John Locke - Wish List

“Are you okay?” I ask.

She laughs. “I’m terribly clumsy. Promise you won’t tell!”

Her breathing seems shallow and irregular and I wonder if it had been this way the whole time and I simply hadn’t noticed till now, having been so caught up in the experience.

“There it is,” she says, and takes a couple of steps into her closet. She bends over and picks up a briefcase, and brings it back to me.

“Your money,” she says.

Chapter 17

I’m in the limo with Thomas Jefferson, heading back to the airport. He’s tapping his fingers.

“She paid me the million dollars out of her own money?”

“It appears she did,” he says.

We sit without speaking. The tapping grows louder as Jefferson seems totally consumed by the challenge of moving his fingers faster and faster against the armrest. He’s preoccupied, fidgety, and very possibly angry, which seems completely out of character for the smooth, confident businessman I’d met in the bank.

“Is something wrong?” I say.

“ Is something wrong? ” he mimics, derisively.

“Is there?”

He stops tapping his fingers and gives me a hard stare. “Was she a good fuck?”

He practically spat the words at me. I’m shocked by his demeanor, which has turned confrontational. I’m trying to decide if Thomas Jefferson is jealous, unstable, or both.

“It wasn’t like that,” I say.

“Care to enlighten me?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Try me.”

“It was…”

I look at Jefferson’s face. He seems to be fighting to keep his anger in check. He repeats my words: “It was…what?”

“It was…like magic.”

The anger leaks out of him slowly, like a balloon with a small nick in it. His lips press together in a flat line. “Well, how nice for you.”

I nod. “But why would she give me a million dollars?”

“What did she say?”

“Something about paying back into the system that helped her become a star.”

“Makes sense.”

“Who are you guys?”

“Who indeed?” he says, with a heavy sigh.

He closes his eyes and doesn’t speak again until we’re on the tarmac. As the limo pulls to a stop near the jet he says, “You need to use the restroom before we take off?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Then, let’s get you back to your car.”

It’s a quiet flight back to Louisville. When the jet comes to a stop, I remain seated so Jefferson can get out first, but he makes no effort to move. Instead, he gestures at the briefcase in my lap. “You get it all counted?”

He’s referring to the way I opened and closed the briefcase several times during the flight, picking up one brick after another, riffling through them.

“You think the money’s real?” I say.

“I guarantee it. Everything about the Wish List experience is real. Except that I’m going to decline the twenty million dollar loan.”

“Why?”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

I pat the briefcase and laugh. “In that case, how long do you think it’ll take me to quit my job on Monday?”

“I doubt you’ll do much thinking about the bank from here on out.”

“Why’s that?”

Instead of answering, he says, “Does it even bother you that an hour ago you were with another woman, and now you’re heading home to face your loving wife, pretending you’ve been hard at work all afternoon?”

His words don’t hit me as hard as he probably thinks they should. Yes, technically, I cheated on my wife. But it’s not as though I deliberately set out to cheat. In fact, it was Jinny who talked me into actually doing it. And there’s this: I’m holding a million dollars in cash on my lap!

I respond by saying, “How many guys on the planet do you know who’d refuse a million dollars to have sex with Jinny Kidwell?”

Jefferson shakes his head. “You have no clue, do you?”

The way he said it gives me pause, and I wonder again if he’s jealous, or simply trying to rain on my parade.

“What do you mean?”

“Ever heard the expression ‘there’s no free lunch?’”

“Look, this isn’t some huge moral issue. It’s not like I’m having an affair. This was a one-time opportunity that will never be repeated. In any event, there’s no way Lissie will find out about Jinny. And even if she did, she’d never believe it.”

“So, if the positions were reversed, Lissie would have slept with a movie star?”

This time his words take a bite out of my heart. I hang my head. “No, she wouldn’t have done it, even for a million dollars.”

“So how does that make you feel?”

“How does that make me feel? Well, hey, now that you’ve brought it up, it makes me feel like shit. So, thanks for that. But I’ve always known Lissie was a better person than me.”

“Meaning?”

“Should a lesser person be held to the same standard as a better one?”

There’s no way he can hide his contempt. But I stand behind my belief that few men on earth would have turned down an afternoon delight with Jinny Kidwell, with or without the money.

He says, “You haven’t read the fine print, have you?”

“What fine print?”

“No one ever reads the fine print,” he says, as if to himself.

“What fine print?”

“On the website. Wishlist.bz.”

I think about Sunday night, when I accessed the website. I’d been rushing, worried Lissie might walk in on me.

“There was no fine print,” I say, aware there’s little confidence in my voice.

“You can’t type in your wishes until you click the box and agree to the terms.”

He can tell by the expression on my face that I remember clicking the little box.

“What terms?” I ask.

He leans his head back against the headrest and closes his eyes.

“What’s in the Agreement?” I ask.

I notice his fingers have started tapping again. When he speaks, it’s just two words:

“Your life.”

I leave Thomas Jefferson in the jet, thank the pilots for the flight, and walk down the steps toward the limousine. Perkins holds the door open for me, and I slide into the car and notice a guy sitting across from me.

A guy who looks like a gangster.

When he eyes my briefcase, I put both arms around it and hug it tight against my body.

“Who are you?” I say.

“Your worst nightmare.”

Chapter 18

“Here’s how it’s going down,” he says. “We’re going to drop you off at your car, and you’re going to drive straight home, observing the speed limit, and when you get there, you’re going to lock your car in the garage. Then you’re going to enjoy a fun-filled evening with your wife.”

“Sounds good so far,” I say, trying to give the impression I’m not the least bit afraid of him.

“After the concert you’re going to put the wife to bed and you’re going to meet me and another guy in your garage.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

“Because I got a job for you.”

“Not interested. I’m retired.”

“This is non-negotiable.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means it’s time to start paying back.”

“For what?”

“The wishes you received.”

“No one said anything about paying for the wishes.”

“And yet here we are.”

“Just for the sake of argument, what sort of payment are we talking about?”

“You’re going to bury a body.”

“Excuse me?”

“Remember wish number three?”

My boss dies a horrible death.

“Bullshit.”

He puts his hand in his suit jacket, removes a photograph, hands it to me. It’s my boss, Edward Oglethorpe, with a bullet hole between his eyes. I’ve never seen a dead body before, except my grandmother’s, and she didn’t have a bullet hole in her head.