If Wishing Made It So (7 page)

But immediately she felt puzzled. A glow radiated from the kitchen. Her first thought was
I don’t remember leaving a light on.
The second was
The house is on fire!
Adrenaline poured through her veins. She dropped her grocery bag and ran toward the brightness, crying out, ‘‘Kitties! Shelley! Shelley! Keats!’’

She flew through the kitchen door and stopped short. The golden light she had seen from the sunporch came from the bottle she had found in the casino. No longer sitting on the counter, it was on its side and open on the linoleum floor. Its stopper had rolled a few feet away. And inexplicably from inside it, a powerful beam of light pulsed and glowed.

Hildy felt perplexed.
Why is the bottle shining? Does it run on batteries?
But the questions vanished from her mind when she realized that a very large man sat on the step stool she used to reach the upper shelves of the cabinets. The cats, peering up at her with sleepy eyes, lay contentedly at his sandal-clad feet. The sandals, definitely not Birkenstocks, were held on by straps that laced up the man’s muscular calves right to the hem—of his toga.

Hildy’s anger exploded like an M-80 going off. The words flew from her mouth.
‘‘How dare you come into my house!’’

The man smiled in a lopsided way. He was remarkably handsome even though his nose had been smashed, no doubt in a fight, and one cheekbone looked slightly flatter than the other. His hair, so dark a brown it appeared black, was a cap of short curls. Oddly enough, he was wearing what appeared to be a wreath of real laurel leaves atop it.

The man pointed to the bottle lying on the floor. ‘‘You brought that here, no?’’ His accent was Italian; his voice seemed raspy, perhaps from lack of use, but not guttural. In fact, he sounded like an Italian count in movies like
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
.

A wave of guilt washed over Hildy. This man must work for Caesar’s. ‘‘Well, yes, yes, I did. I was going to leave it at your Lost and Found department, but I forgot. I didn’t know it was so valuable the casino would send somebody to get it—’’ She stopped herself. She sounded apologetic when she should be outraged.

Her hands went to her hips. ‘‘But that’s not the point. You had no right to just walk in here. How did you get in, anyway?’’

The man shrugged and pointed to the bottle again. ‘‘You brought the bottle in here yourself. You just said so. You left it on the counter. The white cat knocked it on the floor. The black one batted it around until the stopper came off.’’

Hildy felt completely confused. ‘‘How do you know that?’’ A new wave of anger washed over her, making her so mad her voice shook. ‘‘What! Were you watching through the window? What are you, anyway, a Peeping Tom?’’

The man shook his head no and stood up. He was well over six feet tall. His toga hung in graceful folds from one shoulder where it was pinned by a gaudy medallion with a Roman emperor’s face on it. Hildy recognized Caesar Augustus at once. After all, she had just seen his statue in the casino. A sword hung at the man’s left side, and in his right hand he held a gnarled wooden staff.

How ridiculous that the casino makes its employees dress in costume,
she thought, remembering the young cocktail waitresses in very short togas who wandered through the casino asking if anyone wanted a drink—at eleven in the morning, for heaven’s sake. But Hildy hadn’t seen any men dressed up. These brawny guys must be security for the high rollers in the evening crowd. Some VIP must have lost the bottle and complained to the management, she concluded.

The stranger took one step closer. A man as solid as a tree trunk, he loomed over her. She could see that long scars crisscrossed his chest, which was bare beneath his toga. And she could smell him, a strong but not unpleasant odor that might be patchouli, she guessed. But although he was nearly invading her personal space, Hildy, her anger still hot, stood her ground despite his bellicose appearance.

Unexpectedly, right at that moment, the man saluted her, thumping above his heart with his right fist. He bowed his head. ‘‘My name is Antonius Eugenius. I once was a centurion commanding a cohort in the Roman army. In the reign of Caesar Augustus I was stationed in Britannia before I was sent to Judea to subdue the Jews. But you asked what I am now.’’

Sadness flickered across his face. ‘‘I am what was in the bottle.’’ He pointed to the amber glass container which remained eerily illuminated where it lay on the floor. Then he looked directly at Hildy with eyes which were a deeper blue and much older than her own. When he began to speak again, the glow of the bottle seemed to come into them, lighting him up from within. ‘‘What I am is a genie.’’

With those words he levitated off the floor and melted away into a plume of smoke which curled upward toward the ceiling and sparkled with a thousand tiny lights like a spray of golden glitter. Then the smoke whooshed downward and turned back into a human form. Once again the Roman centurion stood in front of Hildy, his flesh solid, his sandaled feet back on the floor.

Hildy’s mouth fell open. Her head felt light and strange. The room began to spin around in a dizzying whirl. She cried out ‘‘Oh!’’ and tried to fight the darkness of oblivion that overtook her, but consciousness slipped away. She slid in a faint to the floor.

Chapter 8

Sometimes a transformation does not happen over time. It occurs in an instant, at the moment when fate delivers its lightning strike. A lottery win, a car crash, a rifle shot, a bomb blast, a heart-stopping medical diagnosis, a phone call in the night bringing bad news—these events happen in a blink of an eye. They divide a life instantly into two parts. And afterward, a person is never again the same.

So it was for Hildy.

When her eyes fluttered open, Antonius Eugenius was bending over her, fanning her face with a paper plate. She attempted to sit up too quickly, and faintness overcame her again.

‘‘You passed out,’’ he said, stating the obvious. ‘‘Keep your head down.’’

Hildy, staying prone as requested, stared up at the ceiling, which she noted had water stains in one corner. But quickly getting impatient with her vulnerable position and the strange situation, she complained, ‘‘I can’t keep lying on the floor. How long do I have to stay like this?’’

‘‘A few minutes.’’ His voice held the timbre of command. ‘‘You should practice some self-restraint. You appear to be an impulsive person; your anger overrides your caution. If you had been in my legion,you’d have been run through with a sword by now.’’

‘‘If I had been in your legion, during the reign of Caesar Augustus or so you claim, I would have been dead two millennia ago. Tell me this isn’t happening,’’ Hildy said and squeezed her eyes shut.

‘‘It’s happening. Denial doesn’t help. Maybe we need to talk.’’

‘‘We are talking. That’s what’s upsetting me. I feel as if I have a unicorn in the garden.’’

‘‘I don’t understand,’’ the man said, looking at her as if she were mentally deranged.

‘‘It’s a short story by James Thurber. I’m an English teacher. I tend to make literary references.’’ Hildy thought for a moment, the linoleum cool against her back. ‘‘Here’s a reference you should understand, if you are who you say you are:
‘Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est.’ ’’

‘‘Ah, you
are
a
grammaticus
. Are you testing me? That is easy; it’s the opening of Julius Caesar’s commentaries on the Gallic Wars. ‘All Gaul is divided into three parts.’ ’’ His voice became annoyed. ‘‘I am an educated man. Did you assume I was born a plebeian or a slave?’’ His chin lifted, his pride evident. ‘‘My father was a Roman citizen.’’

‘‘I really need to get off the floor,’’ Hildy murmured to herself. Aloud she asked, ‘‘What did you say your name was?’’

‘‘Antonius Eugenius. You can call me Tony G. Should I call you master?’’

Hildy moved abruptly into a sitting position. Her head swam but she remained upright. She put her fingertips to her forehead. ‘‘Master is the wrong gender and quite inappropriate.’’

‘‘Mistress, then?’’

‘‘Absolutely not.’’ She adopted the voice she used for dealing with wiseacre teenage boys. ‘‘You shall call me Ms. Caldwell.’’

‘‘As you wish, Ms. Caldwell.’’ A pained expression crossed Tony’s face. As a Roman centurion, he led a cohort, nearly one hundred and sixty Roman soldiers. Now he had to obey this slip of a girl. But he accepted the cards dealt by fate. He had no choice. Some battles are best left unfought.

‘‘Now, Tony, if you will offer me your hand, I want to stand.’’ He did, and she did, swaying slightly. As soon as she felt steady on her feet, she dropped his hand. She tipped her head back and looked up at him. Her eyes narrowed. ‘‘You look familiar. Are you sure you don’t work for the casino?’’

‘‘I am positive that I do not,’’ he said.

Hildy remained skeptical. She suddenly knew who this man resembled: Tony Curtis in
Spartacus.
His name in the movie was Antonius too. Her suspicions grew that she was the target of a scam, although she couldn’t imagine for what purpose someone who worked at Caesar’s would pretend to be a genie in a bottle. She decided on another test for this Tony G.

‘‘ ‘Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit litora,’ ’’
she recited.

The Roman’s face lit up with delight. ‘‘You do know Latin! Shall we speak it then? It has been centuries since I’ve conversed in my native tongue.’’

‘‘No, we shall not speak Latin. To paraphrase your own words, ‘I am an educated person.’ I had four years of Latin study, but I’m far from fluent. And if you really are an ancient Roman, as you say you are, I would like you to identify the line and give me a translation.’’ Hildy’s voice was arch.

‘‘You really should choose a more obscure quotation,’’ Tony commented. ‘‘Every boy at the gymnasium must memorize the first line of Virgil’s
Aeneid.
In English, the line would be something like, ‘I sing of war and the man’—he meant the hero Aeneas, you know—‘who, exiled by fate, first came from the coasts of Troy to the shores of Italy and Lavinia.’ ’’

But as Tony finished his answer, his voice caught in his throat. The light in the room dimmed. And the Roman who had stood so solidly in front of Hildy began to fade away, his outline softening and his body first becoming insubstantial, then transparent, until only a wisp of smoke remained where the large man had been.

‘‘What’s happening? Where are you?’’
Something must have gone terribly wrong,
she thought.

Only a moment passed, although it seemed much longer, before the brightness returned. Tony G. changed again from smoke to flesh and blood. His eyes held a great sorrow, his mouth turned down at the corners, his shoulders sagged. He sat down heavily on the step stool.

‘‘I must ask your forbearance, mis— I mean Ms. Caldwell. I am a stoic man, but hearing you speak in Latin touched my heart, awakening such memories. Then the import of Virgil’s words suddenly struck me, reminding me that I too am in exile, wandering farther from home than Aeneas ever did.’’

He shook his head, overcome by weariness and grief. ‘‘I am a warrior, but I am also a man. You might say I began to fall apart.’’

He sat there on the stool an arm’s length away from Hildy. He wasn’t a vision, a hologram, or a dream. Hildy felt confused. The situation was fantastical, but this man had feelings, a past, a life. He was undeniably real. She groped for an explanation. ‘‘Tell me again, you were in the bottle and you’re a genie? How can that be?’’

‘‘I don’t care much to talk about it,’’ he said and sighed. ‘‘But to give you the short version of a long story: I was to be executed— You wish to know why?’’ He paused as Hildy made a noise and held up her hand like a stop sign.

‘‘Yes, yes, I would. Why don’t you give me the unabridged version? I think I need to hear it.’’

The genie gave another deep sigh, and his eyes got a faraway look. ‘‘It was a case of being blinded by love, I suppose. I had been in Judea for some time when I met a beautiful woman near a well where she waited for an elderly servant to fetch her a drink. She was a lovely thing with flashing eyes and a smile that made my heart race. Her hair was black and interwoven with jewels. She smelled of sandalwood and she dressed in silks.’’ His voice trailed off and he smiled at the memory. Then he continued.

‘‘I looked at her longingly and she looked back. I ventured a greeting. She responded in kind, and with her first words, I was smitten. I approached closer. I took her hand and brought it to my lips. She didn’t resist. In fact, I felt her quiver when I kissed her palm. I suggested that, if she was thirsty, we could visit a nearby tavern and have some wine together. She giggled and said she couldn’t possibly.

‘‘I dropped her hand and bowed. I turned to leave. Her voice stopped me. Perhaps I could come back to
her
rooms, she whispered just loud enough for me to hear. She had some very fine wine there. I couldn’t believe my luck.

‘‘And I shouldn’t have believed it. Her rooms were in the palace of Herod the Great, a blood-thirsty tyrant—’’

‘‘I’ve heard of him,’’ Hildy interrupted. ‘‘He’s the king of Judea who ordered every child under two who lived near Bethlehem to be murdered. He feared the Messiah, said to have been born there, would usurp his throne. What a monster.’’

Tony G. nodded in assent. ‘‘You don’t know the half of it. He had an obsession with threats to his kingship. Just the year before my own, er, situation, he had executed two of his own sons because he thought they were planning to overthrow him.’’

Hildy’s eyes got bigger. She urged the genie to get on with his tale.

‘‘As I was saying, I retired to the rooms of this alluring young female. She ordered wine to be brought, along with some meats and fruit. We ate, we drank, we talked for a while. I told her of my life. She said little of hers, but I was too dazzled to notice her reticence.