by Mindy Klasky
Teel stared at me, a distinct frown creasing the space between his eyebrows as he evaluated me. Now that I knew I was a model, of sorts, I was increasingly uncomfortable. How could I possibly match up against the fashion goddesses of the seventies? Was he comparing me to Farrah Fawcett? Angie Dickinson? Wasn’t she from the seventies? Both women—truth be told, almost any women—were certainly more endowed than I. And definitely slimmer.
Or maybe Teel simply disapproved of the almost-invisible coffee stain on the front of my sweatshirt. “Kismet?” he snapped. “There isn’t any kismet in my being here. So, where exactly are we?” His voice seemed flatter than it had. Less flamboyant. I realized that he’d left behind his 1970s slang, apparently absorbing my contemporary language as he took on my clothes. Still, he clicked his tongue in frustration, a timeless sound meant to speed my answer along.
“At the Fox Hill Dinner Theater.” Teel’s exasperated expression indicated that he was looking for additional information. I hastily added, “In Bloomington. Just south of Minneapolis. Minnesota.”
“Well, rub my lamp and tell me another one,” Teel muttered.
“Where did you come from?” I asked. “I mean, before the lamp.”
“The Upper West Side.” He blinked, and then enunciated very clearly, as if I might be an idiot. “In Man-hat-tan. New. York.”
I grimaced. “I know New York. I’m a stage manager here at the dinner theater. I’ve taken plenty of trips to New York.”
“So, this isn’t the end of the earth. It just looks like it.” Teel glanced around.
“We’re not half bad!” I had to rise to Fox Hill’s defense. No wonder Susan had ditched Teel’s lamp. She’d probably dropped it off at her own Goodwill shop, starting its decades-long cross-country trip. Given Teel’s snotty attitude of New York superiority, it wouldn’t surprise me if Susan had had a very good reason to be angry with the guy.
“But you’re certainly not half good.” Teel looked at my dusty clothes, and he scarcely bothered to gesture at the racks of costumes around us. “Let me guess. A Chorus Line passes for cutting edge around here?”
Despite myself, I sighed. “We haven’t done it.” I remembered the fights that Anna had gotten into with the board of directors. They’d disliked the “tits and ass” song; they thought it was too suggestive. Somehow, the board managed to ignore the theater marquee next door, boasting the so-called film Jack and the Giant Stalk. I didn’t think we needed to worry about “suggestiveness” on stage if our clientele was brave enough to get through our front door. But no one had listened to me.
Teel sighed in disgust. “All right, then. Let’s get this over with. What’s your first wish?”
“My first wish?”
“Oh, come on. You’ve got to know about the genie gig, even here in the middle of nowhere. You rub the lamp, out comes the genie? You make all sorts of unreasonable demands? I’m your slave until I’ve granted all your wishes? Peace, love, and granola…”
“You’re serious.”
“Serious as the New York City blackout. The sooner I grant your wishes, the sooner I can figure out where Susan went.” His voice softened as he mused to himself, “Stupid girl. She must have thought I really was interested in Connie. She should know by now that I only do those things to freak her out.”
Three wishes. A genie was sitting in my costume shop, waiting to grant me three wishes before he left to track down his now-middle-aged main squeeze.
I closed my eyes, imagining everything that could be mine. Unimaginable wealth—I could create my own theater company! And find a better landlord than my father, in the meantime.
But filthy lucre would be a pretty selfish use of a miracle, wouldn’t it? I should go for something real, something meaningful—forging world peace, ending hunger everywhere, eliminating illness from the face of the earth.
Of course, if I eliminated illness, then people would live longer. They’d eat more, put a strain on all their local food resources. That stress would inevitably lead to battles over territory. And the battles would result in poor nutrition, compromised medical care, and…illness. We’d be right back where we started.
Just to make sure I wasn’t being too negative, I opened my eyes and squinted at my benefactor. “I suppose eliminating disease from the entire world is out, right?”
Teel sighed in exasperation. “What is it with you people? Nine out of ten people want eliminating disease as their first wish.” He shook his head. “Look, I can get you the disease thing, if you really, really want it. But it’ll take some time. I mean, I’ve only got so much power, and something that affects so many people…”
“How much time?” I asked, curious despite myself.
“A couple of centuries, give or take a decade or two.”
“I’d be long dead by then!”
“Yep.” He nodded. “You, and everyone you know. And I’d only be able to cure the things we know about now, as we get started with your wish. Diseases that come up while I’m in progress would still exist.”
Even so…Could I truly pass up the opportunity to try? But then Teel continued, “I have to warn you, though. I tend to get a bit distracted. I might forget what I’m working on, partway through. Especially after you’re gone and can’t remind me.”
“That would be cheating!”
“It’s only cheating if I drop your wish intentionally. Sometimes, my attention wanders. And something that takes centuries to complete? You’ve got to be realistic. Ten out of ten people are. Every single one forgot about the disease thing after I explained.”
I had to be realistic. With a genie standing in the middle of a dinner theater. Okay, eliminating disease was right out. “World peace?” I asked.
“Arg!” His exasperated shout made me jump. “Eight out of ten go for peace once disease is off the table! It’s the same deal. North America isn’t bad on the international peace front, and Europe would probably come in line in a decade or two. But North Vietnam? The Soviet Union? I hope you have a lot of very prolific children—it’ll take generations before they would see any positive result, even if I start work today.”
His general language might have been updated when he adopted my contemporary clothing, but someone would have to get him caught him up on world politics. I wasn’t inclined to be a history teacher, though. I was still stinging from his statistics, lumping me together with every other person who’d ever cast a wish. There’d be plenty of time to let him know the Cold War was over. First, I had to try one more wish for the betterment of mankind. “Hunger?”
“What is it with you people? Six out of ten—let’s feed the world.” He’d shrunk his voice to a mocking little pout. “At least with disease and war, there are some people who aren’t suffering right now, right at the beginning. But everyone gets hungry, given a day or two. It’d take at least five hundred years for a genie like me to wipe out hunger—and that’s assuming no population growth, a stupid assumption in light of how fat and happy everyone would become.”
Well, then. No wonder only sixty percent of us lucky wishers were stupid enough to suggest saving children from starvation. I sighed. At least I could say that I’d tried, if anyone ever asked. The big things were impossible; they were never going to work. That left more manageable projects. More realistic ones.
Zoom in on me.
I glanced around the costume shop, taking in the pitiful price tags I’d placed on our racks of clothing. Fox Hill was staggering along. It might manage to last another season, maybe even two or three, once they got rid of my pitiful salary and cut back in other desperate ways. But dinner theater was never going to be my future. It wasn’t going to support my professional career as a stage manager—it had already closed some of the more important doors in the region.
And truth be told, I didn’t want to do musical theater forever. I needed something else. Something bigger. Something more.
The problem was, I had to have some sort of job in the theater, and I needed it now. Other p
eople could float for a month or two between jobs, rely on their savings to carry them through a temporary gap.
If I didn’t have something lined up by the time Anna gave me my last paycheck, my father would finally have the opportunity he’d craved for years. He’d be able to insist that I apply to law school. That, or I could very well find myself looking for a new place to live, along with a new job.
Dad wasn’t a terrible person; he wasn’t even terribly unreasonable. He just wanted to know that his only child was financially safe and sound. So long as I was getting paid to “play” in the theater (Read: Work my fingers to the bone making productions happen), he’d stay off my back.
But if I waited until Anna gave me my last check…If I didn’t have something else lined up, something big and recognizable…Something that even my father would view as worthwhile…
I needed a gig with the Landmark Stage. I needed to work on a production at the brightest star in the Twin Cities’ theater firmament. One show, no matter what it was, no matter who the director was, and my local reputation would be set. My local reputation and—if I played my cards right—my career.
I tested the notion, tugging it in one direction, pulling it in another. It wasn’t too much to ask of a genie; it wouldn’t take years to fulfill. It would have a minimal impact on other people. The actors and crew for the show would end up better off for my involvement—I was a damned good stage manager, if I did say so myself!—and the only possible person to lose out would be the stage manager I ousted from the job. At least that person probably already had great credentials or fantastic connections; otherwise, they wouldn’t be working at the Landmark in the first place.
The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea.
“Anytime today, sister!” Teel said, breaking into my reverie.
I glared at him. Weren’t genies supposed to be submissive? Wasn’t he supposed to yield to my wish and my command? Oh, well, there was no reason to get him riled up, just before I asked him to do something for me. I took a deep breath and said, “Make me the stage manager for Landmark Stage’s next production.”
He rolled his eyes. “That’s your first wish?”
“Yes!” I heard the defensive knife beneath my words. I almost asked him how many wishers out of ten asked for the Landmark.
“You have to phrase your request in the form of a wish.”
What was this? Jeopardy?
Still, he was the genie, and I was just the lucky girl who’d found the lamp. I took a deep breath and enunciated: “I wish I were the stage manager for Landmark Stage’s next production.” Before Teel could respond, I started to think about all the things that could go wrong with what I’d said, so I hurriedly added, “Here. In Minneapolis. The new Landmark Stage. The one that just opened last season. The—”
“I’ve got it,” Teel said dryly. He raised his fingers to his earlobe, staring at me, as if he were daring me to change my mind. I bit my lip and nodded. “As you wish,” he said, and he tugged at his ear twice.
Another electric jangle shot through my body, freezing my breath inside my lungs and making me painfully aware of my heart’s stuttering beat. The tiny hairs on my arms rippled to attention and then settled down, but not before I felt the entire room surge closer with Teel’s energy.
Even as the electric shock faded away, my cell phone started to ring. I had the volume set on high, so that I could hear it above the hustle and bustle of cleaning out the costume shop. The raucous repetition of “There’s No Business Like Show Business” sounded cheap. Vulgar.
Grimacing, I dug the phone out of my pocket, flipping it open with fingers that trembled in the aftermath of Teel’s electric discharge. A local number was displayed across the screen, a strange one I’d never seen before. Teel stared at me in fascination, as if he’d never seen a cell phone. Which, I realized, he never had.
I’d explain later.
I pressed the tiny button to activate the call and put on my most professional voice. “Kira Franklin speaking,” I said.
“Kira!” A voice boomed down the line. Over the airwaves. Whatever. “Bill Pomeroy here, from Landmark Stage.”
I gaped at Teel, who had figured out enough about the device in my hand to smile smugly. “Bill,” I said, suddenly aware that I needed to respond, needed to say something, needed to keep this conversation moving forward.
“I know this is incredibly short notice,” said the Twin Cities’ darling-of-the-moment director. “I’ve just cast my production of Romeo and Juliet, but our stage manager has a family emergency. I need someone to fill in and your name is at the top of my list for possible substitutes. First rehearsal is tomorrow, and we open in three months. Any chance that I can convince you to drop whatever you’re doing and become my stage manager?”
CHAPTER 3
AFTER ACCEPTING BILL POMEROY’S INVITATION AND agreeing to attend the next day’s rehearsal, I collapsed to the floor of the Fox Hill costume room, staring at Teel in amazement. The genie merely nodded in smug satisfaction; apparently, he was accustomed to the adoration of wishers like myself.
“Can I see that?” he said, gesturing toward my cell phone, which I passed to him numbly.
He started punching buttons at random. I vaguely wondered if my package included calls abroad, because Teel was certainly going to connect with someone if he kept up his nonscientific exploration of the phone. I could hardly tell him to stop, though. Not when he had just granted my first wish. Not when I owed him my greatest professional success to date. Not when I—I!—was going to stage-manage Landmark Stage’s next production. What were a few bucks spent on a call to Ulan Bator, in exchange for guaranteed career advancement?
I hadn’t read Romeo and Juliet since high school, but that was okay. I could skim through it that night—there had to be a copy somewhere in the apartment that I shared with two other theaterphiles. Besides, I’d get to know the play by heart in the days and weeks to come.
Three months till opening night. That made it an April opening. April—a time when a lot of theaters do “hard” plays, thought pieces, demanding productions to make up for the froth of A Christmas Carol and other holiday fare.
I swallowed hard. We could do it. Three months was a century, in theater time. Or so I tried to convince myself.
Teel looked up from the phone. I could hear the double ring that meant he actually had managed to punch in an overseas number. “Ready for your second wish?”
Second wish? Now? I could barely process that my first had been granted.
“Sain by noo?” came a voice from my phone. After a pause, it repeated, “Sain by noo?”
“Give me that!” I said to Teel, snatching back the electronic device. I snapped the phone closed, cutting off my dear correspondent from Outer Mongolia, or wherever Teel had actually managed to reach. I gave the genie a dirty look, but he only shrugged, as if people grabbed cell phones from him every day.
“Your second wish?” he repeated, glancing at his flaming wristband the way a normal person would glance at a watch.
“Do I have to make the decision now?” Two wishes left. That suddenly seemed like such a small number. Such a forlorn possibility. Especially when I saw how easy “one” had been.
Teel sighed. “No. You can wait.”
I glanced at the brass lamp. “So do you go back in there, while I’m trying to decide?”
He shook his head vigorously. “Absolutely not. I get to roam free while you make up your mind.”
That didn’t sound like such a good idea. I tried to remember my elementary school afternoons spent eating junk food in front of the TV, watching syndicated reruns. On I Dream of Jeannie, things always went wrong when Jeannie was allowed out of her bottle. Of course, she referred to the guy who released her as “Master.” I didn’t see Teel becoming that submissive anytime in the near future. (Read: I couldn’t imagine Teel ever bending to my will.)
But could I be certain that he was telling me the truth? What if he disappeared
without granting me the rest of my wishes?
Then again, was I really any worse off, with only one wish awarded, than I had been when I woke up this morning? I tried to erase the suspicious tone from my voice. “So how do I get you back, when I’m ready to make my next wish?”
He nodded toward my right hand. “Just press the flames together, speak my name, and I’m bound to come to you.”
The flames?
I looked at my fingertips for the first time since Teel had poured out of the lamp, the same fingertips that had jangled with sparky energy when he’d worked his magic in front of me. If I angled them just so, I could discern vague outlines across the whorls of my fingerprints—flames that seemed to be tattooed in transparent ink. My right thumb and each finger on that hand were marked.
I pressed my thumb and index fingers together and squeezed. “Teel,” I said loudly.
“Ow!” He gave me an annoyed glare. “I’m right here!” He raised his own fingers to massage his temples and said crossly, “Do you want to make another wish now, or not?”
“Not yet,” I said meekly, staring at my hand in amazement. I couldn’t keep from asking the first question that popped into my head. “Why do you care, anyway? I mean, isn’t it better to be out of the lamp than locked up inside there?”
He scowled at me and drew himself up straighter. “Of course it’s better to be outside. But we genies have certain standards. The Registry keeps statistics on every wisher we assist.”
“The Registry?”
He rolled his eyes. “The administrators who keep track of all us genies. The ones who decide who gets to be advanced.” I must have looked as confused as I felt, because he sighed and started over. “Each genie is obligated to grant wishes. If we take too long to grant them, we get shoved into one of the backwaters.”
“Backwaters? Like what? Like Minneapolis?”
“Like Regrekistan.”
“Regrekistan? I’ve never heard of it.”
