Wishes

Order

For the next couple days, the strange visit slowly eased its way out of Jason's consciousness. He returned to his routine. Cereal. TV or Work. Lunch. TV or Work. Dinner. TV. Sleep. Repeat. Then, on January 26th, a Tuesday, the phone rang at 6:23, after he had gotten back from work and was just easing into a re-run of Seinfeld with some dim sum takeout.

"Hello?"

"Jason. Hi. It's me." The voice sounded strained and rushed.

Jason knew immediately who its was, but he still asked, just to make sure. "Look. Whoever you are, you can't just say 'it's me.' That's arrogant and I still don't know who you are."

A sigh. "Still the same old Jason. It's me. Teresa."

Jason sat down and sank into the sofa. "Teresa? How are you?"

"Listen, Jason. I just want you to know I'm sorry. I already spoke with them."

"You're sorry? I-Wow. That's great, but who are you talking about?"

"The lawyers. I'm so sorry for everything, Jason. You're a good guy. You don't deserve it. The alimony and now this..." The voice trailed off into soft static. Jason waited for a few moments, and then Teresa clicked off.

"Teresa?" Jason gripped the phone tightly, as if trying to squeeze a response from the toneless piece of plastic. Nothing.

He wiped the sweat from his brow, shrugged, and turned back on the TV.

Then, as his consciousness faded away into the laugh tracks and flat charcters, he remembered with a smug smile that in this weird, truncated way, his first wish had come true. 

 _____________________________________________________________________________

The next day, as Jason got home from work, he noticed a strange piece of mail among the normal ad trash. It was from Caliber Insurance, the workplace his dad had loved more than Jason.

With a feeling of strange expectance of what was inside, Jason opened it up and held in his hands a check for $100,000 from the company.

"What the fuck...." He shook the paper a few times to see if it would disappear. Or explode. Or do anything but simply stare back at him with six figures and leave him with a slowly engulfing realization of what had just happened.

Still, Jason set the check on the counter and turned on the TV to catch that new True Detective episode. The check could be fake, he told himself. The call could very well also be a coincidence. It was still probably some social experiment to see what people would ask for and how they would react. Heck, there were probably cameras in the apartment already, he thought. Teresa still knew where he lived. Probably some cruel prank on her part for one of those stupid Big Brother-spinoffs.

Still, a small part of Jason was starting to wonder...But the true test would be getting Jason a face to face meeting with his dad.

 _____________________________________________________________________________

The next day, Jason got a call at work.

"Hello?"

"Jason Krun?"

"That's me."

"My name is Officer James Wilson with the LAPD. I have some bad news..." And Jason was told how his father had perished in a car accident on Sepulveda a few days ago. How it had taken some time to find Jason because of their estrangement.

"Who hit him?" Jason asked, oddly disconnected and devoid of any interest or emotion other than a morbid curiosity in this latent state of shock.

"Err. A woman named Teresa Krun. I understand that's your ex-wife, Mr. Krun.,,"

Then the devastation hit. The terrible, crystal clear recognition of what had happened. Teresa had hit his father and called. The check was life savings from his piece-of-shit father. All that was left was...

"Mr. Krun? I know this is hard, but we do need identification from next-of-kin..."

And so that afternoon Jason finally got his face to face meeting with his father.