Three More Wishes: Be Kind To Your Genie

by Doctor MC

  “I did, I told you exactly that. But as of now, you’re no longer in the Abzug Society, so I expect you to dress more girly. I hate the Hillary Clinton look, got it?”

  She hung her head. “Yes, Marvin.”

  “Good. Now kiss me goodbye and start your day.” Bellina gave to me, her student, a kiss that probably broke twenty-three school-district rules. Then she walked away from me, her ass swinging.

  Next, I turned my attention to Stephanie and Diane, my newbies. “Whoa, Diane, I didn’t expect you to look this hot!” I exclaimed.

  Diane was blushing red. “Well, I went to Kelly Brown’s house and borrowed a few things, and I asked my sister if I could borrow her shoes. Then I changed clothes this morning in the bathroom of a J-Mart.”

  I beamed at the blushing blonde. “You asked to borrow things, Diane? Good for you.” Diane was shy like the ocean was wet. In class, she never raised her hand, and she blushed whenever she was called on. Despite being a natural blonde, Diane was invisible in any class she attended.

  My other three women were each dressed sexy (at least a little bit). New recruit Stephanie was wearing a denim miniskirt that was too short, and a light-green blouse with three buttons unbuttoned. Elena and Kristin apparently were in friendly competition now to see who could make my eyeballs melt fastest. Elena was wearing a blue V-neck cocktail dress, and Kristin was wearing garters and stockings.

  I took my harem to the school office, to tell Mr. Bender that my women now included Stephanie and Diane. Mr. Bender didn’t argue with me. Perhaps this was because I was now taller than him (if only by half an inch), and I was now clearly stronger than him.

  Outside the office, I gathered my four women together and said, “In a moment, I’ll walk each of you to your lockers, then I’ll walk each of you to your first-period class. But as you walk down the halls, I want every person who sees you to know that I’ve fucked you. Kristin, show the newbies how to walk sexy.”

  Once we started walking the hallways, I put Stephanie and Diane on either side of me, with Elena and Kristin following behind. We must have been impressive—wherever we went that morning, nearby students and teachers went silent and stared at us.

  ****

  In first-period Physics, I was trying to pay attention to Mr. Lloyd’s lecture. But Jim-Something would not be stopped. “Say, Marvin, the word is that you fucked fifty women last night, including teachers from Ewert Grant.”

  “That’s not true, Jim,” I said.

  I suddenly realized that the classroom had gone dead silent. Everyone, including Mr. Lloyd, was looking at me.

  Mr. Lloyd said, “Marvin, the boys in the class won’t be able to listen to my lectures till you put this subject to bed. What exactly happened in the Home Ec Lab yesterday?”

  I didn’t feel like discussing it. “Maybe nothing happened. Maybe it’s only wild rumors going around.”

  Mr. Lloyd gave me a you can do better than that look. “Marvin, your statement is refuted by the forensic evidence. There were many used condoms thrown into the Home Ec Lab’s trashcan yesterday.”

  “Wicked!” a male voice exclaimed.

  Before I was forced to come clean, the door opened and an Office Helper stepped in. “Mr. Bender needs to see Marvin Harper right now,” she said.

  As I stood up and walked toward the door, Jim-Something started singing the theme from “Cops.” Several students joined in the singing, which didn’t help my mood.

  By the time I got to Mr. Bender’s office, I’d imagined three different Doomsday scenarios. Fortunately, all three were wrong.

  In Mr. Bender’s office were Natasha and a girl in a plaid skirt. I didn’t see any problem—Natasha’s jeans weren’t ripped, and the girl’s skirt was “fingertips length.” Then I looked again. Holy shit!

  Yesterday, I had told Harold that the purple satin shirt “looked gay.” Well, this went way beyond looking gay.

  Mr. Bender asked me, “Is Harold Miller one of your friends?” Mr. Bender’s voice was strained.

  I asked Harold, “Why on earth are you wearing a skirt?”

  He said, “Natasha asked me to, and she’s the boss.”

  Natasha said, “Not is skirt. Is kilt.”

  I asked Harold, “Are you Scottish?”

  By now Harold was blushing. “Not at all.”

  I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation. So I was groping around for what to say next. “How tall are you now?” I asked Harold.

  But it was Natasha who answered. “He is 168 centimeters.”

  “Five-six,” Harold clarified. Then he leaned toward me and murmured, “I’ve stopped shrinking, for all the good it’s done me.”

  Natasha was pouting when she turned to Mr. Bender. “If ‘Red’ Baxter is this wearink, you would is sayink ‘yes,’ yes?”

  I said, “ ‘Red’ Baxter has red hair and big muscles. He’d look like a true Scotsman, wearing this. Whereas Harold looks like a girl. Geez, what guy has hair that long except one of the druggies?”

  Mr. Bender looked at me and said, “Is Harold a friend of yours, or not? Do I allow this farce?”

  So it came down to me. This was Fatima’s wish-grant playing out, and I didn’t know what would happen if I were to thwart it. Maybe all that would happen would be that Natasha felt annoyed with me. Or maybe all my wishes would get canceled, besides a rift opening up in the space-time continuum.

  But hey, there was an easier way to answer this. I gestured Harold to the far corner of the room. Natasha tried to join us, but I strongly gestured Stay put.

  In a low voice, I asked Harold, “Suppose you woke up tomorrow and everything was put back. You were the starting quarterback and I was 5′2″, and nobody but you and I remembered these crazy days. And tomorrow, somehow I was forced to wear a skirt to school, but somehow you had the power to stop my humiliation. What would you do?”

  Girly-Harold glared at me. “Are you kidding? After you humiliated me yesterday in front of Natasha and Anna Kay, grabbing my book bag out of my hands and picking it up one-handed? You showed-off big time, and you made me look like a weak baby. Tomorrow I’d not only keep you in that skirt, I’d go to the drama teacher and borrow a blond wig to plop on your head.”

  I gave Girly-Harold a cruel smile. “Thank you for being honest.”

  Then I walked back to Natasha and Mr. Bender. “Harold is not my friend, but Natasha is, and Harold belongs to Natasha the same way that Kristin and them belong to me. So between now and Graduation Day, Mr. Bender, whatever Natasha wants Harold to wear, let him wear it.”

  I glanced back at Harold. His face was chalk-white.

  ****

  Hours later, school had ended for the day and I was at Mr. Dodd’s law firm. I’d asked Mr. Dodd for the use of a computer with graphics software, a USB port, and a printer; I’d explained only that I had “some pictures to print out.”

  I’d also hinted to Mr. Dodd that the pictures might upset his employees, and so privacy would be really appreciated. Mr. Dodd had sent me to a spare conference room.

  I took out the USB stick and put it in the computer. On the memory stick were decrypted files that on Monday I’d copied from Uncle Warren’s computer: text files, Word files, database files, and as many recent dirty-picture graphics files as the two-gig USB stick could hold.

  Uncle Warren, it turned out, had been consistent about filenames identifying the people in his photos. I was able to find five pictures of Sherry, and seven of Virgilia.

  It turned out that the earliest picture of Virgilia was captioned “Virgilia O’Keefe handing out feminist pamphlets at Nimfo Club.” The woman who was pictured had Stripper-Virgilia’s face (minus the false eyelashes and the puffed-up lips), and had ordinary-brown hair and an ordinary body. I needed to ask Virgilia about that sometime.

  There were two photos of Sherry clearly giving a blowjob to Uncle Warren, where I could see faces and half a cock. Ditto, I found two such pictures with Virgilia. Perfect, just what I was looking for.


  As I was printing those four pictures out, the conference-room door opened and a twenty-something blonde walked in. She was wearing law-office clothing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I didn’t know anyone was in here. I’m looking for a phone to use. Stupid me, didn’t charge my cell.” Her shoulders hunched as she said that, is if she expected someone else to trash-talk her if she didn’t bad-mouth herself first.

  I said, “You don’t look familiar. Did Mr. Dodd just hire you?”

  “Oh, I don’t work for David Dodd. I work for Mr. Northcutt, and we’re waiting for David Dodd’s client to show up.”

  Oh shit, I thought. Carefully I asked, “Who’s the client?”

  “Marvin Harper. He recently turned...” She looked at me and said, “Oh god.”

  Now I was pissed. Someone who worked for Aunt Esther’s law firm, “accidentally” walking in while I was trying to help defend my case? Yeah, right. “Get out now,” I growled.

  “Yes, I’m going, I’m going!” she said. She walked to the door, put her hand on the doorknob, then stopped.

  “Mr. Harper?” she said.

  “Yes?” I said, in a tone of voice that meant You aren’t gone yet?

  “Mr. Harper, I’m sorry for what we’re putting you through. You don’t deserve this. It’s wrong.”

  Before I could reply, she was walking out the door.

  Chapter 17

  Aunt Esther

  I was carrying a manila folder with the four blowjob photos in it, when Bridget escorted me into a second conference room. On one side of a large table sat Mr. Dodd, in the middle of three chairs. Bridget took the chair to Mr. Dodd’s right.

  On the other side of the conference table sat a brunette woman in her forties; a disgustingly fat man filled the chair next to her; and next to him sat the “dead cell phone” blonde. If the brunette was my Aunt Esther, I didn’t recognize her at all. Her expression was a mask. The fat man was looking at me with eagerness, whereas the twenty-something blonde looked like she was about to endure a tax audit.

  I’d walked maybe five feet into the room when the fat man said loudly, “Young man, if you’re going to surf internet porn, please do it on your own time and on your own computer. You’ve kept us all waiting, which is inconsiderate, don’t you think?”

  I gave him an amused smile. “Internet porn, is that what you think I was doing?”

  I took the empty seat to Mr. Dodd’s left. As Bridget was handing me a legal pad and a pen, Mr. Dodd said, “Marvin, let me introduce you to the people on the other side. You already know your aunt, Esther Flint. Sitting next to her is her attorney, Wayne Northcutt. Sitting next to Mr. Northcutt is his legal assistant, Cassandra Farnetti. Folks, this is Marvin Harper, the heir designated in Warren Harper’s will.”

  I stood up, leaving the manila folder on the table unopened, and walked around to the other side of the table, my hand out. As soon as my intentions became clear, Northcutt and Cassandra stood up.

  Aunt Esther did not stand up. I walked to her chair, my hand out to shake hers, and said, “Aunt Esther.” I was not about to say Aunt Esther, it’s good to see you again.

  Aunt Esther looked at my hand like I’d just pulled it from a septic tank. “This is not a social call,” she said coldly.

  Surprised, I moved my gaze from Aunt Esther to Northcutt. He was pulling his outstretched hand away from me. “Sorry, I have to follow the client’s lead.” His sassy grin told me that he was anything but sorry.

  I shrugged, and walked back to my seat. As I walked past Cassandra, she averted her gaze.

  Once back in my seat, I said, “Aunt Esther, I don’t recognize you. Have we ever met?”

  She said, “Yes, Christmas of ‘97, Granny Flo was hosting a Christmas dinner. You were a child, and you kept chasing her poodle through the house.”

  I nodded, recalling a poodle with pink nail polish. I then asked, “When did Florence die? It had to have been before Christ-mas 1999.”

  Northcutt said, “Young man, if you want to catch up on family history, please show some consideration and do it later. We have more important things to discuss.”

  I looked at him coldly. “Number one, I’m asking questions that I’m the most qualified person here to ask. Number two, doesn’t your whole court argument come down to blood relationships?”

  Northcutt said pompously, “I will allow such questions.”

  Aunt Esther said, “Granny Flo died in July 1998.”

  A few more questions by me, and the pattern became clear. Aunt Esther and her children had come to the Christmas dinner in 1999 that Herbert (my great-grandfather) and Minnie had hosted—but after 1999, Esther and her children had skipped all events hosted by Flo’s relatives. I thought it better not to tell Fat Boy that the Steve Harper family and Uncle Walter kept bumping into each other every Christmastime and Fourth of July.

  I then turned to Mr. Dodd and said, “I have no more to ask.”

  Mr. Dodd then asked Aunt Esther a few bland questions about traffic tickets, arrests, finances, and credit history. I suspect that he had already gone online and pulled up the answers.

  Mr. Dodd looked at Northcutt and said, “Wayne, your turn.”

  Northcutt turned his fat face toward me and said, in a voice dripping with sarcasm, “Mister Harper, please tell us about your one visit with Warren Harper in the hospital.”

  I ignored the sarcasm; I figured it was a tactic to get me angry and make me do something stupid.

  I calmly answered, blah-blah, “...Aunt Claire, actually, she’s my mom’s aunt. I was visiting her and she told me that Uncle Warren also was in the hospital. I suppose he and she met at one of Dad’s Fourth of July barbecues...,” blah-blah, “...I walked over and visited him. Then four days later, he died and I was in the will.”

  “You went to the hospital with no plans to visit him, only your Aunt Claire?”

  “Yes.”

  “The decision to visit him was spontaneous?”

  “Yes.”

  “So what happened during the visit?”

  “Beats me. I’m going to a party day after tomorrow, and I told him about that. He told me how he got his war injuries. And pretty much, that was it. We were never ‘buddies,’ so we didn’t talk long, or about anything deep. Correction: he mentioned the fact that Eisenhower started the interstate system, which gave us the Smith Freeway. Uncle Warren was a big fan of Eisenhower.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Northcutt said. “But do you see the problem that a jury will have with what you just said?”

  I said testily, “A jury won’t have any problem with what I just said, because it’s the truth.”

  “We have only your word that nothing else was said, nothing else was done during that visit.”

  “Not so. Sherry Benson was there the whole time, heard every word.”

  Aunt Esther said, “Is she one of Warren’s little sex slaves? Spare me.”

  Northcutt nodded, and started to look through his manila folder. “Sherry Benson, she’s an ‘exotic dancer’ at ... Club Physique.”

  I said, “Nimfo Club, actually. She started work there Monday.”

  Northcutt gave me a shark smile. “Thanks for the correction. Cassie, make a note.”

  Cassandra didn’t say anything, but she gave me a pitying look. You fool, don’t you see that you’re making things easier for him?

  Northcutt continued, “And if you disregard the words of a stripper—which I think I can easily convince the jury to do—then what’s left as the explanation? You’re a big, muscular boy—maybe you threatened to hurt the sick old man, hm? Or since I can easily establish that Warren Harper was a pervert, maybe you offered him a little quid pro quo, hmm?”

  I laughed. Jeez, this guy is so transparent.

  Then I said, “So that’s your big legal strategy, shyster?” I put on a Marlon Brando Godfather voice and continued, “Boy, you do me a favor, I do you a favor. You suck my cock, I put you in my will, capisce?”

  Aunt Esther said
to me, “Marvin, remember that there are ladies present.”

  I replied, “You’re right. My apologies to Bridget and Cassandra.” Cassandra giggled at this, then quickly silenced herself.

  Then I said to Northcutt, “What can you beat me on? And by ‘beat,’ I mean prove with facts, not spin ‘maybe this, maybe that’ theories. Genealogy, that’s all you got. But genealogy cuts both ways. You better pray to God that Uncle Thomas doesn’t try to horn in—because Thomas Harper is Herbert’s son and thus Warren Harper’s nephew, which beat’s Esther’s claim.”

  I held up a finger to indicate Time out, then I slid the blowjob folder over to Mr. Dodd. I wrote on the legal pad, “OK to show to Fat Boy?”

  Mr. Dodd looked at the printouts, then wrote, “Relevance?”

  I wrote back, “Two examples that undue influence doesn’t get you in the will.”

  He wrote back, “BRILLIANT!!!”

  ****

  Seconds later, the open folder laid on the table in front of Northcutt, and I was retaking my seat. Aunt Esther had turned away, pretending to be offended; but Cassandra (with Fat Boy’s permission) was studying the photos.

  Northcutt sneered at me. “Young man, I want to thank you for further impeaching your key witnesses.”

  I said, “I guess you’re not as smart as Aunt Esther is paying you to be. Sherry and Virgilia are poster girls for ‘undue influence,’ but neither of them will inherit a dime.”

  Cassandra said, “Mr. Northcutt, he has a point. These pictures are facts, and his facts trump your theories.”

  Northcutt said, “Cassie, that’s why you’re the legal assistant and I’m the lawyer. Juries decide facts, and I decide what juries think.”

  I said, “Then you’re definitely not as smart as Aunt Esther is paying you to be. Because so long as the news is ‘Two relatives are fighting over a rich man’s will,’ the news media won’t get interested. But bring in cocksucking strippers, and every TV station will be doing hourly updates. Too bad for you. Because not only will you lose the case, but you’ll be hated nationwide. I bet I’ll see a ‘Northcutt is scum’ page on Facebook.”