She waved her hand over the top of my glass,
as if to push the genie back in the bottle.
We sat in the Sherlock Holmes Public House,
a corny little pub in central London,
not far from the Embankment.
I looked down at the two ales.
She looked up from the two ales wide eyed.
“All these years I have been married to the man I know
who is sitting before me, and he has been sober.”
There was no genie loose in London.
There was no genie loose in me.
“All these years I have chosen to be sober,
only because it was what I preferred,
not because I have a problem.
Here in London, on vacation,
it is not going to change our lives.”
But she saw a genie,
or maybe it was a leprechaun,
perched on my shoulder.
She waved her hand over my glass again
as if it would vanish
like a genie after the third wish was granted.
I smiled.
To make her happy,
I complied:
to make her smile.
The moment had passed, and the genie was back in the bottle.
As it turned out, she tells me the ales weren’t even very good.