So A Genie Walks Into A Bar...
by Lucas X. Wiseman
So A Genie Walks Into A Bar...
By Lucas X. Wiseman
“Ya know, you can tell a lot about a generation by the things they wish for,” the alcoholic said to Adam.
He’d just finished polishing the bartop and had accidentally wandered into conversational range. The sole patron left in “Moe’s Bar and Haberdashery” was a thick chested, salt-of-the-earth kind of man that Adam assumed had traditional family values and a fear of people with funny accents.
He’d been in here for hours, pounding the same drink– a strange dark liquor that came out of a dusty, spiderweb-covered bottle Adam hadn’t even known was on the top shelf.
Adam had been tempted to cut him off just to make him leave, but each time he brought the man a drink, he got tipped a fiver. He’d almost doubled his takehome off this guy, and he wasn’t about to pass that up.
“I mean, shit,” the man said. “Look at kids today. You ask them what they wanna be when they grow up, and they say famous! Like it’s a career option!”
Adam nodded again, a practiced action that consoled, agreed with, and affirmed a patron’s rant without actually requiring him to comment. It had taken him weeks to perfect.
“What about you, what do you wish for?” the alcoholic asked. Adam winced. A direct question, no nod this time.
“I don’t really know,” he said. “I’m not much for wishing. I usually make due with what I have.” That answer was sufficiently pragmatic, he judged. The man should be pacified and continue his talk without further contribution from Adam.
“I talked to a girl last week, you know what she wanted?” Adam shook his head and started organizing the bottles on the shelf, turning them so the labels faced outward. “She wanted to become a famous TikTok skit… influencer?” The man rolled his glass between weathered hands, staring at the dark liquor. Every time Adam had poured it for him, it had a different, complexly earthy scent. He wasn’t sure if that meant it was very expensive or very, very bad.
Adam knew very well, he followed several girls just like that online, but he doubted the patron before him wanted to hear that. “Oh yeah, uh… like an actress or something?” Shit. He’d answered. This was officially a conversation now.
“Not even; that would be respectable. This gal, she wanted to be famous for the videos she made of her godsdamned cats.” He set his drink down.
“She would like, knit these stupid little sweaters for them. And there’s four of them mind, four cats. The sweaters would be from some tv show and she’d dress the cats up and do voices for each of the characters.” The alcoholic shook his head. “I mean, who would watch that shit?”
Adam thought this would be a bad time to mention that he would probably watch that shit, so instead he frowned. “Crazy.”
“Two hundred years ago it wasn’t like this. People wanted real things. I’m not talking about money neither,” he said. “Power. Influence. Longevity. The ability to change the world.” He threw his drink back, and Adam dutifully poured him another; this time it smelled like the soil after a downpour. The alcoholic slid him a twenty.
“I can’t get a respectable wish out of anybody,” the man said. “My buddies always get the good responses, the ‘I wish I could talk to dogs’ or ‘I wish my mom’s cancer was gone.’ Stuff like that,” he said. “Al Adeen even heard a good one from the president last year!” the alcoholic said. “He wanted the most delicious American cheeseburger. At least that’s original!”
Adam blinked. “The current president?”
The man nodded.
“What are you guys? A group of like, consultants?” Adam asked. Mentally he kicked himself again. He was making a rookie bartender’s mistake, getting sucked into the story.
“You could say that, yeah.”
He turned back to the bottles to continue facing them out, but he was already done. Except for counting the till, turning off the lights and leaving, there was nothing else to do, and fifteen minutes left till close. Nothing to do but talk to the weird alcoholic. Adam faced him.
“What’d you mean, ‘a respectable wish’?” Adam asked.
“Mmm?”
“You said that your buddies hear “good wishes” from older people. Is that like, insider talk? Like how studios “discover” movie stars?”
“More or less. How old are you, kid?” the alcoholic asked. “22?”
Adam was slightly unnerved that he had guessed correctly. He was covered in tattoos and had worn a beard since he was fifteen, and most people assumed he was in his 30s.
“28,” he lied. The man’s thick eyebrows stretched upward.
“Sure you are,” he said. “So tell me, what’s a 22 year old bartender in this armpit of a town want out of life? Give an old timer like me some perspective.”
“Old timer? You hardly look more than…” Adam realized he wasn’t sure how old the man looked. When he’d first sat down at the bar, Adam had him pegged him close to retirement age. Now though, he looked older. Ancient. The lines in his dark face were deep, and his hair wasn’t gray, it was white as bone. His eyes were the color of mud, but they captured Adam anyway, and he had to jerk his head to the side to look away.
“Don’t bother flattering me,” the man said, throwing back his drink. “I’m old, and I know it.” He waved Adam away when he went to fill the glass again. “I’m done for tonight.”
“Right.” Adam said.
“So?” The man asked. “What’s your wish?”
Adam leaned back, bracing his hands against the bartop for support. “I don’t usually think about that stuff. When you grow up in a town like this, you either leave or you don’t. I didn’t.”
“So you want to get out!” the man said. He rubbed his hands together. “Excellent choi-”
“Well no,” Adam interrupted. “I sort of like it here, actually. The town’s an armpit, yeah, but it’s home.”
The alcoholic sagged back. “Of course,” he said.
“I wish my grandparents were still alive?” Adam said. “That’d be nice.”
The alcoholic shook his head. “Death is a natural part of life. Try again.”
Adam frowned. “I guess I’d like the girl at the Dennys around the corner to go out with me.”
The man shook his head again. “Can’t help you with love, either,” he said. “Look, what’s the thing you want most, right now, in this moment?” he asked.
Adam glanced at the clock. He was tired and this man was weirding him out.
“I guess I wish it was midnight so I could go home,” he said.
The alcoholic rolled his eyes, and all the lights in the bar flickered.
“Godsdamned kids today.”
He snapped his fingers.
