looked around and saw a fallen log, moss covered but solid enough to support their weight. He took a seat atop it and patted the spot beside him. Colby hopped up on the log next to him, listening intently.
“There once was an evil man,” he began.
“Was he a wizard?” asked Colby.
“No, he was a vizier.”
“What’s that?”
“He’s the king’s most trusted advisor. If the king has a question or a command, the vizier tells him whether it’s a good idea or not. Sometimes the vizier tells the king what he should do, but he does so in a way that makes the king think it was his own idea.”
“So they’re bad men?”
“Some of them, but most were wise and benevolent. This one, however, was bad, an evil, wicked man. He was jealous because of something I did. You see, there was this man, and he was a good man; he worked hard and did everything to the best of his ability. All he desired was for the most beautiful woman in the kingdom to be his wife. Now this wasn’t all bad because she actually loved him too—very much so—but this vizier, he wanted her as well and not for so noble a cause as love.”
“What did he want her for?”
Yashar paused for a moment. “So that people could look at him and say, ‘He must be a great man to have such a beautiful wife.’ ”
“Oh. I thought he wanted her for sex,” said Colby, disappointed.
Yashar glared at Colby. “Where did you learn of such things?”
“A kid in my class named Ruben. Once, when we were in his basement, he showed me some of his daddy’s magazines and they had women with no clothes on and Ruben said that it was so you could have sex with them. But I didn’t like the pictures, I swear!”
“Do you want to hear my story or not?” asked Yashar.
Colby nodded excitedly, his head bobbing like a woodpecker against an invisible tree.
“All right then. I made it so this beautiful woman would marry the good man instead of the evil vizier. That made the vizier very angry and he commanded many wizards—”
“Cool! I knew there would be wizards in here somewhere! Wizards are always in the good stories.”
“Well, this isn’t a very good story.”
“Then why are you telling it?”
“Because it has a point.”
“Like a fable?”
“Exactly,” said Yashar. “Except that this one is true. And very sad.”
“Oh. What happened?”
“Well, the vizier was so angry at what I’d done, he commanded his wizards to weave a spell that would trap us djinn in bottles.”
“Like on TV?”
“Worse! In the