Out on the front porch swing, watching the cars go by and sipping a Coke in the afternoon heat, Kozy thought about finding a boyfriend for her mother.

It seemed to Kozy that her mother spent a lot of time reading and just puttering around, and not nearly enough time having fun. Kozy thought a boyfriend would help.

The next door neighbor, Rodney, had just come home, and she considered his car, which now sat in his driveway next door gleaming like hard candy. A dark green Jaguar, not the sporty kind, but a nice steady car, a married man's car. She knew Rodney wasn't married anymore because he taught piano to Marsha down the street, and he had told her so. Kozy liked Rodney and decided he might do, but he would need a nudge. Up until now, he didn't seem to notice her mother except to say hello once in a while.

Rodney washed his car every Sunday unless it rained or was about to rain. He seemed to enjoy washing it. He played the radio, old stuff like her mother enjoyed. Her mother would often walk around the house singing along with the music, or she would find the same radio station on their own stereo and turn it up a bit. This gave Kozy the idea that she could get them together. They liked the same things, which she considered a good start.

She decided to nudge them together with an enchantment, one that would help them become friends. Kozy knew with absolute surety that she would have to devise her own enchantment. Recipes devised by other people would not work for her. She'd figured that out last year after her tenth birthday party when no one brought her any chocolate. Either the people on the web who provided sample instructions for making charms and potions didn't know the enchantments were unique to the person using them, or they were just making stuff up to sell books.

She knew she needed some yellow M&Ms to influence friendship. Cat hairballs and dried oak leaves weren't right. Yellow was the color of friendship for Kozy. She also needed a bit of Head & Shoulders because this charm of affection was for her mother who smelled of Head & Shoulders when they ate their morning cereal at the kitchen table.

The M&Ms and the Head & Shoulders would be easy. The hard part would be finding something that fit Rodney. He didn't really smell like anything she could identify. She could use the old standby, a lock of hair, which she could probably cut off somehow, but to her, his hair had no emotional substance. The ingredient for her mixture had to be his, but it also had to express his nature in a way that felt right to her, since she would invoke the enchantment.

The next time she saw Rodney washing his car, she put on her flip-flops and went outside. She offered to help. "Well," he said, "if it is OK with your mother, then I'd be glad for the help." He smiled. A fatherly smile, Kozy thought, and she went inside to ask.

"Why would you want to do that?" her mother said. "Wash our car if you're so enthusiastic. Don't bother Mr. Finch."

"But I want to be neighborly," which was something her mother was always saying; that they were doing something to be neighborly. "I asked him if I could help, and he said I could if you said it was OK."

"Oh, I see, now if I say no, he'll think I'm mean or something. Clever girl aren't you?" She smiled to take away the sting of her words. She didn't really think Kozy was a conniving girl, though of course she was.

Kozy took an almost empty Coke can with her and went back outside. She went over to Rodney's driveway. "Mom said it was OK," she said.

He handed her a soft, wet cloth from the bucket. "Since you're still short, would you wash down low?"

She washed the bottom of the passenger side doors, then sipped the last of her Coke. When she thought he wasn't looking, she squeezed some dirty water from the rag into the Coke can.

"Hey," he said, "you got some dirty water in your coke." Then he grabbed the can and poured it out onto the grass. After he'd thrown it into the recycle bin, he added, "I'll get you another. I have some in the house."

"That's OK," Kozy said. "It was almost gone anyway."

She washed the tires while she tried to think of another way to get some soapy water. She turned to rinse her rag in the bucket, but Rodney had moved it, and she stepped right in. When she pulled her foot out, her flip-flop stayed stuck in the bottom. Rodney apologized for moving the bucket when she wasn't looking, but her spongy flip-flop had absorbed plenty of suds. She set her flip-flops aside. This would be perfect for mixing her balm.

Later, she squeezed the contents of her flip-flop into a ceramic bowl she'd made in school and put the bowl in her closet. By the next day it had evaporated into dust and soap scum. She crushed the candy coating from yellow M&Ms and mixed the powder into the dust and added just a touch of Head & Shoulders. This made a sticky olive-colored paste.

Now she had to administer the paste to both of them, and they would become friends. The love potion would be harder. She would have to figure out how to get them to drink a love potion, but she'd worry about that later, after the friendship balm worked its magic. Maybe she wouldn't even need to help it along. Maybe love would happen all on its own.

The next Sunday, she dipped a dab of her friendship balm onto her finger and went down to breakfast. When she hugged her mother good morning, she dabbed it onto her mother's elbow and gave it a quick rub which made it disappear into her mother's skin.

When Rodney came out to wash his car, she dipped her finger again and went outside to help. When he handed her the rag to wash the low parts of the car, she mushed her finger into his hand as she took the rag.

It was hot and dry outside, but the water made it cooler. The radio was playing a happy, energetic song. Rodney sang along at times.

She looked at him while she was washing the car. He smiled at her, and she liked him more already. He would be perfect for her mother, she thought.

It was when she went to dip her rag back in that she turned and fell over the soap bucket and struck her shin hard against the car's bumper. She let out a yelp which her mother heard over the sound of the radio. Her mother came running out into the yard. Rodney was still holding the hose, which squirted her mother when he bent to ask Kozy if she was OK.

Kozy had always thought of her mother as a serious person, definitely not the type person to react kindly to being squirted with a hose, so she tried not to laugh. Rodney dropped the hose.

Kozy said she was all right, although actually her shin still hurt terribly.

"I'm very sorry about your shirt, Mrs. Dalton," Rodney said. "I was worried about Kozy and, well, I wasn't watching." Her mother calmly walked over to the hose and picked it up. It had one of those nozzles that you turn to change the spray pattern.

Kozy's mother, stiff-kneed, legs apart, held the hose nozzle pointed at Rodney with both hands. His eyes widened, then he slowly backed around the front of the car. He held up his hands like he surrendered. Rodney ducked behind the car. She reached forward deliberately and twisted the nozzle to set the spray pattern, then stepped around the side of the car and let him have it.

"Yes, Mr. Finch," her mother said with a mischievous smile, "I can see how the hose might squirt someone by accident."

Rodney was completely drenched now. "Perhaps you'd better give the hose to me. It's kind of dangerous," he said with mock sincerity, as though he wanted to save her life. He stood away from the car, acting like the battle was over, but his gaze darted from her mother to the bucket of suds and water lying between them. He reached for it, and she doused him again.

"Yes, it is dangerous isn't it?" she said, still pointing the hose at him. Kozy noticed a dimple high on her mother's left cheek which Kozy hadn't seen in a long time. It only showed when her mother was very happy and having lots of fun.

Kozy's friendship balm had worked. When she jumped up and laughed with delight, they both looked at her. Her mother turned the hose on her, and Rodney just missed her with the bucket of suds.

The End

Clifford Royal Johns has had stories published in various small press magazines, including recent issues of Shimmer, Farthing and Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine. He lives outside Chicago with his wife and a few dogs.

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