When Good Wishes Go Bad

by Mindy Klasky

  I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to guys apologizing to me. I wasn’t used to the sudden rush of pleasure that his words brought, wasn’t used to the realization that he was reaching out to me. “I was wrong, too,” I finally said, amazed at how easily the words came once I started. “I mean, it’s not my fault that the Popcorn King is a jerk, but I shouldn’t have gotten as upset as I did. I think I was mostly embarrassed. I’d been avoiding you, and it was hard to come in there, with that news, with yet another disaster.”

  “And you were avoiding me because of Pam?”

  I tried to put my thoughts into words. “Not exactly. I mean, I know you dated other women before me. But I was upset that you’d never mentioned her to me, that you’d barely even mentioned the software. When Dani told me, I understood why the blocking was so important to you, and I just wished that you had told me yourself. I could have helped. I mean, helped you and the show.”

  “I can see that now.”

  Wow. This was how adults talked through their problems. This was how two grown-ups explained their misunderstandings to each other.

  All of a sudden, I thought back to that night in Dani’s apartment, the night that Ryan had shown me how to plant cabbage seeds. I’d realized then that he was an excellent teacher, that I could learn from him. And here was another lesson he was handing over to me, wrapped up, with the proverbial bow on top.

  I caught myself grinning awkwardly. Like he used to do. Like he used to do, when he was gangly and uncomfortable, when he’d first appeared in my office, and I’d nearly dismissed him as some sort of mis-socialized geek.

  I was glad I’d taken the time to get to know him better.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. Before I could respond to his apology, before I could formulate any sort of suave, adult reply, he closed the distance between us. His fingers were warm against my cheek as he leaned in for a kiss, but his lips were soft, tentative.

  That sweet uncertainty awakened the beast that had been frozen in my belly. Heat uncurled inside me, reaching out tendrils to steal my breath, to make my pulse pound hard. He must have felt my response, must have recognized it for what it was. His hand slid to the back of my head, and his fingers twined in my hair. His kiss became more urgent, more demanding.

  My own hands made themselves busy, clutching at his back, pulling him closer. I tugged at his shirt, ready to free it from its waistband.

  And that’s when I heard the cough.

  A polite little “ahem,” delivered against a wrinkled palm. A prim reprimand, like the chastisement of a grandmother. A deferential reminder that someone disapproved of my behavior.

  Teel.

  Ryan froze at the same time I did. When he stepped back, he slid his hands down to my elbows. The motion effectively kept him between my genie and me, giving me a much-needed moment to catch my breath, to collect my composure. There was nothing I could do about the tingle in my lips, though. Bracing myself, I stepped to the side and confronted my judgmental genie’s ebony gaze.

  “If you two are quite through, we can go back to rehearsal.” Teel-as-Anana’s disapproval shattered against the gray nothingness. “You seem to have finished your discussion, and you obviously don’t need to look at the Garden.”

  Ryan glanced at me. “You can actually see it?”

  Great. Even if I’d wanted to continue lying to Teel, wanted to spin out some elaborate story to cover my earlier confusion over the gate’s location, I couldn’t do that now. Not with Ryan asking me a question, point-blank.

  “Not exactly,” I said. Teel harrumphed, and the cap of her silver hair trembled like a high-strung horse’s mane. I swallowed hard and forced myself to explain. “But I pretended that I could. Before. When it was just Teel and me.”

  Teel’s old-lady voice was raspy. “I thought that you were a Perceptive. One of the very few humans who can truly see the Garden. One who can understand.”

  I twisted my hands in front of me, honestly miserable. “The first time you brought me here, I thought that I was the strange one. The way you went on and on about how wonderful it was, I thought that everyone else had to be able to see it. I didn’t want to disappoint you. I didn’t want you to give up on me, to take away my wishes because I was defective, or something.”

  “But I believed you! I shared my secrets with you!” Her words trembled, and an actual tear carved a valley down her cheek.

  “Teel! Don’t cry!” I rushed over to her, folded her hands between mine. It was hard to believe that this was my genie, this pitiable old woman whom I’d inadvertently hurt….

  She was also the Con Ed line worker. She was the debonair man in a tuxedo. She was the painter and the bombshell who had ruined my hopes of soliciting money from the International Women’s Union, and she was the clown and the lawyer. I couldn’t picture any of those personas crying. I couldn’t imagine any of them caring enough, any of them being influenced at all by who I was, by what I said, by what I did.

  And yet they were all one and the same. They were all, at their core, the same creature. The same magical being who had been there for me each time I thought my life couldn’t get any worse.

  Sure, Teel could be annoying. She purposely got a few wish details wrong, just to spice up her magical life. She sparked each week of her life with more drama than most humans would pack into a lifetime.

  But she didn’t deserve being lied to.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, applying the lesson I’d just learned from Ryan. “I shouldn’t have lied. I thought that I’d be making things better for you, not worse.”

  The old woman sniffled before she pulled her hands away from mine. She tilted her head to one side, squinting her eyes as if she were measuring the actual dimensions of my apology. I hung my head, trying to convey the full extent of my remorse.

  “There is one thing that would make me feel better,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Make your fourth wish, now.” She struck like a cobra.

  “Teel!” When I looked closer, her eyes were completely dry; her tears had faded as soon as she revealed her true purpose.

  She shrugged. “It was worth a try.” She cocked her head, taking in Ryan. “So, are you two ready to go back?”

  I thought about the argument we’d had back at the Mercer, the frantic escalation of our emotions. I didn’t want to yell anymore. I didn’t want to fight. “Do we have to?”

  “It’s that, or stay here forever,” she said.

  Ryan stepped up beside me. “We’ll go back.” I heard the fervent desire in his voice. He must really dislike the Garden space, as much as Kira did.

  “But what about everyone else? They’re going to realize something’s wrong, if Ryan and I aren’t screaming like magpies.”

  Teel rolled her eyes. “You were the one doing the screaming. He kept his voice down the entire time.”

  “Great. Thanks for reminding me.”

  Gallantly, Ryan got us off the subject. “Seriously, though. What are we going to do? We can’t explain to anyone what’s happened. Your magic would just knock us silent, won’t it?”

  “Silence won’t be a problem,” Teel said. “I promise.”

  Before we could ask for an explanation, she raised her mahogany fingers to her ear. The wrinkles across her knuckles were deep, mesmerizing, and I almost forgot to grab a breath before we translated through the gray nothingness.

  I stumbled just a little as I came back to the Mercer. Ryan shot out a hand to steady me, leaving his fingers on my forearm. I glanced at him, hoping that he had an idea, that he could figure out something on the spot to explain to everyone why we weren’t fighting anymore.

  And then I heard the sound of popping corn, and I knew why no explanation would be necessary.

  “Pop off!” exclaimed Ronald as he rolled through the theater door.

  Hal still held the printout of Jenn’s e-mail in his hand. The cast still thrummed with outrage about Plain Starvation. And everyone was waiting for me to t
ake the lead, for me to respond to the rampaging Popcorn King.

  I swallowed hard and stepped forward. I waited until Ronald slapped his cell phone shut, and then I said his name by way of greeting, keeping my voice perfectly level.

  “I got tired of talking to your assistant! Sweet girl! But can’t make a decision to save her life!”

  I heard Jenn splutter behind me. I said, “I have absolute faith in Jenn’s ability to make up her mind, Ronald.”

  “No! Not her! I gave her a simple list of product names! But she couldn’t approve them!”

  “I think you misunderstood.” I tried to paint a coat of sympathy over my words, but I didn’t waste a lot of time getting the sound exactly right. For someone as tone deaf as Ronald, nuance wasn’t worth the extra effort. “Jenn didn’t say she couldn’t approve them. She said she wouldn’t approve them.”

  Ronald stopped dead in his tracks. “What?” His roar must have been audible back in his own office.

  In another place, in another time, I would have found a way to be conciliatory. I would have woven the necessary lies. I would have placated. I would have soothed. I would have applied every last trick in my bag of dramaturgical training.

  But not now. Not when I had just learned how dangerous silence could be.

  My goal as dramaturg wasn’t to make every single person in the Mercer love every other person. It wasn’t to smooth over conflict solely for the purpose of smothering negative feelings. My goal was to make the best play possible.

  And Ronald J. Barton, Popcorn King, wasn’t part of that vision.

  I could feel Ryan behind me, his support as solid as the painted metal roof on Fanta’s hut. The cast murmured beyond him. Some of the actors had never before laid eyes on Ronald J. Barton. They hadn’t had the opportunity to view his fashion sense firsthand. They hadn’t had the pleasure of listening to his foghorn bellow.

  Hal knew what we were up against, though. I glanced at him, made sure that he was on board. He gave me the tiniest of nods, the slightest visual sign of his approval.

  Taking another step forward, knowing that I had to stand alone, I raised my chin. I spoke clearly, precisely, never raising my voice but using every last shred of my theatrical experience to make sure that Ronald could hear each syllable of my reply. “Ronald, we will not use your flavors. They, and their names, are insensitive and insulting. We will not devalue our audience or this production, just to help you sell more popcorn.”

  Ronald’s eyes bulged. His face flushed crimson, contrasting violently with his lemon-yellow sweater. His hands curled into fists so tight that I feared for the structural integrity of his cell phone. “We have a contract!”

  I exploited his shout, lowering my own voice for greater contrast. “I am well aware of that.”

  “You’ll never see a penny of my third check!”

  “We don’t expect to.”

  “I’ll sue!”

  “And I’ll accept service of your complaint, right here.”

  Hal stepped forward. “Or I will.”

  Ryan wasn’t about to be outdone. “Or I.”

  We stood there, like the Three Musketeers. Out of the corners of my eyes, I could see the cast gather closer. A few actually wore their Popcorn King T-shirts, and the fluorescent colors almost threatened to steal my attention from the apoplectic man before me. Almost.

  “I—!” he shouted. “You—! They—! We are through here! You’ll never see another penny from me! And I intend to see you repay every single cent I’ve given you so far!”

  Ronald J. Barton, the Popcorn King, turned on his tangerine-clad heel. He slammed the theater doors behind him and, by the sound of things, crashed through the lobby doors, as well.

  Shaking, I turned to look at Hal. His lips were stretched thin, his jaw practically wired shut. I only realized then how much he had longed to speak out, to interrupt Ronald’s tirade, to berate the Popcorn King himself. He spared me a single nod, a tight, incontrovertible gesture of approval.

  When I looked at Ryan, he was smiling. He raised his hands in front of him. He clapped once. Twice. And then the entire company joined in, filling the Mercer with the sound of applause.

  I barely resisted the urge to take a bow.

  CHAPTER 16

  NO ONE WOULD HAVE CLAPPED IF THEY’D REALIZED how much work it would be to cut loose the tentacles that the Popcorn King had wrapped around our production. Sets, costumes, programs, lobby—just about every aspect of the Mercer had been co-opted by our unholy alliance with Ronald J. Barton.

  The first thing Hal ordered was for the set to be repainted. It took four coats of gray to block out the fluorescent glow of yellow on the corrugated roof of Fanta’s hut, but everyone agreed that the change was for the better. Even if we needed to adjust the lighting levels to account for the darker color, nudging everything up a notch or two. Even if the shift in lighting made it more obvious when the actors missed their precise marks for those tightly choreographed scenes in the second act. Even if the brighter lighting required a change in makeup design, so that everyone’s wrinkles and fatigue appeared more realistic.

  It was worth it, just to be free from the all-smothering logo of the Popcorn King.

  Similarly, it was worth the effort to rework costumes for the players who had been slated to wear orange and yellow souvenir T-shirts. Of course, Ronald’s fluorescent dyes had never faded as we’d hoped; his hideous advertisements had remained brilliant despite our best efforts to camouflage them into submission. Now, we threw out the promotional garbage, but we stuck with the same general concept in our costume redesign—the characters lived in rags, in donations from benefactors they’d never met. The new costumes were more subdued, defeated, grim, like the living conditions we showed throughout the play.

  Everyone was grateful that we no longer risked migraines from staring at the mix of never-appropriate, brightly colored American ultimate-symbol-of-consumerism shirts.

  Cleansing Ronald’s influence from our brochures and programs posed a bit more of a problem. We’d already laid out the written materials to include the Popcorn King’s two bargained-for ads. We were up against a tight deadline as it was, getting everything to the printer on time. I spent one entire sleepless night updating the programs, scrubbing every last reference to our supposed benefactor.

  I was yawning the next day, but it was worth it to have everything correct.

  We had a substantially easier time jettisoning the massive advertisements that Ronald had created for our lobby. Everyone breathed a little more freely when we were no longer assaulted by raging yellow and orange billboards every time we walked into the theater.

  The transition wasn’t one hundred percent painless. The house manager had to scramble to rebuild our traditional lobby display for the actors’ headshots. She had to remove the performers’ staid black-and-white photographs from the riotous, circuslike foam-board frames that Ronald had provided. She restored them to the traditional, boring, easy-to-view white background that had served well enough for every other production the Mercer had ever hosted.

  The dim burgundy and navy lobby might be boring, but it was familiar. It was home.

  Kira even saved the day when it came to the refreshments we intended to serve before the show and during intermission. Weeks earlier, she had placed a triple order for soft drinks, recognizing that our patrons would likely consume more than usual—a lot more—as they attempted to wash down the Popcorn King’s heinous flavor combinations. Kira remembered the unusual order early enough to cancel it with a simple phone call to our supplier, reverting to our usual purchasing. At the same time, she arranged for candy bars, mints, oversize cookies—the usual snacks that our audiences expected.

  Those treats might be boring, but at least we wouldn’t have to worry about patrons getting sick on cruel and unusual flavors.

  The last phase of de-popcorn-ification was the trickiest. We needed to review our accounting books to determine precisely how much of Ronald’s money we h
ad already spent, and how much we could return to him. We combed through columns of assets and liabilities, through checkbooks and credit-card statements, investing more attention to fiscal detail than Dean had likely spent during his entire tenure at the Mercer.

  One calculation was simple: the Popcorn King’s entire third payment, the $50,000 we hadn’t yet received, was earmarked for advertising and promotion. With a few minor penalties, we canceled all of our radio spots, withdrew the splashy print ads that we had hoped would catapult the Mercer into the top tier of New York theaters.

  Even so, our financial numbers were grim enough that I lost another few nights of sleep. A lot of Ronald’s money had been used for the theater’s day-to-day expenses. The Popcorn King had paid salaries for cast and crew. He had kept the heat and lights on. He’d covered the accent coach who had finally brought Fanta in line, after so many weeks of inappropriate Jamaican sojourns. Ronald’s funds had been invested in costumes, in the set, in the fine, dry earth that drifted over the entire theater, despite Kira’s best efforts to contain it.

  Nevertheless, we juggled the numbers as best we could. Hal called an emergency board meeting, tapping into the directors’ pockets for donations that each was likely to make at some point during the year. He met with our banker. He convinced the cast and crew to take a ten percent cut in pay for the rest of the rehearsal period, for the entire run of the show. He called in the directors for the remaining three plays in the Mercer’s season, bargaining with them until they donated some of their shows’ funding to ours.

  Ultimately, we wrote a check to Ronald for $75,000. We owed the man another twenty-five, but we were temporarily out of fundraising ideas.

  With three days to go before preview performances, we’d exorcised the Popcorn King as best we could. Everyone in the company was happier. Jenn still thanked me morning, noon, and night for sparing her from Ronald’s constant phone calls and e-mails. The Mercer’s flirtation with orange and yellow was safely in the past, a nightmare that rapidly lost its hold as each of us came fully awake.