When Good Wishes Go Bad

by Mindy Klasky

  I reached a shaky hand toward my office telephone. 9–1-1. I could place the call, even in my compromised state. An ambulance could be here in minutes. They’d take me to the hospital; they’d make sure that I got whatever care I needed. They’d protect me until my obviously overtaxed brain could stabilize.

  Which hospital was closest to the theater? I glanced at my bulletin board, at a neat printed sheet that I’d received during my very first rehearsal for my very first Mercer play. Kira had typed up the list of hospitals, along with a summary of local drugstores, bodegas, and late-serving restaurants. She took her stage manager duties seriously. As seriously as she’d taken our conversation, just a few minutes before. When she had given me the lantern.

  She’d known exactly what it was. She’d known what would happen. That was why she had looked so strange after handing over the blue pillowcase. That was why she had told me that she was fine, and that I would be, too.

  “Kira knows about all this, doesn’t she?”

  “Kira Franklin?” Teel narrowed her eyes, as if she were searching through a gigantic filing cabinet in her mind. I nodded. “Kira doesn’t know about the Decadium. It never came up while she and I were working together. We finished our business relationship before I left for MAGIC.”

  “No,” I said, frustrated that I hadn’t made myself clear. “She knew about you. About genies in general.”

  “Well, I should certainly think so. Didn’t she say anything about what we accomplished the last time I was out and about in this godforsaken place?”

  “Godforsaken place?” I was surprised at the scorn in the genie’s voice. “What do you have against New York?”

  “Well, shine my lamp! She finally left that frozen pit!”

  Minneapolis. Where Kira had landed her dream job. Where she had met John McRae. And, apparently, where she had met Teel. Met our genie.

  “Um, Kira moved here about three years ago.”

  “Three! Well, it took her long enough, then, to pass along the lantern.” Teel clicked her tongue. “Seven out of ten wishers pass on their lamp within one month. Remember that.”

  “Um, I will.” What? Was I going to be quizzed on these statistics? Or was I just supposed to feel a little pressure, an obligation to conform to everyone else who’d been granted magic wishes?

  Like Kira, apparently. Maybe I wasn’t crazy after all.

  I picked up the contract again, seriously considering signing on the proverbial dotted line, even though I couldn’t begin to comprehend the document. Beggars couldn’t afford to be choosers.

  Of course, Dean would have handled all this differently. He would have taken all day and all night to mark up the pages, scribbling minute notes in the margin with his fine-point red Bic, asking endless questions. Well, I wasn’t Dean. In fact, screw Dean.

  I waved the pages at the genie. “What’s in here? What are my obligations to you?”

  For an instant, she got a crafty look in her eye. She turned her head to one side, arching one expressive eyebrow. I could feel her measuring me, trying to decide if I would buy whatever answer she made up. “You have to make all of your wishes within a twenty-four-hour period?” she said.

  That sounded like a question, though. Not an answer. “How many wishers do that?”

  Teel frowned. I suspected that she was accustomed to using statistics to her own advantage. “Some?”

  Another question. I wasn’t willing to push for actual numbers, though. Instead, I asked, “Did Kira make all of her wishes in a single day?”

  Teel pouted, and I could see with perfect clarity the petulant teenager that the blond woman once had been. “No,” she admitted. I could almost imagine her digging the toe of her pumps into my office floor before she flounced out of the room mid-temper-tantrum. “She took a lot longer than that.”

  “So, what was Kira’s deal? She signed the contract, got her three wishes, and then you waltzed off to your conference?”

  “Four,” Teel said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Four wishes.”

  That didn’t make much sense. “Every book I’ve ever read says genies grant three wishes. Isn’t that in all the fairy tales?”

  Teel seemed a bit put out. “It’s a good thing life isn’t a fairy tale, then, isn’t it? You get four wishes, okay? I’m bound to you until I’ve granted all four.”

  I actually felt a little sorry for her. It had to be a drag, waiting around to grant that one extra wish to every single person who rubbed the lamp. I suspected that the delay could really screw up her completion statistics.

  But four wishes? All mine? Who was I to insist that the standard was three? Gift horse, and all that.

  I turned to the last page of the agreement and signed my name, looping the letters with a little more authority than I customarily used.

  “Wonderful,” Teel said. “And initial here. And there. And at the bottom of that page, there.” What did I have to worry about, really? It was the devil who stole souls, right? Not genies. As I finished adding my last scribble and set down my pen, my attention was drawn back to Teel’s fiery tattoo. All of a sudden, the ink wasn’t quite as fascinating, now that I’d spoiled it by thinking about demons.

  “So?” she said, as if she were afraid I’d change my mind. “What’s your first wish?”

  I thought about everything that had happened that day. Kira had given me the lantern because she had known just how absolutely, completely, irredeemably miserable I was. But now I had the power to act. I had the power to change things.

  What should I wish for? Information about Dean’s whereabouts, so that I could turn him in and get back everything he owed me? Me, and the Mercer, too?

  But that was sort of petty, in the big scheme of things. Sure, my day had been a disaster. Absolutely, my personal life had fallen apart at the seams. Beyond doubt, the Mercer was in trouble. But the world had even bigger problems.

  Universal health care. Equal rights for all people. Genocide in countries I could barely name. How could I pass up solving such major problems for so many others?

  I rolled global crises around in my head for a few minutes. And then, I said, “Global warming.”

  “Excuse me?” Teel’s words sounded liked they’d been punched out of a sheet of frozen metal.

  I tried to project an air of confidence. “I’d like to solve global warming. Climate change. You know, polar bears drowning in the Arctic, drought in Australia, ecological disasters around the world.”

  Teel closed her eyes and brought her hands together in a gesture of prayer. Her tattoo pulsed as she inhaled, then exhaled. Four times, she repeated the breathing exercises. Each time that she filled her lungs, the flames on her wrist glowed a little brighter, as if she were pumping a bellows, breathing fresh life into the tattoo. On the final exhale, Teel opened her eyes and stared at me levelly.

  “Was that it?” I whispered, awed. “Global warming is solved?”

  She snorted, scattering any semblance of peace and harmony. “Of course not. You’ll know when I grant one of your wishes.”

  “But what were you doing?” I heard the wail behind my words, realized that I sounded like a spoiled child.

  “I was calming myself. We had an entire afternoon seminar on that at MAGIC. On how to handle the Grand Wishes.”

  “Grand Wishes?” I repeated.

  “Ninety-eight out of one hundred first-timers try to save the world. Make a better planet.” She drew out that last phrase into a mocking sing-song.

  I started to argue even before I wondered about those other two, the pair who didn’t have altruism running in their veins. “But you said—”

  She cut me off. “You can ask me to solve global warming. And I can grant your wish. But I’m only one genie. And the globe is a very large place. Climate change is especially tricky—I have to balance everything, from one region to another, and every adjustment I make in one place will have an effect somewhere else. You know—butterflies, flapping wings, hurricanes
, all that garbage.”

  “So you can’t do it?” I was astonished to hear the disappointment in my voice. Half an hour before, I hadn’t even known that genies were real, and now I was sulking because mine was backing off from her promises.

  “I can do it, but I wouldn’t finish up for…” she trailed off, staring at my office wall and moving her lips as she made some mental calculation. “Six hundred and forty-three years, twenty-seven days, four hours, and oh, give or take twenty minutes.”

  “Wow.” I felt like I had to say something else, so I tried, “You can be that precise?”

  “That’s one of the new requirements, in the revised contract. Page thirty-one?” She pointed a perfectly manicured nail toward the document that I’d signed. “Fulfillment delay for any wish that will take longer than twenty-four hours to grant must be disclosed in full to the wisher. Prior written notice must be provided in cases of time variance stemming from high Ethical Interference Quotient, extended Physical Impact Vector, or substantial Time Adjustment Factor. No written notice necessary here, though.” When I merely stared, stunned into submission by all the jargon, Teel dusted off her hands. “Of course, the actual contract language is a little more complex, but those are the general ideas that we covered in our breakout session at MAGIC.”

  I was beginning to gain a little more respect for the administrative nightmare that must have taken place at that conference. I sighed. Bottom line, if most wishes could be granted in less than a day, and my climate change wish would take six and half centuries, give or take…“Okay,” I said. “Forget about global warming.”

  “Thank you.” Teel nodded firmly. “Do you want to try something a little more manageable?”

  I chewed on my lip. Money. That was the root of all my problems. If I wished for enough money, I could pay back the Mercer, buy myself a condo, replace all of my possessions, and guarantee that I’d have a diet more satisfying than flash-fried noodles in oversalted broth.

  But money would get Dean off the hook.

  Sure, the cops would still track him down. They’d arrest him. He’d go to trial. But any lawyer worth his astronomical hourly rate would get Dean off if no one could prove any lasting financial impact from his misdeeds. I didn’t want to do anything to help that lying, cheating sack of…

  I cut my mental tirade short. For now, I’d use my wishes to take care of myself. Of my immediate problems.

  “Okay, then. I need a place to live.” I started to suggest a rent-controlled apartment, the Holy Grail of Manhattan tenants, but I could be a little more extravagant than that, couldn’t I? I mean, genies had to have some way of covering up their actions, right? Teel had to have some secret magic that would make everyone forget that I’d been terrified and homeless only an hour before.

  I steeled myself and elaborated: “A condo.” No negative reaction from the genie, so I must still be on track. “Two bedrooms? And an actual kitchen, not just a galley?” She still wasn’t saying anything, wasn’t shutting me down. I decided to push for even more. After all, this was one of my wishes, one of the four total. If I could have asked Teel to invest centuries managing climate change, I could certainly elaborate a little bit on my new home. Couldn’t I? “And could it have a view of the river? And a doorman? And, um, two bathrooms, do I have to specify that?”

  “I get the idea,” Teel said dryly. “You have to phrase your request in the form of a wish.”

  I felt like I was a contestant on some obscure new game show. Any moment, there would be flashing lights and blaring music, and a secret studio audience would be revealed behind a curtain. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Do I look like the type of genie who kids?”

  Not with that perfect haircut. Not with those pumps and that expertly tailored suit.

  I took a deep breath and said, “I wish that I had a condo with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a kitchen, and a view of the river, all in a doorman building.” I barely remembered to exhale as I waited to see what Teel would do.

  She nodded once, and then raised perfectly shaped fingers to her right earlobe. Flawless nail polish highlighted her pearl earring. I watched, hypnotized, as my genie’s tattooed flames caught the light. “As you wish,” she enunciated, as if she were speaking to a judge, a jury, and a courtroom full of spectators. Then, she tugged at her ear twice, hard enough that I winced in reaction.

  An electric shock jolted through my body, stronger even than the current I had felt when Teel had manifested from the lamp. My lungs were frozen between breathing and coughing; my heart bucked in my chest as if I were a patient in some lousy television medical drama. The jagged electricity hurt, and tears sprang to my eyes.

  And then all of the jangling power dissipated, flowing into the space around me as harmlessly as wine pouring from a bottle. Teel nodded, a satisfied smile turning the corners of her lips.

  “You’ve done it?” I croaked. “You granted my wish?” I looked around, half expecting to find us transported to my dream apartment.

  “Just…one…mo-ment…” Teel said, drawing out the last syllable.

  And then my phone rang. A quick glance at the built-in caller ID showed that the call came from outside the Mercer, from somewhere else in Manhattan’s 212 area code. One ring. I stared at it. Two. My fingers froze. Three. I was afraid to answer.

  With an annoyed harrumph, Teel grabbed the handset before the call could roll over to voice mail. “Rebecca Morris’s office.” All of a sudden, she was chomping on a wad of gum. The minty stuff had materialized from thin air; I certainly hadn’t seen her unwrap a stick. Her lawyer-modulated voice was gone, replaced by the nasal stereotype of bad secretaries everywhere, each phrase punctuated with a hearty Double-mint smack. “Just a moment, ma’am. I’ll see if she’s available.”

  She extended the phone to me.

  I gave her a curious glance, but she refused to say anything, to give me any more to go on. I forced myself to take the instrument, to put on my most businesslike voice. “Rebecca Morris,” I said, trying not to sound as puzzled as I felt.

  “Maureen Schultz here,” said a crisp voice. When I didn’t respond immediately, she added, “With Empire Realty? Over at the Bentley.”

  “The Bentley?” I repeated.

  “I just wanted you to know that we’re ready for you to move in at any time. Per your contract, the painting was completed last week, and the floors were refinished over the weekend. Your furniture all arrived this morning, and I had the men place it where you indicated in your sketches.”

  “My…sketches.” I swallowed hard and watched Teel’s smile grow broader.

  “I have to say, Ms. Morris, I was quite impressed with the information packet that you sent over. So many of our new owners don’t plan ahead, and we end up needing to reserve the elevators for another round of furniture removal and redelivery.”

  “Well, yes,” I said. I’d never lived in a building where elevators needed to be reserved. When Dean and I had moved into our place together, we’d just traded off pressing the call button, doing our best to keep the too-small elevator on the floor where we needed it. I shook my head. “My assistant, um, Teel, takes care of those details for me.”

  My genie beamed as Maureen made approving noises. “So can we expect you this afternoon?”

  I glanced at my shabby surroundings. I wasn’t going to get anything else done today. Not with rumors from the board meeting still metastasizing in the hallways. Besides, the cops were likely going to show up soon, to go through my every professional possession. “I’ll be there in about an hour,” I said.

  “Wonderful!” Maureen’s enthusiasm made me believe I’d just perfected her afternoon. “I’ll see you then!”

  “Oh!” I said before she could hang up, and then I improvised, “I don’t have my papers in front of me, and I need to fill out a change-of-address form here at the office. What’s the exact address?”

  Teel nodded in approval as Maureen recited a street number that placed me in prime West
Village real estate. The real estate agent laughed as she added, “Of course, your unit is 8D.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’ll see you soon.”

  After I hung up, Teel said dryly, “I took the liberty of having furniture delivered for you. I’m sure you would have thought of that, if I’d let you go on with your wish-making.”

  “The liberty…” I stared at the address that I’d scribbled down. “How does this work? I mean, how much is the mortgage on a place like this?”

  “Nothing,” Teel said.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch. You wished for a condo, and your wish was my command.”

  “I bought it outright?”

  “That’s what the paperwork will say.”

  “And taxes? Insurance?” I remembered my grandfather ranting about his real estate taxes. Even after he’d paid off his home, he’d complained bitterly that San Diego was trying to bury him with annual levies.

  “Everything’s wrapped up for as long as you own the property.” She clicked her tongue. “Honestly, all of this is in the contract that you signed. Real estate obligations are there on page seventy-four, in simple black and white.”

  I could barely process what she was saying. An hour ago, I’d been homeless. Now I owned a home that was probably worth more than my parents’ and my grandfather’s houses combined.

  Teel allowed a very lawyerly frown to crease her brow. “You should start over there. You don’t want to keep Maureen waiting.”

  I heard the dismissal in her voice. “And you?” I asked. “Aren’t you coming with me?”

  Teel’s carefully glossed lips came close to mocking me. “I already know what the condo looks like.” She shook her head and raised her fingers to her ear. This time when she tugged, I didn’t feel anything, didn’t suffer the electric shock. When she lowered her arm, she wore a stunning wool coat over her suit, a fitted garment with a belt that accented every curve of her figure. A cashmere muffler draped over her shoulders with casual élan, and a pair of fur-lined leather gloves covered her fingers, palms, and tattooed wrist. “You go ahead,” Teel said. “I’m going to spend a little time visiting some old haunts.”