How Not to Make a Wish

by Mindy Klasky

  Teel’s hot womanly commentary was originally missed, but the actors quickly recovered because they were almost completely submerged in their roles. Every single guy in the cast, though, made sure to tell me that he couldn’t wait to attend Teel’s senior thesis presentation in the spring. It wasn’t until the fourth man (Lady Capulet) said something that I managed to wheedle details from Drew. Teel had told them that she was doing a performance art piece that examined gender roles and expectations. Basically, she performed a striptease set to a voiceover of great feminist texts from around the world. She started with a full Victorian costume and ended up in a bikini. Or less. Everyone was a bit fuzzy on that last bit.

  Pity they’d never actually get to see the piece, now that Teel was gone.

  In the meantime, Bill had demanded some sort of uber-Method acting for our cast. He’d instructed all the actors to stay in gender character even when they weren’t at the theater. That direction had already caused some trouble: three of the women were threatened at a downtown bar after they insisted on using the men’s room rather than the ladies’. Fortunately for me, Drew had decided not to follow that edict of Bill’s, at least not when we got away from the Landmark.

  On the home front, Maddy and Jules were fantastic about my newfound romance—even if Drew did present something of a challenge.

  For one thing, he didn’t play Scrabble. At all. One Monday night, the first one where all of us were home at the same time, Jules had already turned over the tiles when Drew and I traipsed in from rehearsal. She was waiting for a championship match.

  Drew was eager enough at first. He sat down at the table, twirling his wooden letter rack between his fingers. But he had to wait for Jules to tell him how many letters to choose. And then, he had no idea how the double-letter squares worked. He got downright cranky when Jules built out a triple-word score that he’d left wide open, and it didn’t help that she used the Z to score an instant thirty points.

  That was the last time we all played Scrabble together—the game really isn’t fun when your opponent only adds three-letter words to the board.

  Ordering in from Hunan Delight wasn’t much better. Drew was a sharer, and that upset the entire balance of our little tradition. He actually teased Jules for ordering Spicy Dry Fried Salted Squid. I didn’t think that was tease-worthy; I was just astonished that she’d found it on the menu. In eight years, I was pretty certain that we’d never ordered squid before—dried, wet, fried or grilled. Even though Drew expressed dismay at the tentacles (what he actually said was, “Dude, are you really putting that in your mouth?”), he managed to dart in with his chopsticks enough that Jules finally passed the red carton to him with a barely suppressed roll of her eyes. I was just grateful that his attention was diverted from my own dinner. I ate quickly and managed to quell my shiver of distaste when Drew insisted on sampling the last few bites of my food.

  Alas, Drew insisted on the idiotic childishness of adding “in bed” to our fortunes when we read them. Which might have been fine, if Jules had not opened a cookie that read “Use proven methods. Avoid shortcuts.”

  Even I found Drew’s sophomoric braying a bit much to handle.

  But every time I started to wonder if I’d made a mistake, if I’d acted too impetuously with my last wish, my new boyfriend did something to endear himself to me. Knowing my love of all things coffee, he tracked down a pound of kopi luwak, coffee beans that were, as the packaging discreetly read, “The World’s Rarest Coffee Beverage.” (Read: The only one to have passed through the digestive tract of a civet cat.) I couldn’t bring myself to drink the stuff, but it was the thought that counted.

  Drew was also ready with a back rub whenever we got home from rehearsals. He seemed able to read my mind about when I’d reached my breaking point with Bill’s ever-more-bizarre staging ideas. He listened to me rant for three full hours the day that our inspired director instructed David Barstow, the lighting designer, to do away with every single light on the warm side of the spectrum. If it wasn’t blue or gray, and cold, cold, cold, Bill didn’t want it in our underground Verona. Never mind that every lighting designer in the world used warm colors to provide important contrast on stage.

  The entire cast was wrapping up our first rehearsal in the actual theater space when Bill had another one of his brainstorms. “I just want to say one word to you,” he announced to everyone after a particularly draining romp through the discovery scene, where Romeo believes his (her?) beloved Juliet is dead. “Plastic.”

  Of course, the actual line from the movie The Graduate, was, “Plastics.” With an S. Multiple plastics. But I wasn’t about to say anything out loud. My mind was already reeling, as I tried to predict what new challenge Bill was about to introduce.

  “Plastic,” Bill repeated to his rapt cast. “That’s the way to capture the danger. The oppressiveness. Kira, give John a call tonight. Tell him that we need to coat the floor with heavy-duty plastic.”

  The first thing I thought of was the fight scenes. The second was the Landmark’s insurance premiums. I cleared my throat and put on my best Logical Stage Manager voice. “Bill? It will be really difficult for everyone to keep their footing if we cover the entire stage with plastic. Especially with all the slime we plan on using.”

  “Exactly!” he boomed, spreading his arms wide. “The floor will be a metaphor for the play’s politics! Our staging will be a physical representation of the Prince of Verona’s instructions to the Montagues and the Capulets. He tells them to be mindful. He says their lives are forfeit if they take one wrong step. We’ll make that danger real.”

  I was pretty sure that John would see things differently. He hadn’t made it to rehearsal in days; I knew that he was working long hours with the welders, trying to get the massive ironwork complete and delivered on time. He’d already made them redo Friar Laurence’s culvert twice, because the sound echoed too loudly for the actors to be heard during those delicate scenes.

  And then, to make everything worse, our fearless director exclaimed, “Picture it! The prince comes in for his first scene. He tells everyone that lives will be forfeited if the street fighting continues. He leaves, and a battalion of city workers, of stagehands, comes in right in front of the audience, to lay down the plastic. The prince’s word is made real, before our very eyes.”

  I was conscious of the very eyes of the cast, but I had to say something, had to make the protest that I knew John would make if he’d been there. “Bill, that’s going to take a long time, to complete a transition like that in the middle of the scene.”

  He snorted. “Nonsense! If you have enough stagehands, you can do it in no time at all.”

  I pictured hordes of workers, waiting in the wings with plastic tarps. We could use the eight guys who would later manipulate the manhole-cover screens. But to cover the entire stage? And to make sure the sheeting was secured at the edges, so that the actors didn’t trip in the dark? It would take a dozen crew members at least. I took one look at the fanatic fire in Bill’s eyes, though, and scribbled a note in the margins of my script. Four more stagehands. The union was going to love this show, even if the audience was mystified.

  Bill nodded at my apparent acquiescence. “Let’s start getting used to the new surface today. Unfortunately, Kira doesn’t have the plastic ready, but I want everyone in their socks, right now. In your socks, and let’s tape Hefty bags around your feet.”

  Unfortunately? What, did he think I could read his mind? That I could produce plastic sheeting out of thin air?

  It wasn’t like I was a genie.

  Still, the cast had perfect faith in him. Not a single actor hesitated. Instead, they just looked at me like baby birds, expectant, confident that I would provide. I thought about making one more plea for common sense, but Bill was already looking at his nonexistent watch. I’d lose the battle. Why declare war in the first place?

  One complete box of trash bags and two rolls of duct tape later, the cast looked like refugees from some horr
ific environmental disaster. Or a bizarre operating room with absurd sterilization protocols. Or something else that I was just too frightened to imagine.

  We only had one fall that broke the skin. Stephanie was skating across the stage in her plastic getup, a guest at the fateful ball where Romeo and Juliet met. She took a tumble as she capered around, doing her best to manifest the trickster spirit so important to Mercutio. She broke her fall with an out-flung wrist; it was just bad luck that Drew was standing in front of her, winking at me. The corner of his script notebook caught her palm, leaving a gash that bled copiously.

  I apologized nonstop as I scrambled for my first aid kit. If Drew hadn’t been clowning around for me, he would have noticed Stephanie’s tumble. He would have snatched away the offending notebook.

  At least I was equipped with gauze pads and a roll of white tape.

  I shook my head as the cast ripped off their plastic booties at the end of the rehearsal. Drew helped to gather up the last of the garbage, shoving the torn bags into the trash can with an earnest smile. “Dude, that was so cool!” he said to me. “I could totally feel the uncertainty in Juliet’s mind, when she was talking to her nurse.”

  “That was just fear that you’d break a leg. Literally,” I added, thinking of the traditional theater curse for good luck.

  Drew answered my tartness the way he always did. He folded me into his arms, kissing me until I began to relax. There was still stress in my life—there would be until the play opened—but this was a great way to deal with it. Nevertheless, I forced myself to push him away. “I’ve got to get going,” I said.

  “Where?” he whispered against my earlobe.

  I shivered. “I told you this morning. I’ve got to drop off our rent check at my father’s office. And you have to finish memorizing your lines. We’re going to be totally off book, starting tomorrow.”

  “I want to run lines with you,” he cajoled, backing up the suggestion with deft fingers that did surprising things along the line of my spine.

  “Drew, we already talked about this!”

  And we had. I’d told him that I needed one night at home. Alone. With Maddy and Jules, just us girls. Both of them had eyed me strangely when I followed Drew to bed the night before. More and more often, I could tell that they’d been talking about me when I walked into the room; there were too many conversations that stopped right when I came in.

  Just that morning, Jules had caught me as I dashed out of the bathroom. I was tucking a brand-new white blouse into the waistband of my jeans. I’d found the pants at the back of my closet, stranded on the very last hanger, where I’d banished them after outgrowing them almost two years before. Now they zipped up easily, emphasizing the ample bosom that continued to surprise me.

  “Wow,” Jules had said tonelessly.

  I’d grinned. “I don’t even remember when I bought these.”

  “I can’t believe how much you’ve changed, Kira.” She’d frowned a little as she spoke, looking doubtfully at my chest, as if she were trying to remember if I’d always been so well endowed. An unreasoning spike of anger stirred in my belly. What did she have against my getting back in shape? How could she even begin to understand how excited I was to wear my skinny pants—Jules, who was always glamorous and gorgeous and fit? Before I could say something I’d regret, though, Drew came out of my bedroom, carrying my backpack for me.

  “Ready?” he’d asked, settling a teasing hand against the small of my back as he guided us toward the front door.

  As thrilled as I was with Drew’s unending attention, I worried about the easy balance of my friendship with my housemates. It was time to clear the air—Maddy, Jules, and I would shift back to normal with a night of girls-only Scrabble and Chinese food.

  Now, as rehearsal wrapped up, Drew’s lips teased mine. “Call me if you change your mind.” Exercising more willpower than I’d managed in decades, I pulled away from him. The February evening was particularly cold as I turned my key in my car’s stubborn ignition.

  At the law firm, Dad’s secretary, Angie, looked up as I waltzed by her desk. “Hello,” I said absently, already digging in my backpack for the check I was going to hand over.

  “Hello, Kira.”

  That’s when I noticed that something was wrong. By the end of the workday, Angie was always frantically printing out documents for my father’s review and signature. She always chomped on a wad of chewing gum that made her look like a big league pitcher for the Minnesota Twins. She always muttered a constant stream of threats to her printer, tearing open new reams of paper as if she were making sacrifices to a ravenous god.

  But today Angie was sitting stock-still. Her desk was bare. Her hands twined in her lap. Her computer had gone to a screen saver, an endless chain of colored light spinning its way through an unknown maze.

  I barely knew what to say. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I made out just a hint of emphasis on the first word. Angie was fine. If Angie was fine, but everything else was turned upside down…I turned on my heel and slammed open my father’s door.

  And was so surprised that I almost fell back into the hallway.

  My father sat behind his desk, ramrod straight, his suit jacket rigid across his shoulders. His tie was perfectly knotted and close to his Adam’s apple; he looked like he was ready to walk into contract negotiations with the archest of his enemies.

  But that wasn’t what surprised me. What surprised me was seeing Jules sitting on the couch, the one that had a full view of the Minneapolis skyline. And Maddy standing beside her.

  “Come in, Kira,” my father said.

  I didn’t want to. Summoning all of my courage, I met my father’s eyes. “This can’t be good for profits per partner,” I said. I’d feared the joke would fall flat. I just hadn’t realized how flat it could fall.

  “Come in, Kira,” my father repeated. “And close the door behind you.”

  I did. I had to clear my throat, though, before I could get out any more words. “So, I’m guessing this isn’t about the rent? This isn’t about Maddy and Jules all of a sudden deciding that I can’t be trusted to deliver our check?”

  My father moved around his desk and gestured to the two Hitchcock chairs, which had been pulled into the stiffest conversation pit known to man. “Please. Have a seat.”

  I thought about saying no. I thought about saying that I didn’t want to. I thought about saying that I was going to go out the door and come back in again, that I was going to rewind the last two minutes, so that the world would go back to normal.

  Instead, I sat.

  Dad joined me in the other chair, seeming not to notice that he had to step over the straps of my backpack to do so. Maddy seemed torn by both of us sitting; she looked around, so ill at ease that I almost didn’t recognize her. Ultimately, she perched on the edge of the couch, twisting her blunt-fingered hands around each other.

  I was a little surprised that Jules spoke first. “Kira, I asked everyone to get together tonight.”

  “What is going on?” I heard a note of fear in my voice and told myself that I was crazy. This was my father. These were my housemates, my best friends.

  Jules glanced at Maddy, looked back at her hands. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We’re worried about you, Kira. We’ve been worried about you for a long time, and we finally decided that we had to do something.”

  My first—totally irrational—thought was that they had found Teel’s lantern underneath my bed. Despite my being silenced by my genie, they had somehow discovered the magic that had permeated my life. They knew that I’d gotten my three wishes, and they wanted their own; they were willing to hold me hostage until they got them.

  That was absurd, though. There was no way that my housemates would have gone digging around under my bed. And even if they had, they would have brought the lantern with them—if they’d even bothered to tell my father. There was absolutely no reason to bring Dad into a discussion about Teel.<
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  I crossed my arms over my chest. It seemed like a long time had passed since Jules had spoken, but I knew it could only have been a few seconds. “There isn’t anything to worry about. I’m fine.”

  My voice cracked on the last word.

  Maddy leaned forward. “You’re not fine, Kira. You’ve changed.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Maddy held my gaze with the ferocity that was her trademark. Madeline Rubens wasn’t afraid of anyone. Or anything. “Kira, we know that you are anorexic. And we’re here to help you.”

  Anorexic?

  I shouldn’t have laughed. But her accusation was so preposterous, so far from what I had feared she might say. Me? The woman who had eaten herself into a mountain over the past year? The woman who could match all three of them, bite for bite, on sweets or savories, on any snack in the world?

  I glanced down at my arms folded across my Teel-induced cleavage, caught a glimpse of my newly retrieved skinny jeans.

  Yeah. Me.

  I stammered out, “Wh-what do you mean?”

  Jules answered. “Sweetie, we only want to help you.” Sweetie? She hadn’t called me that since…since she’d been holding my hair back from my face in the Hyatt Regency bathroom, the night that TEWSBU left me. I started to protest, but she interrupted, using every ounce of her acting skill to override me. “We know that this has been a really tough year for you. We understand that you’re just trying to control a little bit of the world around you. But you don’t have to do it this way. You don’t have to hurt yourself.”

  “I’m not hurting myself!” I snapped. “I’m not anorexic!”