Wish Upon a Star (11 page)

For just a second, I thought that I must be having some sort of delayed reaction to Sam’s departure. I certainly didn’t
feel
like my heart was breaking. I didn’t
think
that I’d suffer a stroke or an aneurysm or some other dire medical emergency, just because my boyfriend of the past two years had walked out of the room without a backward glance. I’d wanted him to go.

But I couldn’t figure out what else was going on. One moment, I was watching Timothy walk back into his kitchen. The next, I was surrounded by nothingness—a vague gray space that stretched as far as my eyes could see. The fireplace, my table, everything about Garden Variety, simply disappeared. I couldn’t see my soup, couldn’t smell it.

I staggered forward a step, surprised to find that I was standing, when I’d been sitting in the restaurant just a moment before. My feet moved; I could sense my muscles bunching, feel my toes rocking to maintain my balance. When I looked down, I could see my body, but there wasn’t anything else. There wasn’t anything beneath my feet. My belly swooped in disorientation, and I was grateful that I’d only swallowed a single spoonful of soup.

“Hello?” I called out, hating the fact that my voice quavered. At the same time, though, I was proud that I managed to get out any sound at all. “Help?”

“I do not understand you humans!” I whirled at the voice that came from behind me. “Seven out of ten just look into the distance instead of using their time here to study the Garden!”

“What?” I asked stupidly, absurdly grateful that my eyes had something to focus on. A well-muscled man stood in front of me. His sandy hair was chopped into a brush cut, and his blue eyes were sharp enough to cut wood. He wore a gray T-shirt that was stamped Garden Athletic Department and sweatpants to match. He bounced lightly on his Nike-clad feet, as if he had just finished an invigorating run and was ready to drop and give me twenty.

I wasn’t entirely surprised to find a tattoo encircling his wrist. The flames shone particularly brightly in the neutral air around us, kindling with an orange-and-yellow light as if they glowed from within. The black outlines flickered as I stared.

“Teel?” I asked.

“You were expecting someone else?” The efficiency of his tight smile was underscored by the stopwatch that he held in his right hand. I was willing to swear that the thing had appeared from nowhere; surely, I would have seen it when I noticed the flickering flames on his wrist. He nodded as he watched the second hand tick past some noteworthy point, and then he raised his left hand to the pulse point in his neck. After fifteen seconds, he was apparently satisfied with his heart rate, because he nodded and thumbed a button on the stopwatch. “Ready? Get set, go!”

“Go where?” I asked. If I kept my gaze tightly locked on the genie, I could just avoid the queasiness that assaulted me every time I looked at the nothingness around me.

“To the Garden, of course!”

“What are you talking about?”

He bounced on his feet like an overly enthusiastic personal trainer, the kind who should be shot at dawn. “The one right in front of us!” He drilled into me with those thermonuclear eyes. “Let’s go, now. You can see it. You can make it real!”

I barely managed not to groan. “Teel, can you just stand still?”

He jogged over to my side. “Okay, now. Take three deep breaths.” He settled one broad hand on my chest, watched as my lungs filled, arching his fingers as I exhaled. “There you go. Another. One more, deeper now. Hold it. Hoooold it!” I clamped down on the air in my lungs until I thought I was going to explode. “And exhale! Excellent!”

Again, he fiddled with his stopwatch. I had no idea what he could possibly be timing. My breathing? I felt like I was confined with some insane paramedic, someone who was measuring the time between my contractions, intent on helping me deliver a healthy baby. Um, if I were actually pregnant. Which we’d all established, cataclysmically, that I was not.

“Okay, now,” Teel said, turning away and obviously not noticing—or not caring—that I wasn’t bouncing along after him. “Place each hand around an upright here on the fence and stretch—” He started to match action to word, but I merely gaped.

My genie was apparently a master mime. His fingers folded around some sort of post, or a pole, something that was absolutely invisible to me. He leaned into the support, popping out the taut muscles of his calves. He threw his head back and inhaled deeply, as if he were summoning strength from the inner walls of his corpuscles.

“There!” he said after a thunderous exhale. “Your turn. Grab hold of the fence—”

His fingers on mine were warm, hot even. I shook him off with annoyance. “Teel, there isn’t any fence!” I pulled away, taking three tottering steps into the void.

“Oh,” he said, and he was so crestfallen that I flashed back to the moment when I told my high school soccer coach I was dropping off the team so that I could act in the drama club’s production of
Ten Little Indians
. Teel came to a bobbing stop in front of me, still shuddering his arms like a bird practicing to take off, keeping his muscles loose, exuding the very essence of athlete-in-training. “Really?”

“Really.” I darted my eyes left and right, refusing to turn my head completely. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

Teel sighed. “Damn. I thought you might be one. A Perceptive. I’ve never met one, and I’m so close to the end.”

“A Perceptive? What are you talking about? And the end of what?”

“My mission. Once I grant all of your wishes, I get to go inside the Garden.”

I forced myself to stare into the distance, into the space where Teel quite clearly saw something beautiful, something compelling. All I could make out was a featureless expanse that made my inner ear scream that it was out of balance. I forced myself to concentrate and asked, “But what is it?”

“The most beautiful place in the world.” Teel relaxed back on his heels. For the first time in this incarnation, he seemed calm. A smile blossomed across his lips as he spoke. “It’s always in full bloom—can’t you smell the lilacs? And the honeysuckle?” He didn’t wait for my denial. “The stream is just inside—you can hear it. And the birds… They’re incredibly loud today. Almost as if they know I’m coming in soon.” He closed his eyes, and his rock-hard features softened. “The nightingales…and Jaze.”

“Jaze?” I finally interrupted Teel’s enraptured recital. “What is Jaze?”

“Who,” my personal trainer said, snapping back to my reality. Or at least what passed for reality here in the middle of nowhere. He started bouncing on his toes again, apparently ready to run a 5K.

“Who,” I acceded, shrugging.

“Jaze is my soul mate. Or I think he will be, if we ever get into the Garden at the same time. We promised we would wait for each other if…
when
we both get in. She’s been there for several months of your human time. I thought it might work out, when you summoned me. Becca passed on the lamp so quickly. She made it possible for you to make your wishes before Jaze leaves.”

His voice became more commanding as he spoke, more insistent. Those laser eyes seemed to demand that I make my last two wishes immediately. Trying not to be flustered by Teel’s flexible use of pronouns, I asked, “How long will he, um, she… How long will
Jaze
be there?”

Teel glared with a fierce competitiveness. “Time might be up, even now. Ready to make your last two wishes?”

That wasn’t fair! He couldn’t lure me here and tell me about his mythical Garden, pine away for his girlfriend, um, boyfriend,
whatever,
and then demand that I make my final wishes! A strong jolt of resentment cemented my jaw, and I forced out an answer. “Not yet. I only made the first two today. I have to see how they turn out.”

“Eight out of ten wishers complete their wishes in one week.” He barked out the statistic with the same conviction legitimate trainers used on their clients.

I’d always rebelled against authority figures. At least, that’s what Amy told me, every time she tried to boss me around. I dug in my figurative heels. “I’m afraid I might be one of the outliers.”

“But I’ve waited so long….” Suddenly, there was a wistfulness in Teel’s voice that I hadn’t heard before, a vulnerability that was distinctly at odds with his current rugged demeanor. He looked over his sculpted shoulder, his eyes swooping upward, so that I was fairly certain he was following the path of an invisible bird.

“I’m sorry,” I said firmly. “But you have to understand. I need to make the most of my wishes. I can’t just give them away, so that you can go into the Garden.”

“But Jaze—”

“Even to meet Jaze,” I said, surprised at the sudden iron that I put into my words.

Sam had just given me a new perspective on relationships, and on just how long—or short—a time they might last. I was strong enough to argue for what I needed, independent enough to take care of myself.

Teel apparently heard my newfound determination. He sighed. “But you’ll
try
to decide quickly?”

“As soon as I know what to ask for,” I said, nodding firmly. I shouldn’t have been so assertive, though. The motion of moving my head up and down was enough to send my stomach reeling again. “Um, Teel? Can you get me out of here now? I really don’t feel well.”

He glanced down at his stopwatch and nodded, as if we had finally met some preordained time limit. “Promise me you won’t delay, though.”

“I promise,” I said. Truth be told, I was starting to feel sick enough that if Teel had offered to trade one wish for getting me out of that disorienting whirl of nothingness, I just might take him up on it. Fortunately for me, though, my genie reached up to his tanned earlobe and tugged hard, twice.

All of a sudden, I was back in Garden Variety. I could feel the chair beneath me. I could hear the crackle of the fire, the murmur of conversation at a couple of nearby tables. I could see the homeless woman at the back gathering up her bags, checking their belts and buckles, readying herself to return to the May night outside. I could smell the still-steaming green garlic soup in front of me.

The hint of sherry in the bowl was too much for my uneasy stomach. I pushed the soup away and forced myself to take a trio of deep breaths.

Only then did I dare look around. Had anyone noticed my disappearance? Had anyone seen me blink out of existence, and then back in again?

Apparently, no one had. Not one person in the restaurant was gazing in my direction. I’d somehow managed to go to Teel’s Garden and return without raising a single suspicious eyebrow.

I forced myself to take a piece of bread from the basket Timothy had brought, hoping that some ballast would steady my stomach. I tore off a bite, relishing the crisp crust. I made myself chew a dozen times before I swallowed, telling myself that my belly would settle down once it had something inside it. I gulped a little water to reinforce the message.

After a few minutes, Timothy circled back. He frowned when he saw the bowl of soup pushed away. The expression looked fierce against his unshaved cheeks, but his voice was gentle. “Rough night?”

I found a wry smile somewhere inside my confusion. “You could say that.”

“Can I get you something else?”

I shook my head. “Let me just settle up on this.”

He picked up the bowl. “It’s on the house.”

“That’s not fair!”

His eyes darted toward the door, tracing the path that Sam had taken as he left. “Fair enough, I think. Are you okay to get home?”

For just a second, I imagined him walking me back to the Bentley. I pictured him standing in my doorway after I’d worked the triple locks. I imagined him resting a hand on my arm, raising his fingers to trace my cheekbone. I felt his lips on mine, warm and growing hotter as he teased a willing response from me.

Blushing, I forced away the fantasy.

I was through with men. I was strong and independent, and I wasn’t going to cash in those hard-won chips for the first guy who was nice to me at the end of a long day. I had a Master Plan, and I wasn’t about to throw it out the window.

“I’m fine,” I said.

He nodded. “Don’t be a stranger.”

I found myself snared by the serious expression on his face, by the grave simplicity of his words. “I won’t be,” I said.

I pushed back my chair and reached for my jacket, but Timothy took it from my hands. He held it behind me, finding the perfect angle so that my arms slid easily into the sleeves. His fingertips twitched the collar into place, and I was aware of the fleeting ghost of his palms against my shoulders, brushing the coat against my frame.

Independent women could let men help them into their coats, couldn’t they?

“Thanks,” I said.

“Have a good evening.” For just a moment, I thought that he was going to say something else, but we both saw the flicker of a raised hand from a table against the far wall, the gesture of a contented diner calling for his check. Timothy smiled wryly and said, “Don’t get wet out there.”

I twitched my hood into place and stepped into the courtyard. It had obviously rained hard while I’d been in the restaurant. In fact, a few stray raindrops still splashed onto the flagstones in the courtyard, but I’d missed the worst of the weather.

I was hurrying toward the Bentley when my cell phone rang. Who’d be calling after nine? It wasn’t Amy—I had a ring tone set for her. Sam, either. He had his own tone, one that it was time to delete. I fished out the phone and stared at the screen. A 212 number, unknown to me.

A 212 number. Here in New York. In New York, the theater capital of the world.

My heart started pounding as I remembered the casting director in the dance studio—was it only that afternoon? “We’ll be in touch,” she’d said. And I had walked out of the audition hall, certain that I had the role.

My fingers tingled as I pressed the glowing green button and answered the call. If I wasn’t cast as Laura Wingfield in
Menagerie!
there was no justice in all of New York City.

THERE WAS NO justice in New York City.

The casting director was kind enough. She told me that I had amazed the director. I had wowed the choreographer. I had made the lyricist recognize new potential for the songs that he had written for the show’s world premiere.