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Careful What You Wish For
I had hoped for a date with Cynthia for months. She finally agreed to go out with me so I decided to surprise her with a homemade meal instead of dancing at a nightclub like she suggested. I had hoped that my gourmet cooking lessons would pay off: tonight it would be apple apricot stuffed pork chops. The only item remaining to complete the meal was a bottle of wine--a nice pinot noir would do. When I left the imported food market, I strolled through the Green Leaf Plaza. The ornate water fountain in the center of the plaza--fashioned in the shape of a unicorn--pulsed its water into the sky. With my recent good fortune of landing a date with Cynthia in mind, I reached into my pocket, made a new wish, and sent my penny twirling into the fountain. I barely understood the weight of my wish.
Children danced merrily around the fountain until coins vanished from their palms and floated toward me like a silver-bronze rainbow. Parents dug into their pockets and purses to dole out more coveted coins but came up empty. My pockets were expanding, seams stretching, popping. Coins and bills multiplied around me. What could I say? No one ever warned me about the consequences of my wishes. This time, I had merely asked for all the money in the world.
A Brinks truck pulled up; two security guards marched toward me with bags of money draped over their shoulders. The clomp clomp of a camel's hooves startled me, but the blocks of gold in a prince's hands softened his cameo. An airplane dropped an object floating under a parachute. Gradually, I could see a wooden pallet carrying tons of cash encased in a transparent, plastic box. When it landed, the parachute billowed above it like an octopus descending onto the ocean floor. Bright golden letters read "Trump" in the silken fibers. Crowds of people gathered around me, the newest recipient of luck--or so they thought. I had two choices in my mind: philanthropy or misanthropy. I could devise a plan to share this wealth with everyone equally, or I could cash in for myself and let everyone else fend for themselves.
A poor woman clad only in ragged, Arabian silks, handed me a single rupee. A thin space in the silk veil about her face exposed her apple-green eyes lingering on the rupee as she turned away. On her back, I saw a child interwoven between layers of his mother's clothing. He looked too large for such an arrangement, but his mother struck me as someone destined for burden. I put down my bag of groceries (including any chance of a successful date with Cynthia) and followed the woman as she walked away from me.
She left the plaza, crossed a busy street, and sat beneath a freeway overpass. When she saw me approaching, she scurried up the dirt embankment. She lay flat on the ground, wedging herself between the concrete slab of the freeway where cars bellowed overhead and the dirt floor where ants had their uniform trail temporarily interrupted. I had followed her here as though drawn to her, so I joined her on the ground. Lying there in the dirt, watching her child squirm on her back while he was pressed into the overpass, I could think only one thing: she deserved some of this luck recently bestowed upon me. The absence of cars rushing by struck me as unusual. I looked down at the sidewalk and was reminded of my recent inescapable fate. Wheelbarrows overflowing with money teetered back and forth as they rolled in my direction.
Something had to be done. I took some money from my pocket, opened her palm and placed a wad of bills in it. Her expression brightened, her sharp eyes became glossy, and she smiled for the first time. Her child swiped at her palm like a tiger cub at play. I slithered down the embankment when the unthinkable occurred. The wheelbarrows had halted, waiting for me on the sidewalk down below, but the money was still multiplying in my pockets. As I reached the sidewalk, the wheelbarrows raced toward me, and, right before their contents were dumped on me, I saw the poor woman sliding down the embankment, both hands on the wad of cash in front her, reeling at the power of the money to find its way back to me. The child had clambered off of her back and was gripping his mother's hands, trying to keep the money from getting away.
John Young teaches elementary school children stuff they ought to know, but rarely want to know. He lives in Bellflower, California. His writing has appeared in The Pedestal Magazine, FlashShot, The Chiron Review, Heavy Glow, and Laughter Loaf. His short-short "Unconditional Love" recently won second place in Inkspotter.com's "Finding the Right Words" 2005 contest. He writes a monthly "featured market" column for Flash Fiction Flash, a newsletter.(December 2005).
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