Wishing in the Wings (28 page)

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 Dali 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 work 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 wish?”

“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 wish 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.

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.

I raised my hand and knocked.

Nothing. Was Dani still in jail? Had Teel failed?

I knocked again, then placed my ear against the door. I could hear a faint shuffling inside, the distorted warble of a voice. Someone was in Dani’s apartment. Ryan’s apartment. Someone who wasn’t answering my knock.

I pounded on the door again, using my fist this time. Even as the sound echoed in the hallway, I wondered who could have known that Dani and Ryan’s apartment was unattended; who could have known that Dani had been arrested, had been kept down at the police station. There were people who monitored police-band radios, weren’t there? People who could use the Grays’ arrest to perpetrate their own crimes, breaking into premises when no one was home?

I fished Ryan’s phone out of my pocket; it was faster to use his than to find my own. I flipped it open and pressed 9-1-1, scarcely bothering to register the irony that I wanted police to come investigate a possible crime in the home of a woman they were holding as a felon.

The first ring was interrupted by a cool, efficient voice. “9-1-1. What is the nature of your emergency?”

“My next-door neighbor—”

Before I could complete my report, though, Dani’s door swung open. She held her own cell phone in one hand, and a wireless handset in the other. She raised her eyebrows in an exaggerated greeting when she saw me and ushered me inside, smiling broadly enough that I knew immediately that she was all right.

She said into her cell, “We need to get something out to all the members tonight. Right now. Tell them just to take their phones off the hook. I don’t think this is going to stop anytime soon. I hope it doesn’t. I’ve got to run—I’ve got another call.”

Then, she turned to her household phone and said, “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting.”

A voice squawked out of Ryan’s cell, which I’d forgotten I was holding. “Ma’am! What is the nature of your emergency!”

I stammered, “I’m sorry. I must have been mistaken. My neighbor is fine. She just wasn’t answering her door when I knocked.”

The 9-1-1 operator asked a couple of follow-up questions, and I answered mechanically, half-listening to Dani’s own conversation. We both hung up at the same time.

She shook her head in amazement. “That was the television studio.”

“Is Ryan okay?” I suddenly pictured him collapsed on the floor of the Pantry Channel’s set. Maybe he’d hurt himself even worse than I’d thought when he fell at the Mercer. Maybe he’d been overcome with blind rage at the Popcorn King and attempted murder, or he’d been poisoned by some horrible combination of caramel corn and unknown salt.

“Isn’t he with you?” Dani asked, concern digging a furrow between her eyebrows. Her phone started to ring again, but she didn’t answer it. After four loud squawks, we were treated to a moment of silence.

“No, he went to the TV studio.”

“How did they get to him so quickly?” Dani sounded completely confused.

“He had an appointment, with Hal.”

“An appointment? But the mayor only issued his statement half an hour ago.”

“A statement?” Now I was the one who had no idea what we were talking about. “Why does the mayor care about popcorn?”

“Popcorn? The mayor doesn’t have anything to do with popcorn!” Dani’s phone started to ring again, and she scowled as she waited for it to roll over to voice mail. “Wait. Go back to the beginning. Where is Ryan?”

“At some television studio, up near Rockefeller Center.”

“Why is he there?”

“He’s promoting However Long. With Hal and our sponsor, the Popcorn King.”

“And what’s the mayor doing there?”

“I never mentioned the mayor. You did!”

Dani shook her head vigorously, as if she were trying to toss confusion out of her ears. “Ryan’s okay, though?”

“He was the last time I saw him. About two hours ago, before you phoned from the police station.” I waited a second, to see if she was going to volunteer her own connection with television, the mayor, and just, possibly, popcorn. When she merely treated me to a bemused smile, though, I prompted, “Your turn. What happened to you? How did you get out of the police station? What happened to being held overnight until arraignment tomorrow?”

Again, the phone rang. Again, Dani waited it out. When she did answer me, she sounded vaguely astonished. “We were sitting in our holding cell, all of the Grays. And a policewoman came in. She said that we were being released, that there’d been some misunderstanding. Just like that, she opened up the door! At the end of the corridor, she stopped, and she told us to get ready, that there were already a lot of reporters there. We had no idea what she was talking about.”