If wishes were bicycles...

Simon stammered a bit before he managed to say, “I-I’ve always wished I had superpowers.”

Habib squinted at him. “You mean superhuman abilities?”

Simon nodded, swallowing hard, his face red. He looked as if admitting what he wanted had embarrassed him.

Habib gestured at himself. “Wish granted, you command a djinni.”

Simon frowned. “That’s kind of like being Johnny Thunder.”

“Who?” said Habib.

“He was a character in a comic seventy years ago, he commanded a living thunderbolt. But the hexbolt did everything, Johnny just stood around and told him what to do.”

Habib pulled an iPad out of somewhere or nowhere and tapped at the screen a moment then examined the result. Simon craned his head trying to get a look.

“Ah!” Habib exclaimed, turning the iPad around to show Simon the Wikipedia page he had found. Leaning close, they both read quickly.

Simon shook his head and Habib nodded. “No,” said Habib. “I can see why you wouldn’t want to be anything like that fellow, or fellows. There seem to have been more than one of him, and one of them was a her.”

“Well, he’s fictional,” said Simon.

“Hm, mm,” said Habib, putting the iPad back wherever he had gotten it. “What about real superheroes?”

“Uh, there don’t seem to be any,” said Simon, looking disappointed. “A few nuts running around in costumes but no one who has real powers like in the comic books I read as a kid.”

“I’ve read a few of those and seen some of the movies,” said Habib. He wrinkled his brow, pulled on his beard and chewed on his lip. Simon watched the djinni for a bit.

“Can you give me superpowers?” Simon finally asked.

Habib looked up. “Maybe,” he said. “But there is the magical Law of Obscurity, I can’t do anything to attract the attention of the masses. Nothing that looks like I’m working miracles without some available explanation. I’m not the only djinni in the world and if all of us did magic in the marketplace, there would be chaos. There are powers in the world that even a djinni must fear.”

“Really?” Simon’s voice almost squeaked. “What are they? Gods? Demons?”

“It doesn’t matter what you call them, they exist and they enforce their rules,” said Habib.

“Oh,” said Simon.

“I can do a lot for you,” said Habib. “I can make you healthy, strong, quick, sharpen your senses. But superpowers,” he shook his head. “I just don’t know if I can do that.”

“Could-- could you try?” asked Simon.

Habib smiled. “I can try,” he nodded. “But the sort of flashy powers you probably want would almost certainly look like miracles.”

“But,” said Simon, “that’s allowed as long as we don’t get caught at it.”

“Something like that,” agreed Habib. “I can conjure things for you in private, even where a few others can see but not where it would attract a lot of attention.”

“So maybe... someone like the Dark Knight. Moving in shadows, using gadgets that could explain some things. And, and, you say you can make me strong and fast and healthy? Like maybe just a little bit better that anyone else? Not enough so it looks miraculous but is just believable?”

Habib smiled. “It may be so,” he said.

“Wow!” said Simon. “This is going to be so cool!”

“Let me consult with some of my peers,” said Habib. “Is there anything you need before I depart for a short while?”

“Uh, how long are you going to be gone?”

“Not long, no more than a couple of hours, maybe much less.”

“Oh, I guess, I’m fine,” said Simon.

Habib smiled. “You are the most agreeable of masters, Simon. And the least predictable. Most men in your situation waste little time in wishing for at least one houri.”

Simon blinked. Habib blinked out of existence.

“What’s a houri?” Simon asked the empty air. He booted up his home computer and wasted a little time wandering around Wikipedia. Then a little more time on on Toonopedia and finally fiddling for a bit with one of his personal software projects, a database to keep track of databases available on the internet.

An hour seemed to pass with grinding slowness. Normally, Simon could waste time on the internet with the nonchalance of a skateboarder in an empty parking garage. But waiting for Habib to return sucked all the savor out of cute cats and wikiwalks. To waste more time, he dug his laptop out of his backpack and set it up to sync all files with his desktop machine while charging the portable’s battery.

Then he wandered through the tiny kitchenette he shared with the other room on the basement level of the hotel and down the hall to the full bath. His own 3/4-bath did not have a full-length mirror and he wanted to look at himself.

At fifty-one years of age, Simon Paul had maintained himself in tolerably good physical condition. Biking six miles each way in all kinds of weather to his job at the university library did a lot to keep him in shape. The hotel weight room next door to the basement full bath helped to, when he used it which was probably not often enough.

“Nader,” he said to the other resident of the basement rooms coming down the stairs from the dining room on the lobby floor.

“Simon,” said Nader. Seeing Simon walking into the full bath, he asked. “You going to be in there long?”

“Not long,” said Simon. He didn’t explain. Nader got a little proprietary about the big bath since his room did not have one. Once in, with the lights on and the fan running, Simon locked the door and stood back from the mirror at a comfortable distance.

He still had a full head of rusty brown hair cut unfashionably short, though his widow’s peak got more pronounced every year. His brown eyes looked out from under a distinct but not Neanderthal, somewhat furry, brow ridge. His nose achieved beakiness without being Durante-esque. He had a chin and only one. He had tried to grow mustaches and beards at various times but they always came in a dirty blond color which he thought looked stupid with his brown hair.

He stood a hair under six-three and weighed about 190, lean but not skinny. Most of his muscular development was in his legs and back; he did not have an extreme triangular shape like a boxer or weightlifter but a lean, long one like a swimmer or bicyclist, which he was. Despite the fact that he looked like what his lifestyle had molded him to be, he longed for the wide shoulders and beefy arms of the men who played Thor and Captain America in the movies.

Self-consciously, he struck a few heroic poses, laughed then reached over to flush the toilet before opening the door. Just as he had expected, Nader Farhadi came hurrying down the hallway toward him, carrying towels and a clean change of clothes. Nader smiled as he squeezed past Simon to claim the room with the only tub on the basement level.

“I’m glad you weren’t using the room long,” said Nader.

“Sure,” said Simon. He wandered back through the kitchenette to his own room, shaking his head at Nader’s predictability. The man was the same way about his side of the refrigerator and his shelves in the cabinets of the tiny cooking space.

Just as he walked back into his room, Simon recalled that Nader was also Persian, or really, Iranian since Persian was no longer a nationality. “I wonder if he knows anything about the djinn?” Simon asked himself aloud but decided not to ask. Nader was a political science major, not at the same university where Simon worked, and he interned with a city councilman’s office. He did not strike Simon as the sort of person who would answer as random a question as the ones Simon wanted to ask.

He checked the time but realized he had no idea when Habib had disappeared. It must have been at least an hour before but surely less than three. It wasn’t yet noon and Simon still felt satisfied from breakfast, he didn’t feel like making anything for lunch yet.

Desperate for distraction, he pulled a couple of long boxes out from under his bed. In the white pasteboard containers he kept a few hundred of his favorite comics. Thousands more were stored in the crawlspace under the front of the hotel in the small corner allotted to him as a longtime resident and he paid a small monthly extra for twice as much space as most of the hotel tenants had.

He pulled out a recent run of Daredevil and browsed through the covers, remembering the stories as he did so. He didn’t need to re-read them; he exercised the one ability he already had that almost passed for a superpower--a near perfect memory for anything he had ever read. Daredevil’s super-abilities were mostly sensory, to make up for his blindness but ol’ Hornhead also had unbelievable agility and the same kind of uneven weird luck a lot of superheroes shared.

He put the Daredevils back in their box, much as he liked to read the adventures of the blind lawyer, he had no real desire to be him. From the other box, he took a few of his prizes--mostly silver-age issues of Action, Superman, Superboy and other titles featuring the strange visitor from another planet. Some of the books were older than he was and all of them were acquired by painstaking bargain hunting at comic conventions as far away as Atlanta.

And all of them featured someone else gaining Superman’s powers. If you’re going to collect forty-year-old comics and don’t have a fortune, you have to specialize and Simon had picked his theme. It occurred to Simon that now that he had an income of a pound of gold a week, he could afford to expand his collection to some of the rarer issues from the 1940s and early 50s.

Or even star in a few comics about himself. That thought made him smile.

He had issues where Batman, or Jimmy Olsen, or Lois Lane, or Lana Lang gained superpowers; another with an Army private and one with just some guy walking along a beach; even three with a super Perry White. He loved them all.

His memory for artwork was not as acute as it was for text and he loved to look at great comic book art. But he didn’t take his treasures out of their plastic vaults this time, carefully restoring them to their boxes and placing them back beneath his bed, instead.

Restlessly, he wandered through his tiny apartment, eventually ending up in his garden. A light rain fell as it often did in coastal Washington State but sunshine broke through now and then and the waterdrops on Mrs. Dumfries’ flowers gleamed like jewelry.

Standing under the portico, out of the rain, he reached to touch one of the delicately pink roses and captured a drop of water on his finger tip. The beauty of the flower in the rain and sunshine made him think of Habib’s comment about wishing for a houri.

At fifty-one, he didn’t feel old but he knew that probably thirty years before it would have been his first wish. He smiled. He’d had girlfriends, even been engaged to marry twice. But nothing had worked out between he and his lovers. Something about his private intensity made the women in his life feel overlooked. He sighed.

A magical companion who couldn’t leave him for someone else might be just his speed.

The thought deflated him a bit and he moved across the tiny paved area beneath the awning to examine his bike. What rain blew in under the covering had done a fair job of cleaning off any mud from yesterday’s adventure, he decided. But it must be about time to oil the moving parts and rub some leather conditioner on the seat. He wondered if Habib would do that for him.

Then he wondered if he would even be keeping the bicycle. It would seem odd to have superpowers and a djinni to command and still ride around town on a bicycle. Would he move somewhere more elegant? He would be able to afford to. Heck, maybe he could buy the hotel.

With that thought, he went back inside, smiling, just as Habib reappeared in his little sitting room.

The djinni smiled back. “Let us do this thing, Simon. I believe I have fashioned a way to grant your wish.”