Imagine

by Jill Barnett

  Theodore’s tongue curled out of the side of his mouth, and he chewed on it. After the long and tense few minutes, he looked at the genie. “Can I do that?”

  “Yes, Master Theodore. As long as you make the wish, it doesn’t break the rules.” But the look the genie gave Hank said he knew his game.

  Theodore looked at Hank. “Okay. I bet a wish and yell at you.”

  “Call, not yell.”

  Lydia and the genie leaned forward, waiting. “Okay, I call you,” Theodore said.

  Hank laid his cards down. “King high full house, kid. Read ’em and weep!” He laughed and laughed, rubbing his hands together.

  The genie sighed and shook his head. Lydia sagged back, her expression lined with disappointment.

  Theodore stared down at Hank’s hand, lying in the sand, then he looked at the words written next to him in the sand. He frowned, then looked at Lydia. “What beats a full house?”

  “Four of a kind,” she said, reading the list. “An’ aces are the highest?”

  She nodded.

  Theodore looked at Hank, then at Muddy. He looked down at his hand again.

  Hank picked up the pot, then paused and looked up.

  The kid’s face suddenly brightened. He looked at the genie and said, “I wish my hand had four aces.”

  Chapter 16

  The sharp, piercing sound of an off-key harmonica cut through the air. Muddy winced, then tapped the heel of his hand against his ear. He looked up.

  A hundred or so feet away, Theodore skipped across the sand. He was wearing Hank’s cap backward and playing the harmonica loudly.

  Hank scowled at Theodore and muttered to Margaret, “I think my ears are bleeding.”

  She plopped down next to him on a rock and rubbed her eyes as if they were tired. She gave a defeated sigh. “At least with the harmonica in his mouth, he can’t say ‘I wish’.”

  Theodore hit a high and off-pitch note.

  Everyone flinched.

  “God . . . ,” Hank groaned.

  Squinting, Margaret looked at the boy. “His talents must lie elsewhere.”

  “Yeah. In poker.” Hank ran a hand through his hair.

  “I can’t believe he wasted a wish on a card game.” Margaret stared at the ground. As if talking to herself, she added, “I should have realized that was a possibility.”

  Hank absently shuffled the deck of cards in his hand a few times, then frowned at them. “It was a masterpiece.”

  Margaret looked up. “What was a masterpiece?” “The rotten hand I slipped the kid. The worst set of cards I’ve ever dealt anyone.”

  Her face creased with disbelief. She looked at Muddy. He shrugged, feeling his policy of noninvolvement was still safest.

  She turned back to Hank. “You were cheating with a five-year-old boy?”

  Hank looked at her like she had rocks in her head. Here comes another argument, Muddy thought. “Hell, yes, I was cheating!”

  “Oh. Excuse me. I foolishly thought an adult could beat a child, especially at a ‘man’s game.’ “

  The blast of the harmonica blared through the air and drowned out Hank’s response. Muddy figured it was best that none of them heard it. He could read lips.

  Theodore blasted the mouth organ again three more times. Muddy could feel the notes in his teeth. He looked up just as Margaret’s mouth fell open, and Hank muttered, “Sounds like a thousand dying geese.”

  “Hey, Hank!” Theodore came running up to him, waving the harmonica.

  “Yeah, kid.”

  “Listen?” Theodore blasted five bad notes. “How was that?”

  Hank blinked, then looked at Margaret, who gave him a shrug that said he was on his own.

  “Am I getting any better?” Theodore looked at Hank as if he’d hung the stars.

  Hank was silent as stone. He just looked at Theodore the same fatalistic, yet perplexed way that Mrs. O’Leary had watched Chicago burn.

  Theodore gave the harmonica a look of youthful longing. “I wish—”

  Hank and Margaret shot off the rock at the same instant. Each reached for Theodore. “Don’t wish!” they shouted together.

  Hank’s hand clamped over the boy’s mouth first. Theodore looked at them from eyes that were wide and white above Hank’s tanned hand. The boy blinked a couple of times.

  “Understand, kid?”

  Theodore nodded.

  Hank carefully drew his hand away.

  “I’m sorry,” Theodore said, looking down. “I forgot. I almost used up my last wish, huh?”

  Margaret put an arm around his small, hunched shoulders. “Theodore, you gave us your word that you would talk with us before you made another wish. I know you’ll work very hard to keep that promise.”

  His small, freckled face turned serious. He nodded.

  “And, in turn, we promised we wouldn’t ask you to wish us off the island again. That was our agreement.”

  “I remember.”

  She patted his shoulder. “I knew you wouldn’t forget.”

  “Is my song better?” He whipped the harmonica in his mouth and blew so hard his cheeks and face turned red.

  Margaret shuddered, and Hank turned away. His shoulders were hunched and his head was down and resting in one hand.

  “Does that sound good, Hank?”

  Hank turned around slowly. His eyes took a minute to clear. He stared at Theodore.

  “I’m wearing your cap backwards for luck and trying real hard. Does it sound better?”

  “Yeah, kid.”

  “Leedee got mad. She said I was playing so loud that I made the coconuts fall off the trees. And one just missed her head.”

  After an awkward few seconds of blessed silence, Hank reached out and gave Theodore’s cap a tug. “We’ll work on it, okay?”

  Theodore grinned up at him. “Good. ’Cause I thought I sounded awful!” He turned around and started to run, then stopped suddenly and turned back to Muddy this time. “You’re yawning.”

  “Yes, master.”

  “You wanna get back inside your bottle?”

  “Yes, master.” It was quiet in the bottle. Peaceful. No arguing. No harmonicas.

  Theodore dug the bottle out of his pants’ pocket and held it up.

  “Leave the bottle here, Theodore,” Margaret said. “I’ll keep it safe.” Theodore looked at the bottle, then at Muddy, who nodded because he trusted the woman.

  Theodore set the bottle on the rock next to Muddy. He grinned, waved, and took off down the beach, the harmonica in his mouth.

  Muddy sighed and began to levitate toward the mouth of the bottle.

  Home, he thought. Where peace and quiet and a good book all awaited him. His purple smoke began to billow and swirl. A heartbeat later he passed through the mouth of the bottle.

  And the last thing he heard was a flat, dull note of a harmonica echoing in the distance.

  Margaret sat on the hard rock, staring at the white sand beneath her bare toes. The air had grown thicker and the sun higher, more intense. She felt the heat of it on the back of her neck. Thankfully, the air had also grown quieter.

  “He’s not a kid,” Hank said.

  She looked up.

  He was staring down the beach at Theodore. “He’s a fifty-year-old midget.”

  She understood how he felt. She was fast learning that children were another species altogether. “It’s not easy to admit that a five-year-old can get the best of you, is it?”

  He didn’t say anything. His demeanor made him look about as flexible as the rock they sat on.

  “I forgot. It’s not easy for you to admit anything.” He turned, pinning her with a sharp look. “I can admit things.”

  “Oh? Like what?”

  “Like I’m right and you’re wrong.” He gave a wicked crack of laughter.

  “I walked right into that.”

  “Yes, sweetheart. You sure did.”

  She stood and walked over to the bottle sitting abandoned on the rock. Three wishes
, she thought. She picked the bottle up and turned it slowly in her hand.

  She was holding a genie bottle. She wondered briefly if anyone back home would believe this. If she ever got back home.

  Now there was a depressing thought.

  She turned to Hank. “What if we’re stuck on this island for a long time?”

  “Then we’re stuck. I’ve been in worse places.”

  She looked at the tropical paradise around her. She paused, suddenly a little shaken. The words twenty years or thirty years came to mind.

  “Oh, my God . . .” She sat down hard on the rock, her whole body suddenly limp at a horrid but real possibility. What if they were never found at all?

  Hank stared at Margaret’s stiff back. She marched down to the beach with the determination of a German Kaiser. And the energy of a German Shepherd.

  Hell . . . She’d been thinking again.

  He slowly followed her, then leaned against the armored trunk of a tall sago palm and watched her.

  Like a beaver intent on building a dam, she dragged pieces of driftwood down the beach and piled them on the crest of a small rise, where the ground was dry and a rocky cliff jutted out toward the sea.

  The longer he watched, the higher the stack of wood.

  She gave him a glance but didn’t stop for a few more minutes. Finally she stood back, her hands on her hips, and she cast a critical eye on the wood.

  “Having fun?” he asked.

  She rearranged the wood a few times until she had it the way she wanted—God only knew why.

  “If you want to build something, Smitty, we have a hut to build.”

  She stopped fiddling with the wood and apparently decided to look at him. “If a ship passes, we have to be prepared.” She bent over and adjusted the wood again.

  “Uh-huh.”She was in the midst of digging a shallow ring around the pyre with her foot, and she stopped suddenly and looked up, her eyes narrowed. “Don’t use that condescending tone with me.”

  “All I said was uh-huh.”“It was the snide way you said it.” She straightened and then searched the beach, tapping a finger against her lips in thought. “I wonder if I should build another one.” She turned around and raised a hand to block out the sun. “Perhaps over there.”

  He crossed his arms. “You want to tell me what brought all this on?”

  She looked over her shoulder. “All what?”

  He waved a hand. “This sudden need to build signal fires?”

  She stood there for a very long time, having some kind of internal battle. He could see it on her face and in her stance. Her arms were clasped tightly to her as if she were suddenly chilled.

  “Nothing” was all she said.

  He didn’t turn away. “I built a pile of driftwood for a beacon fire on the ridge the first morning on the island.”

  She turned around, her hands still hugging her elbows. “You did?”

  He nodded.

  Her arms fell to her sides for a moment, then she rubbed a hand across her forehead. With a sigh, she walked down to the sand. She stood near him but didn’t look at him. Her attention was on the vast ocean beyond their lagoon. “What if no one finds us?”

  So that was it. He squatted down in the sand and picked up a tiger shell, then turned to look at the same distant horizon. “Someone will come eventually.”

  “But there’s no guarantee. It could be twenty years.”

  “It could be tomorrow.”

  She didn’t say anything for the longest time. There was only the distant noise of Theodore’s harmonica, the crash of a wave on the rocks near the headland, the nearby lapping sound of the water as it licked the edge of the beach.

  “Do you have anyone waiting for you?” she asked.

  “Me?” He laughed and tossed the shell a couple of times. “Like who, Smitty, a lover or wife?”

  She shrugged.

  He looked out at the sea, then tossed the shell in the water and straightened. “There’s just me. No one else.” He waited for her to look at him.

  She didn’t. She sat down in the sand and hugged her knees to her chest, staring out at the sea.

  He sat down next to her just to see what she’d do. She didn’t move, which surprised him.

  She stared at the silver bottle. “Look at how old this is.”

  He gave the bottle a cursory glance.

  She held it up in the sunlight. “See these carvings and designs? They weren’t made by a machine. They are too imperfect. Something made by human hand is never perfect.”

  He didn’t respond. He wanted to know what she was getting at.

  She hesitated, then asked, “What would have happened if we had found this?”

  He gave a wry laugh. “We’d be off the island.” “Yes, I suppose we would. I’d be back in San Francisco.” She paused and dug her feet in the wet sand. “Home,” she said wistfully. “Where would you be?”

  He shrugged. “Somewhere in the States.”

  “Isn’t there someplace you could call home?”

  “I grew up in Pittsburgh.”

  “What brought you to the South Seas? Seems like an odd choice.”

  “You’re here.”

  “On a holiday only. At least it was supposed to be a holiday.” She gave him a wry look. “Somehow I don’t think you came here on a holiday.”

  He looked at her then. “What is this, a cross-examination?”

  “No,” she said with a sharp laugh. “Just plain old curiosity. No need to put up a defense.”

  “I heard there was a lot of money here—gold, pearls the size of your eye. Men were coming here to find treasure.”

  “So you came to hunt for treasure,” she repeated.

  “Yeah, you could say that.” He laughed.

  She turned, frowning. “What’s so funny?”

  “I wasn’t planning on hunting for it.” He held up the deck of cards. “I had big plans to fleece it from the suckers who did.”

  “But you got caught and ended up in prison,” she said knowingly.

  “No. I didn’t get caught.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. “There is no such thing as innocent until proven guilty in these islands.” He threw the seashell into an incoming wave.

  “Napoleonic law,” she murmured and absently drew one finger through the sand. “Sometimes it’s the things we Americans take for granted that are the things we should value the most.”

  They sat in companionable silence, something new for them, while the trade wind ruffled the leaves on a nearby palm. A sand crab skittered across the shoreline, then disappeared into the deep safety of the wet sand, a small bubble the only sign that it had ever been there.

  After a few minutes Smitty looked back at the bottle. “If you had found this”—she turned it in her hand again—“and were given three wishes, what would you wish for?”

  “Freedom,” he said without a second of thought.

  He could feel her stare and knew what she wanted. She wanted to ask him about his prison sentence. He turned and gave her one of those direct looks she favored. He saw curiosity, interest, and intelligence in her face. But he’d volunteered enough. “How about you?” He picked up a small stick and jabbed it into the sand a few times, then looked back at her, waiting for an answer.

  “I’m thinking,” she said after another stretch of silence.

  He laughed to himself. What a surprise. Smitty thinking. He tossed the stick in the water and watched a wave catch it and tumble it back toward them. “What does a woman attorney wish for? To win every case?”

  “No. I love the challenge of the law. The way it always changes. It fascinates me.” She paused. “There’s something special about trying to make the world a fair place.”

  “That sounds like one of your oxymorons, sweetheart. The world can’t be a fair place.”

  “I believe it can be fair and equal.”

  “You’re just chasing rainbows.”

  “The law is there for all of us. Think about it
. Without laws we have chaos.”

  “With laws we have chaos.” He laughed more caustically now. “What the hell is the world going to be like a hundred years from now?”

  “A better place to live. More fair. More equal. Closer to perfect.”

  He just shook his head. A perfect world, what an idealistic joke. He looked at her. Yeah, he thought, she is an attorney. “So what about those wishes, Smitty? What does an attorney who works to make the world perfect wish for?”

  “I was a woman before I was ever an attorney.” “What does a woman wish for?”

  She shook her head. “I can’t speak for all women. Only me. I would want to go home.”

  “You have three wishes. What about the other two?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know,” she said almost as if she were talking to herself. She looked at him. “That sounds strange, doesn’t it?”

  “No.” He waited, then added, “You probably haven’t thought about it long enough.”

  She slowly turned to look at him.

  He tried to keep a straight face.

  She burst out laughing. “I walked right into it again, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, Smitty, you sure as hell did.”

  Her laughter died as easily as it had come. The wind whipped her hair loose and strands of it stuck to her face. He watched her pull the hair away from the fullest set of lips he’d seen in years.

  She had a face and body that men in prison dreamed of—knock-’em-dead looks, full chest and hips, a small waist, legs that went on forever.

  And he was intensely aware of her. But not as he would be about just any female, which seemed odd to him. He watched her a moment longer and became aware of a few other things, too. Aware that they could be on this island for a long time. Aware of how goddamn long he’d gone without a woman.

  Mixed with the scent of the sea and the heavy air was the soft musk scent of her. That woman-smell men knew so keenly. The scent that could drive some men to cross the line and take what they wanted.

  He’d never forced a woman. Never had to. Didn’t think much of those men who did. He had always been able to talk himself into walking away from any woman. And it hadn’t been too tough either.