The Wish List Read Online Free PDF Page B

have shamed an Olympian.
    â€œI need him in two hours. If I don’t have him in two hours, there’s a lot more where that came from.”
    Myishi nodded, cheeks ballooning with swallowed screams.
    Beelzebub smiled, his good humor restored. “Good. I’m glad we understand each other.”
    He turned to go, the folds of his black kaftan swirling around his ankles. “Oh, and Myishi?”
    â€œ Hai , Beelzebub- san ?”
    â€œPut the top of his skull back on, there’s a good fellow.”

LOWRIE MCCALL’S LEG WAS FORECASTING RAIN. Two years now since that hound had taken a chunk out of him, and the leg still wasn’t right. Never would be either. The doctors said he’d walk with a limp for the rest of his life. Lowrie chuckled mirthlessly. The rest of his life? That was a laugh.
    Lowrie lit up a fat stinking cigar. He’d started smoking again. Why not? No one was around to complain, and the nicotine would never have a chance to kill him.
    It hadn’t always been like this. All doom and gloom. But now . . . well, things were different now. He could trace it all back to that night, two years ago, lying on the floor with his life’s blood pooling on the linoleum around him. It had hit him then that he was going to die. Maybe not then, but sometime. His interest in life just stopped. What was the point? Heaven? Balderdash. There was no justice aboveground, so why should there be any under it? Why all the effort, then? What was the point in being good? Lowrie still hadn’t answered that question. And until he could, there didn’t seem to be much point to anything.
    Lowrie got fed up looking out the window and decided he’d chance a bit of television. Afternoon television. The pastime of the past it. After five minutes of elementary watercolor and cooking corner, he realized he wasn’t that desperate just yet and switched the box off. The garden. He’d go pull a few weeds in the garden.
    But of course his leg had been right, and the rain began to pelt down on the tiny square the landlord optimistically called a “green area.” Lowrie sighed. Was anything going to go right ever again? Where was the wisecracking fine figure of a man that he had used to be? Where was his life gone?
    Lowrie had spent so much time mulling over these particular questions that he had managed to isolate a few key moments in his past. Ones where he had a choice to make, and made the wrong one. A litany of mistakes. A list of would-haves, could-haves, and should-haves. Not that there was any point in thinking about it. It wasn’t as if he could change anything now. He put a hand over his rib cage, feeling the thump of his heart. Especially not now.
    So, how to round out this roller coaster of a day?
    Take some medicine perhaps. Go for a limp down to the newstand, or—oh, the excitement—bingo in the community center.
    Meg Finn hurtled out of the afterlife and into Lowrie McCall’s armchair. And because she wasn’t thinking hole anymore, it was as solid to her as to you and me. The chair’s springs wheezed in protest, brass casters sending it spinning across the floor.
    Lowrie did not jerk backward in shock. He jerked backward because the careering chair flipped his cane from under him. He went down in a heap, grasping at the bookcase as he fell. Not a good move, really. The top-heavy shelving teetered past the correctable angle and crashed down on the old man.
    A few moments of dazed confusion followed all around. Meg gazed dopily at the motes of dust spiraling upward from the ancient cushion. Dust. Real dust. From the real world. She was back. Maybe she’d never been away. The chair was real enough. So, a possible theory: Belch’s shotgun blast had blown her through old Lowrie’s window, and the chair had broken her fall. Hmm. Dubious. Several holes in the reasoning. Still though, no harder to believe than melting into a tunnel wall, purple