by Mindy Klasky
I felt for him. I really did. And yet, I was certain that Teel wouldn’t push himself to make his fourth and final wish if our roles had been reversed. He’d be selfish and self-centered, just as he’d been when he manipulated me into spending two wishes for dancing and singing skills that I would likely never share with an audience.
And so, I grew accustomed to seeing Teel as a bank manager (pinstripe suit, even in the middle of the July heat), as a grocery store cashier (uniform apron), as a swimming instructor (indecently tight Speedo.) Male, female, young, old—Teel played more roles than I had ever dreamed of performing.
And every once in a while, he came back as the doctor. Much to Shawn’s amusement, he even showed up at the theater a couple of times, making suggestive jokes about house calls, spiriting me away for a quick cup of coffee during breaks. He thought that he was seducing me. He thought that he was bringing me around, drawing me closer to making my last wish. He thought that he was winning me over by reminding me of some of the hottest kisses I’d ever experienced.
And those kisses had been good, I had to admit, especially now that I was deep in my Master Plan–induced drought.
But every time I saw Dr. Teel, I thought about Justin. My nephew talked about Teel constantly. He’d drawn the doctor on several pages of his Super Soldier Saturday scrapbook. He’d even sketched in a superhero cape once, turning Teel into the amazing, incredible Soldierman. I knew that Teel only helped out with Justin because of boredom, because I wouldn’t make my fourth and final wish. Nevertheless, I was secretly proud that I was assisting Amy. Justin’s improved behavior was the best reason for me to delay making my fourth wish.
Over and over, I reassured myself that my delay didn’t really matter, that my keeping Teel from meeting Jaze in the Garden was harmless. Expected, even. Lots of genies must end up in the Garden while the loves of their magical lives worked in the outside world. Even if Teel missed Jaze completely in the Garden, they’d have ample opportunity to interact out here in the real world, in my world, once they were both back on the regular wish-granting rota. At least, that’s the way I thought it would work.
It was absolutely exhausting, keeping all of those justifications flowing through my thoughts at the same time.
Every night, I got home from rehearsal too tired to do anything but take a shower and climb into bed. Tabitha had taken to sleeping next to me, stretched out longer than seemed possible for her scrawny little frame. She had become the world’s most affectionate cat. Dani continued to visit her regularly, bringing by canned cat food a couple of times a week, keeping up the financial end of our bargain. Nevertheless, I found myself supplementing more often than not, feeding Tabitha nearly double what we’d originally planned. At least her poor wastrel frame was starting to fill out a little.
Alas, the morning came when Tabitha was set to discover what a traitor I was. Dani knocked on my door, holding a cat carrier. “Ready?” she asked.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I said. “Tabitha drove me nuts all night, meowing and walking into the kitchen, like I forgot to feed her.”
“Poor baby,” Dani said. “She doesn’t understand what ‘nothing by mouth after midnight’ means. She’ll be fine after the surgery, though.”
Dani picked up our jointly owned cat adeptly. Dani backed her into the cat carrier. Dani maneuvered the little cage door closed. In fact, Dani had done everything to set up this entire excursion, tracking down a vet, making an appointment for the spay, even rounding up the cat carrier.
I’d explained that the timing was bad for me, that we were down to one week before Menagerie! previews opened. Dani listened, but she ignored me, brushing aside my concerns with a single reminder that Tabitha could go back into heat at any time. Neither of us wanted to hear those yowls again. Dani would keep an eye on Tabitha during her recovery. I didn’t have to worry about a thing.
It was easier to give in than to fight.
As we walked through the city streets to the vet, Tabitha expressed her constant displeasure, complaining from the carrier as if we were torturing her. Some people looked at us with amusement on their faces, but most folks who noticed our screaming banshee frowned as if we were horrifyingly bad parents. Fortunately, we only had to wait a few minutes in the vet’s waiting area, and then we were escorted into an examining room.
“Let’s see,” Dr. Ricker said, turning the carrier upside down to extract the suddenly shy Tabitha. “What a beauty you are!” she said encouragingly, as if she didn’t see a dozen cats every morning.
Once Tabitha was safely on the examining table, the vet stroked her with confident hands. “Let’s just see how your ears are,” she said, producing a medical tool so quickly that Tabitha didn’t have a chance to protest. “And your eyes look fine.” The vet ran her hands along Tabitha’s spine, and then she started to feel her belly.
“Hmm,” Dr. Ricker said, her eyebrows knitting.
Dani stepped closer to the table. “Is that a good ‘hmm’ or a bad ‘hmm’?”
For answer, the veterinarian merely stroked Tabitha, coaxing her onto her side. That angle exposed two rows of bright pink nubs rising from the spotless white fur of her belly. “Have her nipples always been this prominent?”
I looked at Dani. She looked at me. We both shrugged. “I don’t know,” Dani said. “I don’t think either of us has really paid attention.”
Dr. Ricker nodded. “Has she been in heat recently?”
“About three weeks ago,” Dani answered.
“And how long was she outside?”
“Before I found her?” Dani sounded perplexed. “I don’t know. I mean, she was a stray—”
“No. When she was in heat,” Dr. Ricker clarified.
Dani protested, “We didn’t let her go outside. We didn’t want her breeding.”
I had to say something. Even though I felt like I was admitting some horrible social crime, like I was standing up in front of a room of doctors and saying that I regularly practiced unsafe sex, like I was labeling myself the most promiscuous female in all five boroughs, I had to say, “Well, actually…”
The other women turned and stared at me. I reached down to stroke Tabitha’s head, seeking as much comfort as I was giving. “Tabitha did get out. Just for one night. I tried to catch her, but she was gone before I had a chance….”
Dr. Ricker nodded. Dani just stared at me as she said, “You let our cat go outside while she was in heat, and you didn’t tell me?”
Three. There. The last of the bad things had come home to roost, until I started on another perfect triad of disaster.
I’d killed my lily plant. I’d killed my goldfish. And now, I’d let my cat get pregnant. I was single-handedly dismantling the Master Plan with the efficiency of a colony of carpenter ants. I was never going to date another man for as long as I lived. I didn’t deserve to.
“I’m sorry,” I said to Dani. “I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t think it mattered. She came back so quickly! And she’s been so good—she’s eating, using her box. I thought she was fine.”
Dr. Ricker looked from me to Dani. “She is fine. She’s just pregnant.”
Dani sighed. “We might as well take her home for now. We’ll reschedule…after.”
This time, Tabitha was eager to get into her carrier. Dani and Dr. Ricker said a few more things to each other; the vet decided to waive her fees, even though we’d taken up plenty of her time. Hands were shaken. Tabitha yowled. I felt like I was a child, hanging my head after a particularly disappointing parent/teacher school conference.
As Dani and I headed out the door, I wrestled with the carrier. We’d walked three entire blocks before I finally said, “I am so sorry.”
Dani continued another ten paces before she answered. “I know you didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”
“I ruin everything I touch!”
Dani stopped and stared at me. “That seems a bit dramatic, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head. “You don’t understand
! I have this Plan! My sister and I agreed on it!”
“And your Plan doesn’t include taking care of a litter of kittens?”
“It doesn’t include any of this.” Without really intending to, I found myself babbling about the entire stupid arrangement, the idiotic goals that I’d agreed to, just because Amy had said I should. Dani stood there beside me, on a quiet street in Greenwich Village. She listened to every word I blurted out, and she didn’t speak, she didn’t interrupt, she didn’t tell me that the morning was hot and getting hotter and she definitely had better things to do than advise some overwrought underperforming actress on her practically nonexistent love life.
“Wow,” I said when I was finished. And that’s when I realized what my confession sounded like. It reminded me of all the times I’d unburdened myself, talking to my mother. All the times I’d told her about having a crush on a cute boy at school, on some guy who didn’t know I was alive. All the times I’d told her about trying out for a school play, about hoping, wishing, dreaming of a role that I knew would be so perfect that I’d be happy forever.
That was the worst thing about Mom and Dad being gone, the worst thing, by far. I could never talk to them like this. Never again.
Dani eyed me steadily, her expression somehow telling me that she knew what I’d been thinking, that she could hear the little whispers that still rattled around inside my head. She said, “It sounds like you needed to share that with someone.”
“I guess so. I’m just sorry, for your sake, that it was you.”
“I’m not.” She grinned and picked up the cat carrier, which I’d deposited on the sidewalk somewhere in the middle of my tirade. “I only had a son. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to listen to a daughter, to hear her version of why the world is an unfair and terrible place.”
I fell in beside her as we continued back to the Bentley. “Thanks. I think.”
“You’re welcome.” Dani clicked her tongue. “Well, we can always hope that Tabitha will have a small litter. The Guerillas aren’t going to be much use, taking kittens.”
“I’m sure I can find some people at the theater,” I said. If nothing else, I could foist a couple off on Amy. I could always convince her that Justin needed to learn how to be responsible for a pet. In fact, two kittens would entertain each other; they’d be much easier to care for than one, living alone. I could already hear my crafty arguments, the words running together like lines in a play.
After all, I owed Amy, for the Master Plan, if for nothing else. Two kittens would be a perfect down payment on that debt.
My conversation with Dani nagged at me, though. When I told her about the Master Plan, I’d ranted about the plant, the fish, the cat. I’d sort of skipped over the “man” part, avoiding any details. Especially any details about one man in particular. Dani hadn’t pushed for specifics, and I hadn’t volunteered any.
Somewhere along the way, I was going to have to fill in the gaps. I couldn’t just hang out with Tabitha for a year, prove that I could handle a cat, then magically expect to find Mr. Perfect waiting for me on my doorstep. I had an obligation to build a perfect relationship, to pave the way for future steps of the Plan.
I’d run out of excuses. It was time to talk to Timothy. And Dani could help me with that.
The next morning, I peeked outside to confirm that she’d already picked up her morning paper before I knocked on her door. “Good morning,” I said, when she answered. I tried to make it sound like we greeted each other every morning.
“Good…morning.” She waited patiently. I thought about bailing on my mission. I could just ask her if I could borrow a cup of sugar. An egg. A stick of butter. I could give her a status report on Tabitha, tell her about the cute way our cat had curled up beside me while I slept the night before.
But she already knew about the Plan. She wasn’t an idiot. She could help me navigate from Step C to Step D, from Cat to Man, but only if I let her. I took a deep breath. “Dani-I-know-this-is-really-strange-but-I-was-wondering-if-you-have-Timothy’s-address-I-need-to-see-him-before-our-next-rehearsal-and-he-may-not-be-at-the-restaurant-this-early-in-the-morning.”
“Timothy?” she asked, and I was pretty certain she was laughing at me. “Timothy Brennan?”
“Yes,” I said. My heart was pounding so hard that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hear her when she answered me.
“I’ve got it with my Gray Guerilla papers,” she said. “Come on in.”
Still half-convinced that I should turn tail and run away, I stepped over the threshold. Dani’s apartment was much smaller than mine. It was darker, too. Her living room window looked out onto another building, instead of the river view that I enjoyed. A large worktable hulked against the wall to my right; I could make out a jumble of seed packets, a bag of potting soil and a tangle of gardening tools.
“I know you must think this is really strange,” I said.
Dani’s smile lit her face as she picked up a three-ring binder from her coffee table. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t really think it’s strange at all.”
“I mean, I’d feel weird if you gave out my address to anyone.” What was I trying to do? Talk her out of this, when it had already taken my entire store of willpower to come over here in the first place?
“If you had evil, nefarious purposes in mind, you could track Timothy down at the restaurant,” Dani said reasonably. “Or at rehearsal.”
Of course she knew that he was cooking for the show. She’d been selling him produce all along. She took an index card from her notebook and wrote out an address. I was surprised to see that it was only a few blocks away. “Thank you,” I said, and I left before I could change my mind.
Outside the Bentley, I swung by Garden Variety. Sure, it was a Sunday morning, but he might be there. I wouldn’t want to go invading his private space, only to find that he was cooking away in the restaurant kitchen.
No such luck.
The courtyard was empty, the tables and chairs stacked and chained in the corner. I knocked sharply on the door, but there was no reply. I even walked farther down the alley, found the service door to the kitchen, knocked on it. Still no answer.
I took Dani’s index card from my pocket. No time like the present.
A block from Timothy’s building, I ducked into a little bakery. Cup of Gold, said the sign over the door. I’d walked by it a dozen times before, but I’d never set foot inside. Three people stood in line in front of me. Three people, giving me time to think. Time to change my mind.
I set my teeth and stepped up to the counter. Two red velvet cupcakes. Two cups of coffee—one black, one fortified with sugar and cream. Two napkins. A box, complete with a bow.
Timothy’s building didn’t have a doorman. Someone was leaving just as I arrived. I smiled breezily, as if I belonged there. I waited for the elevator, taking care not to look in the mirror that hung beside the mailboxes in the lobby. The last thing I wanted to do was stare at myself.
Fourth floor. To the right. Third door.
Knock.
“Erin!”
He opened the door on a chain. In the spare seconds it took for him to close it, to slide the chain, to open it again, I tried to parse his tone of voice. Was he pleased to see me? Or was that pure shock in his voice? Certainly, it couldn’t be anger?
“Erin,” he said again, when the door was open. “Are you okay?”
Of course. He must have thought that something terrible had happened, after my avoiding him for three weeks. “No,” I said, and then I shook my head. “I mean, I’m fine.” Wonderful. I was getting this conversation off on a great foot.
After a long pause, he said, “Come in.”
The place was small, but light streamed in from two large windows. A tiny kitchenette gleamed to my right. We were standing in the living room. A door to the left showed a bedroom, and I could just glimpse a rumpled navy comforter sprawled across the mattress.
Fighting an involuntary blush, I
extended my peace offering of food and drink. “Coals to Newcastle, I guess.”
“Coals are always welcome,” he said, but his voice was wary.
A newspaper draped across the small dinette table in the corner. “Please,” he said, gesturing me toward one of the two ladder-back chairs. “Have a seat.”
I was glad that there was someplace to sit, other than the couch. I didn’t think that I would trust myself to go on with this, otherwise. Not after the last time we’d sat on a couch together. Timothy swept away the newspaper. He collected two plates from his kitchen. He looked a question toward me, and I nodded, to indicate that he should open the box. “Red velvet,” he said. “My favorite.”
“Wonderful!” I said, but my voice sounded fake to me. Staged. As if I were reading a bad script. I reminded myself that I’d come here because I wanted to know more about him. My plan was working perfectly so far.
I looked around the room. Everything was crisp. Clean. The furniture was tailored, the colors subdued. Bookshelves lined the opposite wall. A blue-and-white abstract print was framed above the table where we sat. I looked at it closer, recognizing the signature in the bottom right corner. Timothy Brennan.
“It’s a blueprint!” I said, honest surprise breaking the brittle varnish in my throat.
He shrugged. “It was my thesis project. To get my architecture degree.”
“You’re an architect!”
“Was,” he said. “Or I thought I would be, anyway.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs in front of him with a predator’s restlessness. “What’s this all about, Erin?”
I blushed.
Everything had made perfect sense inside my head. I’d come over here. We’d eat breakfast together. I’d get to know him better. I’d fill in some of the blanks, get answers to all the questions that swirled inside my head. I’d lay the groundwork for some future friendship with him. For something more, possibly. Probably. Hopefully. Down the line.
I’d forgotten one little thing, though. He had no idea what I was planning. From his point of view, I’d avoided him for three weeks. I’d brought him to my home, then thrown him out, and then ignored him for nearly a month.
