So, when I saw what could be my own personal bottle of vintage dreams, I instinctively looked for a hidden camera. With one foot holding the glass jar against the sand, I glanced up and down the beach twice and then over both shoulders. I even looked under my beach chair; you never know. Other than a group of seagulls, I was alone.

In a single motion, I grabbed the bottle and yanked the cork free.

A fog of musty, green smoke followed by a shower of silver-sparkled dust, shot out of the bottle. Its fragrance reminiscent of pet shampoo on a long-haired dog in August. The heavy cloud sank faster than a pair of sunglasses in a wave, and covered the sand in glitter. In a moment of panic, and to avoid a mouthful of the foulness, I dropped the glass bottle and backed away. All I could think was, "Oh damn, I'm never gonna get the cork back in."

The old man who farted his way out of the open top, once the smoke had cleared, had as much in common with a cinematic genie as I did with the Pope. He might have been buff, in his day, but it appeared that his day had come and gone. There was more color in the sand than in his skin. Other than a bunch of deep brown liver spots on his face and what could have been paint splatter on the back of his bony hands, this genie could have been somebody's great-grandfather.

Straining against some imaginary weights, he straightened his body, every joint popping with a noise that reminded me of an anchor being ratcheted into a ship. I stood there and waited for a 'behold' and a 'thank you master' but all he offered was, "Oy!"
"What the hell is 'Oy'?" I said to the creaking man as he adjusted the twisted, yellowed turban on his head.
"What?" he shouted at me, "Damn left ear, I can't hear you. Say it again!" He banged the left side of his head with the palm of his hand.
"You said, 'Oy'." He stumbled and I reached out to steady him. "Hey, are you okay?"
The genie pushed my arm away and sneezed. "Am I okay? Yeah, I'm just peachy. You think that fahcocktah bottle is a palace suite? What the hell's the date, junior?"
"June twenty-fourth, Friday."
He shook his head. "And the year, putz? What year is it? I ran out of places to put scratch marks in that bottle a long time ago."
"2011."
He turned and looked back for the wave that had thrown his floating home ashore, "Who won the war?"
I stared at the genie's turban and noticed the grape-colored stain on the back. "Which one?" I asked.
With a spin that sent sparkle and sand in all directions, he whirled to face me. "What do you mean, which one? How many do you have a week now?" He smacked his forehead. "Putz, the war between England and France those schmucks were fighting when I got back in the bottle."
"When did England and France? Do you mean the Hundred Years War?" There was a reason they made you take world history again in Law School. "That was over five hundred years ago. You've been in the bottle for..."
"Five hundred and sixty years, give or take a decade. So, schmeckelah, who won?"
I scratched my head and looked to the clouds for the answer. "I'm not sure. Usually the French surrender. But France is still there and no one's invaded England for quite some time so I guess you'd have to call that one a draw."
The genie knelt in the sand and tasted the incoming tide, "Salt. Where is this place?"
I sat back down in the crusty beach chair I occupied daily to watch the sunset and stretched my legs. "This is the west coast of Florida, Clearwater Beach."
"Florida? What the hell is Florida?" He put up a hand. "No, stop, don't tell me! I went through this with that Viking lunatic and his flat earth two thousand years ago and I've still got a headache from the shouting." He tasted the water again and spat it out at my feet. "What's the floating black stuff? This tastes like dried goat's piss." He scooped a lump of sand caked with tar and tossed it into my lap.
"Hey!" I shoved the mass off my bathing suit with the back of my hand. "The black crap is oil, probably from a rig in the gulf."
"Oil?" He sniffed it again, "Doesn't look like it mixes well with the ocean."
"Gulf." I corrected.
He pointed out toward the waves. "That's not an ocean?"
"No, it's the Gulf of Mexico. But you probably don't want to know about Mexico either."
He shook his head. "Not today, bubbalah."

His gaze traveled across the water toward the horizon where the sun inched down out of the sky. "Time's running out," he announced. "You've got two wishes to make and they've got to be spoken out loud before sundown."
"Wait a minute, only two wishes? I thought it was always three."
The genie shrugged his shoulders. "You want three, I'll give you three, but that's it. Don't push your luck, sonny boy. But if you don't make all your wishes known by sundown you're gonna find out what's inside the genie's bottle first hand."
"Whoa there Tonto, who made those rules?"
"Oy, schmeckelah don't you read the scrolls? It's been like that since your family swung from trees." He tugged on the white rope belt that held his billowing trousers at his waist. For a moment, I thought he was going to drop them to the sand and relieve himself in the water. "If you don't use the wishes, you set me free and you must take my place in the bottle until some other putz uncorks the jar and lets you out again."
I watched as the sun, somehow in league with this crazy old man, seemed to pick up speed and rush closer to the thin line where the royal blue water met the darkening sky. None of the movies I ever watched had anyone but the genie going back into the bottle. Who was this floating nut case?

Although poverty lived only a mile from my doorstep, I had been able to stay on the better side of the tracks. Despite the loss of my official lawyer's credentials (even the judge thought she looked twenty-three) there were still plenty of friends and neighbors who were willing to pay cash for expert legal advice. Of course, the four-bedroom house had gone to the bank and sports car to the repo man. The girl took the bulk of my savings after the judgment and moved several time zones west of here. I'm not starving, but at least one meal a day comes in a paper sack from a drive-up window. Even with what I'd thought eighteen months ago was a temporary state of affairs, if you ask me how I'm doing, I'll always answer, "Great!"
Nonetheless, the taste of money, once it had been on my lips, always called me back. "Three wishes?" I sneered. "Okay, first I want to be filthy rich."
He smiled at me, "A honey-coated pig stuck in a muddy bog is filthy rich. That's what you want to be, putz?"
"No, I want a billion dollars. Is that clear enough?"
"You like purple? I redecorated the bottle with a bunch of purple fabric from one of the Khan Brothers." He touched the back of his turban. "Color hides wine stains quite well. Very supple and smooth as a camel's ear on chapped skin even after a thousand years. You'll get used to the blue glow from the glass after the first hundred." He drifted several feet higher and peered down at me as he waved his gnarled hands in the air, "You think I know from dollars? How much gold coin do you want, pea brain?"
I kicked myself up and out of the beach chair, "What the hell kind of genie are you? I'm wishing for stuff and you're arguing with me."
"Listen kiddo, I started doing this genie routine before your ancestors figured out how to walk without dragging their knuckles." He spun around once in midair. "I've been in and out of that bottle almost a dozen times and I'm ready to turn it over to someone else and go live in a nice beachfront shack in Phoenicia."
"You're going to have some trouble finding it."
"The beach?" he asked.
I dusted the sand off my legs. "No, the country."
The genie floated back to the ground. "Let me worry about that, junior. Have you figured out your first wish yet?"
"Gold coin, eh? Okay, I want my weight in gold coins."
The genie poked his finger into my chest, "Schtummela! Do I look like a butcher? How many shekels do you weigh?"
"What's a god damn...never mind. How many do you weigh?"
"Putz, I'm a genie." He laughed, "I float on the air currents and can squeeze into a tiny glass bottle. I weigh nothing."

The sun, having no need to wait for my answers, had dropped through the last of the low hanging clouds in the distance. A fan of orange sprayed out from it, eastward toward the beach where we stood. I looked up and down the shoreline, hoping for a court-appointed linguist to pop out from behind a sand dune and translate this grumpy old goat herder's rants into English. However, the beach had been deserted for over an hour before this glass bottle full of lunacy washed up at my feet. I was going to have to prosecute this case on my own.
With time on his side, I pulled a number from midair and tossed it in his face, "Ten thousand shekels of gold. That's what I want."
The ancient genie looked at me and scratched his forehead. He asked the same question the teenaged girl had, sitting naked on the edge of my bed, "You've never done this before?"
I plopped down in my seat and kicked the sand into a footstool. "No, this is my first experience with a madman. What's the problem now?"
"How many birthdays have you had?"
I threw up my hands. "I'm thirty-six, what's the difference?"
"You don't blow out the candles?"
"Of course and I...make a wish. Ah ha, okay I get it. I wish for ten thousand shekels of gold coins to appear at my feet."
The genie sighed and waved his arms in a flourish, "Mazel Tov!"

There was a grinding noise as though someone had tried to vacuum a pile of finishing nails into a Hoover. The sand between us split open and gold coins popped out of the widening slit at a pace to rival a bag of popcorn in the microwave. The pile grew and tumbled down on itself as it spread across the beach and clinked toward the surf. Coins erupted from the top of the pile with the violence of a pissed off volcano. Two of them bounced off my head. I ran backward several paces and waited for the boiling mountain of gold to calm and finally cease.
"Ten thousand shekels of gold." The genie unwrapped a fold of his turban and used it to wipe the sweat from his forehead. "Something lightweight for the next wish, if you don't mind."
I grabbed one of the coins and bit into it as I'd seen someone do once in a black and white gangster movie. My teeth left a small impression in the surface and loosened the crown over my last molar. The pile of money lay over enough of the beach to hide a family of six - beach towels, beer coolers, and babies included. It was all mine, but it wasn't going to fit in my wallet.
"How am I going to get this off the beach?" I asked him.
"You're going to have to wish for a cart and a team of oxen if you want to save these coins from the high tide."
"Or I could wish them to be magically transported to my garage." I smiled back at him. "But that's not a wish just yet."
He shook his head. "Pity that it's not, because you would have wasted one, sonny. I can't do long distance. If you want your treasure off the beach, you're going to have to wish for it locally."
The genie pointed to a patch of open sand and wiggled his index finger. The grains and shells pulled into a pile that slowly transformed into a reclining lounge chair next to my webbed throne. The racket from his hips and knees as he lowered himself into the seat was enough to frighten a flock of curious seagulls from atop the glittering peak, but not before several of the birds had relieved themselves on my fortune.
"I wish for the most beautiful woman in the world to appear and fall eternally in love with me!" I belted out to the old man in a show of bravado.
"You know that's two wishes, kiddo. Are you sure you want them both - the princess and the love potion? He closed his eyes and sighed. "And do you want me to pick the woman for you? Remember, tastes have changed somewhat in five and half centuries."
I thought about the most beautiful movie stars I had ever seen naked on the silver screen, and tried to decide which one would best compliment my newly created wealth. There were several who came to mind, but most looked better twenty years ago than they did today. It was hard to shake the old stills from my memory. He was right; it was not the best idea to put the dice in his hands. Regardless, there was no guarantee the one I selected today would still be vintage thirty years from now.
"Well, I do want the beautiful woman, but now that I think about it, I'm not sure I want her forever. What happens when she grows old?"
He furrowed his brow. "You'll have grown old as well."
"Bingo, I don't want to ever grow old." I slapped my thigh. "I want to live forever."
"It's out of my hands, young man. There's only one way to live forever and it involves a three-liter blue glass jug and more patience than you've got, putz." He cracked a small shell and cleaned several centuries of dirt from under the fingernails on his right hand.
"Okay, forget the woman. With this kind of money, I can have gorgeous girls ringing my doorbell more often than the bill collectors."
The genie slipped off his gold-tasseled sandals and pushed the sand around with his leathery feet. He pointed at the shimmering coins, "Six slaves with burlap sacks, two strong donkeys, or just a simple sled - take your pick, make your wish, the sun is about to drink from the sea."
"Okay, I wish for my gold to be loaded onto an ox cart sufficient to hold ten thousand shekels of gold coins hitched to an ox strong enough to pull it."
The tide pulled back beyond the first sandbar and a gleaming white ox cart with wheels over six feet high, rose out of the surf. From behind us, marched an ox with full yoke and lead. The ox trod out across the damp sand and backed carefully into the rails. Once he was correctly positioned, the genie pointed with his toe and the ropes latched themselves to the yoke, as they wrapped around and tied tightly to the pegs.
"Help me up, schmeckelah unless you can speak 'Ox'," the genie commanded.
I leaned toward the ancient traveler and grabbed his outstretched hands to lift and tug him to his bare feet. He cracked the bones in his neck, left, right, forward, and back, and held his cupped hands in front of him as if he were waiting for a ladle of lukewarm water to be poured from heaven. The ox hauled the cart off the sandbar and up onto the beach, bringing it to a halt alongside my treasure.
"I would get out of the way, young man. If this load slips out of my control, if I lose concentration, if you make me fart, then this thing could land on your head instead of the cart."
I took his advice and moved several paces up the beach to safety. He jiggled his ass and lifted his hands slowly over his head. As his hands passed in front of his eyes, the entire mountain of ancient coins rose with them as though they had been welded together. His legs buckled with the immense weight, but with a forward thrust of his hips, he pulled himself up straight and locked his knees in place. The pile of glittering change was now hovering level with the top edge of the cart. The ox turned its head, looked at the mass, and groaned. As the genie began to shuffle across the beach toward it, moving with the patience of a turtle crossing a highway, the money floated forward, one agonizing step after another. He let the load float smoothly into the bed of the cart as he lowered his arms to his sides. The wheels sank halfway into the soft sand. The ox sat on its rump and bellowed.

In the distance, the sun was only minutes away from disappearing for the night. I still had one wish left in my hand to play. He looked at me and cocked his head to one side, "Nu? What's wish number three gonna be?"
I actually gave the words 'world peace' a spin in the back of my head, but knew it was beyond the scope of this senior citizen's powers. "I wish for...hey wait a minute!" I pointed at the one-ox engine. "Is that beast going to be able to pull the cart off the beach?"
The former inhabitant of the blue bottle looked at the ox and shook his head, "No, I don't think so. You're going to need a solid road out of here."
I kicked his sandy footstool in anger, "You might have told me that earlier, pops!"
"Schmuck, you think I'm supposed to lead you through this with a ring in your nose? They're your wishes. I can only make them come true." He nodded toward the horizon as the final rays of the setting sun were extinguishing themselves one by one. "Well? In or out, putz. Your hourglass is about to drop the last grains."
"An ox, a cart, a road, and my weight in gold coins or to live forever in your bottle?" It took me only a heartbeat to yield to the money. "I wish for a solid road from under the cart to the highway behind me."
The genie sighed and waved at the sand under the cart. The wheels came up from below their grainy pits and the sand was solidified into a cobblestone pathway ending at the curb of the county road. He turned and smiled at me, his voice tinged with resignation, "I didn't think you were that smart." His feet began to vaporize into a cloud of green smoke that swirled into the waiting bottle. The movie was running in reverse. Next, his legs became transparent and he called out to me, "Do me a favor, my friend." His waist was now rolling inward, only the upper half of his arms could gesture. "Don't toss the bottle back in the water. When you're done with the ox, ask him to take it to Phoenicia."
With that, his face feathered into the mist and disappeared into his glass sanctuary. The last thing down the neck of the bottle was the purple-stained loop of his turban before the cork slammed home.