When Good Wishes Go Bad

by Mindy Klasky

  “Ryan!”

  He was lying on his stomach, his arms stretched in front of him, as if he’d tried to break his fall. I rushed to his side as he slowly pushed himself up onto all fours, his head hanging almost to the floor. He gaped like a goldfish out of water, unable to draw a full breath.

  “Oh my God! Ryan!” I seized his shoulders, trying to ease him into a seated position. He held up one hand, effectively freezing me in place.

  “I’m okay,” he rasped. “Just…winded.”

  I fluttered my hands around his shoulders, unable to do anything to help. “I’m calling an ambulance.”

  “No,” he choked out. “I’m fine.” He celebrated that pronouncement by rolling onto his back. I watched his chest rise and fall as he finally managed to catch a handful of proper breaths.

  “Just a second.” I rushed into one of the dressing rooms. A collection of battered coffee mugs ringed the sink. I grabbed the one that seemed the least dirty, filled it with water, rushed back to the stage. “Here. Drink.” I knelt beside him, carefully easing him up until he was half sitting, half leaning against my shoulder.

  He folded his hands around the mug, downing one noisy swallow. He closed his eyes and pulled away from me, huddling into himself like a homeless man on some anonymous sidewalk. “Thank you,” he said, settling the mug on the floor with a terrifying note of finality.

  “Ryan, I—”

  “Yeah,” he said, and he sighed deeply before hauling himself to his feet.

  “Wait here. I’ll tell Hal that you can’t go. We can take a cab home. We can talk about this some more.”

  He shook his head. “No. I’ll go with Hal.”

  “But you were right—”

  “No, Becca.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “You were right. The play isn’t about me. We all have to do things to make it happen. We all have to make sacrifices.”

  “Let’s talk about this, Ryan!”

  His smile was sad. “We’ve talked enough. Hal’s probably going insane out there, waiting for me. I’ve got to go.”

  “But we’ll finish this conversation later, won’t we? You’ll come by when you get home?”

  “I have to go.” He eased himself off the stage gingerly. I waited until the door closed behind him, hoping that he would turn around, certain that he would say something else. Anything else. Even one single, solitary word.

  The theater was very quiet when I stood alone.

  When I’d run out of excuses for Ryan to come back, I forced myself to pick up the chipped coffee mug. I rinsed it out in the dressing room, holding it under the running water until my fingers started to pucker. I headed back onto the stage, stopping long enough to collect the pots, to stack them all for the next morning’s rehearsal. I walked from stage left to stage right, trying to figure out a different configuration for the scene, a different way to have the actors move, so that they wouldn’t kill themselves or each other, while still making their entrances at Ryan’s specified places.

  And all the time, I tried to keep from hearing Ryan’s quiet pronouncement: he had to go.

  I should have been pleased. He was falling into line, helping the Mercer. He was sucking it up, meeting with the Popcorn King. How difficult could one little half-hour segment be, anyway? Ryan was being a man.

  Ryan was being a man, but there was a part of me that wanted to chase after him, to beg him not to go, to plead with him to stay with me, to join me and the guerilla gardeners. But it was far too late for that.

  I was halfway to the audience seats when the music started. R.E.M.’s Gardening at Night. For a second, I couldn’t figure out what I was hearing, then I realized it must be Ryan’s phone. He’d had it out, mimicking the Popcorn King. It must have gone flying when he’d tripped.

  Michael Stipe reached the chorus as I rushed backstage, looking frantically for the device. I hadn’t seen it when I picked up the pots; it must have skittered underneath—There! The phone was vibrating on the floor, lodged against the ominous wall.

  Mom, the caller ID announced.

  I flipped the phone open without thinking. “Dani, it’s me. Becca.”

  “Thank God!” The connection sounded like it was coming from Mars. “I didn’t think anyone was going to pick up.”

  “Where are you? It sounds like you’re in a cave.”

  “Close enough,” her voice echoed. “I’m at the police station. Is Ryan there?”

  “No.” I looked around in exasperation, as if I somehow expected him to reappear. “Why are you at the police station? Are you all right?”

  “I’ve been arrested.”

  “You what?” I tried to picture Dani sitting in a jail cell. I couldn’t reconcile the image of her Birkenstock sandals and her denim jumper behind bars. And yet, the Grays had been executing a raid…

  “They’re charging us with felony vandalism.”

  “Felony! What happened?”

  “We got started early. The weather forecast said that the rain was going to start coming down hard after nine o’clock.”

  I wanted to rush her through her weather report, but my mind was reeling. Dani had been arrested, and she was obviously trying to reach Ryan with her one call. He was impossible to get hold of now; he must be deep in the heart of the Pantry Channel’s television studio. I was going to have to take care of this myself.

  “Becca?”

  I shook my head to clear it. “Yeah, I’m here. But I don’t understand. Why are they calling it a felony?”

  “Lorraine Feingold was our mission commander tonight. That means she got to choose our target.”

  “What did she choose?”

  “We seed-bombed Temple Beth Torah.”

  I shivered. Dani and the Grays were already skating on thin legal ice with their guerilla gardening. Half the members had received warnings in the past—Dani had shown me her own citation just a few weeks before. Even though I was afraid to know, I asked, “What happened?”

  “We staged our attack from a little bodega, around the corner from the synagogue. Each of us brought our own grenades. We planned on carpet-bombing the side yard. We wanted to see it full of wildflowers by summer. There isn’t anything but mud there now, and the children play outside on breaks from their classes.”

  Even though she couldn’t see me, I nodded. I could imagine what had happened. The Grays had thrown their clods of dirt at the synagogue. A passing patrolman had witnessed the bombing. Or the bodega owner had reported them as suspicious characters. Or someone inside the synagogue had called in the attack.

  Vandalism plus a hate crime. On top of the numerous warnings individuals had received, all spring long. The police would throw the book at them.

  Dani’s brave report was winding down, and I heard a quaver in her words. “They’re keeping us here tonight, Becca. They say we’ll be arraigned tomorrow. But if the judge decides we’re a threat, he won’t let us go. He’ll hold us without bond!”

  I wanted to reassure her, but I wasn’t certain that I could. After all, actual hate crimes were serious things. And the Gray Guerillas had broken some laws. And they’d been warned before. Dani’s own blog had listed tips for evading the police.

  I’d watched enough Law and Order to predict what would happen. Some promising young district attorney would make a name for himself, prosecuting the Grays in the highly political, symbolic, never-ending battle for safe city streets.

  “Okay, Dani,” I said, trying to make my voice reassuring. “Let me make a couple of phone calls. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Becca, be careful when you go home tonight. They say they’re going to raid our homes. They’re going to collect evidence, find our ‘implements of destruction.’”

  My blood froze. I knew what it was like to have the police go through my home. I knew what it was like to be locked out of everything I knew, kept away from everything I owned, from everything that mattered to me.

  There was no reason to think that the cops would cross the hall into m
y apartment. But they’d commandeer Dani’s place. And Ryan’s.

  Ryan would be as powerless to protect his possessions as I had been.

  I thought about the compost container in Dani’s kitchen, the delicate ecological balance that she had nurtured for years. I pictured the purple grow-lights, suspended over the workbench, the collection of buckets, the peat cups and seeds and all the other gardening supplies.

  They’d all be confiscated. Ruined. Lost forever, even after Dani and her companions managed to explain away the absurd hate-crime charges.

  Dani seemed to realize the same thing. The sound of her sobs echoed through Ryan’s phone. “And Ryan—” Her voice broke, as if she were ashamed to tell her son what had happened.

  “I’ll fill him in. We’ll see you tonight, if we can. If not, first thing tomorrow.”

  “Thank you, Becca. I—” She fought her tears into submission. “Thank you.”

  I terminated the call and flipped the phone closed. I considered hailing a cab, making my way uptown, interrupting the Popcorn King’s grand television spectacle, so that I could deliver my bad news.

  But I couldn’t imagine what that would accomplish. Ryan was already furious with me—he might never talk to me again if the Popcorn King’s cable extravaganza proved as obnoxious as I expected it might be. Besides, Ryan couldn’t work any miracles to free Dani from her police cell.

  But I could.

  I could work miracles.

  I glanced around the theater, even though I was certain I was alone. The harsh work lights made my skin look pale, but when I raised my thumb and forefinger, I could still make out Teel’s whorls.

  I considered what I was about to do. I only had two wishes left. I’d been hoarding them, saving them for honest emergencies. Keeping them for the chance to change the world in some meaningful way, even if I couldn’t solve poverty, couldn’t eradicate hunger, couldn’t “purchase” any of the big-ticket long-term Grand Wish items.

  But that wasn’t the same thing as saying that I couldn’t have any impact at all on the world around me. That wasn’t the same thing as saying that I couldn’t do any good deeds at all.

  I tugged at the neckline of my Eileen Fisher sweater. I loved my new wardrobe. It had given me the confidence to master my new job. But I couldn’t exactly argue that a full closet was a great thing for mankind.

  It was time to make a choice. A better choice. A more meaningful one. I pressed my thumb and forefinger together and said, “Teel!”

  An electric shock jangled through my body, jolting me into perfect posture. All the hairs on my arms leaped to attention. The sudden pain made me flinch, and my eyes squinched shut. When I opened them, the stage was filled with opalescent fog, ruby and topaz and sapphire all glinting in a swirling mist. As I stared, the cloud cleared, resolving into a solid shape, into a man.

  Tonight, Teel was a painter. He wore a long smock, a garment that had once been blue, but now it was slashed with a brilliant array of color. He balanced a classic wooden palette across his palm, his thumb poking through the hole near the edge. Daubs of paint glinted on the surface, and I immediately smelled the pungent bite of linseed oil.

  “At last!” Teel said, pointing his paintbrush toward me with the vehemence of a witness accusing a murderer. As if to cement that image in my mind, the tips of the black bristles gleamed with crimson paint.

  Teel had apparently chosen Salvador Dalí as his artistic role model. He sported an enormous mustache, waxed out to two perfect points. A jaunty emerald-green beret echoed his close-set eyes, but it made his swarthy skin seem almost sickly.

  As I recovered from the burst of electricity that had brought my genie onto the stage, he circled around me, cocking his head at all sorts of unlikely angles. The hand that held the palette teetered dangerously, and I wondered if I’d have to clean up the floor after we finished our conversation. Teel held up his paintbrush the way some painters used their thumbs, squinting past its straight line and gauging me, all the while muttering about perspective.

  Annoyed by the attention, I snapped, “How the hell did you have time to get set up as a painter? You were Anana an hour ago.”

  “Ve genies, ve vork in ze mysterious ways.” His French accent was as thick as crème brûlée.

  “I thought you had to stay quiet when we weren’t together! How could you be painting someone?”

  “Something, ma chère. I ’ave been, ’ow you say? Painting ze still deaths.”

  “Still lifes,” I corrected automatically.

  “All zose apples and oranges, and ze perfect silver knife. Boring, yes, but vat is a poor genie to do?”

  He could start by choosing another pastime. But I hadn’t summoned him to argue. “I’m ready to make my third wish.”

  “Enfin!” Teel started to clap his hands in excitement, only remembering his artistic encumbrances at the last possible second. “And vat is ze vish?”

  “Guerilla gardening,” I said. “Dani’s group. I want to make it safe for them to work. I want them to get some positive recognition for all they’ve done. I want them out of jail.” I sighed. “Teel, I don’t even know what has to happen. I don’t know how to make it right. Can you do the wish anyway?”

  “Could Monet paint ze vater lilies? Phrase ze request in ze form of a vish.”

  “And you can—”

  “Ze form of a vish!”

  I took a shocked step backward as Teel jabbed his paintbrush toward me. He’d never been so forceful, not in any of our conversations, any of our discussions about magic, or the Garden, or Jaze, or even his—her—role of Anana. I realized just how much this wish meant to him. He’d finally be one giant step closer to completing his mission with me.

  And the Mercer would be one giant step closer to losing one of our lead actresses, with the show already on shaky ground.

  Well, there was time enough to worry about that later. I had Dani to think about now, and all the other Grays who were spending the night in uncomfortable jail cells. Dani was more important than any details about a play that still had two weeks before it was supposed to open. Dani, and the apartment she shared with Ryan, which might be being raided even as I delayed there in the Mercer.

  I looked at Teel levelly and said, “I wish that New York City recognized the value of guerilla gardening and created a supportive atmosphere for the Gray Guerillas. And other gardening groups. And individuals who garden. And…” I trailed off, realizing that I was babbling.

  “Finis?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  Teel thrust his paintbrush toward me. I took it awkwardly, turning my wrist to keep from getting crimson paint all over my hand. Once I was through fumbling, Teel raised his free fingers to his ear, edging his beret to the side. Eyeing me as if he suspected I might try to steal his art supplies, he enunciated, “As you vish.” He tugged twice, hard, on his ear.

  I’d forgotten to brace myself for the bolt of raw electricity, the power of magic changing the world. The shock felt like fire, darting from Teel’s paintbrush all the way up my arm. My heart bucked from the charge, and I couldn’t keep from shouting a wordless protest.

  But the energy passed as quickly as it had come. I was left with only the memory of pain, only the recollection of power.

  “That’s it?” I asked, when Teel stayed silent.

  “Ze vish ’as been granted.”

  I fished Ryan’s phone out of my pocket, punching the keys to return Dani’s call. The phone rang four times, then went to voice mail. I terminated the connection without leaving a message. “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “’Ave I lied to you before?” I wasn’t quite sure about the answer to that, but it hardly seemed politic to say so. Teel said, “Go ’ome. You vill learn about ze vish zere. Vith ze gardeners.”

  I sighed and tucked Ryan’s phone back into my pocket. “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “I ’ave vork to do. Zose apples, zey do not paint zemselves.” He held out a demanding hand. “Ze paintbrush, s’il
vous plait? Unless you are ready to make ze fourth vish after all?”

  “No,” I said, surrendering the brush. “I’m saving that one for a rainy day.”

  “Ze rain, she falls right now,” Teel said. “Tonight is a perfect night for vishing.”

  “No,” I said more firmly.

  “Eight out of—”

  “No! Go back to your painting, Teel, or whatever else you want to do. I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow.”

  “You vill talk to ’Al? You vill change ze blocking for ze dream scene?”

  I pictured Ryan sprawled across the floor, desperately fighting to regain his breath after his blocking had caught him by surprise. Even then, he hadn’t admitted that the play wasn’t working. Even then, he hadn’t agreed to modify the script.

  “I don’t know, Teel. I don’t think anything short of a wish will make that happen.” He perked up, starting to pass me the paintbrush again. I held up my hand in the universal symbol for Stop. “And I’m not sure that even you are powerful enough to change Ryan’s mind. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  My genie was still grumbling to his artistic self as I ducked out the door to find out what, exactly, had happened to the Gray Guerillas.

  CHAPTER 14

  I STOOD IN FRONT OF THE DOOR TO DANI AND RYAN’S apartment, overcome with a feeling of déjà vu. Wait. It wasn’t actual déjà vu. I had stood here before. I had carried out this exact same debate with myself, wondering whether I should knock, whether I should just make a phone call, whether I should resort to sending an e-mail message.

  That was back when Ryan had just been an unknown geeky playwright who had insisted, in a rather underwhelming show of professional enthusiasm, that I take his script. Before I knew him. Before I knew Dani. Before I knew the first thing about the Gray Guerillas.

  Before I’d made any of my wishes.

  I had to know what Teel had done. With my other wishes, the results had been immediately clear. I’d received a phone call from that real estate agent. I’d seen a full wardrobe laid out in my bedroom closet. This time, though, I had no idea what was waiting for me. I had no idea what Teel had actually accomplished.