Young and Forgetful Be Careful What You Wish For chapter 5 by witeja9199

Gareth does not think. He has never needed to. The world has always arranged itself around him like iron filings around a very smug magnet. He flings one of Brenda's immaculate hands at the woman by the lift and says, in a voice that stops the air conditioning:

"Make her forget! Everything she's just seen! That's the wish, I wish it, do it!"

"Is that the wish?" says Mazzaroth.

"I just said it was!"

"Only I do like to confirm. People get so cross afterwards, and then there are letters." The genie turns and looks Brenda over like a locksmith eyeing a safe. "Madam, would you mind telling me when you last forgot something?"

Brenda, who has not moved, tightens her grip on the folder. "I beg your pardon?"

"Anything. A birthday. An umbrella."

"I don't forget things."

"No," says Mazzaroth sadly. "That was my fear. Not one dropped stitch in..." he consults the air, "twenty-two years. It's like trying to dent a bank vault with a blancmange."

"So don't dent it," says Gareth. "Just do it."

"Forgetting requires a person capable of forgetting, sir, and this one isn't. I'm afraid I must go to source."

"Which source?" asks Kirsten, who has learned to ask.

"The last Brenda who could."

Pop.

It is nothing like Gareth's transformation, which was a sort of violent tailoring. This one is a tide going out. Twenty-two years leave Brenda's face one at a time, like guests slipping away from a party. The steel bob loosens into a ponytail and a scrunchie. The coat, which has made grown men apologise, slides off one shoulder. The folder shrinks to a lanyard. When the glow clears, a woman of thirty-two or so stands there in saucer-sized glasses, clutching a visitor badge as though it might protect her.

"Oh gosh. I'm so sorry. Is this Grimshaw and Thripp? They said fourteen, but the lift went past, and I think I'm either very early or terribly late..."

"Hello," says Kirsten gently.

"Hi! Sorry! Hi." She turns, sees Gareth, and stops dead. Her eyes travel up the pinstripes, the cheekbones, the bob you could slice ham with. Her mouth makes a small round O. "Is that me?"

"Don't be ridiculous," says Gareth, and the sentence lands like a dropped anvil.

"Sorry! You're right, sorry." The young Brenda begins alphabetising the nearest desk tray at speed. "It's just, do I really get that hair?"

Something crosses Gareth's borrowed face that might, in the right light, be mistaken for conscience. The light is poor and it leaves quickly. He shifts his weight and discovers that Brenda's hips have opinions about it.

"She's got the instincts of an Associate Analyst," murmurs Mazzaroth. "It's terribly poignant."

"It worked, didn't it? She's wiped." Gareth squares his shoulders, which are now a different shape. "Two wishes gone, one left. That's loads. That's practically a pension."

In the corner, the photocopier clatters up to speed. A single sheet slides out, smeared and urgent. Mazzaroth reads it aloud, and his indigo takes on the grey of a man who has remembered a clause.

"'Ask her about the fourteenth of March.'"

"What happens on the fourteenth of March?" says Kirsten.

"I was not going to mention it. There's a clause."

"What kind of clause?"

"The kind with a footnote," says the genie miserably.

"Oi," says Gareth. He doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't need to. It fills the room like cold water filling a basement. "Kirsten."

"Yes?"

"I've had a long evening. I'm cancelling your review."

"Oh! Thank you, that's..."

"Because you're fired. Take your cardigan. Go home. Don't come back."

Kirsten opens her mouth to say something clever. The clever thing sits on her tongue and dies, a small frightened animal. Her feet, meanwhile, have set off down the corridor without consulting her. She is doing exactly what Brenda's voice makes people do, which is leave quietly and feel bad about it.

"Wait," she tells her legs. "Wait."

"It's structural," says Mazzaroth, with real distress. "I'm so sorry. It's load-bearing. And I'm bound to whoever holds the lamp, so if I help you, I'm in breach."

"Then say it in a way that isn't help!"

"I'm a genie, not a lawyer. I mean, I'm also a lawyer, but not tonight."

Her thumb finds the lift button. Behind her, Gareth clears his throat, and the tone is a man about to compose his third wish, which is the most frightening sound Kirsten has ever heard. The lift doors open. Beyond them is a mirrored box, and in the mirror she watches a young Brenda slowly raise a hand to say excuse me.