Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [111]
Soon, Jodie said. We’ll see each other soon.
Her dreams that night were packs of lies, lies piled on lies, an exhibit of lies. Mayhem, penises on parade, angels in seersucker suits, that sort of thing. She woke up on the sleeping porch ashamed of her unconscious life. She hated the vulgarity and silliness of her own dreams, their subtle unstated untruths.
Her job interview was scheduled for eleven o’clock the following morning, and after Walton had called up to her and taken her to the café, she stared down into her third cup of coffee and considered how she might make the best impression on her potential employers. She had worn a rather formal white ruffled blouse with the palm tree pin and a dark blue skirt, and she had a semi-matching blue purse, at the sight of which Walton had announced that Jodie had “starchy ideas of elegance,” a phrase he didn’t care to explain. He told her that at the interview she should be eager and honest and self-possessed. “It’s a brokerage house,” he said. “They like possession in places like that, especially self-possession. Be polite. Don’t call them motherfuckers. They don’t like that. But be honest. If you’re straightforward, they’ll notice and take to you right away. Just be yourself, you know, whatever that is.”
But she wasn’t convinced. At the moment, the idea of drifting like a broken twig on the surface of a muddy river was much more appealing. All through college she had worked at a clothing store as a checkout clerk, and the experience had filled her with bitter wisdom about the compromises of tedium and the hard bloody edge of necessity. She had had a gun pointed at her during a holdup her fourth day on the job. On two other occasions, the assistant manager had propositioned her in the stockroom. When she turned him down, she expected to be fired, but for some reason she had been kept on.
“There you are.” A voice: her left ear: a phlegm rumble.
Jodie turned on her stool and saw the fat man with yellow-green eyes staring at her. “Yes,” she said.
“I hadda get things in order,” he said, grinning and snorting. He pulled out a handkerchief speckled with excretions and blew his nose into it. “I hadda get my ducks in a row. So. Here we are again. What’s your three wishes?”
“Excuse me?”
“Just ignore the guy,” Walton said, pouring some cream into his coffee. “Just ignore the guy.”
“If I was you,” the fat man said, “I’d ignore him. They don’t call him Glaze for nothing. So what’s your three wishes? I am the Genie of the Magic Lamp, like I said. You did me a favor, I do you a favor.” Jodie noticed that the fat man’s voice was hollow, as if it had emerged out of an echo chamber. Also, she had the momentary perception that the fat man’s limbs were attached to the rest of his body with safety pins.
“I don’t have three wishes,” Jodie said, studying her coffee cup.
“Everybody’s got three wishes,” the fat man said. “Don’t bullshit the Genie. There’s nobody on Earth that doesn’t have three wishes. The three wishes,” he proclaimed, “are universal.”
“Listen, Tad,” Walton said, turning himself toward the fat man and spreading himself a bit wider at the shoulders. He was beginning, Jodie noticed, a slow, threatening, male dancelike sway back and forth, the formal prelude to a fight. “Leave the lady alone.”
“All I’m asking her for is three wishes,” the fat man said. “That’s not much.” He ran his dirty fingers through his thinning hair. “You can whisper them if you want,” he said. “There’s some people that prefer that.”
“All right, all right,” Jodie said. She leaned toward him and lowered her voice toward the Genie of the Magic Lamp so that only he could hear. She just wanted to be left alone with Walton. She wanted to finish her coffee. Her needs were small. “I want a job,” she said softly, “and I’d like that guy sitting next to me to love me, and I’d like a better radio when I listen to music in the morning.”
“That’s it?” The fat man stood up, a look of storybook outrage on his face. “I give you three wishes and you kiss them away like