Wish Upon a Star Page 5

  What the hell. Wishes weren’t going to get me into any more trouble than I was already in. And if I was really going to follow through on Amy’s crazy Master Plan, it might be useful to have a wish or two up my sleeve. Not that I’d need magic to keep a stupid plant alive. Or a fish. Or a cat.

  Really.

  He nodded as I dotted the i’s in Erin and Hollister and crossed the t in my last name. “Very well.” He gathered the pages together and tapped them into one neat stack. Before I could say anything, he turned his tattooed wrist, and the entire bundle disappeared.

  “Hey!” I exclaimed. “Don’t I get a copy?”

  Instead of retrieving the contract from wherever he had stashed it, he gazed at me with those chocolate eyes. “What’s your first wish, ma’am?”

  My first wish? Already? I swallowed, but my throat had gone bone-dry. I knew that sensation. I experienced it every time I auditioned. My heart started to beat harder, and I had to concentrate to take a deep breath. My fingers tingled just a little.

  Wishes. All the power of a genie at my disposal. All sorts of selfish indulgences sprang to mind, but I quickly set them aside. I couldn’t be self-centered when there were so many huge problems in the world. Global warming. Habitat destruction. Inner-city poverty.

  But then, I thought of Amy. Of Justin. Of both of them waiting for Derek to come home.

  “Peace,” I said. As soon as the word was out of my mouth, I felt a little silly. My wish sounded idealistic, naive. But, seriously, with a genie at my beck and call? How could I wish for anything less? “World peace,” I said. “I want to eradicate war everywhere.”

  Apparently, that wasn’t the right thing to say.

  Teel’s hands clenched into meaty fists. I could easily picture him bringing down some perp in a back alley. His breath snorted in the back of his throat. When he spoke, he shoved his words over pulverized glass. “That wish will take five hundred twenty-one years, forty-seven days, eleven hours and…forty-two minutes to fulfill.”

  I was shocked. “That long?”

  “What is it with you guys?” he exploded. “You all think we genies can grant Grand Wishes in a heartbeat! Cure disease! Feed the world! Ninety-eight out of a hundred want the hard stuff! And every one of you acts disappointed when I say it takes time to work miracles!”

  “Okay,” I said, anxious to calm him down.

  But he wasn’t done with his tirade. “Notify the wishers, they tell me. Explain delays for all wishes taking longer than twenty-four hours to fulfill. Get their understanding in writing.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “We genies have feelings, too, you know! We worry about the world. We want to make everything nice and safe and beautiful around us.”

  “Hey!” I said, more sharply than I intended. I had to raise my voice, though; otherwise, he never would have heard me over his own grousing. “Forget about it! Forget about world peace.”

  He stopped complaining immediately. “Fine,” he said, the iron command suggested by his uniform back in his voice. I wondered if he’d just been playing me, trying to get me to give up on the notion of lions lying down with lambs. “Let’s try again,” he said. “What’s your first wish?”

  “I don’t know!” I was terrified that whatever I suggested would bring on another rant like the one I’d just witnessed. Sure, there were a million things that would help me perfect my single life. A secure Survival Job. Starring in that Mamet play. Permanently plucked eyebrows. (Yeah, even in my excitement about having wishes, I recognized that last one wasn’t exactly on equal footing with the others. But think of the lifelong impact, the hours that I could devote to other, more important things!)

  I wasn’t sure what I truly wanted, what would make me happy. Make me strong. “Can I wait a day or two? Can I have some time to get used to this entire idea?”

  He shook his head in disgust. “Yes, you can wait. Summon me as soon as you’ve made up your mind.”

  “Summon you?”

  Fully restored to cop mode, he nodded tersely. “If you’ll take a moment to review your fingers, ma’am.”

  Review my… I raised my hand, turning it slightly in the kitchen light. I could just make out a faint tattoo on my finger and thumb, rippling flames, like a shadow of the ones on Teel’s wrist. When I rotated my hand, the color glistened, changing like oil spread over water. “How did you—?”

  “Press your fingers together when you need assistance, ma’am. Saying my name will summon me.”

  This was insane. If he hadn’t been a policeman, if he hadn’t spoken with such blunt certainty, I never would have believed him. Before I could protest, though, he raised his fingers to the brim of his cap. “Ma’am,” he said, by way of leave-taking.

  “Where are you going?” Was I supposed to let him just walk out of here? Were genies allowed to roam around New York City?

  “You read the contract, ma’am.” Um, not exactly. At most, I’d skimmed the major paragraphs. “I’m entitled to go on patrol between your wishes.”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to sound as if I’d known that all along. “Of course.”

  “Ma’am,” he said again, already striding across the kitchen. At the apartment door, he nodded approvingly at my trio of dead bolts. “Make sure you lock up after I’m gone.”

  I did, and then I dove for the phone on the kitchen wall. As I punched in Amy’s number, I tried to make myself take deep breaths, to keep from hyperventilating. My lips tingled as I waited for her to pick up.

  “Hi,” she said after the third ring, obviously hassled. “Can I call you back?”

  “No!”

  I heard the exasperated sigh that she almost managed to cut off. Her tone was tight as she explained, “Justin and I are finishing our broccoli. Before he takes a bath. So that he gets to bed on time.”

  I glanced at the clock on the stove. Okay, so I was interrupting dinner, a meal obviously made more challenging by my nephew’s least favorite vegetable. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I know my timing’s lousy, but I have got to tell you what just happened.”

  “Justin!” she snapped, ignoring me. “You are going to deliver the goods before you leave this table! Two more bites!” A long pause, my fate resting in the mouth of a five-year-old. I wished that I could invent some flavor-changer, so that vegetables all tasted like candy. Think of the parent-child relationships that one could save…

  “One,” Amy counted, and then after a long pause, while I imagined my nephew’s face contorted into cruciferous agony, “Two. Okay, swallow, and then you can go play for a few minutes.” Amy sighed gustily. “Sorry,” she said to me. “What’s up? Is the apartment a disaster zone?”

  “No, no, it’s perfect. But you won’t believe what I found in the kitchen.”

  “Roaches the size of Montana?”

  “Amy!” Why did she have to be so negative? “I’m serious.”

  She switched into Concerned Big Sister Mode. “What’s going on?”

  That was better. “When I got here, I walked into the kitchen, and there was this big box on the counter. It had my name on it, so I opened it up, and there was a brass lamp inside.”

  “What, like a table lamp?”

  “No!” I scooped the thing off the counter, belatedly admiring its graceful curves in the overhead light. “An oil lamp. You know, like the one Aladdin comes out of?”

  “I know about Aladdin,” Amy said wryly. Justin loved the Disney movie—he could watch that blue-faced genie for hours on end. “So, what was it? A housewarming present?”

  “That’s what I thought. But when I took it out of the box, it was filthy. I started to polish it, and a—” Suddenly, I couldn’t speak. My throat slammed closed, the words trapped inside my lungs. I cleared my throat and tried again. “Sorry. I polished it, and a—”

  The same thing happened. This wasn’t like getting a frog in my throat. Instead, it felt like my vocal chords simply disappeared. I couldn’t speak because my body was no longer capable of
making sound.

  “What?” Amy said, and then she enunciated with cell-phone exasperation. “I. Can’t. Hear. You. You’re. Break. Ing. Up.”

  I stared at my phone. I was on the landline; my cell was buried somewhere deep in my tote bag. “Sorry,” I said again, flooded with relief that I could get the word out. I proceeded with caution, testing each word before thinking it, before dropping it into a carefully phrased summary of what had happened. “I…rubbed…the…lamp…and…a—”

  That was it. I couldn’t say genie. Or fog. Or magic.

  I couldn’t tell Amy what had happened.

  That policeman had more than killer biceps up his sleeves. He was somehow controlling my ability to talk. I sighed and tried to come up with something that would keep Amy from thinking I’d totally lost my mind. “I rubbed the lamp and set it on my bookshelf,” I finally finished weakly. “I think Justin will really like it—he can pretend that he’s in that movie, flying on a magic carpet.”

  “That’s why you called?” Amy sounded a bit put out.

  “Um, yeah.” I had to say something else. “I miss you guys. Thanks for letting me stay there the past couple of days.”

  “Any time. But the next time you’re here, you get broccoli patrol. Plus you get Justin ready for bed.”

  “It’s a deal,” I said, relieved that she’d bought my dissembling. “Go give him his bath. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  Okay. That had been totally bizarre. Why couldn’t I tell Amy about the jeweled lights that had poured out of the lamp, about the policeman genie, about my wishes? I held my hand in front of my eyes, studying the barely visible flames tattooed across my fingertips. What other powers did Teel hold over me?

  Before I could seriously consider summoning him back to the kitchen, my stomach growled. Loudly. All of a sudden, I was ravenous. I’d grabbed a bowl of cereal at Amy’s in the morning, and a granola bar for a makeshift lunch as I was running to the Mercer box office for my shift.

  A quick check of the pantry, the fridge and the freezer proved that Becca had done an excellent job emptying her kitchen for me. Nothing remained, not even the packets of soy sauce and Chinese mustard that filled at least one drawer in every Manhattan apartment I’d ever visited.

  Well, it wasn’t like I was living in the middle of the Gobi Desert. It was time to learn my way around my new neighborhood.

  After a moment’s hesitation, I returned the genie lamp to its box and stowed both away in my bedroom closet. By that time, I was actually feeling shaky, I’d become so hungry. I grabbed my coat and my keys, threw my tote bag over my shoulder and quick-walked to the elevator.

  Standing on the sidewalk outside my building, I tossed a mental coin. Heads. Turn left.

  Halfway to the corner, I was assaulted by the fragrance of baking bread. All of a sudden, I was catapulted back to childhood, to a school field trip to the Mrs. Harton’s Bread Factory. I could practically taste the hot-baked bread, pulled fresh from the production line, sliced into steaming hunks and slathered with butter for my elementary school class to savor.

  My mouth literally watering, I looked around, trying to find the source of the incredible aroma. A tiny walkway led between two buildings. A neatly printed sign was nailed to the wall: Garden Variety Café. An arrow pointed down the narrow alley.

  Like a woman possessed, I followed it. Ivy-covered walls led me to a surprising little courtyard. Four iron tables melted into the shadows, barely reflecting the cheerful gas flame that flickered beside a green-painted wooden door. The alcove was a perfect retreat from the hustle and bustle of the city; it was like I’d stepped into a fairy tale. Any minute now, hobbits were going to stroll over the flagstones, laughing about a fine evening meal of mushrooms.

  Hey, in a world with roving, wish-granting, policeman genies, anything is possible, right?

  “Still a little cold for eating outside, isn’t it?”

  I jumped in reflex, biting off a shriek. I hadn’t seen the man who stood in the shadows beside the door. As he stepped forward, I saw why I’d missed him. He wore black from head to foot, a long-sleeved work shirt tucked into worn denim jeans. A dark apron was snug around his waist, the long ties wrapped behind him, then brought around to hang in a comfortably loose bow. The guy’s hair was as dark as the shadows that had hidden him, unruly waves that clearly defied any barber’s control. He looked like he’d forgotten to shave for a day or four.

  His left hand was curled around a large stoneware mug. Steam curled above the pottery, and I caught a whiff of bergamot. Earl Grey tea.

  He shrugged disarmingly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “No, you didn’t,” I said automatically, then felt like kicking myself for the transparent lie. “I was just…”

  He waited politely, but when I couldn’t come up with a story, he nodded toward the green door. “You’re here for dinner?” he asked. The smell of baking bread made me nod. He turned the wrought-iron doorknob and gestured for me to precede him inside.

  The restaurant was tiny. A kind critic would call it “intimate”—there were half a dozen four-tops scattered across the scrubbed wooden floor. A square of brown butcher paper covered each table. Mismatched dishes sat in front of each chair, flanked by a chaotic tumble of silverware. The entire room could have looked like the back of a Goodwill store, but the effect somehow managed to be one of simple, easy good cheer.

  That impression was helped along by the presence of four different groups of diners, all chatting comfortably. One man sat alone at the table nearest the kitchen, though, a traveler’s backpack his only companion.

  My host waited patiently until I turned my attention back to him. “One?” he asked.

  I nodded, and he glided toward the only open table, the one in front of the large stone fireplace. Glancing around the room, I saw that the only decor consisted of simple, framed architectural prints—line drawings of buildings that may never have actually existed. The stark artwork anchored the walls somehow, made them seem more real.

  Real. I shivered, consciously forbidding myself from thinking about the flames tattooed on my fingertips, about the markings that my policeman genie had displayed on his wrist.

  I wasn’t going to ponder my impossible wishes. I was going to eat dinner. Have a normal meal. In a normal restaurant. Like a normal person.

  “This is your first time at Garden Variety?” The guy looked attentive, attuned to my response as I pulled my gaze back from the cozy room. I nodded, and he smiled. “We don’t have a written menu. I cook what I feel like, based on what’s in season. Tonight, we have a cream of asparagus soup or a golden beet salad, to start. I’ve got a good meat loaf, and roast chicken. Some baked macaroni and cheese.”

  Everything sounded wonderful, like the comfort food I’d craved without even knowing my own desire. I was a little leery looking around, though. I had no idea how much anything cost.

  But I couldn’t back out now. Not with the chef himself standing over me like a watchful ninja, waiting for me to make up my mind. Worst case, I’d charge my dinner. And then cut up my credit cards as soon as I got back home, at least until I found a new Survival Job. Throwing caution to the winds, I said, “I’ll have the salad. And the macaroni and cheese.”

  He nodded, as if I’d made the decision he’d expected. “I’ll bring you some water, and some bread—it just came out of the oven. Do you want wine? I’ve got a red that’ll be great with the mac and cheese.”

  In for a penny, in for a pound. “Sounds good,” I said, and flashed him my best stage smile, holding the grin until he disappeared into the kitchen.

  I looked around the room. Everyone was wearing casual clothes. That was a good sign—if they’d been in suits and silk dresses, I would have been doomed for sure. Backpack Guy even wore a hoodie sweatshirt over torn jeans.

  Feeling conspicuously single, I dug in my tote bag, trying to find some reading material. There was my bus ticket from New Brunswick, the one that I’d bought that
morning. A receipt from a Starbucks I’d stopped at a few days ago. Not much else.

  “Here you go.” I looked up with a start as my black-clad benefactor set a basket of bread on the table. The heavenly scent that had initially drawn me to the courtyard curled from beneath a blue gingham napkin. “I thought you might want these,” he added, producing a sheaf of magazines from the large pocket in his apron. His other hand deftly balanced a stemmed glass and an oversize bottle of wine. He poured a single sip and then said, “Help yourself to more.”

  Before I could comment on the unconventional service, Backpack Guy shuffled over, maneuvering between the tables with care. “Thanks, Timothy,” he said.

  The man in black—Timothy—turned to his departing customer and extended a hand, like a panther offering a velvet paw. “Have a good night, Peter. Stay warm out there.”

  “Thanks,” the customer said again. I smiled at him, but he didn’t meet my eyes as he hurried out the door.

  Timothy turned back to me. “Your salad will be out in a minute or two.” He nodded toward the magazines. “Enjoy.”

  I glanced at the stack of reading material. The current New Yorker. That month’s Gourmet. A home decor magazine, Circle, which I’d never heard of before. “Thanks,” I said, honestly touched by the thoughtful gesture.

  He disappeared into the kitchen, and I thumbed open the New Yorker. There was just enough light to read the pages comfortably. I skimmed through the notices of Broadway plays. Someday, I thought wistfully. That’s what I should wish for, from Teel—a starring role in a career-making play. Something more appropriate for me than the Mamet play had been. As long as world peace wasn’t going to happen on my watch…

  I reached for the basket Timothy had left and extracted a thick slice of bread. The texture was heavy, rich, and I suspected that I could count at least twelve whole grains if I were willing to invest the time. I dipped my knife into the accompanying pewter cup of warm butter. I wolfed down an entire slice and then forced myself to be more restrained with a second. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had homemade bread. Sam and I definitely had not done any baking on our own.