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strong. “Tell me something, Gene. If you can
grant all of this stuff, you must know a lot.”
    “I do.”
    “Is there a heaven? Is that where he is?”
    But of course the Genie could not answer.
    * * *
    He tried to tell her that he had no need for
sleep, but wasn’t surprised when she called him a liar. She shoved
blankets into his arms, and made him pull apart the chair that she
called a couch. To his surprise, it became a bed, of sorts. He had
seen them often, but had never used one before. She told him to lie
down, and because she was his mistress, and he her servant, he did
as she ordered.
    There, in the darkness, he stared at the
ceiling and counted the broken springs beneath his back. He did not
understand this odd woman, with dreams buried so deep they could
hardly be reached at all. He didn’t understand why she wouldn’t
believe him, because he was thrumming with magic and power so
strong he felt that they must be visible. He closed his eyes, and
tried to sleep.
    When the lights returned, he knew it was not
dawn, and sat up at once. Sue stood in the doorway between the two
bedrooms, and stared down at him. “Gene,” she said quietly, “do you
ever get lonely?”
    “Yes. All of my brothers are dead.”
    She held out a hand that shook in the light,
and he understood that she meant him to take it. He did, and it
trembled.
    “I want you just to be with me,” she said,
and her eyes were filmy with longing and shame. “That’s all,
nothing more.”
    And the last of the Genies, with power that
could have turned time or death at her behest, felt the second wish
strike him deeply in what could have been his heart.
    * * *
    He stayed with her, of course. And every day
she began by telling him that he would have to leave soon. He
attended her in silence, and grew used to her complaints, her
amusements, and the strict adherence she had to daily routine. He
helped her dress in the mornings, when she needed the help at all,
and accompanied her everywhere. She became accustomed to his help,
and once in a while would entrust him with her purse.
    But she thought him simple, that much was
obvious. She taught him about money, taught him about food, taught
him about clothing, and even tried to buy him some. She called him
Gene; it was her joke, and her private name, and as she was
Mistress, he answered to it.
    She talked, slowly, of her life, and he was
amazed at the endless detail, the endless memories, that so short a
span of years could produce; in the evenings, tea in hand, she
would regale him with stories of a youth so long gone he could hear
it only in the wistful tone of her voice.
    “I could make you young again,” he would say,
but she would only shake her head and smile.
    “And what would happen if I were young again,
eh? What would happen if you made me young?”
    “I would die,” he replied.
    She laughed wickedly. Always the laugh. She
would slap him on the back, shoulder or thigh—whichever happened to
be closest, and say, “Gene, you have made me young again!”
    * * *
    She took him to the ballet. She took him to
the movies. She took him to the Salvation Army, and made him work
with “real” bums, as she called them. She took him to church, where
he met with a priest who talked about an after-life and heaven.
Heaven was important to Sue, and she spoke of it with both longing
and fear. He didn’t understand it.
    But he grew to understand her, and he was
happy, in his way; as happy as he had ever been in the millennia
that preceded these few years. He forgot what loneliness was
like.
    But Genies are immortal until they grant the
last of their wishes; humans are not. One morning, just before the
glint of dawn, he felt her shake in her sleep. She was hot; he had
not realized how dry and tight her skin had become. When she woke,
she coughed and shuddered horribly. He took her to the
hospital.
    There, he waited in a room that smelled of
vile chemicals. People came and went and he ignored them; they