When Good Wishes Go Bad

by Mindy Klasky

  The day’s meeting. Our meeting with the Popcorn King. To get funding for However Long. For the play that he had written, that I was working on as the dramaturg. The professional dramaturg.

  I froze.

  He sensed the change immediately. His voice was husky as he whispered against my ear, “What, Becca?”

  “I can’t,” I croaked.

  He collapsed against me for just a moment, burying his face in the tangle of my hair. I caught my breath. My body wanted me to laugh. It wanted me to tell him I’d been kidding. I was game. I was more than ready.

  But my mind knew I couldn’t follow through.

  We were professionals. We were working together on his play. On his first play, the first that would ever see production, the one that would cement his reputation forever. I was honor-bound to guide that production, to analyze it, to support it. I had to remain dispassionate. Separate. Apart.

  He grunted as he pushed himself up to a sitting position. “What is it, Becca?” He waited as I flailed for an answer. “Is this about Dean? Is it too soon?”

  “Yes. No.” I hadn’t thought about Dean romantically in weeks. But this was about him. This was about not wanting to make the same mistakes I’d made in the past. About not wanting to rush into a relationship, just because it felt good to be there. About not wanting to tangle my personal life with my career. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry. We’re working together, and doing anything else, anything more, it just feels wrong.” To my horror, my throat tightened, and tears burned in the corners of my eyes.

  He rubbed one hand across the back of his neck, exhaling deeply. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “I thought we’d agreed not to say that anymore.” I managed to smile, even as a single tear snaked down my cheek.

  He reached out with his thumb to wipe it away. Before he could touch me, though, my body flinched. I didn’t intend to move; I didn’t intend to react at all. But I jerked away by reflex.

  “Right,” he said. The bitterness that he ladled over the single word surprised me. He wiped his palms against his slacks. “Okay, then,” he said, climbing to his feet.

  “Ryan, I—”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I think I just got carried away by our success today.”

  “Seriously, Ryan. I—”

  He raised his chin and settled a broad smile across his lips. A goofy smile. The smile of a man who wasn’t comfortable with who and what he was. “Auditions are tomorrow, right?” He didn’t wait for me to nod. “I’ll see you at the Mercer, then. Ten o’clock. Right?”

  “Right,” I whispered.

  I knew that I should stand up. I should walk him to the door. I should thank him again for getting us the funding. I should smile and laugh and make everything all right between us. I knew how to do that. I was a trained professional.

  But I stayed silent. I listened to his barely audible footsteps as he crossed the luxuriant carpet Teel had given me. I heard the click of the doorknob turning. I registered the whisper of the door snicking closed behind him.

  Frozen in the amber of my own uncertainty, I stared at the blinking city lights outside my window. It was an hour before I even moved to collect my goblet from the seedlings—one full hour before I gathered up the bottle of Burgundy I was suddenly determined to finish on my own.

  But those long minutes were nothing compared to the time I spent tossing and turning in my king-size bed that night. Alone. Cold. Waiting until the sun rose on auditions for However Long.

  CHAPTER 10

  THE NEXT MORNING, I WOKE WITH A SINKING FEELING in the pit of my stomach. Auditions were going to be awkward—Ryan and I were going to be stuck together for the entire day.

  But I’d get through that. We were coworkers, after all. That was the entire reason I’d pulled back from…whatever I’d pulled back from. We were professionals. We were leading lights of contemporary theater. Or something like that.

  Even given my ambivalence about Ryan, I was excited to participate in my first round of auditions at the Mercer. This was the first show that I would work on from beginning to end, the first where I would sit beside Hal in the audience seats, spread my paperwork across the rough table fashioned out of a sheet of plywood, the one that balanced carefully over a half-dozen red velvet chairs.

  I ducked inside the theater door from the lobby, jumping into the gloom at the back of the house as I studied the lay of the land. Kira had already taken care of her responsibilities. As stage manager, she had run electrical cords to the worktable, set up a small lamp, plugged in Hal’s laptop. She’d even taken care of creature comforts for all of us. I’d been thrilled to find hot coffee waiting in the rehearsal room (normal strength, not the legendary pure caffeine of Kira’s preferred brew). Her frosted sugar cookies were a thoughtful touch (not that I needed anything to make my blood pound any faster).

  Living up to her reputation as one of the finest stage managers in the city, Kira had even anticipated more obscure needs—she had provided an entire canister of Hal’s precious Rollerball pens, and she’d laid in a solid supply of legal pads. A forest of freshly sharpened pencils waited, as well, their tips aligned like darts, waiting for some unseen bull’s-eye to materialize out of the shadows.

  I smoothed my hands down my charcoal wool trousers, grateful for the cool touch of the silk lining against my thighs. I resisted the urge to pluck at the knit shawl of my emerald sweater. I’d already spent fifteen minutes in front of my own bathroom mirror, making sure that the whisper-soft cashmere fell naturally. Easily. Gracefully. As if I were accustomed to owning a world-class wardrobe that complemented my green eyes perfectly.

  Not that I’d taken any extra time to dress for Ryan. Not at all.

  Thinking of the wish that had solved my sartorial problems so simply, I closed my eyes and brushed my thumb and forefinger against each other. It had been almost two weeks since Teel had first stormed into my life, but I still thought that I should be able to feel the tattoos dusted over my fingertips. I thought about what Teel had told me almost a week before, about his longing to join Jaze in the Garden. I had so much power embedded in my hands, the ability to summon my genie, to make my life complete. To make his life complete. If only I could decide how best to use it.

  “Excuse me!”

  Ryan’s voice sent my heart skipping into the catwalks. My eyes flew open, and I clutched at the seat in front of me, suddenly unsteady on the heels of my perfectly sensible pumps. “Ryan,” I said, trying to sound like I was bored. Or disinterested. Or…professional.

  He jumped from my side into the aisle, shoving his hands into his pockets so quickly that I worried he would tear his pants. His tongue darted out over his lips, and he swallowed audibly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize you’d be standing there! I just wanted to duck out of the way when I came in. I wanted to take a second to look at the stage. To let it sink in that these auditions are really happening. That my play is really going to be produced. I—” He finally stopped babbling for long enough to draw a breath. “I’m talking too much, aren’t I?”

  Despite the butterflies that were colonizing my esophagus, I smiled. “It’s exciting, isn’t it?”

  Exciting. That was a bad word to use with him.

  He didn’t seem to notice, though. I tugged at my sweater, wondering how all the air could have been sucked out of so large a room. Even as my fingers clutched the soft wool, I wrinkled my nose, frustrated that I’d sabotaged the perfect neckline I’d smoothed into place with such care. I barely resisted the temptation to rake my fingers through my hair—my carefully casual chignon would never have withstood the attack.

  “Becca!”

  Saved by the shout. I jumped into the aisle, brushing past Ryan as I took a few giant steps toward the stage. Hal stood on a precisely taped X, shading his eyes from the overhead stage lights so that he could peer into the seats.

  “I’m here,” I said, closing the distance to the worktable with strides tha
t would have made an Olympic speedwalker proud.

  Hal craned his neck forward. “Are you okay, Becca? You look like crap.”

  “Thanks,” I said, certain that my general appearance was only worsened by the crimson blush that immediately turned my cheeks into a mirror of my strawberry hair. “I’m fine.”

  “Okay,” he said, practicality rinsing his words of any lingering shade of concern. He peered farther back into the house. “Ryan? Great to see you! Are you ready?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Once again, Ryan surprised me by being closer than I expected. This time, he was standing behind me. When I started at his single word, my shoulders brushed against the dark brown cabling on his sweater. The sweater that he’d worn in my apartment, just the night before. The sweater that…

  I leaped away from him, then tried to pretend that I was only counting the pencils Kira had left for us.

  Hal jumped down easily from the stage and strode to meet us. If he suspected that anything strange was going on between Ryan and me, he gave no sign. Instead, he tapped a stack of pages against the plywood surface, lining up his papers with a precision that would have made the military proud. Before I could say anything, keep the conversation flowing about the theater, about the play, about anything other than my personal life, Kira poked her head out from the wings.

  She shot all of us a quick smile and said, “Ready for the first round? Women reading for Fanta.”

  “Ready,” Hal said, taking a seat between Ryan and me. I forced myself to lean back against the red velvet of the chair, to relax. I was grateful for Hal’s electric presence, grateful for the distraction from Ryan.

  Kira flipped a sheet of paper over the back of her clipboard and stepped toward the dressing room, where all the hopeful actors and actresses were waiting. She consulted her notes and then called out, “Patrice Leveque.”

  Automatically, I shuffled through my own scramble of pages, pulling out a resume. Hal had the hopeful actress’s headshot displayed in front of him, a moody portrait in black and white that depicted a young woman with a tight-coiled sense of drama, a wild energy that vibrated off the slick page.

  In person, the actress had even more energy as she bounded to the center of the stage. Despite the short notice about our choice of plays, Patrice had found time to embrace the African setting of However Long. Her long limbs were covered by a flowing robe, a silky garment that flashed intricately embroidered stripes of yellow and green and red. Her hair was bound up in an elaborate headscarf fashioned from the same material. The wild clothing contrasted dramatically with her dark skin; her features looked as if they were carved from ironwood.

  She set her hands on her hips and proclaimed, “My name is Patrice Leveque. I’m doing a monologue from Raisin in the Sun.”

  Alas, Patrice had invested all of her energy in her appearance. Her voice turned shaky and weak as she recited her prepared piece. She had clearly memorized specific hand movements, taught herself to take one precise step here, another there. While she knew every word of the character’s speech, her phrasing was off; she elided some words and drew out others, until I almost believed she was speaking a foreign language. Her recitation ran longer than the two permitted minutes, and Hal did not hesitate to snap out, “Thank you. Next!” when she’d reached her limit.

  Once upon a time, I’d worried about actors who were shot down mid-audition. After all, these artists were baring their souls, showing everything that mattered to them, everything they cared about.

  But I’d been hardened by my years of theater work. I’d learned that the vast majority of directors knew what they wanted within fifteen seconds of watching an actor onstage. A dozen heartbeats—maybe twenty, for the adrenaline-charged folks on display.

  Hal, of course, was no different. He’d arrived at the auditions with a clear picture in his mind, a precise image of the cast he intended to harness to Ryan’s play. And Patrice Leveque obviously had no place in that vision.

  She wasn’t the only actress to leave the stage disappointed. Rather, she was just the first.

  We sat through an entire morning of auditions, a constant parade of hopeful talent. I settled into taking notes, jotting down a record of who performed which monologues, setting out my own opinions about how they’d executed their miniature roles. Occasionally, Hal left an aspiring performer standing center stage, covering his face with his clipboard as he asked me a question. Sometimes, he wanted clarification on the script, on issues that he’d already identified with specific scenes. Other times, he wanted to know if I was familiar with an actor’s work, if I’d heard gossip from other theaters, from ShowTalk. A half-dozen times, he turned to Ryan, asking whether the playwright could envision one actor playing opposite another, if he had ever considered presenting certain characters in specific ways.

  I settled into the rhythm easily, lapsing back into the tried and true, a process made familiar by years of amateur productions, by the half-dozen plays I’d shepherded through graduate school. Some of the actors were too overbearing. Some immediately conveyed that they were too precious, too difficult, not worth the inevitable investment of time, and special care, and hand-holding that they would require. Two people were absent when their names were called, overcome by stage fright or too-crowded schedules. One man forgot the lines of his monologue partway through. He crumpled in defeat and dragged himself off the stage before Hal could tell him to take a deep breath and start again. A woman insisted on embracing Kira as soon as she walked onstage, after she finished her monologue, before she walked away, each time ignoring the stage manager’s silent but obvious desire to step away, to keep a physical distance.

  Bit by bit, though, we pulled together a cast. Ryan’s characters emerged in three vibrant dimensions as human variations spun across the stage. I hadn’t realized that one of the daughters could be as old as the actress Hal favored, but as soon as he drew a solid line underneath her name on his pad of paper, I realized that she would bring a new gravity to the role, a solid certainty that I’d missed when I’d read the script.

  Three women emerged as strong contenders for the lead, Fanta. Under Kira’s able management, the actresses waited in the wings, came back onstage, delivered a second monologue and then a third. Hal had each of them perform with the indomitable daughter. He had them all read with the massive man he was considering for the husband. He asked everyone to improvise a scene, and he had them tell a personal story, about family, about lost chances at communication. (I steadfastly avoided looking at Ryan during that utterly ridiculous theatrical exercise.)

  In the end, the cast seemed settled. Certain. Perfect—as if they’d been framed for their roles from the very beginning of time.

  Except for one part: the grandmother. Anana had to be soft, gentle. But she also had to have a spine of iron, a solid will that taught her daughter, that guided future generations through hunger, through despair, through the challenges of a modernizing world where the old rules no longer worked, where new rules had yet to be defined.

  Anana was only onstage for four short scenes, but those glimpses cemented all of the other characters, set everyone into the difficult lives that Ryan had crafted so delicately.

  And we had no one to play Anana.

  After reviewing his list for the fourth time, Hal stood up and balled his fists into the small of his back, stretching as he turned to face Ryan and me. “We could try going with Sheryl,” he said, referring to one of the actresses who had been put through her paces for the better part of the morning. “We could work with her on the physicality of the role. Coach her to walk like an eighty-year-old village woman.”

  Ryan shook his head vigorously, oblivious to the way his hair brushed against his collar at the back of his neck. “I’m sorry. I know that you have more experience than I do. It’s just that Anana has to be real. She’s the core of tradition, of old Africa. In a lot of ways, she’s even more important than Fanta.”

  Hal looked at me. “What do you think, B
ecca? Could Sheryl work?”

  Great.

  There I was, caught between my boss and my—What? Lover? Definitely not. Crush? I couldn’t be certain. Neighbor? Yeah, but…

  Oh. Playwright. That’s what Ryan was to me. That’s all that he could be, while we stood here in the darkened Mercer theater, trying to figure out who would embody his vision of Africa.

  I braced myself and cast my professional lot with the man who knew the material best. “We shouldn’t make a decision out of desperation, Hal. If we know that Sheryl’s not right now, we can’t count on her changing enough in just six weeks. The part’s too important for us to hope she can get to where we need her to be.”

  Ryan flashed me a quick smile of gratitude. For just an instant, I felt like we were working together again, driving his vision forward, as we had done so successfully in the yellow-and-orange land of the Popcorn King. A sliver of heat uncurled in my belly, and I smiled without meaning to.

  But that smile must have said too much. Must have reminded Ryan of how we’d celebrated our past alliance. Or not quite celebrated, as the awkward case might be. He glanced away, scrambling for one of Kira’s needle-sharp pencils. As he bounced its perfect pink eraser against the table, doubt drowned whatever flicker of passion had considered awakening inside me.

  Maybe that hadn’t even been passion after all. Maybe I was just hungry, after the long hours of auditions.

  “What about Maria Rodriguez?” I asked, less because I thought the actress would work as Anana and more because I needed to cover up the strange moment, needed to erase the bizarre tension between Ryan and me.

  “Maria?” Ryan asked carefully.

  Hal glanced at his pad of paper. “She’s probably got the vocal range. She could age her voice. But I really see Maria as Lehana.”

  He had a point. Lehana was an auntie, an older woman who had power and control within the complicated family structure that Ryan had crafted. But Lehana was no grandmother, no matriarch for the ages. And neither was Maria. I sighed in frustration.