Kevin Barry - There Are Little Kingdoms

‘What are you doing here?’ he says.

‘Come on,’ says the genie. ‘You know the script, Ralph. I’m after floating out of a lamp, aren’t I? You know what comes next.’

‘But why are you here ?’

The genie grins, and he begins to pace the floor, with his hands held casually behind his back.

‘It’s nearly always a lamp with me,’ he says, ‘but then again, I’m one of life’s traditionalists. There are others who have taken a completely different approach. You can understand how a young man coming into the field would be keen to adopt his own method. There’s one guy who pops up out of a toaster. There’s another fella appears like an air bag if you brake suddenly at a certain junction on a particular country road. Now if you ask me, that’s acting the maggot. You could give someone heart failure. And between myself, yourself and the wall, there’s been a couple of very sad cases.’

‘You mean to tell me,’ says Ralph, ‘that people have actually…’

‘All I’ll say, Ralph, is that our health-and-safety record isn’t all it could be.’

Ralph eyes this genie carefully. Ralph has a couple of difficult years put down, a time when his old certainties went tumbling, and anything that smells of opportunity he views balefully now, a once-bitten man.

‘Listen,’ he says, ‘do you always deal with local cases yourself?’

‘Mostly,’ says the genie. ‘The odd time I knock up and cover for a guy in Tipp. He comes down bad with hay fever around May, June, when they’re turning up fields. And I tell you, Ralph, it’s no joke dealing with the crowd up there. The country people have turned most avaricious in recent times.’

‘So what exactly is the deal here? I get three wishes, is that what you’re saying?’

‘Correct.’

‘And it doesn’t matter what they are?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. I can be as disappointed in people as the next man. And if I’m disappointed, who’s to say that I’ll perform my duties in as careful a manner as I should? Try not to disappoint me, Ralph. I hate to be disappointed in people. Would you believe I’d a guy wishing for a long-term parking space convenient to the South Mall? I had another fella looking for a 48-inch plasma screen. I looked at him, Ralph, and I said what do you think you’re dealing with here, an Argos catalogue?’

The genie becomes irate. The pitch of his voice rises.

‘You give people a chance!’ he says, balling a fist and slapping it into his palm. ‘You give them a chance to transform their lives! You give people possibilities! You give them every fucking opportunity. And what do they do? They look at you like you’re crazy. Don’t disappoint me, Ralph.’

‘I wish,’ says Ralph Coughlan, ‘that I had a singing voice.’

The genie stops short.

‘I see,’ he says. ‘And how long have you been having problems at home?’

Ralph pales:

‘What do you mean?’

‘All the old spark gone out of it, killer?’

This Coughlan case, thinks the genie, is a no-brainer. When a man starts wishing for the power of song, it is a general fact that he is trying to impress women.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ says Ralph. ‘Look, can you do it for me or not? What I’d love is a good, solid tenor, one that’ll hold through on a note, but if that’s too much to ask, maybe you could just do me something that’s kinda… husky?’

The genie holds up a warning palm.

‘Wait,’ he says. ‘Let me think this over.’

The genie settles on a seventies sofa chair of brown corduroy, crosses his short legs, and considers the ramifications of Ralph Coughlan’s wish. You can’t just suddenly give someone a singing voice and forget all about it. You have to consider what they’ll do with this gift because our talents, coldly used, can be deadly as knives. The genie notes that Ralph is a dapper sort: he is well-turned out, carefully groomed. Also there is the fact of the hair. The genie has to be careful. This could be like turning a young Engelbert Humperdinck loose on the northside of the city. There wouldn’t be a marriage safe for miles.

It is in this way that the genie’s job sometimes has a high stress level. You will already have met genies, at flotation centres, at reiki workshops, haunting the backs of chapels, trying everything and anything as they attempt to ease their anxieties. You will see them slumped over tables in sad dockside bars, or waiting on prescriptions in late-night pharmacies. Many avail of early-retirement packages but even if they leave the service at fifty they are already, in many cases, broken men. The manipulation and shaping of dreams can really take it out of you.

‘Well?’ says Ralph.

‘Un momento, por favor,’ says the genie.

Rush hour thickens on the quay outside. There is general belligerence. Men parp their horns at each other. Seabirds jacked up on weird emissions from the chemical plants downriver stand with deranged eyes on the quayside walls and seem to waver in the light breeze and they watch it all go by.

Now what if a singing Ralph proves to be a force for good in his community? The genie pictures Ralph appearing at fundraisers for Nigerian refugees, or launching into feel-good John Denver numbers on Sunday morning visits to the terminally ill.

Ralph waits. He looks at the genie with a coolness now. This genie, it is Ralph’s opinion, could use a good wet shave. Ralph will never present himself to the world with an unclean jaw. He will appear to a room with a suave smile and a small bow, in a well-pressed suit, with lightly dressed hair, and he will begin to softly croon. The room will be packed with doe-eyed lovelies. They will all but have to be shovelled out of the seats.

‘No rush, genie,’ he says.

The genie retains some sympathy for his client. He’s just one of these big handsome fools, the type of man who believes that if he keeps brushing his teeth and thinking pretty thoughts, it’ll all turn out gravy.

‘Okay. We’re going to do it, Ralph. You can sing.’

Ralph emits a small, delighted gasp and gets to his feet. The rolodex in his brain flips over and over and searches through all the easy-listening finger clickers he’s ever been partial to and stops at the Ws: he selects ‘Can’t Get Used To Losing You’ by Andy Williams.

‘Guess there’s no use in hangin’ rouuuuund,’ he begins. ‘Guess I’ll get dressed and do the towwwwn.’

He still sounds like something off a turkey farm. The genie is sombre.

‘I can hear where you’re coming from, Ralphie.’

‘What’s the story, like?’

‘Not always instantaneous,’ says the genie. ‘Relax. The docket is gone in. A lot of these things we can do on the spot but there are others that take a little time. You’ll know when it’s there for you. Trust me.’

‘I’m starting to have my doubts here,’ says Ralph Coughlan.

The genie’s superiors consider the case. They raise their eyebrows. They know that for the Ralph Coughlans of this world, things can go either way. The slightest intervention and your Ralph Coughlan has a suitcase on the bed and a taxi called for the station. He’s thinking, will I bring a towel or will they have towels there?

Ralph and the genie observe the city groaning past outside. The traffic is choked, and it’s warm for March, the car windows are rolled down and you can hear all the radios. A headbanger on a death metal show responds to a texted request: Sorry, girl, he says, I got nothin’ with me by Slayer.

‘Let’s do it again, Ralph,’ says the genie. ‘Let’s do it so we can get home to our teas.’

Ralph Coughlan is troubled. Small worms of concentration wriggle on his brow.

‘Listen,’ he says. ‘What kind of thing do people ask for?’