by Mindy Klasky
“So you’ll help me?” Teel wheedled. His pout looked even more pitiful beneath his exaggerated face-paint. “You’ll get me in as soon as possible, by making the rest of your wishes?”
I forced regret into my voice, harvesting everything I’d ever learned in the theater, all the skills I’d ever glommed on to from the finest actors I’d ever met. “I want to, Teel. I really do. I’m just not ready yet. I’m not certain. But I see how much the Garden means to you. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve made up my mind.”
Teel flashed a triumphant smile at Kira. “See?” he said. “That’s all I ever wanted. Just someone who understands what’s important to me. Ninety-nine out of one hundred wishers say kind things to their genies.”
Kira gritted her teeth. “I’m sure they do, when they can get a word in edgewise. When they’re not being harangued and harassed to make up their minds.” She sighed with something that might have been nostalgia. “I said kind things, too, Teel. Every once in a while.” She looked around uncomfortably, looking distinctly queasy as she struggled to find some stable point to settle her eyes. “You got your answer from Becca then, right? She’ll make her wishes as quickly as possible. Will you please take us back now? And will you please make sure you don’t drag me along again?”
Teel’s real smile beamed inside his painted clown one. “I can’t make any promises!”
“You can say that again,” Kira muttered.
Teel turned to me. “You’ll summon me, then? For your second wish? Soon?”
“I will,” I agreed.
“Six out of ten wishers make their second wish within twenty-four hours of their first.”
I was going to be part of the outlying group of four. But there was no point telling Teel that. “Thanks for the information,” I said, trying to sound sincere.
Teel looked at both Kira and me. He stripped off one of his huge white gloves, raised his seemingly tiny human (genie?) fingers to his earlobe. He cast one last, wistful glance toward the invisible fence, and then he tugged once, hard.
And Kira and I were back in my office, with Teel nowhere in sight.
Kira stomped her right foot on the floor, as if she were trying to restore circulation after sitting still for a long time. “Ah,” she said. “Terra firma. I hate it there! Could you really see the Garden? Could you really smell it, and hear the birds?”
“God, no!” I admitted. Kira gaped, and I rushed on, “I figured it wouldn’t do either of us any good to be stranded in the literal middle of nowhere, with an angry genie who was dressed up like a clown. I lied about the entire thing.”
Kira’s laugh was refreshing. “Well, that’s a relief. I thought I was stranded with two people who could see the exact same hallucinations.”
“So, I guess the whole wish thing is really important to her. Er, him.”
“Whatever,” Kira agreed. “You’ll probably get pressured even more than I did—he’s that much closer to his goal. Just remember that the choice is always yours. Don’t let him railroad you into anything. I think he makes up most of those statistics, anyway.” She started to turn back to my office door. “Oh, and don’t worry. You’ll get used to the whole gender thing. The gender and the costumes…” She shook her head and turned to leave.
“Kira?” I said, before she could disappear down the hallway. “Thanks.”
As Kira smiled and walked away, the phone on my desk rang. I glanced at the caller ID. It was him. Hal. And he’d had long enough to read However Long. My hand shook as I picked up the receiver. “Hey,” I barely managed to say.
“Call Ryan Thompson. Tell him I want to meet the author of the Mercer’s next production.”
I barely remembered to hang up the phone before I pumped my fist and cried out, “Yippee!”
CHAPTER 7
EVERY DRAMATURG DREAMS OF THE MOMENT—THE instant when all those years of professional training merge into an indefinable something, a soul-felt understanding, a perfect yes. That’s what it feels like when a new playwright is discovered.
Sure, I could have called Ryan to tell him that we were choosing his play. As he’d mentioned when he left his envelope, he’d included his business card with his manuscript, and that card had listed a home phone, a cell phone, an e-mail address, and an IM address. I had plenty of ways to reach him electronically.
But news this big required a personal touch. Besides, I’d already put in a long morning reading However Long—twice, no less. I deserved a break. I shrugged on my coat and headed toward the Mercer’s front door.
Glancing at Jenn’s desk, I saw that her computer was off; no amusing screensaver of cockatiels danced across her monitor. I winced as I thought about how much she’d drunk the night before. How bad was her hangover today? Had her husband reminded her to drink some water? Had he shaken out a handful of aspirin for her?
Oh, well. Under other circumstances, I would have invited Jenn to join me in sharing the good news with Ryan. After all, she’d originally placed him on the stalking list. But she had introduced the two of us the day before; she’d asked me to get involved with his future.
And I couldn’t delay delivering my message. Not when there was so much to do in so short a time. And not when we’d promised each other that she would stay totally disconnected from the decision-making process, lest the bribes that we’d received corrupt our selection.
Not that Ryan had bribed anyone, I thought. I hoped. I didn’t really care. However Long was too strong a play for me to worry about who had given the gifts that Jenn and I had received the day before. Especially when we’d already worked out a system to avoid corruption.
I barely felt the cold as I raced back to the Bentley. Pushing the button in the elevator repeatedly, I was frustrated that it took so long to arrive. (It didn’t actually take any longer than it had the day before, and it certainly wasn’t slower than the ancient machinery in the building I’d shared with Dean. It just seemed to take forever.) On the eighth floor at last, I bounded up to Ryan’s door.
And then, I stopped.
I wasn’t a shy person by nature. I’d spent most of my life around actors—I was used to fighting to be heard in a small, crowded room. I knew how to express myself, how to get people’s attention.
But I suddenly wasn’t sure that I wanted Ryan’s attention.
Oh, I wanted it. My belly did a little flip-flop as I remembered that brief moment between us the night before, the instant when I’d almost invited him in, the split second when he’d thought better for both of us. What had that been about?
Of course, I knew what it was about. It was about Dean. It was about the fact that I’d had a boyfriend every day of my life, ever since I’d turned ten and Timmy Dayton had given me a friendship bracelet twined out of red and white lanyard. Note to self: Insert long, boring story about boyfriends I had known and loved through the years. Insert longer, more boring story about how I’d thought every single one of those guys was The One.
The simple fact was, I always had a boyfriend. Someone always wanted me. I was always special. Popular.
And in the midst of my personal disaster, in the midst of Dean walking out on me, leaving me holding the bag for our apartment, for the theater, for every aspect of our life together, there was a teeny, tiny part of me that was already shouting, already demanding that I hook up with someone new.
That little voice was totally sick. I knew that.
I absolutely understood that women could be strong and independent. I was a vocal advocate for women standing on their own two feet, for professionals carving out their own places in the world. I completely, one hundred percent supported women who broke down barriers, who built up their own accomplishments into towering edifices of independent success.
I just didn’t know how to live my own life like that. I didn’t know how to wake up alone, morning after morning after morning. I didn’t know how to succeed without immediately turning around to share that success with the special guy in my life.
All of which pretty much underscored why it was a bad idea for me to be the dramaturg on Ryan’s play. It was one thing for me to wrestle with my own personal demons, but my professional obligation to the Mercer went beyond those feelings, was bigger than those fears.
But what choice did I really have?
However Long was good. It was beyond good—it was magnificent, easily one of the top ten plays I’d ever read. And that was saying something. By a conservative estimate, I’d read about a thousand plays in the past five years. Ryan’s voice was going to reach the Mercer’s audience. It would open up the hearts and minds of theatergoers, make them see a world—a real world—so completely different from their own that their lives would never again be the same.
So why was I hesitating? Why wasn’t I pounding on Ryan’s door, shouting out the good news? Why wasn’t I giving a struggling artist the break that he’d worked for, for years? What was I afraid of?
Good questions, all of them. Especially that last one.
The rap of my knuckles on Ryan’s door seemed louder than it should. I half expected our neighbors to peer out of their own doors, to shout down my disturbance. (Of course, I’d expected them to stare at me after midnight, too, when I’d staggered home drunk. Lucky for me, my neighbors didn’t seem the curious type.) I caught my breath and took a half step back, waiting.
Ryan blinked when he opened the door, looking like an owl disturbed in the middle of the day. He sounded almost guilty when he said, “Rebecca? Is your lock sticking again?”
“No,” I said, almost bouncing with excitement. “And call me Becca. That’s what everyone calls me at work. And since you’re about to spend a lot of time down at the Mercer…” I rushed on before he could get confused. “Congratulations, Ryan. However Long is going to fill our scheduling hole.”
Good fortune strikes people in different ways. Some scream in happiness. Others start to cry. Still others stare in amazement, their jaws slack as they try to grasp the import of ordinary English words. I’d seen all those reactions and more, in all the years I’d watched actors read casting lists, discovering that they were going to be in the shows of their dreams.
Ryan, though? His reaction was totally new to me.
He hung his head, as if I were chastising him. He caught his lower lip between his teeth, sighing deeply, drawing out his exhale for so long that I actually worried he might grow light-headed.
“Ryan?” I finally said. “Are you okay?”
He ran a wiry hand through his hair as he looked up, fortifying himself with another one of those mammoth breaths. “Yeah,” he said. “I’m fine…Becca. Thank you. Thanks for coming all the way over here to tell me.”
Okay…So that hadn’t been exactly the response I’d anticipated. But what did I know? What did I know about coming back to the States after two years abroad? About creating art based on that foreign experience, about building characters out of whole cloth, about relating the horrors and joys of real lives to an audience who had never even dreamed such people could exist?
So Ryan wasn’t howling with joy. Why had I even expected such a boring, customary reaction, knowing the extraordinary story he had to tell in his play?
I pitched my voice low, almost as if I were comforting an injured animal. “You’re welcome. I’m really looking forward to working on this show. However Long is just…amazing.”
He raised his fingers to the neck of his shirt, tugging like a little boy made uncomfortable by his Sunday best. “Thanks,” he said. “Um, would you like to come in?”
“That would be great.” I felt a little awkward as he stepped aside, like I was back in elementary school, going to a birthday party at a classmate’s home. We were like kids who had been coached on all the right words to say, but neither of us was actually comfortable with the social niceties.
Ryan’s apartment was much smaller than my own. I found myself in a combination living room, dining room, and kitchen. A wooden workbench was pushed up against one wall, laden with potting soil and trowels beneath purple grow-lights. A folding screen cut off the other half the room, forcing a love seat and a rocking chair into close proximity. A twin bed peeked out from behind the screen, knotted sheets and blanket tangled on the floor at its foot, as if its occupant—Ryan, I assumed—had spent a restless night. A door to my right hinted at a bathroom; one to my left opened onto a single dim bedroom. The entire place was dark, even though the curtains were open, even though early-afternoon sun was shining on the street. A quick glance out the window confirmed that a brick wall was less than an arm’s-length away.
So. This was how the Bentley looked for people who didn’t have a genie at their beck and call. I supposed that I should be grateful Teel had swung her magic, getting me the river-view apartment I’d so greedily demanded. I felt vaguely guilty, though, as if I’d taken something that should have belonged to Ryan.
“Can I get you a cup of tea?” Ryan asked after my inspection spun out for a little too long.
“That would be great!” I could hear too much enthusiasm in my voice, and I warned myself to tone things down.
“English Breakfast all right?” Ryan asked, rummaging in the kitchen. “I have a pot made.”
“That would be grand.” I made a face at myself, because I sounded stupid. Grand. Who talked like that? Ryan pretended not to notice, though, turning his back to take a small carton of cream out of the well-stocked fridge.
I thought of my own kitchen, larger and brighter and much more bare—at least until I got my first post-Dean paycheck. “Thanks,” I said, as Ryan passed me a mug. He gestured, and I followed him over to the tiny dining table in the common room. He took the seat closest to Dani’s workbench.
“So,” he said, adding cream to his own mug after waiting for me to do the same. “What do we do now?”
“We’ll announce the new play on ShowTalk and in conventional media. Auditions are in nine days. After rehearsals start, Hal will want you there full-time. New plays develop better if everyone is totally committed from the start.”
Gee. I made it sound as if I’d launched dozens of new plays before. The casual observer would never realize that I was making everything up as I went along. Except that bit about Hal wanting him there. Hal always wanted playwrights present. The Mercer would have done a lot more Shakespeare, if only Hal could have figured out a way to bring the Bard back from the beyond.
“So that’s it?” Ryan sounded skeptical. “I just sit around for a week, waiting for things to get moving?”
I shook my head, and I fortified myself with a sip of tea before answering. “No, you’ll need to meet Hal and the rest of the Mercer staff. Of course, you already know Jenn. And, um, me.” I was delaying telling him the bad news. I was pretty sure that Ryan wouldn’t be thrilled with his first true assignment, to get However Long on its path to production. “We do have one more real project, though, one we should get started on right away.”
He stared at me, waiting for me to elaborate. His eyes seemed especially dark in the dim apartment; they glowed like melted charcoal briquettes. I’d already grown accustomed to his too-long hair; my fingers had almost—almost—forgotten that they wanted to brush it off the back of his neck. When I continued to hesitate, he said, “I’m not going to like this much, am I?”
“It’s not terrible,” I assured him. “It’s actually one of my favorite parts of the job.” I paused a moment, so that my enthusiasm could soften him up. “I’m going to need your help finding a sponsor for the show.”
“A sponsor?” He sounded like a new arrival in America, a person just learning our language.
“We had one all lined up for Crystal Dreams. The Narcotics Awareness League was going to underwrite the entire production, make media buys, host the opening gala. But they won’t support However Long.” I saw him start to frown, so I turned up the wattage on my own smile. “Sponsors choose their shows really carefully. It’s a huge financial commitment for them, and they want to make sure that they get as much g
ood publicity as possible.”
“Publicity! But they’re sponsors. For the arts!”
I smiled wryly. I had been that naive once. Dean had trained that out of me, ladling his grim money management over my enthusiasm. I consciously set aside thoughts of everything else Dean had taught me, about business, about self-interest. I explained, “They still need to get something out of the deal for themselves. Our sponsors love the Mercer’s upscale audiences.” Ryan started to splutter, and I hurried on. “But they also want to feel good about what they’re doing. That’s why I want them to meet you. I want them to understand what you saw in Africa, what the Peace Corps taught you.” He began to relax, lulled by my explanation. Chalk up another one for the dramaturg’s inherent skills as psychologist. “I already have some great prospects lined up,” I assured him. Well, I’d thought about a few possibilities. Okay, I’d thrown together a short mental list as I hurried over to tell him the good news.
“Like?” he asked.
I didn’t want to get his hopes up too high. But he smiled—that sweet boyish smile that made a little part of me melt inside—and I couldn’t refuse to answer. “Like the International Women’s Union,” I said.
“You think they’d be interested in my play?” His eyes grew large, and I resisted the urge to cross my fingers in hopes that I could make the sponsorship come together.
“We can’t know until we ask,” I said firmly. “And I have other ideas, as backups. So it’s a deal? You’ll do it? You’ll go meet sponsors with me?”
He shook the hand that I extended. Once again, I felt the hint of calluses against my own pampered fingers, a silent reminder of the hard work that he’d put in half a world away. “It’s a deal,” he said.
Both our mugs were empty. I’d run out of excuses to stick around. Reluctantly, I stood up. “I know you’re going to jump online now,” I said with a laugh. “Log in to ShowTalk and learn everything you can about the Mercer.”
He looked up at me sideways, suddenly lapsed back to boyish shyness. “Actually, I already checked you out.”