Alternate Gerrolds (18 page)

In short, Lennie Smish was so unappetizing, so unpleasant to look upon, so disheartening to deal with, that nobody ever scheduled a meeting with him before lunch.

How the lamp got to Hollywood is obvious. In 1946, in his quest for Arabic authenticity, Louis B. Mayer ordered the purchase of as many Moroccan oil lamps as it took to find the right lamp for the new Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Maureen O’Hara picture. Fifteen hundred lamps later, somebody finally worked up the courage to tell him that the lamp was actually in the story of Aladdin, not Sinbad. For years thereafter, the MGM prop department was the place to go if you needed an authentic Arabian lamp.

How
the
lamp fell into the hands of Lennie Smish is another story—the usual combination of greed, deceit and underhanded dealings. The
short version: Lennie was cataloguing the property he’d seized from the estate of a client who shortsightedly had not provided for Lennie’s fees in his will, and had attached the lamp as part of his booty. In keeping with tradition, Lennie was cleaning the lamp when it went off.

The
djinn
came pouring out of the lamp, hacking and wheezing with a dreadful cough—Lennie had been using a chemical cleaner. It expanded itself to a comfortable size, twelve feet, then, seeing the low ceilings in Lennie’s apartment, retracted again down to seven feet, ten inches. The
djinn
was a traditional
efrit.
It was as big as it could be in such cramped qaurters; it was bronze of skin and muscled like a bull elephant who worked out at Gold’s Gym. It wore a red fez, a black vest, a green sash, a curved bronze scimatar, yellow flowing pantaloons and black pointy-toed shoes. There was no doubt that this was a major genie. It had no hair, no eyebrows, but long black mustaches. It had sharp-pointed ears. It grinned down at Lennie with a mouth full of golden teeth.

Lennie Smish blinked.

To his credit, he did not for an instant doubt the authenticity of the experience. He’d seen stranger sights on Santa Monica Boulevard and hadn’t doubted the reality of those apparitions either. His first words were, “Right. How many wishes and how long do I have to make up my mind?”

The genie settled itself comfortably on the floor. It sat down crosslegged on the rug and swelled again to its full size. “In your case,” the genie said, “you get one wish only. But you may take as long as you need to decide.”

“Hm,” said Lennie, thoughtfully. The last time Lennie had said “Hm” so thoughtfully, a major studio head had abruptly announced his retirement. But then, suddenly, Lennie realized what the genie had said. “What do you mean—in
my
case?”

The
djinn
shrugged. “Policy,” it said. “That’s just the way these things work.” But, seeing the look on Lennie’s face, it pulled a document out of thin air. “See here? This is the 1990 rider attached to the 1988 contract extension. Section 12, Article II, Paragraph 6, Item A, Schedule 2. Lawyers and other primordial scum. That’s you.”

Lennie leaned forward to examine the document, but abruptly the genie snatched it back and stashed it away again in thin air. “Sorry, that’s a confidential Guild document. I can’t let you see it.”

“Guild?” Lennie asked.

“WGAW,” the
efrit
explained.

“Wizards, Genies, Angels, Warlocks?” Lennie asked. “I dealt with them once. A fellow named Faust, I think—”

“Writers Guild of America, West,” the genie corrected.
“Our
executive director is a pit bull.”

At last, Lennie’s incredulity surfaced. “The
Writers Guild?
But you can’t be—”

“Yes, I can,” the
djinn
replied huffily. “I’ve been a member since 1949. Well, only an associate member, but when I finish my screenplay, I’m sure it’ll sell. I have a cousin who knows Spielberg and—”

“Never mind,” said Lennie, waving his hand in annoyance. “Let’s talk about the bottom line here, my wish.”

“As you command, my master.” The
djinn
spread its hands in a florid arm gesture and inclined its muscular upper body in a semblance of a bow. “How much wealth, love, honor, fame, glory, beauty and power do you want? I am required by law to caution you, however, that while I must honor your wish to the letter, I must take advantage of every loophole in your wording to thwart the spirit of it.”

“Hm,” said Lennie again. And this time he meant it.

The
djinn
flinched. He knew who Lennie Smish was.

“I’ll tell you,” said Lennie. “If there’s one thing I’ve always wanted, it’s respect.”

“Is that your wish?”

“No,” said Lennie. “Not yet. What I want is the respect that comes with success at one’s craft. I have always wanted to be a $10,000 an hour lawyer.”

“Ahh,” said the
djinn.
“That’s your wish.”

“No,” said Lennie. “I am not yet ready to wish. Not until I find a way to phrase this so that there are no loopholes—so you can’t thwart it.”

“Ahhhhh,” said the
efrit,
approvingly. “A challenge.” It licked its chops; its tongue was long and pink and forked. “Those are the
tastiest
kind.”

Lennie reached over to the table beside his chair and picked up his yellow legal pad and a pencil. At the top of it, he wrote:
Ten thousand dollars an hour.
After a moment, he added,
As many clients as it takes to make me happy.
After a moment’s more thought, he scratched that out and wrote,
More than enough work to keep me busy.

Underneath that, he began making notes:

Lennie Smish thought for a while. He stared across the room at the
djinn
and pursed his prune-like lips. He gnawed on the end of his pencil while he considered all the ways he might phrase his wish and all the ways that the
efrit
might thwart the results.

The
djinn
grinned at him.

Lennie Smish said, “I think I’m beginning to understand the depth of this problem.”

The
djinn
’s grin widened. Its golden teeth flashed like sunset. Sunset Boulevard.

“I believe,” said Lennie, “that I am going to have to spend some time researching this. Will you negotiate with me? Will you sign a fair contract?”

The
djinn
laughed. Its voice boomed like a kettle drum. “I will sign any contract you care to draft. Even you, the great Lennie Smish, cannot write a contract that cannot be thwarted.”

“Hmm,” said Lennie. A new thought occurred to him and he began scribbling more notes onto his yellow pad. His handwriting was crabbed and tiny; his words looked like spider-tracks. “This is going to take some time,” said Lennie.

“No problem,” said the
djinn.
“I can work on my screenplay.” The creature materialized a laptop computer and began carefully typing. Occasionally, it chuckled. Once, it materialized a dictionary in mid-air, paged through it to check the meaning of the word
scrofulous
, then dematerialized the volume and returned to its labors.

Across the room, Lennie scribbled furious notes. More and more ideas kept occurring to him. But one thought overrode every other consideration—this had to be the
greatest
contract of his career, perhaps even the greatest contract that anyone had ever negotiated anywhere. This document would be a model of airtight, watertight,
unbreakable,
krell metal-clad intention.

At one point, the
djinn
looked up and said, “Oh, by the way—don’t forget to add a clause that I can’t alter you, your behavior, your motivations, your desires or your conception of your results. I wouldn’t do it
anyway, that would be cheating, but you need to be aware that some
efrits
consider that a fair trick.”

Lennie stared at the
djinn,
astonished. It was
helping
him? But, he dutifully noted the clause. Then he made a note to himself to examine the
efrit
’s suggested phrasing. Was the genie giving him that clause specifically to set up a loophole big enough to drive a producer’s ego through?

At last, Lennie put the yellow pad aside and said, “All right, I’ve outlined the areas I’ll need to research. It’s going to take longer than I thought, several months at least. But I think I can do it. I can’t rely on boilerplate. I’m going to have to do the whole thing by hand. I’ll probably have to release most of my other clients just to put this thing together—”

The
djinn
didn’t even look up. “Of course,” it acknowledged. “That’s the way these things work. You’re not the first, you know. I doubt you’ll be the last.”

“We’ll see,” said Lennie. “We’ll see.”

For the next nine months, Lennie devoted himself solely—eighty hours a week—to his contract. He researched contract law all the way back to Noah. He studied every precedent from Faust to Daniel Webster. He consulted with demonologists, mediums, exorcists and karmic gurus. He met with scholars of the supernatural from seven different cultures. He interviewed three supreme court justices. He studied linguistics and communication to make sure he understood the precise semantic definition of the words he was using and the distinctions he was drawing. He studied torts, retorts and curses. He even met with an emissary from the Pope to ensure that his immortal soul would not be endangered by the contract. He cashed in his savings bonds, withdrew his life savings, sold his Paramount stock and hired a staff of twelve research assistants; he broke them into three teams—each one would write a clause and the other two teams would try to find a loophole.

After nine exhausting months, Lennie was finished. It took another two weeks to get the contract printed, proof read, corrected, reprinted, proof read again, corrected again, reprinted again, etc. Lennie could not allow even a typographical error to mar the perfection of this document. A forgotten comma had once cost a shipping company forty million dollars. By now, of course, the
djinn
had finished its screenplay and had
begun sending it out to agents. While it waited, the
djinn
worked patiently on the novelization.

At last, Lennie presented his contract to the
djinn.
The creature took the document, paged through it slowly, nodding and grunting in reaction to various clauses, sub-clauses, articles, sections, paragraphs, schedules, tables and footnotes. It read the contract all the way through to the last page and looked up at Lennie with a happy grin. “This is really a very nice piece of work,” it said. “My compliments. This work is definitely worth $10,000 an hour.”

“So you’ll sign it?”

“Of course,” said the
djinn.
“Hand me that pen, will you?”

“You have to sign this with your legal name!” Lennie Smish insisted.

The
djinn
looked up annoyed. “Give me a break,” it said. “A contract this elegant requires a loophole every bit as elegant—and every bit as carefully worked out.” It scrawled its signature in elegant Arabic script.

“Aha!”
said Lennie Smish, grabbing the contract and waving it in the
djinn
’s face. “I got you now!”

The
djinn
looked at Lennie without emotion. “You do?” it asked.

“I won’t agree to any contract you sign. Because you won’t sign it unless you find a loophole. The deal’s off.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” the
djinn
said. “You have to avail yourself of my services.”

“No, I don’t. I haven’t signed. And I have the right to back out of the deal any time before the contract is finalized.” Lennie Smish produced his bill. “But whether the contract is executed or not, you still have to pay for the services of the lawyer. Here’s my bill for three thousand hours of labor, plus the labors of my staff and associated expenses. It comes to thirty-six million dollars, payable in legal tender only, cash, check or money order—no coins or bills under a hundred, please.”

The
djinn
began laughing heartily. “I do believe you have caught me,” it said. “I really do believe that you have found a way to get your wish without getting tricked. I’m mightily impressed.” It began plucking suitcases out of the air, thirty-six of them in all. Lennie grabbed at the cases and began opening them suspiciously.

The
djinn
shook its head. “The money is legal,” it said in annoyance. “United States of America,
e pluribus unum.
All that stuff. I don’t cheat. I trick. There’s a difference.”

Lennie stacked the suitcases in the hall closet, the spare bedroom, the service porch and the kitchen. He hadn’t realized that thirty-six million dollars would take up so much space. When he finished, the
djinn
asked him to sign a receipt. He did so suspiciously; but he had no choice.

“All right,” said the
djinn.
“Our business is concluded. You got your wish. I get my freedom.”

“Begone,” said Lennie, glad to have the creature finally out of his apartment.

The
djinn
—and the lamp—vanished.

Two days later, there was a knock on the door. Lennie Smish answered it and a process server handed him a subpoena. He was being sued. By the
djinn.
For failure to negotiate in good faith.

That was only the first subpoena.

In the next three months, forty-six more lawsuits were filed against Lennie Smish. Everything from sexual harrassment in the workplace to violations of the RICO statutes. And that was only the beginning. It seemed as if every court case, every settlement, every contract he’d ever worked on, was bubbling back up to the surface of the legal quagmire.

It took a while, but Lennie finally figured it out.
He’d gotten his wish.

He was a $10,000 an hour lawyer, and he had more work than he could handle.