Shelly's Second Chance (The Wish Granters, Book One) (3 page)

Ben got out and walked around
the car to open her door. Shelly smiled to herself. So he was coming up after
all. Then they were suddenly kissing, with Shelly pressed against the side of
the car, Ben’s hands on her hips. But his cell buzzed again, right against her
thigh this time, and he pulled away.

“Oh shit, sorry Babe,” he
said and reached in his pocket for the phone. “I really do need to get home and
pack or I’ll never make it tomorrow. Save it all up for me and we’ll celebrate
big time when I get home from St. Louis. All night long, just me and you and a
bottle of champagne and that bed. You understand, right, honey?”

*****

Joe wasn’t sure how long he’d
been here or even where “here” was but he was starting to figure out a few
things. As far as he could tell, Transition was a bit like going to another
country to study. You just had to wing it, trusting that you’d understand more
as you went along. He may not know exactly what it meant to be a Wish Granter,
but at least he’d gotten lucky with his partner assignment. Alanna was
definitely a girl to die for, and apparently he’d done just that.

According to the file, he and
Alanna were supposed to grant the wish of a woman named Shelly. That’s all he
knew so far, just her first name. Not where she was or what she wanted and he
sure as hell had no idea how they were supposed to go about making this girl’s
wish come true. But he supposed those were earth problems and could wait until
they were back on earth.

In the meantime, Transition
itself was an interesting puzzle. You were still you, whoever that was, only
different in certain ways. You didn’t need a last name anymore because you
didn’t have to sign checks or file with the IRS. You didn’t need a car or a phone
and you never watched the news. But, for Joe, the really incredible part was
that you could time travel. The guy with the clipboard had called it The
Manifest. Joe couldn’t figure out exactly how manifesting worked but apparently
he’d just show up where he was supposed to be. Sort of like I Dream of Jeannie
meets Nascar. It sounded very cool.

Joe wondered what the Jesuit
priests back at his old elementary school would make of all this. Transition
was neither a heaven nor a hell, but one of many levels between the two. Apparently
he and Alanna were somewhere between down there, where nobody wants to go, and
up there, where everyone wants to end up eventually. And apparently if they
completed their tasks correctly they could move on. That was how the senior
coordinator had phrased it. Move on. A phrase that raised a lot more questions
than it answered.

He was only at Stage One. A
Newbie. But so far he liked it where he was and didn’t see any reason to get
all worked up about what might be next. Especially now that he’d seen what his
new partner looked like. Yep, no reason to rush to the next level. No reason at
all. Anyway, just like the senior coordinator had told him in their briefing,
“The future comes soon enough, even here.”

Chapter Five

Shelly walked up the stairs
and into her dark apartment. She was disappointed to find herself alone yet
again, but she supposed this was the price of falling in love with a
workaholic. And heaven knows, on the flip side there were certainly advantages
to Ben’s ambition.

Starting with this envelope
in her purse. This envelope that held twenty-five hundred dollars in cash.

Shelly headed toward the
bedroom, unbuttoning her blouse as she walked, and carefully placed her purse
on the night table beside her bed. In the bottom drawer of that same table—the
one she’d bought at Goodwill for three dollars —was a stack of overdue bills
and two termination notices. One for her car insurance and another for wifi
service. Oh well. She still had the car, except one of the overdue notices was
from the bank about her car loan. Only one of her credit cards had not been suspended
and she’d already raided her 401K from work. Her salary was spent long before
she cashed the checks. It would take her at least two years to get clear. Two
years, that is if she didn’t have to pay her rent and buy groceries and live.
Basically, Shelly was broke six ways to Sunday and Ben had no idea.

With a sigh she dropped to
the bed, stretching out across the wide empty space, and once again, her mind
turned to Marcus. He was an irritating guy, no doubt about it. A know-it-all, a
scold, and half the time he looked at her like a high school teacher who’d just
caught a student skipping class. But he certainly had a way of getting under
her skin, to the degree that sometimes it felt almost like he was haunting her.
What had he said while walking her to the car?

Oh yeah. “You know my number,
Shelly,” he’d said, and then he’d opened the car door for her, just as Ben had
done tonight. “Don’t be a stranger, now.”

Don’t be a stranger. It was a
funny expression. On one level you can never be a stranger to someone you know.
But there are ways of being strangers that don’t hinge on proximity in the same
room with someone, or the same house, or the same bed. We’re all strangers in
some way, she thought.

Marcus would not be happy to
know that earlier, over at the Mobil station on Grand Avenue, she’d broken the
pledge and, after using plastic to pay for a tank of gas, spent her last fifty in
cash on Super Lotto tickets. That jackpot was up to thirty million but he
wouldn’t be happy to hear that either, or that she’d set her phone to buzz her
with a notification whenever the total rose.

And he certainly wouldn’t be
happy to know that now Shelly had twenty-five hundred dollars in cash in an
envelope inside her purse.

*****

Joe and Alanna were seated at
what looked like your typical bar. Any bar, any place on earth. Bottles lined
up neatly on shelves in front of a long mirror. Music playing. The clink of
glasses and ice. But the drinks in front of them were nothing recognizable, nothing
like a beer or margarita. Alanna picked up hers and drained the glass. Joe
followed suit and whatever slid down his throat wasn’t liquid exactly, wasn’t
alcohol, but it had the same effect because he immediately felt better.
Confident. More sure of himself. Hell, more like himself in general. Alanna
turned slightly toward him on the stool, her shapely legs crossed.

“How long is it going to take
me to get my bearings?” he asked Alanna. “It’s been tough to calculate time, I
have to say,”

“I know.” She signaled to the
bartender who was wearing a crisp, white, long-sleeved dress shirt with the
sleeves half rolled up to his elbows and a black apron tied over black slacks.
His face was half hidden by a baseball cap with a large green M on the front.
He promptly brought them both another round of not-drinks.

“My impression is that how
long we stay here is linked to how well we do on a series of challenges.
Apparently, we grant wishes to people . . .”

“Women,” Joe blurted out. He
wasn’t sure how he knew this, but, just as promised, things from the file were
coming back to him on a need-to-know basis. It eliminated the need for planning—or
for reflection—and he guessed that was by design. But where was memory in all
this?

“All the people we grant
wishes to will be women, but I don’t know why,” he said, noting Alanna’s
quizzical gaze.

“Wait a minute,” she said.
She drained her second not-drink. “I’m pretty sure this part was in my file.
Okay, got it. We grant wishes to women only because it’s so hard for women to
wish on their own behalf. You know. Women want good things for their husbands,
their kids, their friends . . .”

“Yeah,” Joe said. “Yeah the
wish has to be something they want and it can’t—wait a minute—I’ve almost got
it . . .”

“Another?” the bartender
asked. Without really looking at him—because honestly who really looks at a
bartender—both Joe and Alanna nodded in unison and two more not-drinks appeared
before them. Apparently this was another thing different from their old world,
Alanna thought, because whatever substance they were putting in these
not-drinks actually helped you think more clearly.

“The wish can’t be given
away,” Joe finally said. Retrieving this particular piece of information had
obviously cost him, judging by the small beads of sweat on his forehead.

“Are you sure?” Alanna asked
skeptically. “Suppose the woman has a child who needs an operation or
something?”

“Well them’s the rules,
honey. I don’t make them. I’m just reporting what I remember from the folder.”

“Yes, I know,” Alanna said,
but her expression was still a little guarded. Suppose the wish didn’t last?
That would be terrible. It seemed almost cruel to give a woman what she wished
for, if there was a chance she might lose it again down the road.

“The first woman is named
Shelly,” Joe said, slapping the bar with his palm as he pulled another piece of
the assignment from memory. “It’s April I think. Down there.” He pointed down
towards his feet and then grinned. “Silly, isn’t it? I have no idea where up
and down are anymore. We could be anywhere. Another galaxy, another time.”

“I remember something, too,”
said Alanna. “A phrase. ‘We grant your wish, but what happens next is up to
you.’ I guess that’s the Wish Granters motto.”

 “Sounds more like a legal
disclaimer,” Joe muttered, chugging the rest of the not-drink.

“But you know what I don’t
understand?” Alanna said, thoughtfully swirling her glass. “When we offer the
wish, do they have to take it? I mean do they have to let us help them?” The
question surprised Joe. He knew what most men would say if they’d been offered
a wish. They’d say hell yes, thank you sir, gimme gimme gimme and I’ll deal
with the consequences later. In fact, Joe thought a little dizzily as Alanna
leaned over to signal again to the bartender, exposing a delicious-looking
wedge of flesh at the base of her neck, if the senior coordinator offered me a
little bit of
heaven right
now, I’d be a happy man. The thought was so fervent it was on the verge of a
prayer. He had to remind himself that this was not heaven and they were not at
a real bar and Alanna was not his date.

“But no,” she said, answering
her own question. “They don’t have to accept our help. It must have been in the
file.”

“Do you know what our first
assignment looks like because I’m sure that wasn’t in my folder.”

“She looks like she’s about
twenty-eight or so. Not over thirty that’s for certain,” Joe explained. “She
looks a bit like Meg Ryan in
French Kiss
. You know, the movie? She had a
big smile and curly hair. And she always looked kind of casual except when she
got all dolled up to seduce the guy who got away. I remember that scene
particularly . . .” but Joe had stopped talking because Alanna had stopped
listening and was staring at something at the far end of the bar.

“What is it?” he asked.

Alanna nodded toward where
she’d been staring. “You mean she looks like that?”

Joe followed her gaze. “Holy
crap,” he said. “That’s her.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m completely sure. That’s
Shelly.”

“Then we’re not . . .”

“I guess not. We must be back
. . .”

“On earth,” Alanna finished
his sentence.

“How did we get here?”

“I have no idea.”

At that moment, the bartender
slid two more not-drinks in front of them and Alanna looked up just in time to
catch his gaze. He was smiling, a knowing little smile, and his eyes twinkled
as if he’d just enjoyed playing a
joke on someone.

“Speaking of movies,” she
said softly. “Does he remind you of anyone?” She nodded toward the bartender
still standing in front of them.

“Hey, you know who you look
like?” Joe pointed at him and then motioned with his hand to come closer.

“Who’s that?” the bartender
grinned openly now and leaned in toward them.

“You look just like Morgan
Freeman, You know, the guy who played God.”

 “Wait a minute,” Alanna
said. “You were the guy who checked me in during Transition, weren’t you? You
were the monk and then the doctor and the lawyer. But what are you doing down
here?”

 The bartender only chuckled
and pulled their empty glasses away. “You can call me Morgan, if you like.”

Chapter Six

Shelly went to the bar
because it was familiar. Whenever Ben was on the road she liked to hang out
with her girlfriend who worked there five nights a week. That night she was one
of two bartenders and the place was busy so Shelly sat alone at the end and
ordered a glass of white wine, which she left half full. She wasn’t much of a
drinker. One vice was enough.

Shelly had convinced herself
that buying Lotto tickets and playing online slots was really only a hobby,
something to keep her busy when Ben was out of town. Being a sales manager with
a team to keep on track, he was gone a lot. And even when he was home—well,
let’s face it—even when he was home, he wasn’t completely home. His attention
wandered. It sometimes seemed to Shelly
that she could have been a piece of
furniture. She found herself imagining a life where everything went her way,
where she was in control and everyone respected her and hung on her every word.
Where Ben wouldn’t have to work because they would have all the money they
needed. The kind of life one big win would give her.