WEB EXCLUSIVE: FOUR WISHES

When I was very small, I decided that I wanted to be a fire-eater. But most kids\' plans for future occupations evaporate by the time they turn 12. There are, after all, many more accountants than astronauts. Like my friend Charlie--he wanted to be a lion tamer once. I think he\'s an architect now.
But I never gave up on my fire-eating career.
This was my dream: I would be a world-famous fire-eater, and I would marry a beautiful trapeze swinger. I would live under a tent that I would set up in thousands of places around the world. I would have a pet monkey who my trapeze swinger wife would teach to be a pickpocket. We would all sing songs, eat elephant ears, and sit around campfires. Men would fear and envy us as we traveled around. My wife would really love me, and if anyone tried to steal her away, I would burn them with flaming belches.
I couldn\'t get up the courage to actually eat fire, though. I would stir my cocoa and put the hot spoon in my mouth without blowing on it, but that wasn\'t quite fire-eating. I also stuck my tongue onto the two prongs of a nine-volt battery, and though that was a bit more like eating fire, it still wasn\'t all that impressive to anyone but me and Charlie; he wanted me to do it, and was too scared to try it himself. He dared me to do a lot of stupid things. I once ate a spider for a half a bologna sandwich.
My parents were just crazy mad that I wanted to eat fire and join a circus. They hid the matches and took away the stuffed monkey my aunt Susan had knitted for me.
\"No son of mine is running off to join the circus. Thomas, you spend so much time with the Gladfree boy, you\'d think some of his brains would rub off on you. Stop talking fire-eating nonsense.\"
Charlie agreed with my parents, so I socked him in the ear. We weren\'t pals for a while after that.
But I still wanted to be a fire-eater. At ten, I figured I could go to Fire-Eaters University after high school. I saved my pennies for tuition. I managed to save $11, even before making a large and unwise investment in a BB gun. Charlie accidentally shot me in the leg with it, so my mom threw it away.
At 12, I began to eat as many spicy foods as I could. They made me cry and fart. I considered the pepper-induced tears and indigestion to be part of my training. I was going to do very well in college. Charlie learned to do algebra. That\'s how he got ready for his college.
At 14, I got one step closer to eating fire. I started smoking. Charlie tried, but he coughed too much and got sick. It wasn\'t as hot as I\'d hoped it to be. But there was actual fire involved, so it was a step.
At 16, Charlie took me to the library, where I learned there was no Fire-Eaters University. Damn. I considered running away with the next circus that came to my town-- I would learn directly from the professionals. The circus came. It had no fire-eaters. There were lots of shabby clowns and a decent sword swallower, but no fire-eaters. I thought about being a sword swallower, but Charlie talked me out of running away with the circus. You\'ve got to follow your dreams, after all.
At 18, I got shipped off to Eastern Trade School. Charlie went to the Western Institute of Technology. I took a class in chemistry, and got to set fire to lots of different chemicals in glass beakers, but never got to eat any fire.
My first semester at trade school, I met a girl named Marie. I think kissing her was as close to fire-eating as I had gotten by that point in my life. Then she left me for a man who said dirty things to her in languages I still don\'t know how to speak. I had no more of her fire to eat.
Charlie met a girl he thought was pretty fiery, too. They live in Westchester now. My car makes too much noise, and can\'t get all the way to Westchester without it needing oil, so I haven\'t seen Charlie in a long time. He\'s got this condition that makes it hard for him to move around, so he can\'t drive to see me, either. But sometimes he calls me-- you know, to see how I\'m doing.
After trade school, I took a job at a big, gray building full of small, gray people. My job was to answer a telephone. Some of the people on the other end of that telephone breathed fire at me. I was jealous. I wasn\'t allowed to be fiery back.
At that job, I met a woman who had been a gymnast when she was a little girl. I asked her if she had ever done any trapeze dancing. She said, \"No, But I dance on a pole on weekends.\"
I thought I\'d never meet my trapeze artist. Charlie told me that maybe I would, in time. My mother said I should chat up a nice secretary.
Answering the phone in the gray building ate up ten years of my life. I had failed at my dream. I wasn\'t a fire-eater. I was a phone answerer. That made me mad. And it made me to pick up a new hobby even better than smoking. I fell in love with beer.
One Sunday afternoon, I was just waking from a really good sleep I\'d started on Friday, and I decided to clean up my apartment a bit. While cleaning up a pile of empty beer bottles, I figured another cold one would help me focus on my cleaning.
I opened it, and a little, wrinkled man popped his little, wrinkled head out of my bottle.
\"Thought I\'d be in there forever. Gosh, you aren\'t pretty at all. Where are all the pretty ones? Huh? I never get to meet any pretty ones.\"
I put the bottle down, and decided that maybe a little more sleep was in order.
I woke up Monday morning, noticed that the little man from the bottle was still very much alive and still inside my bottle. I called in sick to work.
The little man and I had the following conversation:
\"Ah, well,\" he said, \"you gonna ask me or what?\"
\"Ask you what?\"
\"For your wishes, of course.\"
\"Wishes?\"
\"Yeah. That\'s what we genies do. We grant whoever lets us out of our bottle three wishes.\"
\"You\'re a genie?\"
\"I just said I was. Come on, I\'m not some rat in your beer. You\'re talking to me. We\'re having a conversation, for Christ\'s sake.\"
\"Yeah, but genies don\'t fly out of beer bottles.\"
\"Look man, real estate\'s expensive. Not everybody can afford one of those nice bottles with the long spout and brass handle.\"
\"Oh.\"
\"Ask. Ask me already. Ask me for your three damn wishes.\"
\"May I have three wishes?\"
\"Yes, yes, of course. Wish already.\"
\"I wish to be a professional fire-eater.\"
\"Granted.\"
\"Really? I\'m a fire-eater?\"
\"I said, granted. Next wish.\"
\"Uh, okay. I wish I was married to a kind and beautiful trapeze artist who really loves me.\"
\"Granted.\"
\"Oh, now wait just a minute. You aren\'t one of those sneaky genies who turns my words all inside-out to give me horrible things instead of what I\'d really wished for, are you?\"
\"Do I look sneaky to you?\"
\"You look pretty shriveled-up.\"
\"I\'ve been inside a damn bottle of beer for three weeks! You\'d be shriveled up, too, if you spent so much time sealed in a bottle! I\'m practically pickled!\"
\"But are you tricking me? Are you going to trick me?\"
\"If I were smart enough to trick people, I would be a much better genie; I would make a much higher salary, and could afford a decent bottle for myself. No, I\'m not going to deceive or trick you or anything bad at all. I\'m not that clever. Last wish.\"
\"I wish I had a pet monkey that knew how to pick people\'s pockets.\"
\"Done.\"
\"Thanks, I guess.\" I saw no proof that any of my wishes had been granted.
\"You know, most men wish for the woman. Almost everybody asks for wealth. But nobody\'s ever asked for a monkey to steal money for them.\"
\"Well, I\'ve always wanted a monkey.\"
\"Good, \'cause you\'ve got one now. Could you please set this bottle on a ledge somewhere, somewhere it won\'t be broken, while I figure out my new digs? Thanks. Oh, and could you pour out the beer? It smells just terrible.\"
And the genie popped back into his bottle. Even though the bottle was clear glass, I couldn\'t see him inside. I poured out the beer and decided I needed a shower.
While I was soaping up, I heard my door open, and someone walk right into my apartment. I was in no mood to attack a burglar while I was naked and soapy, so I pretended I hadn\'t heard them, and hoped they wouldn\'t steal my television.
It was no burglar. It was the most gorgeous woman I\'d ever seen. She was short, golden, and had black hair down to the small of her perfect back. She winked at me. I was too stunned to move. I couldn\'t even suck in my gut. She disrobed-- good God was she perfect in every way-- and grabbed the shower curtain rod, flipped over it, and landed in the shower with me.
I have never had a more satisfying shower.
Drying off, I saw that we were both wearing silver rings. Hers said \"Thomas\" and mine said \"Argentina\". She called me \"darling\".
\"Oh, darling, we have to pick up Arthur from the vet this afternoon. I hope he didn\'t get too scared when he got his shots.\"
Arthur managed to snatch us 15 wallets, a gold watch, and a diamond necklace on the subway ride home.
I had to call Charlie and tell him about the good luck I had.
\"Hello?\"
\"Hey, Cynthia. Is Charlie there? I have good news for him.\"
\"Sorry, Tommy. He\'s not home. He hasn\'t been home for a while. He isn\'t well at all.\"
\"Well, gosh. That\'s rotten. I guess I\'ll call in a couple days, you know, when he\'s feeling better.\"
\"Okay, Tommy. Goodbye.\"
\"Bye, Cynthia.\"
Even though I didn\'t get to talk to Charlie, I slept well that night (though not much-- and you\'re jealous, I can tell) for the first time since before I\'d bought that stupid BB gun, and I could not wait to get up and go to work.
All the way into work, I was imagining that the building had been replaced with a big tent, and that I could have an elephant ear for breakfast.
Work was the same as always. Gray building. Gray people. Answer phone. Answer phone. I was ready to go home and stomp that genie and his bottle into a genie-glass-casserole when I got the phone call I\'d dreamed about for so long.
And it, friends and neighbors, went like this:
\"Hello, New-Tech Cellular Services, how may I help you?\"
\"Uh, we don\'t even have your service, but we got a letter telling me to call about an unpaid bill.\"
\"That doesn\'t sound right. May I have your full name?\"
\"No. I think this is a scam, and I want to get to the bottom of it.\"
\"Then, may I have your telephone number?\"
\"Look, you aren\'t getting any personal information from me. This bill wasn\'t even addressed to me. It was just sent to my place of work, with nobody\'s name on it.\"
\"Then may I have the name of the organization where you work? I\'ll run it through the system, and if there\'s no account under the business name, you can forget about that letter, since New-Tech didn\'t send it if there\'s no account.\"
\"Okay.\"
\"Go ahead.\"
\"The company name is the Eastern School of Fire-Eating.\"
\"No shit?\"
\"Excuse me?\"
\"No account. There\'s no account on file for that organization.\"
\"Then why would I have to call you?\"
\"It sounds like a con game to me. By any chance, is your school accepting new applicants?\"
\"The next series of courses begins next week.\"
I signed up, quit my job, and finally, at age 32, I finally tasted fire. It was as delicious as I always thought it would be. After my month-long fire-eating course, I broke my lease and hit the road with a traveling circus.
Two years later, my wife and Arthur and I still tour with that performance troupe. I can\'t wait until I stop back into my hometown. I\'ll show mom and Charlie that I really did make my dreams come true. And I can\'t wait until they meet Argentina. They\'ll be so impressed. I just hope Arthur doesn\'t steal any of mom\'s antiques.
\"We\'ve finally got one-- a perfect match.\"
\"Oh, thank God. Oh, thank, thank you, doctor. Did you hear that, sweetheart? You\'ve got one!\"
\"Harvested from a 32-year-old male. His mother found him in a coma after he called in sick to work four days ago. Alcohol poisoning. But that shouldn\'t affect the quality of the heart. I\'m sorry, Mrs. Gladfree, but I believe you know the donor. His mother requested that his organs go to Charlie, and only Charlie.\"
\"Oh my. Can I ask who it was? Is? Who it is?\"
\"His name was, is-- his name is Thomas Gouck.\"
\"Oh, dear. Poor Thomas.\"
\"Well, try to see it as a blessing. I see these things every day, and I\'ll tell you, there\'s just no point in looking on the dark side of things. The heart is on its way now. We need to get Charlie prepped and ready. Cynthia, if you could, please wait in the lobby for me? Thank you, dear.\"
Cynthia sniffed, and clapped her damp hands once. \"Oh, doctor, thank you. You don\'t know how long I\'ve wished for this.\"