In my bedroom was Fatima, looking exactly the same as in 1943. (Except that her clothing was green now, not gray.)

One minor mystery got cleared up immediately. Her legs weren’t blurry in Uncle Warren’s photos because they were out of focus, but because they were smoke. She had green-silk-covered hips, and greenish sorta-thighs, and below that, green smoke. But somehow her upper body remained motionless, as if it had legs holding it up.

Have I described that motionless upper body? She had shiny black hair, which was tied by a braided green ribbon into a waist-length ponytail. She had tan skin, a nice chest (large tits but smaller than porn-sized), and electric-green eyes. At the moment, those eyes were searching my soul.

“Fatima?” I said.

Her eyebrows shot up, and she spoke to me in what I’m guessing was Arabic.

“Hold on,” I said.

I grabbed the older photo album, and flipped through the first few pages. I pointed to a photo of Uncle Warren holding a rifle (a photo that showed his face clearly) and said in English, “You knew him.”

“How are you connected to him?” she asked. Now she had a Chicago accent exactly like Uncle Warren’s.

I said, “I’m his great-nephew. He just died. So you’re a genie, and you granted Uncle Warren three wishes?”

“He died on Friday, the seventh of May, 2010?”

“Right, this morning. What’s that got to do...?”

My words sputtered to a halt when I realized: That was the date of his death that was written in the old photo album. Which meant that Uncle Warren knew beforehand that he could safely play War Hero in the 1940s; but it also meant that when he was lying in his hospital bed, talking to me, Uncle Warren knew that he was doomed within days.

Fatima said, “That was his first wish, to know the day he was fated to die.”

“What else did he wish for? Can you tell me?”

Fatima gave me a piercing look. “You are my Master now; I must answer any question of yours. But are you sure that you want this question answered, O great-nephew of my last master?”

“Yes. I need to know.”

She started speaking then, but her voice sounded like a young version of Uncle Warren’s—

“My second wish, Fatima, is I want a magic power over any cutie I get the hots for. If I touch a woman on the back of her hand, from that moment on, she becomes my blowjob-horny complete slave. And by `slave,’ I mean she’ll do anything I tell her, won’t refuse me a damned thing. Oh yeah, you better make the power one I can turn on and off whenever I want—I don’t wanna be like Midas, y’know? And when I say to her, `Rumpelstiltskin says you’re free to go,’ then she won’t be my slave anymore, or crave sucking my cock anymore. One more thing, on that date in 2010 when I die? Whatever slaves I’ve got, won’t want be my horny slaves anymore. Let me think ... yeah, that covers everything.

“My third wish? A knack with money. I wish that in any situation, I have an infallible instinct how to make money, and I have an infallible instinct how to keep from losing money. Whether it’s poker with my buddies, or a goddamned horse race, or the New York fucking Stock Exchange, I want to always know in my gut who to give money to, and when, and when to cash out or fold.”

I sighed. “Well, you tried to warn me. My uncle was a real lowlife with his wishes, you know?”

Then I looked at her and said, “Which brings me to my own wishes. What are the rules?”

“You don’t want to go ahead and wish, and I tell you if a wish is out of bounds?”

“No.” I wasn’t going to anger the genie by pointing out that in lots of stories, genies were as sly and wily and crafty as lawyers.

Fatima shrugged. “The rules are that all the wishes must be made the same day—”

“Does that have to be today? Or can I think about it?”

She looked surprised. “I’ve had only one master who delayed making wishes. He waited a day.”

“Was he happy with how his wishes came out, after taking a day to word them?”

“I cannot say with certainty, because I was sent back to my lamp after he made his wishes.”

Genies are like lawyers. I asked her, “And you can tell me nothing about his life after he made his wishes?”

She admitted, “I can sense the death of my master while within the lamp, and he lived six years after making his wishes.”

“And how old was he when he made his wishes?”

“Seventeen. He was just starting to grow a beard.”

“After making his wishes, he lived only to be twenty-three? Huh,” I said. Then I changed topics: “You said earlier that you must answer your master’s every question. Can you lie to me?”

“I say no, but perhaps this answer is a lie.”

“If I ask you a question in English, can you answer in Arabic?”

She looked at me in puzzlement. “No, I must answer in English.”

“Which means that you may not give me an `answer’ that holds no useful information for me. Which would be the case if I knew that you were permitted to lie to me. So I conclude, you cannot lie to me. Is my logic faulty?”

“Perhaps so.”

“How is my logic faulty? Under what circumstances can you lie to me?”

Fatima looked very uncomfortable. She sighed. “I cannot lie to you.”

“So if I ask you a question, Fatima, you will tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, always?”

She looked like she wanted to dive back into the lamp. At last she said, “No.”

“Tell me how you can avoid telling me the truth, if you cannot lie to me.”

“By not volunteering information that you did not ask for. By answering your question as narrowly as possible. By suggesting possibilities that I know are not true.”

“So how can I find out whether you’re deliberately making me think, or allowing me to think, something other than the whole truth?”

Her shoulders slumped. “By asking me directly whether I’m intending to evade telling you what I think you want to know.”

“And if you have been evasive, how do I find out what the whole truth is?”

“By asking me what the whole truth is, or by asking me what I don’t want to tell you.”

“I see. And what, if anything, do you not want to tell me now?”

She looked at the floor. “Among we of the djinn who have been bound by Solomon, it is a disgrace to fail to trick one’s master during his Wishing Time. I fear that this might happen to me.”

“And how did you trick my Uncle Warren?”

“When he learned that he would live another sixty-seven years, he said words meaning that no harm would come to him in his war. I let him think that.”

And now I understood what Uncle Warren had been trying to tell me in the hospital: that his arm and leg were wounded because he “didn’t think something through.” He was warning me: Don’t shoot your mouth off when you make your wishes.

I looked at Fatima and said, “So back to my original question: What are the rules?”

In a sing-song, I’ve-said-this-a-million-times voice, she answered, “All three wishes must be made the same day. You may not wish for a throne, nor may you wish to cloud men’s minds to grant you a throne, nor may you wish to cloud men’s minds so that they will fight war for you. If you wish one of these three forbidden wishes, you forfeit that wish and all remaining wishes. You may not wish that anyone die, or be made so sick or so injured that death comes soon. If you wish one of these three forbidden wishes, you forfeit that wish and all remaining wishes. You may not wish for immortality, your own or anyone else’s. If you make a wish like this, you forfeit that wish and all remaining wishes. You may not wish to delay your own or anyone else’s fated death by more than 120 lunar cycles—”

“Say what? You mean a `month,’ 120 `months,’ or ten years?”

“No. There are twelve calendar months in a year, but thirteen lunar cycles. May I finish, O Master?”

Just marvelous, a sarcastic genie, I thought. Aloud I said, “Please do.”

“If you wish to delay your own or someone else’s fated death by more than 120 lunar cycles, you forfeit that wish. These are all the rules but one, which I may not tell you until after you’ve spoken all three wishes.”

“Huh,” I said. “Now back up to the `120 lunar cycles’ rule. If I wish to postpone someone’s fated death by 120 lunar cycles or less, you’ll grant the wish—no forfeiture, no penalty?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me the whole truth.”

“If you do not say otherwise in your wish, the person’s health gets worse till he is on the verge of death, then remains at that state for 120 lunar cycles.”

“My god, that’s horrible! Imagine, nine-years-plus of almost-death!”

Fatima shrugged. Then she asked, “Are you ready to tell me your wishes now?”

That was a good question. Waiting to wish meant staying in my ordinary life for another day or two, but rushing into this wishmaking could get me in serious trouble. After a few seconds, I said—

“No. I’ll wait two days, till Sunday. Now I have another question for you. Of your former masters, how many do you know how their wishes turned out?”

“Only one. Ali the Goat-Herder.”

“And how do you know how his wishes turned out? You said that you can’t sense such things while you’re in your lamp.”

“But I wasn’t in my lamp, except when he was sleeping, or enjoying a woman. The rest of the time, I was his companion.”

“Wait, you didn’t go back into the lamp after you granted his wishes?”

“Only briefly, Master. I cannot leave the lamp except by my master’s summoning, but a master remains my master until he or she dies, so he’s able to call me forth anytime. I saw Ali the Goat-Herder daily for forty-four years, until his fated death. I was his most trusted advisor.”

Fatima choked up, saying those last words, and she was blinking rapidly. Was she really crying for her dead master Ali? She certainly had shed no tears for Uncle Warren.

Fatima looked meaningfully at the brass lamp. “Do you order me to leave you now?”

I was just about to say Yes, goodbye till Sunday, when I got a thought. “Tell me, can you give yourself legs, make yourself like a regular woman? And give yourself non-genie clothing?”

“Betty Grable legs, coming right up!” she said. She went completely green-smoke for a few seconds, then solidified into a definitely girlish shape. Except that—

“Fatima,” I said, “I’m sure that men in 1943 thought you to be quite a `blackout girl,’ looking like that. But can you make your hair and makeup and clothes into something more 2010-ish?”

She reached out a hand and almost touched my forehead. Then she green-smoked again, then solidified again. And this time I said, “Whoa, mama.” Green had never looked so good on a woman in 2010—or maybe I’m just partial to well-displayed big tits.

The nice thing about being height-challenged is that more often than regular guys do, I go through an entire weekend without spending money on things. Like dates. So I had a pretty good stash of cash in my wallet, this Friday night. I grabbed my wallet, grabbed my clunker keys, tossed the brass lamp under my bed, and said to Fatima, “Let me show you the twenty-first century.”

After all, how often do you get a chance to take a genie on a date?