Wishing in the Wings (34 page)

“Five million dollars,” I stammered.

“That’s impossible!” Ryan protested, but after turning a few more pages, he agreed in a disbelieving voice. “Five million dollars.”

Dani shook her head angrily. “He’ll never get it! Not after what he put you through!”

I swallowed hard. “Even if we end up winning, it’ll cost a fortune to fight this. We’ll have to hire lawyers, both of us. And Hal and the Mercer, too.”

Ryan had read further into his sheaf of papers. “It’s not just the money. He says he’ll be irreparably harmed if we do the play without his sponsorship. He says his reputation’s on the line.”

“His reputation!” I almost choked.

Ryan’s face was chalk-white. “He got a judge to sign off on it. He got a temporary restraining order. We’ve been shut down, effective immediately.”

Dani’s brilliant crocuses seemed to fade as I struggled for something to say. I stared at the papers in my hand, as if I could will them into some transformation. I struggled to read the words, but they defiantly danced around the page.

I heard Ryan say something to Dani, thank her for the flowers, for the guerilla action on our behalf. Then he sent her on her way so that we could start slicing through our legal emergency. “We’ve got to find Hal,” I said, fumbling my way back into the theater. Ryan stayed by my side as I ran through the lobby.

The stage was empty, though. Everyone had rushed out for lunch, eager for a break after the grueling rehearsal. Without a lot of hope, I said, “Maybe he’s in his office.” I led the way backstage, down the stairs, through the passage that led to the business side of the Mercer.

Jenn’s computer was on in the Bullpen, her cockatiel screensaver mocking me with its cheerful colors, but she was nowhere to be seen. I knocked on Hal’s door, simultaneously pushing it open. He wasn’t there. Frantic, I darted into the conference room, poked my head into every single office down the long corridor.

Only when we got to my office did I accept that Ryan and I were truly alone. We had to grapple with this disaster without any help, without any guidance. I closed the door and threw my summons onto my desk, glaring at the ruffled pages.

Five million dollars.

That was more money than I could imagine earning in a lifetime. It was more than Dean had stolen. And a judge had already said we couldn’t do the show? Without even holding a hearing?

I tried to remember to breathe.

“I don’t know who to call,” I muttered, longing to pace, but hemmed in by the stacks of books and boxes that filled my office. “Do you have a lawyer? Maybe Dani has one?” I fumbled through the stack of business cards piled by my computer monitor, as if legal counsel would magically appear. Ryan made a few negative noises, but he didn’t bother explaining that he didn’t keep a consigliore on call. He didn’t need to.

Hal was going to be furious. Sure, he’d stood by me when my (now ex-, thank God) boyfriend embezzled funds. He’d put up with Ryan’s pickiness over the staging. He’d embraced all the challenges of producing However Long. But having our show shut down before we started? All because I’d recruited the wrong sponsor? Because I’d let myself lose my temper with the Popcorn King? Because I’d abandoned every precept of dramaturgy when I read Ronald J. Barton the riot act in front of the Mercer’s cast and crew?

Hal was going to fire me.

And the worst part of it was, he’d be right to do so. I had ruined our production. I had totally and completely screwed up.

The towering stack of plays on my desk mocked me. Someone else would inherit them. Someone who was more organized. Someone who could track all the details of this job neatly. Someone who was a better judge of character than I.

I couldn’t help it. I started to cry.

Ryan was beside me instantly. His arms around me should have been comforting. They should have felt like protection, like a bulwark against all the tumbling chaos. Instead, though, they reminded me of everything I’d had, of everything I’d lost.

“Hush,” he murmured as my sobs crescendoed. He brushed his lips against the top of my head. That tenderness broke something inside me. I hadn’t just disappointed Hal, hadn’t just let down the Mercer. Ryan was losing, too. Ryan’s first play, his debut in New York—destroyed, because I had misplayed my cards with the Popcorn King. My tears turned to hysterical waves of desperate sorrow, of loss, of hopelessness.

Throughout the torrent, Ryan stood fast. He held on to me, became my only anchor in that forlorn sea. Just when I thought my sobs would tear me apart completely, he tightened his arms around me, pulled me even closer, supported me even more.

That sort of breakdown couldn’t continue forever. I needed to catch my breath. I needed to blow my nose. My wracking sobs faded to gasps, drifted away to hiccups. I could hear Ryan’s heart, pounding through the drenched fabric of his shirt. Ducking my head, I slipped out of his embrace and stumbled to my desk, flailing around until I found a box of Kleenex.

I kept my back to him as I blew my nose. Great. With my waterlogged face, I was going to look like some alien monster. Embarrassed to face him, I fumbled for another Kleenex. I missed the box, though, sent it skittering across my desk. Ryan rescued it and plucked a tissue, which he pressed into my seeking hand.

I took another minute before I trusted myself to speak. “Well,” I said, not certain what other words to add.

“Well,” he agreed. “That was a long time coming.”

I nodded, even though he couldn’t see my face. Sure, I’d been crying about the lawsuit. But I’d been crying about so much more—the endless tension in bringing the play to completion, the loss of Dean, of my first home in New York, of my silly, schoolgirl dreams.

I took a fortifying breath and exhaled slowly, collecting the tattered shreds of my tissue and my dignity before turning to face Ryan.

He didn’t flinch at my tear-mottled face, at my swollen eyes and runny nose. He didn’t fling a hand over his eyes, didn’t scream that I was a hideous monster, a gross, distorted alien. Instead, he reached out one hand and tucked a wayward strand of my strawberry hair behind my ear.

I forced myself to meet his gaze. “I think today is a rainy day.”

He didn’t pretend to misunderstand me. “Are you sure? It’s your last wish. I don’t want you to waste it.”

“It’s not a waste,” I said. “It’s a necessity.” With stolid determination, I raised my tattooed fingers between us. I turned my wrist slightly, watching the near-invisible flames fracture the light, send it back to us in rainbows. Matching my thumb to my forefinger, I pressed hard and said, “Teel!”

Even though I was braced for the electric shock, it still surprised me. It caught Ryan, too; I saw him jerk once, as if he’d been suddenly awakened from a sound sleep. My entire office was filled with a kaleidoscope of lights, jeweled motes that coalesced in the air, that solidified on every surface. The brilliant dust swirled toward me, ruby and cobalt and emerald and topaz, all glinting like fireworks on a dark summer night. Each individual spark blazed brighter for a single, unified heartbeat, and then they all collapsed inward, solidifying into one dark shape.

A man. A policeman.

His navy blue uniform seemed molded to his body. The knife edges ironed into his shirtsleeves looked sharp enough to draw blood. His black belt was tight around his trim waist, and his nightstick and gun looked ready to jump into his confident hands. His strong jaw and deep-set chestnut eyes made me absolutely certain that he had graduated first in his class at the academy. Only the tattoo blazing on his wrist marked him as a man who’d never set foot inside a traditional police station.

I stepped forward and raised my chin. “I’m ready to make my fourth wish.”

“I observed your intention as I exited the transition plane, ma’am” he said. He sounded like he was testifying in a court of law about some crime that he had foiled through hard work, long hours, and unquestioned diligence. His voice rumbled with an authority that could have stopped a bank robber mid-heist. Sparing a tight nod for Ryan, he said, “I take it, sir, that you’ve been included in the preparations for this wish transaction?”

Ryan straightened his shoulders and answered with resigned acceptance. “Yes.”

I took a deep breath. “Teel, we need to erase Ronald J. Barton’s lawsuit against us. Against Hal and the Mercer, too. We need to get rid of the order that the court issued this morning, eliminate any chance that we could owe damages.”

The policeman’s jaw clenched, as if his teeth were working steel chewing gum. He plucked a notepad from his belt, flipped back its leather cover. Grasping a pen between his iron fingers, he jotted something on a form, checking a couple of boxes, and reviewing the entire document before he scribbled his name across the bottom.

“What’s that?” I asked as he tore out the page and gave it to me.

“Prior written notification of a time variance stemming from a high E.I.Q. pursuant to the original contract that you signed.” His eyes narrowed as he pointed to one square on the form. “Your request will take two weeks to grant.”

“What?” I was astonished. My wish was a simple request, not something like world peace. “I just want the Popcorn King off my back!”

Teel recited, “Applying the standards set forth at the most recent Decadium—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, cutting off a lecture that sounded as exciting as a Miranda warning. “You have to warn me if you can’t do the wish right away. But what’s the problem? Why will this one take so long to fulfill?”

The cop brought his blunt fingers to rest on the grip of his gun, as if he wanted a reminder of his position of authority. His fingers curved easily around the textured metal, and his voice was professionally cool as he said, “Applying the standards set forth at the most recent Decadium, your request generates an E.I.Q. of one hundred and seven. All fourth wishes generating an E.I.Q. greater than one hundred require a two week holding period.”

“E.I.Q.?” Ryan asked.

“Ethical Interference Quotient.” Teel nodded once, as if he were responding to roll call in the patrol room. “Paragraph seventeen point K point twenty-seven point A sub three. It’s all there in the contract you signed. Ma’am.”

Yeah. The contract I’d barely skimmed through. I vaguely remembered the lawyer-Teel mentioning a handful of special circumstances, of wishes that could cause a delay in fulfillment. “Um, could you refresh my memory?”

“Your requested action involves the modification of an order issued by a legally constituted court of law.”

“So what?” My frustration shortened my temper. Two weeks of delay might as well be forever. Two weeks would keep Ronald’s restraining order in place through what should have been However Long’s previews, into the first full week of performances. We’d still have to hire a lawyer to secure the right to open the show, and we’d still be on the hook for five million dollars if Ronald actually managed to prove that our play had irreparably harmed his reputation.

Teel didn’t bother reacting to my tone. Instead, he shifted his feet until they were shoulder-width apart. He linked his fingers behind his back, as if someone had barked out the parade rest command. With a grim nod, he recited, “Nine out of ten wishers who interfere with a court’s decision require additional wishes to achieve their ultimate objectives.”

Again with the statistics! “But I’ve only got four wishes, Teel. If I screw things up, that’s my problem, not yours!”

“Seventeen out of twenty people who use their fourth wish on high E.I.Q. wishes attempt to manipulate the person who next receives their lamp.”

Seventeen out of twenty. Wow. That number seemed unbelievably high.

So the E.I.Q. functioned as a rough gauge of morals, of ethics. People who cast high E.I.Q. wishes were willing to engage in ethically risky behavior, ducking out from under punishments that had already been determined by a court of law. Sure, there were plenty of reasons someone might deserve to escape justice—Ryan and I were a perfect case in point—but I could see that most people in my position were a little on the shady side.

Okay. A lot on the shady side.

And if things didn’t work out the way I’d planned? Once I’d already crossed that first ethical bridge? What was to keep me from giving the lamp to someone I knew I could control? Someone who would effectively give me another four wishes to play with?

But that wasn’t me. That wasn’t my situation. “I’m not just any wisher, Teel! You know me! You’re in the show. You know why I need this!”

Teel shook his head, staring me down like a patrolman at a D.U.I. random stop. “The two-week hold permits both MAGIC and persons of interest to evaluate their choices more completely.”

Persons of interest? He made me sound like a suspect in some case. Some very nasty case.

“Becca.” Ryan’s voice was so soft I almost didn’t hear him. “You’re going to have to make another wish.”

“Another—?”

“Wish away the production.” He turned to the policeman, who was eyeing us as if we were security risks at an open-air presidential rally. “That would work, wouldn’t it? If Becca wishes that the Mercer had never staged However Long?”

A dull ache started to pound between my eyes. If we’d never staged the show, then we never would have approached Ronald for money. If he’d never donated funds to us, then he couldn’t sue us. But we had approached him, and he had sued, so didn’t we still run into the E.I.Q. problem?

But who was I to say how magic worked? Teel spared us another haughty nod before he testified, “Without an Ethical Interference Quotient over one hundred, I can grant your wish instantly.”

I said, “I can’t do that! I can’t kill the play.”

Ryan reached toward me, cupping my cheek with fingers so cold a tremor rippled down my spine. “It’s all you can do, Becca.”

It wasn’t fair. I couldn’t wish However Long out of existence. I couldn’t erase all the progress that we’d made, all the things we’d learned about the script, all the art that we’d created together. I couldn’t peel back time so that our show had never existed.

And might well never exist in the future.

Oh, sure. If we wiped out the production, I could still “discover” Ryan’s play in the stack on my desk. I could bring it to Hal. I could suggest that we produce it in a future season, that we bring it into a new and healthy full-fledged existence, with proper planning, with appropriate sponsors.