The Second Hour
14.
 What do I want to wish for more than anything else in the world?” Arthur thought out loud as the truck pulled into his home street.
Cuphandle cranked the steering wheel as the truck turned into Arthur’s driveway. “Be careful and think your wish through all the way. You have until the last minute of the twelfth hour to change your mind, and you don’t need to commit until then. Take your time and think it over.”
As Arthur got out, and Cuphandle climbed out on the other side. Their breath was vapor in the clear, chilly night air. The snow had stopped, and it seemed the entire world was muffled in a thick white coating. A clear black sky was filled with stars, which wavered in the warmth rising from the city. Starlight glittered in myriad fallen crystal facets that lay facing up. The air smelled fresh and invigorating, though breathing it made the rims of Arthur’s nostrils tingle with cold. Arthur was glad to be back in his familiar yard with its leaning mailbox and crumbling driveway. High tufts of unkempt, dead grass poked up here and there through a foot of snow.
“Man, what a crumbling pile of brick.” Cuphandle stood with his arms akimbo, looking up at the house’s narrow, high walls and sharply pitched roof. The twisted brick chimney looked as though a drunken bricklayer had slapped it together. “Is this place haunted?”
“Not if I can keep you outside,” Arthur said. He fumbled with his keys, while Cuphandle untied the clock and brought it over. As Arthur opened the door, Cuphandle carried the clock inside. As he entered, all the lights in the house turned on of their own accord. The wall heater in the living room made a whoosh sound as the gas ignited. “Now how did you do that?” Arthur said.
“Tricks of the trade. I’m not going to show you anything more than I already have, and you can’t do Poof!-!fooP without my help, so don’t go getting any ideas.”
Arthur shut the door and got comfortable. The djinni (by now he’d accepted the notion that maybe this strange fellow was indeed a djinni) put the clock in just the right spot and sat on the sofa to admire his work. It stood between a wall mirror and a dark table with a marble top. The marble top was the wrong shade of black and white whorls, so he changed the marble to a pleasant marmalade-and-cream that complemented some of the more prominent facets of the very fancy and intricate clock. The clock seemed to tick louder, like a cat purring happily at being stroked. “It likes being where it is,” Cuphandle said. “It seems to feel at home here.”
“I hope you’re not,” Arthur said as he shuffled in his slippers to the kitchen. He regarded the old white enamel stove, the tiled sink, and the rest of his anachronistic cookery with familiarity and affection. “Do djinn drink tea? I’m about to make myself some. Would you like a cup?”
Cuphandle sauntered into the kitchen, hands in his pockets. “Wow, ever think of modernizing this place?” Arthur’s kitchen glimmered from a single yellowed lamp glowing under a countertop.
“If was good enough for Gretchen, then it’s good enough for me,” Arthur snapped. “Do you prefer Irish breakfast tea, Indian morning tea, or English high tea?” He pointed to a trio of Victorian glass jars tucked among cracker boxes, grocery bags, spilled egg cartons, and other casualties of poor organization on the tile counter.
“Let me help you,” Cuphandle said. He raised both hands and twiddled all ten fingers. Instantly, the counter was bare and clean. The old yellow lamp had become a stylish wall sconce with a red glass shade shaped like a leaping tuna. “Now how about a nice fresh blend directly from a Darjeeling warehouse? Like so.” He whistled and pointed, and on the stove sat a popping and rumbling kettle just beginning to boil. As Cuphandle stopped whistling, the kettle picked up in just the same exact pitch.
“You knew how that was going to sound,” Arthur said, stepping in close. He eyeballed the kettle and then Cuphandle. “You know the future?”
“In my limited fashion, sometimes.”
“So you could tell a man when he’s going to check out?”
“You mean—die? Don’t wish for that.”
“But I could ask for it?”
“You could but to what purpose?” Cuphandle seemed to hesitate. “I’d first have to—er, um—check the rules and bylaws rather more closely.”
“Oh, so there are limits to what you can do?” Arthur glared at him, licking his lips, with eyes that suddenly radiated lawyers and daggers. Arthur had trashed many an opponent in courts of law. When it came to saving a penny, or preserving Latchloose Bank & Trust, Savings & Loan, What & Not, Arthur was a champion of the inverted yes, the twisted phrase, the fatal noose of well-delivered aha!
Cuphandle motioned for the kettle to be silent and the stove to be off. Fresh steaming cups of fragrant tea appeared on the kitchen table, and the two men sat down to drink. Arthur found his tea sweetened just enough to his taste. Cuphandle seemed to prefer tea with milk and honey, just like in Psalms. Along with the tea, a plate of crackers, cheeses, and a little potted meat for dipping appeared. They sat in the quiet, echoing kitchen with its high shadows and mysterious spaces, and were each lost in their own thoughts.
“I wouldn’t want to know about the hour of my release from this dungeon of time and pain,” Arthur said, thinking of his final hour. “I’d want to have something positive, something useful, something glorious, maybe even fun, but what?”
At that moment, the house filled with a pleasant sound. Arthur jumped a bit in his seat, but relaxed when he realized it was a sound like a gathering wind chime that turned into the repeated bongs of a clock. The sound was fine and distant, but full and perfectly tuned. It came from the wooden chamber inside his new clock. It rang twice.
“There you go,” the djinni said. “That’s another hour gone by. The hours are going fast, Arthur. You have ten left, after we have spent the first two in idle chatter.” He dipped a cracker in artichoke and olive dill dip. “Maybe you are just a complete loser, after all. Or maybe you are just getting warmed up.” He snapped out a cell phone and impatiently thrust it against one ear.
“What are you doing?” Arthur asked, rather offended. He sensed that the other was becoming bored.
“I have a date later,” said the young djinni. “As soon as this miserable business with you is done, you unhappy and cranky old ugly man, I’m taking a beautiful young houri dancing all night atop the London and Paris skylines.”
“A young—what?”
Cuphandle nodded and smiled at someone over the phone. He put his cell away and said to Arthur: “Not what your miserable little twisted brain thinks. She is not a woman of the streets, but a divinely beautiful creature, sort of like a cross between a sea horse and a Seraphim, or maybe Miss America and a violoncello, but always a dazzling young woman. Nevermind, I can’t find the metaphors, the matadors, or the macaws to describe her. Just looking at her would turn you to stone—a forever smiling statue—but that cup is not yours to take in hand just now. You have smaller fry to fish—or is that fish to fry? I still have difficulty with the idiom sometimes.”
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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