by Mindy Klasky
“The mayor’s—” He looked from her to me. I couldn’t meet his gaze, though. Couldn’t think past everything Dani had just told me.
Thankfully, Dani rushed on, filling the conversational void. “Becca tells me that you’ve been on TV! How was the show? The Cupboard Channel, was it?”
“Pantry,” he corrected. “It was fine.”
“What happened? What did you do?”
“I ate popcorn.”
Ryan looked like he wasn’t going to say more, like he was going to press me to pick up our earlier conversation, but Dani asked, “You ate popcorn?”
“Yeah. The way nature never intended it to be. Deli Dill Caramel. Vermont Maple Cheddar. Breakfast in a Bag. That last one is plain with powdered egg and bacon flakes.”
My stomach turned over, but Dani was the one who said, “Those sound disgusting.”
“Let’s just say I didn’t bring any home for you.” He offered his mother a faint grin before casting another opaque look at me. “But I didn’t realize both of you would be here. What were you talking about?”
“The Grays,” Dani said brightly.
At the same time, I said, “The Mercer.” I watched Ryan’s expression turn quizzical. I stammered out, “The Grays and the Mercer. Both. Dani will tell you. I—I have to go. I have to—” I didn’t have an excuse. I didn’t have an explanation. I just wanted to get out of there. I wanted time to think. I caught myself short and repeated, “I have to go.”
Fortunately for me, Dani’s phone chose that moment to ring again, and I ducked out before Ryan could press for a clarification. Certainly before he could decide to walk me across the hallway. Before we needed to face the rest of the fight, er, discussion that we’d started back in the theater.
Safe in my apartment, I sank onto my couch, consciously pushing aside the memory of sharing its cushions with Ryan.
Teel. Teel was a safe topic. I’d think about Teel instead. About what an incredible job my genie had done granting my third wish.
I had to give him credit. When he worked a miracle, he really worked a miracle. Dani’s guerilla activities had not only become legal, they’d become the talk of the town. I’d have to send Pop-pop information about the Grays. Maybe he could start a San Diego chapter on his own. He’d be good at that. He’d enjoy the camaraderie. The subversive activity.
There. That was about all I had to say about the Grays. All that I could force myself to think about my genie.
That left me with Ryan. With a man who’d never thought to mention the transforming event of his entire adult life. Who’d never thought to mention the woman he’d almost married.
I rubbed my thumb and forefinger together and wondered if Teel could straighten out my love life as easily as he’d straightened out Dani’s life of so-called crime. And then I wondered if I’d want my genie to get involved. Was Ryan worth my fourth and final wish? Was Ryan worth all the time and energy and emotion that I’d poured into him already?
I was terrified that the answer was yes. But even more terrified that it might be no. And by the time the sun rose, I was no closer to finding an answer.
In fact, five days later, I still didn’t have any idea what I should do.
Jenn stormed into my office, ignoring the fact that my door had been closed. “I assume you’re getting all the e-mails I’m forwarding, and you’ve just decided to ignore me?”
I glanced from my assistant to my computer. “I turned off e-mail about an hour ago. I couldn’t keep up with the flow.”
“That man is driving me crazy. Completely, utterly, one hundred percent insane. He makes my cockatiels look like Mensa candidates.” She shoved a pile of books off my guest chair and collapsed onto the furniture as if she could no longer breathe.
I didn’t have to ask who she meant. Three days earlier, I’d officially designated Jenn to be Speaker to Popcorn—she was in charge of corralling Ronald J. Barton. I wasn’t totally heartless—I’d warned her not to give out her home telephone number, or her cell phone, or her personal e-mail address. Unfortunately, though, Jenn had thought it would be faster to IM the Popcorn King with one quick question about the wording for ads in the program. He’d been stalking her online for the past seventy-two hours.
Stalking her online, and by the conventional office phone. And I’d heard his ridiculous ring tone at least three times over the weekend, as he roamed the Mercer’s hallways looking for anyone who would give him the time of day. Ronald J. Barton might be New York City’s busiest food entrepreneur, but he clearly had too much time on his hands. If Jenn had to field one more phone call, I was afraid she would quit. I sighed. “Okay. What is it now?”
“He’s created new flavors. To launch when the play opens.” She actually sounded like she was going to cry. I forced myself to set aside the program notes I was reviewing—one last pass before they went off to the printer, before any existing errors were enshrined forever on slick glossy paper.
“What are they?” I asked with a sort of fascinated dread.
Wordlessly, she handed me a sheet of paper, the printout of an e-mail that probably lurked unread in the bowels of my own computer. I skimmed it with a growing sense of horror and then I gaped at her. “He can’t.”
“He’s going to. He’s shipping some over tomorrow, along with newer, bigger orange and yellow signs announcing the names. He wants the cast photographed in front of them. To advertise in every store in Manhattan.”
“The cast can’t promote this stuff. They’d quit if we asked them to.”
“He said that you agreed—”
I remembered sitting in his office, listening to Ryan bargain with the master himself. The cast would sit for one day of publicity photos. I’d thought that with only a week and a half before previews began, we were out of the danger zone on that promise. I’d figured that Ronald had forgotten his original demands. I was an idiot.
“We agreed that the cast would pose for publicity shots,” I explained to Jenn. “But I can’t ask the cast to eat those flavors. Well, the last one, sure, they can eat it, but if I even read them his description, they’ll walk out in protest.”
“What are you going to do?”
What was I going to do? I thought for a second. For the past five days, I’d holed up in my office. I’d told Hal that I was too busy to sit in on rehearsals. I was researching and writing my program notes, perfecting the flyers that we were going to insert in the programs, the ones that told the audience about charities where they could help women like Fanta.
I’d argued that Jenn needed the experience sitting in on the actual rehearsals. That was it. I was mentoring. I wasn’t shirking my own responsibilities. I wasn’t doing my best to avoid the man who had been my boyfriend, who had been my lover, who had been the playwright I was assisting as he brought his dreams to life.
No, I couldn’t possibly be doing all that.
It was just coincidence that I’d seen Ryan for a total of fifteen minutes in the past five days.
But even I couldn’t justify staying locked up in my little office, now that I saw the horror that Ronald J. Barton, Popcorn King, intended to perpetrate on our production. “Don’t worry,” I said to Jenn. “I’ll take care of it.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
She followed me through the hallways, absolutely silent as I clutched the printed e-mail in my fist. We ducked into the back of the theater, taking care to close the door behind us silently. I immediately recognized the scene from the middle of the first act—Fanta was sweeping the dirt floor of her hut as she calculated how many francs she had to last the rest of the week.
The set was nearly finished. Dull red earth had been carted in by the barrowful. Fine dust had sifted over every surface, despite Kira’s best efforts to control the environment. I knew that she was wetting down the dirt every morning and every evening, but I’d heard the actors complaining about how the grit got into their hair, settled at the back of their throats.
A
s if to emphasize that complaint, Fanta started coughing in the middle of a line. It was a dry cough, a racking one, almost as painful for me to hear as it must have been for her to produce. “Dammit,” she said, when she finally managed to clear whatever dust had settled deep in her lungs. At least she maintained her perfect Burkinabe accent. “Where were we? Line?”
Kira called out from the front of the house, “If the wee ones share—”
“If the wee ones share their morning portion, then I can buy a bite or two of goat tomorrow. I’m not hungry today. No need for me to eat.” Fanta glanced overhead at the supposed sun, realized that she was late heading to the market. She rushed to place her broom inside her home. As she spun upstage, ready to dart into the wings, her crocheted shawl caught on something, and the sound of ripping fabric was drowned out by her curse.
The actress dropped out of character immediately. “Hal, I can’t get the broom back there if I’m going to exit before the children come on.” She froze as the costume designer hurried onstage, shaking his head in frustration over the damaged shawl.
With Jenn still clinging to me like a barnacle, I strode down the aisle. As long as the rehearsal was interrupted, I might as well deliver my news. “Hal?” I said, approaching his seat on the aisle.
He held up a commanding hand, and I stopped, fidgeting with impatience. I hadn’t realized Ryan was speaking to him, hadn’t even seen Ryan crouching beside him. Now, though, I heard the heated words: “Hal, we can’t change the scene. Her entire life would be sweeping the floor. That’s what she does. That’s why she has nothing else to turn to, nowhere else to go. She’s just got to practice the blocking—it shouldn’t be this difficult.”
Now, I understood his argument. With the background that Dani had given me, I knew why Ryan cared so much about the staging, why it was so much more important to him than it had been to any other playwright I’d ever met.
Hal tried to sound conciliatory. “But we really haven’t given her much to work with. You’ve already insisted that the children come on from both sides of the stage. I understand the symbolism in that approach, really I do. But Fanta has to have room to exit. She has to have room to move.”
“She just needs to move faster,” Ryan said stubbornly.
Annoyed, Hal slammed his notebook shut. “She can’t. Ryan, this just isn’t worth fighting over. She can walk upstage and exit there, without ever getting involved with the children.”
“You don’t understand! You can’t change it now!” Ryan was stubborn.
“Kira!” Hal hollered. “Five minutes!”
“Five-minute break, everyone. Back to your places in five minutes.” Kira’s voice was a masterpiece of calm. She jumped onto the stage to calm the costume designer, then ran her fingers over the offending nail that had caused the damage in the first place.
I stepped forward before Hal and Ryan could come to fisticuffs over the blocking. “I’ve got to talk to both of you. Now.”
“What is it?” Hal snapped. Jenn flinched beside me, but I clutched at her arm, keeping her close. For moral support. Or, er, to further her training.
“The Popcorn King,” I said. Both men sighed with equal disgust. “Now, Jenn has been dealing with him, and she’s managed to rein in a lot of his ideas. But we’re in trouble now.”
“What is it this time?” Hal asked. He was used to dealing with demanding sponsors. He was used to applying carefully chosen compliments, to soothing moneyed brows. He would understand the delicate diplomacy we needed to finesse this most recent disaster.
“Sample popcorn,” I said earnestly.
“And why do I give a good goddamn about sample popcorn?” Okay. So Hal wasn’t used to all the challenging issues that came up with Mercer sponsors.
“Weeks ago, Ryan and I agreed that the Popcorn King could provide free samples of popcorn to all of our patrons, before the show and during intermission.”
Hal shrugged. “So what? It’s free. If they hate it, um, when they hate it, they don’t have to eat it. That’s his problem, not ours. Come on, Becca. We’ve got bigger fish to fry here. Which you’d know, if you’d set foot inside the theater for the past week.”
Ouch. It was five days, not a full week. But I didn’t think Hal would appreciate the contradiction.
In any case, Ryan seemed to understand that more was at stake than a few free snacks. His eyes reflected the stage lights dramatically as he asked, “What are the flavors?”
“Caramel Curry Karma.”
“Curry?” Hal asked.
I glanced at Jenn, indicated that she should reply. She nodded with professional vigor and explained, “He insists there are African curries. He says it’s a novel combination that’s perfect for our show.”
Ryan sighed. “I ate curry there. It’s not native to the region, but with enough money you can get it.”
“What else?” Hal asked.
“Cheddar Kola Chew,” I announced.
Hal exclaimed, “Cola? Chew? Who chews cola?”
A glance from me, and Jenn hurried to clarify. “It’s not cola, like you’re thinking, like the soda. It’s kola, with a k. Like the nut.”
“Kola nut?” Hal asked, still perplexed.
Ryan shook his head. “They chew it in West Africa. It’s bitter, and it eases hunger pangs. I can’t imagine that it would be any good with cheddar popcorn, but it’s more authentic than the curry.”
Hal shrugged and said to me, “Fine. We can live with it. Is that all?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t want to name the last flavor. It was a bad joke, like someone trying to do a stand-up comedy routine the day after a horrendous natural disaster. I looked at Jenn, but she shook her head, obviously tossing the proverbial ball back into my court. I gritted my teeth and blurted out, “He wants to serve plain popcorn. No salt. No sugar. No flavor. And he wants to call it Plain Starvation.”
“What?” Ryan and Hal bellowed together.
The cast had been standing around onstage, ready to resume their rehearsal. At the combined shout of anger and disgust, though, everyone turned to stare at us. They were actors, after all. They knew when good drama was staring them in the face.
“What sort of egomaniac takes the starvation of hundreds, of thousands of women and turns it into some sort of promotional opportunity?” Ryan was furious, angrier than I’d ever seen him.
“Jenn tried talking to him, but he absolutely refuses to give in.”
“Jenn!” Ryan responded. “Why is Jenn dealing with that idiot? Isn’t that your job?”
My voice froze. “I beg your pardon?”
“Well, you’ve been too busy to come to rehearsal! I just assumed that you were off doing important ‘dramaturg’ things.” I could almost see the air quotes that he put around my title. “I should have realized you were making your assistant do your dirty work.”
“Don’t you dare tell me how to do my job!”
The cast moved toward us like a pack of hyenas closing in around a pair of dueling wildebeests. Hal cleared his throat pointedly, his icy eyes flashing a warning to me, to both of us, demanding that we calm down. He said, “Ryan wasn’t—”
“Don’t try to defend him, Hal. We’ve bent over backwards to make this play what he wants it to be. We kept his impossible blocking. We reworked the sets. We brought in costume consultants from the African Art Museum. We dragged in language and accent coaches. We’ve done everything we possibly could to make this show real. To make it true. Ryan should know by now that we’re on his side. He should understand that. We. Know. How. To. Do. Our. Jobs.”
Ryan’s fingers folded into fists. He refused to look at me, refused to acknowledge my rage. Instead, he turned to my assistant. “I’m sorry, Jenn,” he said, in a voice so low that, against my will, I stepped closer to hear. “I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t capable of dealing with Ronald. I only meant to say that you shouldn’t be required to work with that maniac.”
Jenn? Why was he apologizing to Jenn? I was
the one he had insulted!
Anger erupted inside me, flinging a white-hot curtain across my eyes. I knew that there were words—scores of them, hundreds of them—words that I could use to express myself with perfect eloquence and precision. But I didn’t want any of them. I didn’t want to modulate my voice. I didn’t want to be demure and ladylike and polite.
I wanted to blast Ryan out of the room.
“Don’t talk to Jenn!” I shrieked. “Talk to me! Explain to me!” The cast was close now; I could sense some of them standing directly behind me. The tide of my fury was too high, though, to cut short my tirade. The force of my rage ripped through me, releasing the tension of the past month, cutting away the tightrope I’d balanced on for weeks as I tried to be the perfect dramaturg and the perfect girlfriend. “Ryan, you owe me that much! You owe me more! Tell me about the computer program you wrote! Tell me about Pam! Tell me about how Africa gave you back your life! You owe me—”
And everything disappeared.
Suddenly, I was no place. Nowhere. There wasn’t a roof above me. There weren’t orderly rows of red velvet chairs around me. There wasn’t a group of people, dozens of cast members, pressing in against my back.
There was just an endless sea of gray.
Gray. And Teel, dressed in her Anana costume, holding on to her old woman form.
“What did you do?” I asked, and my voice sounded very, very small.
“I figured I’d better get you out of there, before you said anything else you were going to regret. I thought it might be helpful if the two of you finished your conversation on neutral ground.”
“Two—” Before I could finish the question, though, Teel jutted her chin toward my shoulder, sweeping her wrinkled hands before her in a grand gesture of welcoming. My breath froze in my throat, and I barely managed to turn around.
Ryan was staring at me, his own jaw slack with disbelief. “You have a genie, too?” he asked.
