Wish Upon a Star (12 page)

But the producers had decided to go with Martina Block, that actress who had become so famous a few years ago, on that reality TV show. She had the big name, the marquee appeal. She could fill a Broadway house, sell tickets for months and months on end.

Nevertheless, they wanted me to be Martina’s understudy. The casting director hastened to assure me that my job as understudy would be so important, so vital, that it was practically a full role in itself. Serving as understudy was so demanding that I wouldn’t even be able to perform in the chorus. It would be fantastic experience.

The only catch was, I wouldn’t go onstage. Not unless something terrible happened to Martina.

I was so disappointed that I wanted to cry. I wanted to collapse onto one of Timothy’s metal chairs. I wanted to grind my cell phone underfoot. I wanted to throw my head back and howl at the beclouded moon, mourning cold, cruel fate.

Instead, I thanked the casting director for her consideration and said that I’d show up for the first read-through, a week away.

What else could I say? I needed the job. I needed the exposure. I needed the pittance of a paycheck, the fraction of what I would have earned if I’d landed the star role. At least it was more than I’d been getting at Concerned Catering. By a dollar or two.

And I could stretch the truth a little, tell everyone that I had a role in a new musical. In the battle to win the new me, I could claim a victory. It was just a smaller victory than I’d anticipated. A much smaller victory.

The more I thought about that, the more I realized that I was furious with Teel. My genie had promised me. We had a contract. In fact, when I thought back to my panic in the audition hall bathroom, I had been specifying the details of my wish, I had been clarifying that I wanted to use my singing and dancing skills to get the lead in
Menagerie!
when Teel had cut me off.

She was bound to grant my wishes, wasn’t she? To make my dreams come true! She had to make this right. She had to make my wishes work the way that I’d intended.

I forced myself to wait until I was back in my apartment before I pressed my tattooed fingertips together and called her name.

There was the electric jangle I’d come to expect. The fog was becoming old hat, but this time it cleared up much faster than before. I barely blinked, and then I was face to face with Fred Flintstone.

Okay. It wasn’t really the cartoon character. Instead, it was a fat slob of a guy. His belly hung over his dirty blue jeans. His Yankees T-shirt was at least one size too small, and he really should have considered adding suspenders to the belt that wasn’t doing its job. A monster-size bag of nacho cheese Doritos filled one hand and a beer occupied the other. Tattooed flames glinted dully against the aluminum can.

I was so astonished that I sat down on my couch. “Where’s the trainer?” I asked.

He belched in response, long and low. When he rubbed the back of one forearm across his mouth, he left behind a sprinkling of fake orange cheese. “A lot o’ good that did me. No need fer a trainer, if I’m stuck outside the Garden. It’s not like Jaze is ever gonna see me.” His beady eyes narrowed as he studied me. “Unless y’ changed yer mind. Ready t’ make Wish Three?”

I shook my head, a little overwhelmed that Teel’s appearance could have changed so completely in such a short time. I shouldn’t have been surprised, though. I mean, there was nothing that the personal trainer had in common with the skanky cheerleader, or the cop. But this guy, this mass of morose flesh… I found myself seeking out the tracery of his tattoos once again, just to reassure myself that he was really Teel.

He scooped up a huge fistful of Doritos and shoved them into his maw. Around the crumbs, he said, “Well, not t’ put too fine a point on it, but what d’ y’ want from me? Why’d y’ call me here?” He chugged down half a can of beer as he waited for my reply.

“My wishes,” I said. “The first two. You didn’t do what you said you would.”

He craned his neck to either side, as if he’d spent too many hours watching TV and had just figured out how to haul his carcass out of his recliner. When his spine had completed its concerto of audible pops, he shook his head vigorously. Only then did he point at me, sparing the index finger that had been curled around the beer can. “Can y’ sing better ’n before y’ made yer wish?”

“Well, yes,” I said, “but—”

“And can y’ dance better?”

“Yes, but—”

“Two wishes granted, then. I done my part.”

“But I was supposed to get a role in
Menagerie!
”

“Did y’ wish fer a role in, what d’ y’ call it,
Menagerie!
”

“I told you why I wanted to sing and dance. I told you that I wanted the lead.”

“But did y’ wish fer it? It’s all about the wishes, is’n it?”

“You didn’t let me! You didn’t let me get a word in edgewise!”

“I don’ recall anyone shovin’ a gag down yer throat. Y’ did well enough, askin’ me fer what y’ got.” As if to punctuate that circular logic, he tilted the bag of Doritos up to his lips, pouring a fluorescent orange stream of crumbs into his mouth. He chewed loudly and then said, “Y’ wanna make another wish? Wish fer the lead?”

“No!” I answered immediately, out of frustration, but also with a sense of outrage. “I already spent two wishes on the show! I want you to do what you should have done in the first place!”

“Y’ want me t’ pull yer contract? ’Cause it says right there in black ’n’ white that y’ got t’ make yer wishes clear. If y’ did’n say y’ wanted t’ be in that play, then I did’n have any obligation t’ put y’ in that play. But yer free t’ make another wish now.”

He was doing this to drive me crazy. He wanted to make me use up a third wish, to get him that much closer to his precious Jaze, even though I couldn’t imagine anyone—male, female, genie or human—who would want to spend thirty seconds with this carb-stuffed, beer-soaked slob.

I dug in my heels. “Fine,” I said. “Go back to whatever you were doing.”

“Yer not gonna make a wish? Y’ got two left, y’ know.”

“I know. I’m not wishing right now. Have a good evening.” I glared at my fingertips. I’d give just about anything to invent some sort of summoning magic in reverse—something that would let me send Teel back to where he’d come from. I settled for a pointed sigh, and then I said, “Good
night
.”

Teel raised his stained fingers to his earlobe and pulled twice. I distinctly heard him belch before he faded away.

I tried not to feel sorry for myself while I sat in rehearsal, but it wasn’t easy.

The director, Ken Durbin, gathered all of us in one room. We were seated at tables that were shaped into a circle, so that everyone could see everyone else. One wall was covered in mirrors, which made the sound echo a little. As we entered, we completed “Hello, My Name Is” name tags; I resisted the urge to draw a frowning face above the
i
in
Erin.
That wouldn’t be the most professional way to meet my fellow cast members.

The show only had four acting roles: Laura (the role that should have been mine), Amanda (Laura’s dreamy, out-of-touch, faded Southern belle mother), Tom (Laura’s brother, who longs to escape the cesspit of family interactions) and Jim (the Gentleman Caller, Tom’s coworker and Laura’s completely impossible crush.)

The musical version added a dozen singers and dancers to Tennessee Williams’s original play. They would perform a variety of roles, acting out neighbors who gossiped about the batty Amanda and Laura, and playing Tom’s factory coworkers, along with a cavalcade of dream-suitors whom Laura imagined might carry her off to eternal married bliss. None of them had lines—they told their story entirely in song and dance.

It took me about twenty-seven seconds to realize that there were three tiers in
Menagerie!
society. First came the name stars, the four leads who would literally see their names in lights. A substantial distance behind came the singers and dancers, the ensemble who would make this musical version of a classic soar above other plays. And at the very back, sweeping up after the entire fiesta of lights and glory and fame, like the circus workers who followed along behind the elephants on parade, were the understudies. Me, sitting in as not-Laura.

At least I found a kindred spirit in Shawn Goldberg, the understudy for the Gentlemen Caller. I’d met him a couple of years back, when I’d first moved to New York. We’d attended a casting seminar together, both listening to a presentation from some long-forgotten casting director, then trying to impress the guy with our respective pitches. I know that I never got a job out of the deal; I didn’t think Shawn had, either. In the intervening years, we’d run into each other at a handful of parties.

Shawn seemed overjoyed to see me. We both took seats at the foot of the table, as far away from Ken Durbin and Martina Block as it was possible to be. Shawn insisted on kissing me on both cheeks, and he exclaimed that I didn’t look a
day
older than when we’d met. He just
loved
what I was doing with my hair, and he would positively
die
if I didn’t share his black-and-white cookie with him.

At least the cookie left a sweet taste in my mouth, to counteract the self-pitying acid of introducing myself to everyone as Martina’s understudy.

After we’d gone around the circle, Ken leaped to his feet. He was a short man, lithe, with a dancer’s body despite his having reached middle age. He seemed unable to keep still; even when he was standing behind his chair, he bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. When he spoke, his voice was higher than I expected; the tone made his words seem even more urgent, more important. His wiry gray hair moved with every toss of his head, and his dark brown eyes darted around the room, including everyone in their survey.

Ken wowed us for almost an hour, telling us about the power that he saw in our American classic. He talked about the archetypal strength of the characters, the ways that they had persisted through the decades, how they had become hallmarks of American culture. He waxed eloquent about the raw creativity of the American musical, an art form born on the hallowed streets of Broadway. He delivered a paean to the artistic spirit, to the songwriters and choreographers and designers who would forge our production into a thing of everlasting beauty.

I would have been inspired, if I’d felt like I belonged.

When Ken finished his eloquent introduction, he announced a short break before we settled down to the excitement of reading through the text for the very first time. Even those of us who knew Tennessee Williams’s play inside and out, he said, were bound to be surprised by the energy!—and the vibrancy! and the excitement!—of the book for the musical.

The dancers led the stampede for the door; they’d been kept from their cigarettes for too long. Familiar with the scene from every other play I’d ever worked on, I could picture the entire gaggle of them, hovering by the door to the rehearsal hall, sucking down as much nicotine as they could squeeze into their bloodstreams before they were required to return. I was consistently amazed that dancers could meet the physical demands of their roles, given the nicotine abuse of their bodies. (I’m sure there were some dancers who didn’t smoke, but not any of my acquaintance.)

Shawn raised a single imperious eyebrow at our colleagues’ behavior, then returned his attention to the lead actors. He leaned close to whisper, “
Someone
should tell Martina that bikini undies are
so
last year. She really should get herself a decent pair of boyshorts.”

I followed his pointed glance. Martina was leaning in close to Ken Durbin, twisting in her chair so that her black gabardine slacks were stretched tight, subjecting her to the scourge of Visible Panty Line. Shawn’s expression was so scandalized that I couldn’t help but laugh. I whispered back, “Is there No Hope For The Future?”

I drew out the last five words, making them as dramatic as I dared in a room where I might be overheard. Martina had risen to fame by competing on a reality television show for a role in a big-budget musical produced by a certain major entertainment corporation that had a certain strong business tie to a certain big-four television network.

Martina’s reality show competition had ranged from gross-out eating contests to big-glitz song-and-dance numbers. She had cemented her win in the final round, where each contestant was required to deliver a speech to the judges. Martina’s had been entitled “No Hope for the Future.” She had written about the horror of industrial farming, decrying the plight of cattle fattened on corn, destined for slaughter. Much to the glee of entertainment columnists everywhere, she had begun her speech with the now-immortal phrase, “I am a cow!”

At least it got her noticed.

Shawn shook his head. “So, what do you think it’ll take to off the leads? Some arsenic in their tea? Colonel Mustard with the candlestick in the conservatory?” He twirled an invisible dastardly mustache.

I laughed. “I wouldn’t put anything past you!”

“Just you wait, my dear. Just you wait!”

I pretended to look shocked, but I was actually quite amused. Shawn had always been good for a laugh, and now that we were engaged in an “us against them” struggle, it felt good to know he had my back.

Of course, I still had Teel up my proverbial sleeve. I
could
have summoned my genie, used a wish and been released from this entire depressing ordeal. Teel would have been thrilled. After talking to his obnoxious Yankees fan incarnation, I was just about positive that he’d railroaded me into making my singing and dancing wishes precisely because he knew I wouldn’t get the role that I desired. He knew that I’d come back to him, speeding through my wishes as if they were tissue, and I had the head cold of the century.

A tiny voice, though, whispered that I was being paranoid. My genie could grant wishes, but he couldn’t read the future. He’d had no way of knowing that Martina Block was going to audition for the role of Laura. He certainly couldn’t have guessed that Martina would be cast instead of me.

Nope. I’d told the truth when I spoke to Teel’s fat-slob persona. I’d spent two wishes getting where I was, and I wasn’t going to invest another. Besides, if I applied a third wish to land the lead, I’d have to arrange for Shawn to star, as well. Otherwise, I’d have to watch every bite of food I ingested, for the entire run of the show. Or at least make sure there weren’t any candlesticks on the set.