BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR

A tale for Christmas.

Chapter One

Evening in New York.

Fog crept through the city streets, drawn from the river like a famished creature seeking warm souls to devour. Its progress was relentless and its hunger was insatiable. All things were swallowed up by its shapeless, rolling form. Sound was muffled; light was extinguished. Those people lucky enough to be indoors on such a night fled upwards if they could and peered through high windows with a sense of morbid fascination as their city disappeared beneath them.

Old Abe was not so lucky. Huddled in his ancient coat, he sat on a low step and dreamed of golden palaces, gleaming in the sunlight. Lazy fountains, lacquered wood and minarets. A different time and place. The visions were fleeting, like the figures that came and went through the mist, but they warmed him all the same.

Just not enough.

The word was 'pinched', he thought, rousing from his thoughts only to feel a vague sense of curiosity at the numbness which was claiming him. 'Pinched' and 'squeezed' until there was nothing vital left at all. A silent enemy, this fog. It slipped through your defences, freezing you slowly from the outside in with a touch so keen that you never felt it enter. A sly blade wielded by a stone-cold assassin. His dreams were blissful but his cheeks were tight with pain and his feet slept uneasily in their worn-out shoes. He could not feel his toes.

Death was coming. Finally. And this was the way his world would end, it seemed. "'Not with a bang but a whimper'*," he murmured, watching the phrase leave his lips in a white cloud that slowly mingled with the mist around him. Lost words; fading away. Just like him.

A door creaked. "Excuse me...?" said a faltering voice above him.

Move on, Abe predicted. Move on and begone with you. Always the same, in this hellish city. Move on and be someone else's problem...

"No one's problem, soon enough," he muttered grimly. Even his voice felt pinched. "Not after tonight. Leave me be."

"Oh - no! That's not what I... Look." The man stepped closer, his bright red sneakers trudging down the steps until they reached Old Abe.

Peering up through the curling mist, Abe's dark gaze met a pair of blue eyes, narrowed with concern. A Do-Gooder, then. Troublesome, or so he had always found in his experience.

"Leave me be, young man," he repeated. "I'm dying here. It's long overdue, believe me, so you've no cause to interfere."

"Wrong," the man said, crouching down beside him. Already, beads of mist were clinging to his scruffy chestnut curls and his skimpy beard. He shivered in his thin shirt. "You can't die here."

"Just you try and send me to a hospital!" Groaning with the effort, Abe surged to his feet... and trembled, leaning back against the post. He clenched his frozen fists in a hopeless attempt to conceal his dismay. It wouldn't do to show the man how weak he really was. "I don't need saving."

"I'm not going to save you. I'm no saint, okay? But I thought... well, I thought that maybe you were hungry? I have Chinese food," he offered brightly. "More than I can eat all by myself... You like Chinese food?"

"I have a fine regard for all things oriental." Abe's tone was lofty. At the same time, his empty stomach gurgled. The young man grinned; a strangely reassuring sight.

"Guess that settles it, then." He held out his hand and the smile broadened. "You can get back to your 'other business' later. Or, you know - maybe not..."

"I told you," Old Abe warned him. "It's my time."

"Whatever you say." The remark was flippant, but the young man's face was stubborn. Before Old Abe knew quite how it had happened, there was a firm hand at his elbow and a friendly arm to take his weight, if he chose to trust it. Which, oddly, he did.

Abe's manners, long forgotten, rose through the fog in his mind. "A thousand blessings on you for your kindness," he said, by rote. It took some effort but he felt a sense of pride that he had thought of it.

"Which means 'thank you', I guess. And you're welcome," the young man said. "I'm Adam, by the way. Adam Ross. You're Old Abe, right? I mean..." Looking flustered, he shook his head. "I'm sorry; that's just what they call you round here. I don't know your real name."

"My 'real' name is mine to keep and always shall be." Abe stretched and cracked his back, drawing himself up to be as tall as he could manage. "'Old Abe' is who I am now, for my sins. But you may call me Abraham, if you wish. Abraham... Nazar." For one dreadful moment, he had quite forgotten. The past was truly slipping away. It would not be long before the present followed after it. And as for the future... I want none of that, thought Abraham Nazar as the man named Adam led him through the doorway into the dim shadow and the impossible warmth of his apartment building.

-x0x-

"Make yourself at home," Adam said, aware as he did so of just how small the apartment really was. Every time he moved, the world seemed to shrink around him these days - until here he was at last in a one-roomed cave with a pull-out couch for a bed and a burly tattooed neighbour who had a penchant for Whitesnake and Iron Maiden at three in the morning. So much for upward mobility. His wage may be steady enough but the cost of living in New York City soared higher each year, like the towers that formed its skyline. Still, all things were relative. At least he had a home. Staring discreetly at Old Abe, he tried to wrap his head around the harsh reality of life on the street. Walls could keep out the bad things (or sometimes lock them in with you) but how scary must it be to have no bolthole whatsoever? No place to hide away from prying eyes or the relentless sky above?

"Stop that," Abe said sharply, twisting his neck like a wrung-out piece of cloth in order to glare at Adam. What, did the old man have eyes in the back of his head? If so, how could they manage to see through those scraggly locks and that battered old hat? Abe's hands were stuffed in the pockets of his voluminous coat, which held the faintest glimmer of an old embroidered glory. Beneath the velvet weight, his thin frame reacted with shuddering violence to the bone-deep transition from cold to comfort. Adam felt ashamed.

"I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to stare. Well, no - I guess I did, but that doesn't make it right. It's just... I wondered..."

"Wondering's bad for you. Take it from me." Old Abe shrugged his acceptance of Adam's apology. Hunching over, he wrapped his arms around his chest and rode the tremors until, at long last, they subsided, melting away through the coarse rug and leaving him breathless.

"Coffee?" Adam was starting to feel quite nervous by now. What on earth had he let himself in for? Curiosity and kindness had turned out to be a potent combination, driving him outside before he even knew what he was doing. Now here he was with a total stranger standing in the middle of his apartment. The man could be insane. He could be a murderer. He could be...

A lonely human being with nowhere to go on the worst and longest night of the year.

Adam stepped towards his little kitchenette. "Black and strong," Abe called after him. "None of your mimsy-pimsy cappuccinos."

And there, at last, was something that they had in common. "No chance," Adam said with relish. "I like my dose of caffeine strong enough to stand a spoon in."

They smiled at each other - a moment of time that was silent and shy. When Adam broke away to fill the coffee maker, Old Abe began to wander slowly around the apartment, studying the shelves and the pictures on the walls. Adam could have asked him to 'stop that' - made a petty point - but he chose not to. Take me as I am, he thought. I've got nothing to hide.

The old man passed by his record collection - Adam's pride and joy - without a second glance, but paused by the bookshelf and started to finger the neatly-ranged volumes. Adam bit back an urge to stop him. Grime was irrelevant. Books were for sharing.

"Science," Old Abe murmured, stroking the back of a textbook. "And fantasy." He dragged its heavy neighbour from the shelf and started to flick through the pages, stopping to study each brightly-coloured plate. Fairy tales and legends. Adam knew them all by heart. They had been his escape and he loved them. "A curious mixture, Adam Ross."

"That's me," he sighed. "In a nutshell, really."

The coffee was brewing by now, its strong smell pervading the room and masking the heady odour that rose from Old Abe - the scent of a thousand and one filthy nights on the street.

Abe set the book back in its proper place with care and turned to his host. "You said something about food?" he murmured, clutching the shelf in a move that was meant to be unseen.

"Of course!" Adam hurried over and steered the old man to his little round table, helping him into a seat. Abe dropped with a sigh of relief that was dragged from his throat like the breath of a dying man. "You're sick," Adam said, his own throat tight with compassion.

"I'm old," Abe replied, with utter dignity.

"How old?" The question was in the air between them before Adam had any chance to stop it. "Sorry," he muttered, contrite and horrified by his own lack of manners. His guest, however, was unperturbed.

"If my life were an hourglass, I would have turned it countless times already, catching the last grains of sand before they fell." Abe shook his head. "Tonight, it seems, I do not have the strength to turn it even one more time. Or the will. The grains are falling. Soon they will be done."

"You shouldn't talk like that," Adam said softly. "It sounds like you're giving up. Things always have a way of getting better."

"A young man's view. And you're right - they did. But I squandered my chances. Made the worst of all possible choices. And so here I am, as you see me."

The man talked in riddles. Adam's head was beginning to spin.

"Kung Pao chicken," he blurted out randomly.

"Delightful." Old Abe nodded. Watching the wrinkles ease in his face as he let his guard down further, Adam saw that he must have been a fiercely handsome man, once upon a time.

-x0x-

The young man possessed a quiet kind of magic, it seemed. The more he talked about simple things and smiled that charming smile of his, the more he put Old Abe at his ease. A trick that wiser men had never mastered, Abe thought, as he settled back into his chair with a full belly and a sense of bewildered satisfaction. For one thing, it required empathy, something that this Adam clearly understood.

The web of warmth and comfort spun around him and before he even knew what was happening, he had agreed to stay overnight. "I'm not letting you go back out there," Adam insisted with dogged determination. "The fog's worse than ever and I'm sure it's below freezing. Argue with me all you like, but you know I'm right, okay, Abraham - and that means you're never going to win." He grinned as he spoke, but all the jesting in the world couldn't hide his stubborn intent.

"On the floor," Abe capitulated.

"No," Adam said. "That's where I'll be. You can take the bed. I mean the couch. I mean... oh, you get the picture."

"I do," Abe said solemnly. "Thank you." To turn his back upon the young man's gesture now would be an injustice that he could not bring himself to perpetrate.

Besides, it was so deliciously warm in here...

Midnight passed. Adam left a single lamp burning and pulled a cosy bundle from the cupboard, followed by a pillow and a sleeping bag. The couch transformed with creaking ease into its alter ego. He set down the roly-poly pile of bedding and turned to go. "I'll be over there if you need anything," he offered, pointing in the direction of his tiny dining area.

Abe clasped his palms together and offered the young man a slight bow. There were no words strong enough to express his gratitude. He sighed, as Adam walked away, to think of all the friends in his long life that had been pushed aside by his own greed and independence. "Foolish, Abraham," he whispered. This lesson, at least, had been learned far too late.

Or had it?

For a long while, he perched on the side of the bed, his dark eyes staring at the dim light, unseeing. Through his mind there ran, not many thoughts, but one; so strong that he could not deny it, no matter how hard he tried. "Is it fair?" he muttered to himself, at one point, speaking his concern aloud. "Will it do more harm than good? I would not wish him ill..."

His hand slid deep into the lining of his coat, which lay beside him. Pulling out a tiny silver box, he stroked the surface, as he had done many times before, throughout the long years. The carving on the lid was almost worn away; the mounted jewel lost and the edges battered - but the seal remained strong.

It's a question of character, he realised. And that, in the end, was the thought that drove his decision. It felt good, this 'giving up' of the thing that he held most dear, and Abe let out a deep sigh of satisfaction such as he had never breathed before.

The room was warm but, running through his veins, he began to feel a new kind of chill; the magic of life receding. Here at the end, time was precious. He rose to his feet and shuffled across to Adam's desk. Tearing an empty page from a notepad, he wrote upon it with a shaky hand; one line only. Then he folded it twice. Box and page were laid beside the sleeping man, who did not stir but only gave a gentle snore and rolled over, twitching and lost in his dreams.

Abe returned to bed.

Lying down upon his back, he placed his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling with an unexpected sense of peace. Time's up. The numbness continued to spread, not painful this time but pleasant. Old Abe waited for the last breath to leave his body as the first light of dawn broke through the lingering fog. Meanwhile, Adam slept on.

-x0x-

A/N: This story will be updated roughly once a week until the holidays, when things should speed up!

* Abe's quote comes from The Hollow Men by T.S. Eliot.