by Mindy Klasky
Ordinarily, I really enjoyed the evenings that all three of us were home. This time, though, I just couldn’t wait for them to get tired, to go to their rooms, to close their doors and give me some privacy.
I had decided to call in my third wish.
Sure, I’d told Teel to leave me alone, just that afternoon. I’d told him that I’d make my wish on my own schedule. I’d told him to back off from dragging me into his invisible Garden.
But that had been before he had reverted to the trampy she I was sick and tired of seeing at rehearsal. That was before she had done everything she could to seduce Drew Myers. That was before she had purposely driven me insane, with her innuendos and her seductive looks.
As soon as I was certain Maddy and Jules were both asleep, I dug Teel’s lantern out of my closet. As always, the metal was warm to my touch. Almost without thinking, I started to rub the side, my fingers aching for the familiar tingle, the promise of the magical energy.
I could feel my pulse beat strongly, echoing through the almost invisible flames tattooed across the ridges and whorls of my fingerprints. I pressed my fingers together, letting the energy spark against itself. “Teel,” I actually said out loud.
This time, I was completely braced for the full electric shock. I was absolutely prepared for the jewel-toned fog that coalesced in the center of my room. I was one-hundred-percent ready for the light to shimmer through the fog, to settle into a human shape.
I’d somehow forgotten, though, that the shape wouldn’t necessarily be familiar to me.
Teel was a black man. A very large black man. His belly spilled over his pants, testing the limits of his suspenders. He wore a white oxford shirt that had to have a twenty-four-inch neck; even then, a roll of flesh sagged over the back of the collar. A white canvas bucket hat sat comfortably atop his head. His hair was gray, where I could see it, and his skin was medium-toned—more seasoned oak than mahogany. He raised a hand as big as a dinner plate and rubbed at the back of his neck. The tattoo was clear around his wrist; the golden flames were highlighted, almost as if they’d been painted on.
“You rang?” he said. His voice was deep and melodious, the reincarnated tones of Paul Robeson. He could have given elocution lessons to James Earl Jones.
I didn’t trust him, though.
This wasn’t some avuncular guy, offering to help with whatever problem I was having. This was Teel. This was my meddlesome genie. He could raise one of those ponderous hands to his ear, tug twice, and look like the slutty little tramp who had haunted our rehearsals for the past too-many weeks.
Without preamble, I said, “I’ve decided on my third wish.”
I’d tested the sentence in my head a dozen times during the evening. I wanted to sound calm. Confident. Not like a jealous witch.
“Indeed,” he boomed.
I looked straight into his eyes, the caramel-colored irises that looked like they knew so much, could tell me so many stories. “I wish for Drew Myers to love me.”
He laughed.
He stood there in the center of my bedroom, enormous hands folded over his belly like a beardless black Santa Claus, and he laughed. The sound started as a chuckle, a chortle, but it grew into a guffaw. He fumbled for his hat, used it to wipe at his eyes. Every time I thought that he was finished, he seemed to remember something else, some new private treat that was even more hysterical. Soon, he was wheezing for breath, staggering forward to rest one of his gigantic forearms against my desk. He fanned himself with the hat, gasping for breath.
When he could finally speak, he said, “Don’t waste your wish on that.”
“What?” I snapped. “You don’t want me interfering with your own little seduction game?”
“My—”
I didn’t let him finish his basso profundo expression of confusion. “I expected you to be happy that I’ve finally decided. I thought you’d be grateful to be one wish closer to your stupid Garden.”
He shook his head slowly, still wheezing from his merriment at my expense. “You were right, Kira. I wasn’t playing fair, taking you to the Garden. You need to make your wishes on your own schedule, not on mine. I’ve already promised not to force you back there. Why don’t you wait until you’ve really made up your mind before you make your third wish?”
“I have made up my mind! I want Drew Myers to love me! You’re just trying to talk me out of it because you like him, too. Not this you. The other you. The you who was at rehearsal.”
He shook his head, all hint of amusement gone. “I’ve already told you—jealousy is bad for wishes. Nine out of ten women who make wishes based on jealousy end up regretting their decision.”
“I am not jealous!” I protested. I’d had enough of his stupid statistics. What was he doing, pulling them out of thin air, the way he materialized himself? “Besides, you’re the one who’s been bugging me about finishing up. I’m just trying to help you out.”
Well, that sounded like a good excuse. Altruistic, even. I wondered if genies could read minds. Would he actually know that I was lying? Or would he just assume so? I repeated, “I am not jealous.”
Teel put his hands on his ample hips, using his current barrel chest to turn his Paris Hilton bubble voice into a monstrous parody. “Yes, Drew,” he minced. “We women would feel…excited.” The last three syllables were barely spoken, barely said aloud.
“That didn’t make me jealous! That made me nauseated! You were manipulating him. Him, Bill…you reached out to Jennifer, too, didn’t you?”
“I was just having a little fun. I told you I was bored.”
“You can’t screw with human lives just because you’re bored!”
“But you can screw with Drew Myers’s life?” Suddenly, the trickster was gone. Teel was staring at me intently, his butterscotch eyes like lasers.
“I love him,” I said, fighting to keep my voice even.
“Spare me! Maybe you love the idea of him. Maybe you love the notion of a leading man who will sweep you off your feet, escort you to all the best parties. Maybe you love the thought of someone who lives at the top of your little social pyramid, someone who is instantly recognized as successful by every single person in the room. But you don’t love him. Not as a person.”
“That’s a horrible thing to say!”
“It’s the truth.”
I couldn’t believe the fury his words stoked in me, the rage that made my fingertips—tattooed or not—tingle. “For your information, not that it is any of your business, I have had all of that. There was a time when I was royalty around here. There was a time when people cared about me, paid attention to what parties I went to, who I talked to, what I thought!”
He shrugged, the motion rolling across his massive shoulders like an earthquake. “And what happened to change all that?”
TEWSBU had happened, of course. TEWSBU had left me. Abandoned me. Cut me down for life.
I shoved that image out of my mind, carved it from my consciousness as neatly as Teel had carved the poundage from my thighs. This wasn’t about TEWSBU. This had never been about TEWSBU.
“I love him, Teel,” I said. And then, because there might have been a misunderstanding, because my own thoughts were tangled and torn and confused, I said, “I love Drew Myers.”
“You don’t even know Drew Myers.”
I fell into the whirlpool of thoughts I’d spun through for the past month, since that first day at the Landmark, when I’d walked into the rehearsal room and met Drew. “You’re right,” I conceded. “Sort of. I don’t know him well. We only met a month ago.” Teel was nodding, increasingly sure that he’d won this battle. “But,” I said, holding up my hand in protest, “I know what he’s not. I know that he’s not pretentious. I know that he’s not cruel. I know that he’s not so conceited that he can’t listen to other people, can’t try new things, can’t risk his dignity and his precious reputation for something new, something different.”
He wasn’t TEWSBU.
I didn’t s
ay that out loud. Teel really didn’t know anything about TEWSBU; as a man or as a woman, he’d never understand.
And then there was the argument I didn’t even try to make. Drew Myers was simply the most physically attractive man I’d ever met.
After all, wasn’t that what my wishes were all about? Dream fulfillment. Shrugging off the miserable routine of a lackluster job for the glamour of the finest stage-managing position in the Twin Cities. Stepping out of a damaged body, into a stunning new one.
I was always the good girl. I was always the staid one. I was the stage manager, for God’s sake, the person whose job was to pick up the pieces, to stay organized, to put each and every thing into its preordained place.
Just this once, I wanted to be the other girl. I wanted to play the romantic lead.
“I’ve made my decision,” I finished. “That’s my wish. For Drew Myers to love me.” Then I started to think of all the things my trickster genie could purposefully misunderstand, all the ways that he could ruin this. “Drew Myers,” I said again. “The one who lives in Minneapolis. Who’s playing Juliet at the Landmark. The one with blond hair—”
“I’ve met him,” Teel said. The statement would have been saucy if it had been delivered by Intern-Teel. Coming from the gentle bear of a man in front of me, it just sounded sad. He sighed and said, “As you wish.” He raised his fingers to his ear. The flame tattoo made his eyes seem to glow as he tugged once, clearly, with definite force, and then again.
I realized that I was holding my breath. Slowly, in control, I forced myself to exhale. I looked around the room, realizing that I’d somehow expected Drew to just materialize from some new stash of colored mist.
“That’s it?” I asked.
“It’s done,” Teel said.
I looked at the phone on my nightstand. Bill Pomeroy had called to announce the fulfillment of my first wish. Was Drew picking up his own cell even now? Was he magically realizing that he had my phone number memorized, committed to some core knowledge that he’d never even suspected he had? Was he at least digging in his script notebook to find the cast list that I’d prepared for everyone, to look up my phone number on the sheet of paper that I had given him?
“What happens now?” I whispered.
“I don’t know about you, but I’m beat.” The black face creased into a smile. “That rehearsal took a lot out of me today.”
I started to make some bitter retort, but he was already disappearing, already dissolving into a shimmer of ruby and emerald and cobalt.
He was gone.
I stared at the brass lantern on my bed. Four weeks ago, I hadn’t believed that magic could exist. I hadn’t imagined that a shape-shifting genie could weave in and out of my life, changing things forever. But Teel had given me my greatest opportunity ever in the theater. He’d given me back my sense of self, my sense of pride. He—if I believed him, and I had no reason not to—had just given me the love of my life. And I hadn’t said goodbye. Or even thank you.
“Teel!” I called. “Wait!”
But it was all over. No more lying in bed at night, thinking about how I’d spend my next wish. No more nervous anticipation of where Teel would show up next, what the genie would do to embarrass me. No more brushing my hand against the lantern, just to feel the tingle, just to imagine the power I knew it possessed.
I was on my own. Totally and completely on my own.
Except for the tapping at my door. “Kira?” It was Jules. “Are you all right?”
She must have heard me cry out. Suddenly feeling a lot less nostalgic about my missing genie, I grabbed the lantern and tossed it underneath my bed. Just as I opened the door, I remembered that it was well after midnight. I was supposed to be sleepy, confused, barely awake.
“What?” I said, blinking hard at Jules’s nightshirt.
“I heard you scream something,” she said. “Were you on the phone?”
What could it hurt, if I told the truth now? Sure, Teel had made me keep his existence secret when he first came to me. He’d taken away my words when I tried to discuss him over Chinese food, muted me as thoroughly as a television set during a long commercial break.
But now? With my third wish spent? I should be able to tell Jules everything, to share all the strange things that had happened to me.
“No. I wasn’t on the phone,” I said. “I was—”
My throat stopped. One instant the words were there: normal, everyday words that I could utter as easily as I could speak my name. The next, I was opening and closing my mouth like a fish, my vocal cords apparently nonexistent.
“What?” Jules said, obviously confused.
“It was just—”
Nothing. There was no way I could say Teel’s name. No way that I could move my body to the space beside my bed, that I could kneel down, that I could extract the lamp.
No way that I could tell her the truth.
“Sorry,” I said. That word came easily enough. Whatever magic Teel had left behind knew that I’d given up. It knew the genie’s secret was safe. Jules was peering past me, curiosity plain on her face. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw my bedroom as she must have—the bed covers still in place, obviously unslept in. I couldn’t lie and say I’d had a nightmare.
I grimaced and twisted my neck from side to side. “I was just doing some crunches. Trying to get in shape. I don’t know what happened. I got this weird cramp in my leg.”
She looked down at my sweatpants dubiously. I shook my foot, as if I was shedding the last of a charley horse. “You should eat a banana,” she said. “Get some potassium.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry that I woke you.”
“It’s okay.” She turned to go but stopped herself before moving down the hall. “Are you—”
“Kira!” The sound came from outside. My name, bellowed at the top of some man’s lungs. “Kira!”
“What the—” I gasped, and hurried to my window. I tugged at the shade, snapping it up. It took me a second to process what I was seeing.
A car sat in our driveway, its engine running, its lights on. A man stood out on the sidewalk, arm wrapped around the lamppost to keep his balance as he leaned back, peering owlishly at my window. “Kira!” he shouted again, sounding for all the world like Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire.
It was Drew.
Drew Myers was standing in front of my house in the middle of the night, without a coat, without even a heavy sweater. He was rocking back and forth, getting more and more agitated by the second. He clutched a piece of paper in his hand, and he glanced from it to our front door, obviously checking the address, obviously making sure that he was at the right place.
“Oh, God,” I said, and fled past the astonished Jules. Maddy was just stumbling out of her own bedroom as I jerked open the front door to our apartment. I hurtled down the stairs, hoping that the Swensons had suddenly become deaf enough that they hadn’t been awakened.
No such luck.
“What in the name of—” Mr. Swenson huffed, opening his own door as I fumbled with the dead bolt to the entry hall.
“It’s nothing, Mr. Swenson. I’m sorry, it’s just a friend of mine, an actor in one of my plays.”
“Kira!”
I swore and apologized again before I finally managed to get the door open. “Drew!” I hissed toward the street. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Kira!” he said, with the joy of a small boy discovering a long-lost puppy. He staggered toward me, trampling across the snow on our front lawn.
“Damn fool,” Mr. Swenson muttered, slamming his own door and turning three separate locks with a precision that told me I’d be doing more than shoveling snow to keep the household peace in the coming weeks.
“Drew, what is going on?”
He stumbled into the entry hall. “Kira! I’m so glad you’re home! I had to see you!”
He was crying. He was honest-to-God crying; tears streaked his cheeks, and his nose was running.
His hair stood on end, as if he’d just gotten out of bed, and he was wearing flannel pajama bottoms, with an ancient ratty T-shirt on top. He’d clearly crammed his feet into whatever shoes he’d been able to grab—one beat-up running shoe and a bedroom slipper that had seen better days.
“Drew, have you been drinking?”
“No!” He shook his head with the vehemence of Dennis the Menace. His teeth started chattering, but he was laughing, even as the tears continued to leak from his eyes. “Kira, I was sleeping. I was dreaming. I was dreaming, and it was raining. It was raining diamonds. And I heard this voice, and it told me that I loved you, and I woke up, and I knew that it was true! Kira, I love you!”
Teel had obviously outdone himself this time. Somewhere, locked away in his lantern waiting for his next victim, my genie must be chortling to himself, overjoyed with the scene he’d made here. Caused to be made. Whatever.
Well, that pleasure was going to have to last him a good long time. Who knew how many more decades it would take for Teel to be freed from his lantern again? Who knew how long it would take for some unsuspecting soul to rub the brass lamp? As Drew gave another shuddering sob, I personally vowed to toss Teel’s lantern into Lake of the Isles, as soon as it was light out. Well, I would, as soon as the lake thawed. For now, I’d leave it stashed beneath my bed, where no innocent could stumble on it.
I gritted my teeth. “Come in, Drew. Wait! Let me go turn off your car. No, it’s okay. I’ll be right back. I’m not going anywhere. Drew, please, I have to turn off your car!”
He was like a hysterical little boy, laughing and crying all at the same time. I finally succeeded in slipping past him, darting out to the driveway. He’d left the driver’s side open; the car was patiently chiming away to let everyone know that the door was still ajar. I reached in and turned the key, grateful for the sudden silence. I locked the vehicle and pocketed the keys.
Drew was staring at me, adoring, from the front porch.
“Let’s go,” I said, leading the way upstairs.
Maddy and Jules were waiting in the living room. I could tell that they’d been talking; who wouldn’t have been, under the circumstances? I flipped on the overhead fixture to supplement the light that was bleeding out of each of our bedrooms.
