by Jamel Cato
Granting wishes is a matter of great controversy within Djinn communities. While there are differing mythologies, the common theme is that Djinn were expressly created to help the Multiverse maintain its integrity. The power to copy atoms from one stretch of spacetime to another was not viewed as magic until humans corrupted some Djinn with the knowledge that they could manipulate reality in any way they wanted and not just in the small ways that kept timelines from colliding. These early Djinn, many of whom lived in Persia, thanked the humans for their awakening by granting them wishes. Their human friends, who had become wealthy and powerful as they had wished, demanded more. When the Djinn refused, the humans hired practitioners of black magic to imprison them in vessels unless they did as commanded. Seeing this, the ruling councils of the Djinn realms forbade travel to Terra, the plane of existence that humans experience as the physical world. This is why Djinn are rare on Earth and almost always bound to ancient urns and lamps.
* * *
My first day on the campaign trail was a nonstop and nearly overwhelming whirlwind of speaking engagements, interviews, photographs and fast food. My head spun as we traveled around South Florida watching Serenity dazzle everyone.
In between appointments, a five-person team of makeup artists, hair stylists and clothiers descended on the candidate like a swarm of locusts. Sometimes Serenity would be briefly undressed down to her undergarments while they deftly switched her outfit like a NASCAR pit crew. These sudden exposures of flesh did not seem to faze any of the other men on her travel team, so I pretended they didn’t faze me.
Except they did.
Serenity was gorgeous. A hazel-eyed brunette with her hair cut close on the sides and a curved bang hanging stylishly over her forehead, she had the high cheekbones of a model and the fit body of a triathlete.
It was during one of these wardrobe refreshes that she and I first made eye contact. She winked at me. It was fast and no one else seemed to notice it. I involuntarily replied with the wide smile of a hunter happening upon the best prey of his whole damn life.
During Serenity’s speech to the Cuban American League, a balding man with a press pass and trendy eyeglasses sidled up to me.
“Danny Weintraub,” he said. “I’m with the Times.”
“LA or New York,” I asked.
“The Times,” he repeated with enough emphasis to let me know he meant the one in New York.
“What do you think of Serenity?”
“No comment.”
“Are you with the Campaign? I haven’t seen you before.”
“No comment.”
“Don’t tell me you’re scared to talk.”
“No comment.”
He was quiet for about twenty seconds. Then he asked, “What’s a Tryvodyn?”
I looked over.
He smiled. “Preston Tiptree, right?”
“That’s my name.”
“Oh good, I thought ‘no comment’ was the full extent of your vocabulary.”
“No comment.”
“Okay, I get it. Ashley had you prepped. How about you just listen while I do the talking?”
I said nothing.
“I used to work the Metro desk at The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. I covered the Darnell Bataille case.”
Darnell Bataille had been a young man in New Orleans whom I had rescued from a street gang and a demon possession before losing him permanently to a drive-by shooting. I considered his senseless death among the greatest failures of my life.
“My editor assigned me the task of finding out how there could be no murders or other violent deaths in the 9th Ward for two consecutive months. It almost defied belief. I thought I would find that there had been an error in the crime reporting statistics by the NOPD, or less likely, maybe the next Martin Luther King, Jr., had taken his firebrand preaching from the pulpit to the street corner. But I didn’t find either of those things. After a lot of digging, and I mean a lot, I heard about a guy from Philly wearing sunglasses and somehow facing down the gangs without getting filled with bullet holes like swiss cheese. You wouldn’t talk to me, so I did what reporters do and started looking into you on my own. After more digging and using up my department’s whole informant budget, I got directed to some ghost hunting forums on the Dark Web. They called you a Talker. I wanted to ask what a Talker was, but I didn’t have enough Karma points to post a question to the Boards and even if I had, it would’ve gotten me flagged as a suspicious newbie. I got pulled off the assignment after Darnell Bataille was killed and the normal violence returned to the Ward, but all the weird stuff I came across stuck with me. Now I have enough points to post to the Boards and the Boards think Serenity is a Tryvodyn.”
I continued watching Serenity in silence.
“I’m going to find out what a Tryvodyn is and I’m going to find out why strange things happen when you show up. Now’s your chance to tell your side.”
“I didn’t have anything to do with Darnell’s death.”
“I know that. I looked hard. Anyway, that’s not what I’m interested in now.”
“What are you interested in now?”
He nodded toward Serenity. “A secret about her that will make my career and maybe garner a Pulitzer. It doesn’t have to be a dark secret. She can still win. I personally think these politicos are all the same on the inside, but she might even be good for the country. Who knows?”
“If I come across a secret like that, you’ll be the second person I think of.”
My wording had not been a mistake.
“Who’ll be the first?”
“Serenity.”
He chuckled. “When I got assigned to the Blakemore campaign, three different publishers offered me book deals. I took the one with a flex topic. It was less money, but I get to choose the title and content. If she wins, I’m going to call it, Eating Fear for Lunch: My Year with Serenity Blakemore. It’ll be an inspirational piece that paints her in a good light and hopefully sells like Michelle Obama’s book. But if she loses, or her campaign is ended in disgrace by some secret, I’m going to call it, Bee Stings and Backrooms: How Serenity Blakemore Conned America. It will be a guaranteed bestseller. I’ll retire to some island and focus all my attention on writing another book about the spooky stuff that occurs around you. If you change your mind about the secret, or you want to help shape the way I portray you, get in touch with me.”
“No comment.”
CHAPTER 29
Serenity and her entourage walked up to me while we were backstage on the set of a Miami morning news program that recorded in the late afternoon.
She extended a hand. “Ash says that if I address you as Dr. Tiptree, you’re just going to tell me to call you Preston or Tree. Is she right?”
“From what I’ve seen, Ashley is always right.”
“She’s right when it counts. Which do you prefer?”
“My friends call me Tree.”
“Welcome to the wild world of campaigning, Tree. I apologize that I haven’t had a chance to say hello before now.”
“No worries, Ma’am.”
She cocked her head. “I look too hot to be called Ma’am. Please call me Serenity or Sellie-Jo.”
I laughed. “Okay, Serenity.”
She took me in from head to toe. “When I first saw you standing with the Travel Team, I thought you might’ve been the personal trainer Ash has been promising to get me so I can lose this campaign flab.”
I wanted to visually devour her the same way and say, “If that’s flab, then I’m Christopher Columbus.” Instead I said, “I hit the gym every chance I get.”
“I can see that. Free weights or body weight?”
I wanted to suggestively say, “Free weights if I have plans to use my body weight later than night.” Instead I said, “Usually body weight when I travel.”
With a mischievous smile, the probable future leader of the Free World asked, “Do you think you could stretch me out the next time we have a break? I haven’t been to the
gym in so long.”
My eyebrows rose. I looked at Ashley for guidance, but she only rolled her eyes.
“Don’t tell me the cat’s got your tongue after all I’ve heard about you,” Serenity added.
I had tried to be a Boring Ben, but the limits of my propriety had been reached.
I said, “When a cat gets my tongue, the thing that gets stretched the farthest is the limit it imagined its body could go.”
Serenity’s mouth dropped open in pleasing surprise.
The women gathered behind her blushed and smiled in ways that told me they weren’t angels all the time.
“Where is my Style Team?” Serenity asked. “I think I need a wardrobe change.”
One of the women behind her began to sprint off. “Right away, Sellie-Jo.”
She held up a hand. “I’m kidding. I’m fine. How long will you be with us, Tree?”
“A day or two.”
“So, you’ll be around this evening?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer that, or if I should. Harmless flirting was one thing, but the media loved reporting how Serenity was happily married to a game warden in West Virginia named Kenneth Blakemore.
Sensing my discomfort, Serenity said, “One of my rules is that my staff balance work and play. The Travel Team will be getting a little R&R this evening and I’d like you to join us if you’re available. It’s a group activity.”
“Ashley told me that on the campaign trail, my time is yours.”
“Well, you did say she was always right. We’ll send a car for you around ten.” She paused meaningfully. “Make sure you’re up.”
“As you wish,” I said, meeting her eyes.
She briefly narrowed her gaze before marching off toward the studio.
Ashley lingered behind. “I never told you that your time was hers.”
“You didn’t tell me a lot of things,” I said.
A caravan of black SUVs with tinted windows pulled up to the front entrance of our hotel just after 10 PM. The one I was ushered into was occupied by three unsmiling Secret Service agents carrying assault rifles. So much for R&R, I thought.
But we only drove a few miles before pulling into an underground parking garage, where the occupants of all the vehicles were switched like a game of musical chairs. I was led by the arm into a different SUV, where I found Serenity, Ashley, Shayla Butler and three women on the Travel Team dressed for a night on the Town.
Kenneth Blakemore was there too, but he was wearing jeans and a Kentucky Wildcats sweatshirt.
“Preston, this is Ken,” Ashley informed me.
“I know who he is,” I said, offering a polite handshake. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Blakemore.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Huh? I’ve seen him on TV with Serenity a million times.”
“Ken is a Native American from the Camawekela Nation. He and Serenity are not married under West Virginia law, but Camawekelan Tribal Law, which is a polyamorous legal and belief system that is Federally recognized.”
As if to underscore the point, one of Serenity’s Angels reached over and intertwined her fingers with his, which didn’t seem to bother Serenity in the least.
Ken said, “We believe that men become brothers when they both share intimacy with the same woman and that women become sisters when they share intimacy with the same man. We call this Tumolongkin-Nahela.”
Sometimes my life feels like one of those Widget Spinner toys where the core remains static while everything else madly whirls about it.
One of the angels, a lawyer, handed me an ink pen and a clipboard.
I took my time reading the document clipped to it. It was an exceptionally restrictive Nondisclosure Agreement. “This says I can’t even tell my grandchildren what I see.”
“We’ve all signed a similar agreement,” the lawyer said.
“I’ll have someone take a look at this.”
“That won’t be possible. You can sign it now, or not at all.”
“I guess it’s not at all then,” I said as I reached for the door handle.
Serenity touched my knee. “Please sign it, Tree. It’s just a formality for my protection. You are here to protect me, aren’t you?”
I looked at Shayla, the only other African American present. “What do you think, my sistah?”
I was putting her on the cultural and legal spot. Secret Service agents were supposed to be seen, not heard. And any black woman with a father who would be hurt by ethical shortcomings had also been taught that she was part of a larger community. I know this because I had been taught the same thing.
Shayla looked me right in the eyes and said, “Trust me, Bruh, you should sign.”
In that context, the word Bruh had more weight than a thousand legal analyses. I signed.
Serenity smiled. “Now that that’s out the way, la vida loca!”
The Angels cheered.
I was stunned when our caravan pulled into the parking lot of a Miami nightclub. I’d felt certain we were headed to a restaurant, or, if they were feeling rowdy, a bowling alley.
Serious Presidential candidates cannot go clubbing. Serious Presidential candidates do not know what clubbing is. Serious Presidential candidates live serious lives where even their laughter is choreographed.
Right?
Wrong.
The Blakemore Travel Team and their Ivy League degrees went clubbing. In Miami. In the Summer.
Once we were inside, where our voices were drowned out by the thumping bass and our identities masked by the darkness of the dancefloor, I saw that there were no nightclub virgins among them, including their fearless leader, who was turning a hidden, camera-free section of the cordoned off VIP area into a syncopated justification for winning every millennial vote in America.
The roof, the roof, the roof was on fire!
And so was I.
When I took a break from the dancefloor to get a bottled water, Ashley slid up next to me. “Do we have your vote yet?”
“Girl, if I’m dreaming or in a coma at some hospital in Jersey, don’t wake me or pull the plug. You have my vote and my undying allegiance for expanding my definition of we the people.”
“Did you dance with her yet?”
I paused. “Wait, the Secret Service allows that?”
I had only seen Serenity dancing alone with a circle of armed agents clearing the space around her.
Ashley smiled and started tapping at her phone screen.
Twenty seconds later, Dawn Penn’s voice started the Reggae set by melodically singing, “No…no…no.”
I don’t know the details of the background investigation that had been performed on me, but whoever discovered that I love old school Reggae dancehall music should have been appointed the Director of National Intelligence.
As is customary during the Reggae set, the nightclub became pitch black to highlight the fluorescent body paint worn by many of the female dancers.
The enticing curves of glowing paint was how I located Serenity in the darkness of her private alcove. Shayla and the other agents, having received advanced notice of my arrival, parted to allow me through. I approached cautiously, leaving what I felt was a respectful amount of space between our bodies. But caution went the way of the Dodo bird when Serenity gyrated right up to me and placed her right hand on the back of my neck, demonstrating that she too was familiar with the customs of the Reggae set.
As we moved in rhythm, a tiny part of my mind wondered if Parsenon had ended my life at Jason’s house and was at that very moment preparing to step out from a doorway and spitefully recite a bedtime story called Presidents Don’t Dance.
When Serenity turned around backwards right on cue with the third verse, I decided I would keep dancing even if he did.
CHAPTER 30
I have no idea which member of the Travel Team had originally been booked in the hotel room next to mine, but as I sat alone in the dark staring at the door adjoining the two suites, I was sure they had been moved e
lsewhere.
Serenity soon came through the door, which I had left unlocked. “Ashley says you can see what I really am.”
I said, “Your species is a Djinn, but what you really are is a breathing refutation of a passionless existence.”
She walked over and loomed above me. “I bet you say that to all the Presidential candidates wearing body paint.”
“Have we been in this room before?”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Many times.”
“Is that how you knew my favorite song and how I like to dance?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a spacetime anomaly. Why don’t you stop it from repeating? That’s why you were created.”
“Because I like it better each time.”
“What do I normally wish for?”
“Sometimes you take me straight to the bed and make love to me, and other times you make a wish to see a reality where you parents are still alive. Both wishes attract me to you more.”
“I’d like to see them again. Will you show me?”
“Close your eyes.”
I opened my eyes when I heard my father say, “Preston. Where’d you go? I thought I would have to send a search party for you. You’re about to miss kickoff.”
I stared in amazement. He was about twenty years older, but it was him.
“Why are you looking at me like that? Are you okay, Son?”
Before I could tell him that I wasn’t, my mother came from the kitchen with a steaming plate of soul food. “I made you something to eat and took the onions out. Tell your wife I know she prefers to handle that now, but she was busy doing hair.”
I gawked.
Concern suddenly darkened her wonderfully real face. “What’s wrong, Preston?”
