⊙ RANGE This creature can be found or, with patience, acquired, wherever less-than-fine wines are sold. It sometimes can actually be ordered by name in unfashionable liquor stores. Like the worm in the mescal bottle or the bison grass in Polish vodkas or the snake in certain French spirits, Djinn Rummies are more often talked of than actually sighted by Americans. Tramps and hobos are said to be most familiar with their whereabouts.

◐ HABITS The Djinn (pronounced “gin”) Rummy has a great and famous power. It can take away three wishes from whoever is lucky enough to find it. The wish for a job, clean clothes, and a place to sleep are the three most commonly removed wishes. The Djinn Rummy can be most entertaining to those who come to know it well and can make them laugh at things other people can’t hear or see and thus don’t think are funny. In payment for its services, this most sartorially splendid of fairy folk exacts a price: in exchange for gifts conferred, it demands every vestige of human dignity.

★ HISTORY The Djinn Rummy originated in the Middle East, where merchants longed to export their herbal opiates to the lucrative European market. But the French were happy with their wine, the Germans with their beer, the English with their mead, etc. An Arab wizard, Akbar the Unspeakable, conjured the Djinn Rummy and infused the demon (and a very rum demon he is) into a butt of sack with which Richard Coeur de Lion was returning from his crusade. This single act of supernatural treachery accounts for the hangovers which we suffer to this day and for the increasing number of dope-sucking morons to be found everywhere in the non-Arab world, SPOTTER’S

TIPS One of the easiest of fairy folk to spot in private, the Djinn Rummy can be found at the bottom of one’s third bottle of domestic off-brand port. It is usually preceded by a circuslike procession, often featuring stately elephants of unusual colors and giant spiders. It is most commonly sighted in depressed urban surroundings. Djinn Rummy of Kentucky might be aristocratic—Bourbon Blood, y’know!