Wishing in the Wings (7 page)

Okay. Maybe she wasn’t actually the severe lawyer that she appeared to be. I didn’t think that Bill Rodriguez, the attorney who had crushed my morning in the conference room, would yawn as he quoted chapter and verse at me. I took Teel’s stack of paper and started glancing through the pages.

Every single sheet was crammed with tiny writing. The minute text was broken up with bold face headings and with outlined indents that led to paragraph numbers like V.A.iii.h.(iv).(q). The more that I examined the words, the more they danced before my eyes.

I blinked hard, then tried again. The words stayed stable this time, but I still didn’t understand them. One passage, printed in bold, stated: “Where any wisher stands to be seized, or at any time hereafter shall happen to be seized, of any lands, tenements, rents, services, reversions, remainders, or other hereditaments, to the use, confidence, or trust of any other person or persons, or any body politic, by reason of any conveyance, contract, agreement, will or otherwise…”

I dropped the pages onto my desk. “This doesn’t make any sense at all.”

Teel sniffed in annoyance. “Nineteen out of twenty wishers said the exact same thing. That’s why we simplified the terms. We’ve just completed our review of all the paperwork. It’s much more basic now than if you’d summoned me a month ago.”

“‘We’ reviewed the paperwork?” I couldn’t smother my suspicious tone. “Who’s we?” I pictured a bunch of women who looked like clones of Teel, all gathered in a huge conference room, masquerading as the Lawyers of the Round Table.

Teel didn’t change my mental image substantially when she said, “Magic.”

“Magic?”

She clicked her tongue. “MAGIC,” she repeated, a bit more forcefully. “The Multijurisdictional Association of Genies and Imaginary Creatures. We just concluded our Decadium last week.”

“Decadium?” I parroted, as if I’d forgotten how to speak a full sentence.

“Our group meeting? Every ten years?” She rolled her eyes, and I was pretty sure she was saying that only an idiot would be unfamiliar with the concept. “All the genies in the Northern Hemisphere get together to discuss important things like case distribution and wish escalation. And simplification of contract terms.”

She made it sound so simple. So normal. So absolutely, positively commonplace. Still, I couldn’t quite picture the meeting. “You get together? You mean, like a conference? In a hotel?”

She pursed her lips. “Not exactly. MAGIC doesn’t convene on your plane of existence. Or in your time, for that matter. It can be a little complicated.”

“Complicated…” I repeated, my eyes straying back to the brass lantern. Somehow, I could see that my entire life had just become a lot more complicated. “Wait a second. You said genies and imaginary creatures. So am I only imagining you?”

“Well, everyone would think you were imagining me if you ever told them about this conversation.”

“That’s not really an answer,” I pointed out.

“That’s as much of an answer as I can give. Isn’t it enough to know that you’re talking to me? And I’m answering? And I’m offering you a wish contract with the most current terms?”

I reached behind me for my desk chair, locating the familiar padded arms without too much fumbling. As I sank onto its seat, I shook my head. This was crazy. Absolutely nuts. Sure, my morning had been a disaster, but had it been so stressful that I was actually hallucinating? Imagining a genie? One who spouted words that sounded like the sort of institutional technospeak that every human trade association gives itself? I recognized self-aggrandizing babble when I heard it—I had a masters degree.

I reached out to touch the contract again. The paper was real enough—a little heavier than the cheap stuff the Mercer used in its laser printers, but absolutely, unqualifiedly real. If I were hallucinating, I wouldn’t be able to feel the paper, right? I mean, hearing was one thing, and seeing nonexistent creatures was probably relatively commonplace. But if the contract on my desk was a pure figment of my overstressed imagination, would I really be able to feel it?

I reached a shaky hand toward my office telephone. 9-1-1. I could place the call, even in my compromised state. An ambulance could be here in minutes. They’d take me to the hospital; they’d make sure that I got whatever care I needed. They’d protect me until my obviously overtaxed brain could stabilize.

Which hospital was closest to the theater? I glanced at my bulletin board, at a neat printed sheet that I’d received during my very first rehearsal for my very first Mercer play. Kira had typed up the list of hospitals, along with a summary of local drug stores, bodegas, and late-serving restaurants. She took her stage manager duties seriously. As seriously as she’d taken our conversation, just a few minutes before. When she had given me the lantern.

She’d known exactly what it was. She’d known what would happen. That was why she had looked so strange after handing over the blue pillowcase. That was why she had told me that she was fine, and that I would be, too.

“Kira knows about all this, doesn’t she?”

“Kira Franklin?” Teel narrowed her eyes, as if she were searching through a gigantic filing cabinet in her mind. I nodded. “Kira doesn’t know about the Decadium. It never came up while she and I were working together. We finished our business relationship before I left for MAGIC.”

“No,” I said, frustrated that I hadn’t made myself clear. “She knew about you. About genies in general.”

“Well I should certainly think so. Didn’t she say anything about what we accomplished the last time I was out and about in this godforsaken place?”

“God-forsaken place?” I was surprised at the scorn in the genie’s voice. “What do you have against New York?”

“Well, shine my lamp! She finally left that frozen pit!”

Minneapolis. Where Kira had landed her dream job. Where she had met John McRae. And, apparently, where she had met Teel. Met our genie.

“Kira moved here about three years ago.”

“Three! Well it took her long enough, then, to pass along the lantern.” Teel clicked her tongue. “Seven out of ten wishers pass on their lamp within one month. Remember that.”

“Um, I will.” What? Was I going to be quizzed on these statistics? Or was I just supposed to feel a little pressure, an obligation to conform to everyone else who’d been granted magic wishes.

Like Kira, apparently. Maybe I wasn’t crazy after all.

I picked up the contract again, seriously considering signing on the proverbial dotted line, even though I couldn’t begin to comprehend the document. Beggars couldn’t afford to be choosers.

Of course, Dean would have handled all this differently. He would have taken all day and all night to mark up the pages, scribbling minute notes in the margin with his fine-point red Bic, asking endless questions. Well, I wasn’t Dean. In fact, screw Dean.

I waved the pages at the genie. “What’s in here? What are my obligations to you?”

For an instant, she got a crafty look in her eye. She turned her head to one side, arching one expressive eyebrow. I could feel her measuring me, trying to decide if I would buy whatever answer she made up. “You have to make all of your wishes within a twenty-four hour period?” she said.

That sounded like a question, though. Not an answer. “How many wishers do that?”

Teel frowned. I suspected that she was accustomed to using statistics to her own advantage. “Some?”

Another question. I wasn’t willing to push for actual numbers, though. Instead, I asked, “Did Kira make all of her wishes in a single day?”

Teel pouted, and I could see with perfect clarity the petulant teenager that the blond woman once had been. “No,” she admitted. I could almost imagine her digging the toe of her pumps into my office floor before she flounced out of the room mid-temper-tantrum. “She took a lot longer than that.”

“So, what was Kira’s deal? She signed the contract, got her three wishes, and then you waltzed off to your conference?”

“Four,” Teel said.

“Excuse me?”

“Four wishes.”

That didn’t make much sense. “Every book I’ve ever read says genies grant three wishes. Isn’t that in all the fairy tales?”

Teel seemed a bit put out. “It’s a good thing life isn’t a fairy tale, then, isn’t it? You get four wishes, okay? I’m bound to you until I’ve granted all four.”

I actually felt a little sorry for her. It had to be a drag, waiting around to grant that one extra wish to every single person who rubbed the lamp. I suspected that the delay could really screw up her completion statistics.

But four wishes? All mine? Who was I to insist that the standard was three? Gift horse, and all that.

I turned to the last page of the agreement and signed my name, looping the letters with a little more authority than I customarily used.

“Wonderful,” Teel said. “And initial here. And there. And at the bottom of that page, there.” What did I have to worry about, really? It was the devil who stole souls, right? Not genies. As I finished adding my last scribble and set down my pen, my attention was drawn back to Teel’s fiery tattoo. All of a sudden, the ink wasn’t quite as fascinating, now that I’d spoiled it by thinking about demons.

“So?” she said, as if she were afraid I’d change my mind. “What’s your first wish?”

I thought about everything that had happened that day. Kira had given me the lantern because she had known just how absolutely, completely, irredeemably miserable I was. But now I had the power to act. I had the power to change things.

What should I wish for? Information about Dean’s whereabouts, so that I could turn him in and get back everything he owed me? Me, and the Mercer, too?

But that was sort of petty, in the big scheme of things. Sure, my day had been a disaster. Absolutely, my personal life had fallen apart at the seams. Beyond doubt, the Mercer was in trouble. But the world had even bigger problems.

Universal health care. Equal rights for all people. Genocide in countries I could barely name. How could I pass up solving such major problems for so many others?

I rolled global crises around in my head for a few minutes. And then, I said, “Global warming.”

“Excuse me?” Teel’s words sounded liked they’d been punched out of a sheet of frozen metal.

I tried to project an air of confidence. “I’d like to solve global warming. Climate change. You know, polar bears drowning in the Arctic, drought in Australia, ecological disasters around the world.”

Teel closed her eyes and brought her hands together in a gesture of prayer. Her tattoo pulsed as she inhaled, then exhaled. Four times, she repeated the breathing exercises. Each time that she filled her lungs, the flames on her wrist glowed a little brighter, as if she were pumping a bellows, breathing fresh life into the tattoo. On the final exhale, Teel opened her eyes and stared at me levelly.

“Was that it?” I whispered, awed. “Global warming is solved?”

She snorted, scattering any semblance of peace and harmony. “Of course not. You’ll know when I grant one of your wishes.”

“But what were you doing?” I heard the wail behind my words, realized that I sounded like a spoiled child.

“I was calming myself. We had an entire afternoon seminar on that at MAGIC. On how to handle the Grand Wishes.”

“Grand Wishes?” I repeated.

“Ninety-eight out of one hundred first-timers try to save the world. Make a better planet.” She drew out that last phrase into a mocking sing-song.

I started to argue even before I wondered about those other two, the pair who didn’t have altruism running in their veins. “But you said—”

She cut me off. “You can ask me to solve global warming. And I can grant your wish. But I’m only one genie. And the globe is a very large place. Climate change is especially tricky—I have to balance everything, from one region to another, and every adjustment I make in one place will have an effect somewhere else. You know—butterflies, flapping wings, hurricanes, all that garbage.”

“So you can’t do it?” I was astonished to hear the disappointment in my voice. Half an hour before, I hadn’t even known that genies were real, and now I was sulking because mine was backing off from her promises.

“I can do it, but I wouldn’t finish up for…” she trailed off, staring at my office wall and moving her lips as she made some mental calculation. “Six hundred and forty-three years, twenty-seven days, four hours, and oh, give or take twenty minutes.”

“Wow.” I felt like I had to say something else, so I tried, “You can be that precise?”

“That’s one of the new requirements, in the revised contract. Page thirty-one?” She pointed a perfectly manicured nail toward the document that I’d signed. “Fulfillment delay for any wish that will take longer than twenty-four hours to grant must be disclosed in full to the wisher. Prior written notice must be provided in cases of time variance stemming from high Ethical Interference Quotient, extended Physical Impact Vector, or substantial Time Adjustment Factor. No written notice necessary here, though.” When I merely stared, stunned into submission by all the jargon, Teel dusted off her hands. “Of course, the actual contract language is a little more complex, but those are the general ideas that we covered in our break-out session at MAGIC.”

I was beginning to gain a little more respect for the administrative nightmare that must have taken place at that conference. I sighed. Bottom line, if most wishes could be granted in less than a day, and my climate change wish would take six and half centuries, give or take… “Okay,” I said. “Forget about global warming.”

“Thank you.” Teel nodded firmly. “Do you want to try something a little more manageable?”

I chewed on my lip. Money. That was the root of all my problems. If I wished for enough money, I could pay back the Mercer, buy myself a condo, replace all of my possessions, and guarantee that I’d have a diet more satisfying than flash-fried noodles in over-salted broth.

But money would get Dean off the hook.

Sure, the cops would still track him down. They’d arrest him. He’d go to trial. But any lawyer worth his astronomical hourly rate would get Dean off if no one could prove any lasting financial impact from his misdeeds. I didn’t want to do anything to help that lying, cheating, sack of…