AFTER REHEARSAL, DREW drove me home. Performing perfectly in the role of a solicitous gentleman, he insisted on dropping me off at the front door before trolling for a parking spot. I kissed him and hopped out of the car, ostensibly properly grateful to be spared the walk through the February cold.
As soon as the car was out of sight, though, I sprinted up the stairs to the apartment. A cautious “hello?” confirmed that neither Maddy nor Jules was around. I dashed into my bedroom and threw open my closet door. Digging out a handful of Hefty bags from my backpack, I immediately began collecting my old, oversize wardrobe.
In another life, I would have acted methodically, carefully stripping garments from hangers and folding them away for posterity. Now, though, I tore through the closet, desperate to complete my transformation before Drew came upstairs.
What had I been thinking? Why had I continued wearing my baggy clothes for so long? (Read: Why had I allowed base comfort and a crazy rehearsal schedule to triumph over even the faintest hint of a fashionable wardrobe?) No wonder Stephanie had made her embarrassing mistake—I deserved it, for being such a slob.
A frantic five minutes later, I’d accomplished my goal. I was astonished to see how many bags I’d filled; I needed to shove them into the back of my closet. Eating myself into emotional oblivion had cost me an arm and a leg—in new clothes at least, and that wasn’t even factoring in the cost of all that food that I’d consumed. I could only hope that someone at Goodwill would enjoy the wardrobe I was leaving behind forever.
My final act of purification involved stripping off the sweats I’d worn to rehearsal that day. I started to add them to one of the Hefty bags, but then decided that I should keep this one set. Treasure them. Always remember the way I’d let TEWSBU ruin my life, the way that I’d eaten myself into misery and despair (not to mention into a size 2X sweatshirt).
I shrugged into a body-skimming burgundy sweater that I hadn’t worn for more than a year, then pulled on a pair of narrow-wale black slacks, as soft as velvet. Although I had thought the sweater would be far too tight, it actually managed to accommodate my new curves. I just looked very … healthy. I was running a quick brush through my unruly curls when there was a knock at the door.
“You poor thing!” I exclaimed as I let Drew in. I hoped that the Swensons hadn’t noticed that I’d left the foyer door ajar for him to enter the building.
He collapsed on my bed, feigning exhaustion, like a man who had just hiked miles through a blizzard. “I decided it might be easier just to park in St. Paul.”
“I am so sorry! It’s not usually that bad around here.” Secretly, though, I was grateful that I’d had time to complete my closet exorcism. I silently vowed to supplement my wardrobe the next day, no matter what theatrical surprises Bill released upon us. “If I’d realized you were going to have to park so far away, I would have suggested going to dinner before we came back here.”
“I’m not moving from that parking space until morning,” Drew pouted. Before I could protest, he pulled me down beside him. “Even if it means that we starve to death. At least then we’ll die together.”
I did my best to reward him for his romantic words with a kiss. I even tried not to pout that he didn’t admire my new clothes before he stripped them off me, garment by tantalizing garment. I sent a mental wave of thanks to Teel anyway, wherever he was now.
Drew seemed remarkably grateful for my genie’s work as well. Not that he was inclined to be a particularly good judge of anything where I was concerned. Drew was completely, utterly smitten, entirely devoted to loving me, to pleasing me.
And that was such a wonderful change that I almost regretted that I would never see my genie again. Almost, but not quite. As Drew started to nuzzle the incredibly sensitive bundle of nerves below my right ear, an electric jangle built inside my body. This time, though, the tingling had nothing to do with magic. I gave myself over to the pleasure, forgetting all worldly concerns farther than my bedroom door.
Of course, pleasure couldn’t last forever. I eventually had to acknowledge that my stomach was growling with hunger. I eventually had to admit that I’d heard one of my housemates come in. I eventually had to sit up, to fumble in the dim light for the clothes Drew had strewn about with such reckless abandon.
“Yum,” he said, reaching toward me after I slid up the side zip on my slacks.
I laughed and leaned down to kiss him on the nose. “As if you could do anything about it right now.”
He looked down, as forlorn as a little boy who had lost his toy ray-gun. “I can try.”
“I’ll see what I can whip up in the kitchen, by way of a restorative.” He started to push himself up from the bed, but I settled my palms against his chest. The heat from his body radiated into my hands. “Just relax,” I said.
“But—”
“You’ve had a long day,” I laughed. He collapsed onto my pillow with a dramatic sigh.
Jules was waiting for me in the living room, one leg flung casually over the arm of the sofa as she chewed the last bite of whatever healthful salad she’d thrown together for her dinner. “So,” she said as I slunk in from the hallway. “You were in there. How was Loverboy last night?”
“Shh!” I glanced down the short hallway to make sure I’d closed my bedroom door behind me.
“What?” And then comprehension dawned. “He’s here? Now?”
I nodded, unable to keep my happiness from spreading across my face in a silly schoolgirl smile. “I’m just getting us something to eat.”
Jules leaped up and followed me into the kitchen. Trying to act as nonchalant as possible, I opened up the freezer. The possibilities weren’t promising. There was a single Ziploc bag holding something that might have been a chicken breast, an Ice Age ago. I dug out the remnant of a loaf of bread, three or four slices with enough ice crystals to conduct a science experiment on cryogenics. Giving up my exploration of the Arctic, I tugged open the refrigerator door. I had a block of cheddar in the deli drawer. A couple of apples rolled around in the fruit bin. I shrugged. That would have to do.
When I stepped away with my pitiful harvest, I saw that Jules was staring at me. I expected a look of sly conspiracy, a “you go, girl” celebration of my newfound romance. I could have lived with an expression of shocked disapproval—after all, things had moved forward rather quickly with Drew. But I was utterly astonished to see the naked concern written across her features.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I guess I haven’t seen you in a while.” She gestured at my sweater and my velvet-soft trousers. “When did you get so skinny?”
I laughed. Jules’s question was the perfect antidote to Stephanie’s mistake that afternoon. Still, I knew that I couldn’t tell her the truth, and I wasn’t willing to ruin the evening by choking over genie-related words that would stick in my throat. I shrugged. “I’ve been working on it for a while,” I said.
“And what are you wearing? A WonderBra?”
I blushed. “Jules!”
She glanced at the food I’d put on the counter. “That’s not enough for dinner.”
I was relieved that she’d moved off the topic of my Teel-enhanced figure so quickly. “We’ll be fine,” I said airily. “You know how life is during rehearsals. No time to get to the grocery store.”
Jules turned to the pantry, digging around to excavate her own box of whole wheat crackers. “At least take some of these.”
“I can’t—”
“Kira, you have to eat!”
Wow. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had said that to me. “Okay,” I said. I didn’t want to turn this conversation into World War III. I should have planned better, should have gone shopping, even though the Landmark was consuming my every waking—and now, sleeping—moment. “I’ll buy a replacement box the next time I’m at the store.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I could see that she wanted to say something else. She kept looking at the cinched-in waist of my pants, at the swell of my sweater.
“Jules, I’m fine. I’ve just dropped a couple of pounds. You know that I had plenty to lose, after… Well…”
“Of course,” she said. But I saw her eyes dart toward the whiteboard, as if she were seeking out Maddy’s thoughts on the matter. Bis Montag was written there. I guessed that meant we’d see Maddy on Monday.
“Kira?” Drew’s voice called down the hallway. I looked up to see him poking his head out of my room. He kept his body hidden behind the door frame; he obviously hadn’t bothered to get dressed. His hair was tousled, and there was no possible way to pretend to Jules that we had not just been rolling around on my mattress. My heart clenched at the sight of him; he was adorable in an innocent, lighthearted way.
“Just a second!” I called, looking at Jules with just a hint of desperation.
“Go,” she said. But she turned back to the pantry, seeking out a pair of chocolate pudding cups, the one sweet treat that she splurged on. “But take some dessert, too.”
“Thanks,” I said. And I tried to pretend that the living room was empty as Drew and I settled into our idyllic bedside picnic.
* * *
We quickly found a steady routine. Drew and I continued to hang out mostly at my place. He had a trio of frat-boy housemates who grated on my nerves with their constant high-fives, beer-guzzling competitions, and comments that would have made a seasoned Hooters patron blush. Besides, their shared bathroom should have been condemned by the health department.
Drew and I barely made it to rehearsal on time every morning. Drew tagged along even when he didn’t have to be there. I couldn’t imagine voluntarily sitting through some of the scenes, listening to the same lines over and over and over again. Drew, though, insisted that he wanted nothing more than to sit by my side. I tried not to preen in public.
In the evenings, we took a break from Shakespeare. We caught up on watching all the movies that had been nominated for that year’s Oscars, pretending to evaluate the performances until we let ourselves get distracted by reenacting the better romantic scenes. We introduced each other to our favorite restaurants. Once, we tried to walk all the way around Lake of the Isles, but we were defeated by incomplete snow removal and a bitter winter wind.
Every night, we collapsed into bed together. Simple cuddling wasn’t part of Drew’s exuberant expression of his boundless love; he was more an all or nothing sort of guy. And under Teel’s spell, Drew wasn’t about to settle for “nothing.”
The play steadily progressed. A team of experts (Read: Musicians who were still trying to sign with a major studio) had been hired to complete the first-ever translation of Romeo and Juliet into hip-hop slang; we were supposed to get the words back by the first Monday in March, so that we’d have plenty of time to make the slides.
One of the metal frames for the manhole covers arrived, and it was huge—heavy and gritty-looking and capable of withstanding any assault with iron-pipe swords. The actors were gradually kitted out in their full costumes—sleek, rubberized things that were glued together instead of stitched. The costumes required copious amounts of baby powder to get on, and they had an unfortunate tendency to split along their seams. Any passing cops would be certain that we were holding huffing parties in the back room as we tried to seal the things up with aromatic glue day after day.
Teel’s hot womanly commentary was originally missed, but the actors quickly recovered because they were almost completely submerged in their roles. Every single guy in the cast, though, made sure to tell me that he couldn’t wait to attend Teel’s senior thesis presentation in the spring. It wasn’t until the fourth man (Lady Capulet) said something that I managed to wheedle details from Drew. Teel had told them that she was doing a performance art piece that examined gender roles and expectations. Basically, she performed a striptease set to a voice-over of great feminist texts from around the world. She started with a full Victorian costume and ended up in a bikini. Or less. Everyone was a bit fuzzy on that last bit.
Pity they’d never actually get to see the piece, now that Teel was gone.
In the meantime, Bill had demanded some sort of uber-Method acting for our cast. He’d instructed all the actors to stay in gender character even when they weren’t at the theater. That direction had already caused some trouble: three of the women were threatened at a downtown bar after they insisted on using the men’s room rather than the ladies’. Fortunately for me, Drew had decided not to follow that edict of Bill’s, at least not when we got away from the Landmark.
On the home front, Maddy and Jules were fantastic about my newfound romance—even if Drew did present something of a challenge.
For one thing, he didn’t play Scrabble. At all. One Monday night, the first one where all of us were home at the same time, Jules had already turned over the tiles when Drew and I traipsed in from rehearsal. She was waiting for a championship match.
Drew was eager enough at first. He sat down at the table, twirling his wooden letter rack between his fingers. But he had to wait for Jules to tell him how many letters to choose. And then, he had no idea how the double-letter squares worked. He got downright cranky when Jules built out a triple-word score that he’d left wide open, and it didn’t help that she used the Z to score an instant thirty points.
That was the last time we all played Scrabble together—the game really isn’t fun when your opponent only adds three-letter words to the board.
Ordering in from Hunan Delight wasn’t much better. Drew was a sharer, and that upset the entire balance of our little tradition. He actually teased Jules for ordering Spicy Dry Fried Salted Squid. I didn’t think that was tease-worthy; I was just astonished that she’d found it on the menu. In eight years, I was pretty certain that we’d never ordered squid before—dried, wet, fried, or grilled. Even though Drew expressed dismay at the tentacles (what he actually said was, “Dude, are you really putting that in your mouth?”), he managed to dart in with his chopsticks enough that Jules finally passed the red carton to him with a barely suppressed roll of her eyes. I was just grateful that his attention was diverted from my own dinner. I ate quickly and managed to quell my shiver of distaste when Drew insisted on sampling the last few bites of my food.
Alas, Drew insisted on the idiotic childishness of adding “in bed” to our fortunes when we read them. Which might have been fine, if Jules had not opened a cookie that read “Use proven methods; avoid shortcuts.”
Even I found Drew’s sophomoric braying a bit much to handle.
But every time I started to wonder if I’d made a mistake, if I’d acted too impetuously with my last wish, my new boyfriend did something to endear himself to me. Knowing my love of all things coffee, he tracked down a pound of kopi luwak, coffee beans that were, as the packaging discreetly read, “The World’s Rarest Coffee Beverage.” (Read: The only one to have passed through the digestive tract of a civet cat.) I couldn’t bring myself to drink the stuff, but it was the thought that counted.
Drew was also ready with a back rub whenever we got home from rehearsals. He seemed able to read my mind about when I’d reached my breaking point with Bill’s ever-more-bizarre staging ideas. He listened to me rant for three full hours the day that our inspired director instructed David Barstow, the lighting designer, to do away with every single light on the warm side of the spectrum. If it wasn’t blue or gray, and cold, cold, cold, Bill didn’t want it in our underground Verona. Never mind that every lighting designer in the world used warm colors to provide important contrast on stage.
The entire cast was wrapping up our first rehearsal in the actual theater space when Bill had another one of his brainstorms. “I just want to say one word to you,” he announced to everyone after a particularly draining romp through the discovery scene, where Romeo believes his (her?) beloved Juliet is dead. “Plastic.”
Of course, the actual line from the movie The Graduate, was, “Plastics.” With an S. Multiple plastics. But I wasn’t about to say anything out loud. My mind was already reeling, as I tried to predict what new challenge Bill was about to introduce.
“Plastic,” Bill repeated to his rapt cast. “That’s the way to capture the danger. The oppressiveness. Kira, give John a call tonight. Tell him that we need to coat the floor with heavy-duty plastic.”
The first thing I thought of was the fight scenes. The second was the Landmark’s insurance premiums. I cleared my throat and put on my best Logical Stage Manager voice. “Bill? It will be really difficult for everyone to keep their footing if we cover the entire stage with plastic. Especially with all the slime we plan on using.”
“Exactly!” he boomed, spreading his arms wide. “The floor will be a metaphor for the play’s politics! Our staging will be a physical representation of the Prince of Verona’s instructions to the Montagues and the Capulets. He tells them to be mindful; he says their lives are forfeit if they take one wrong step. We’ll make that danger real.”
I was pretty sure that John would see things differently. He hadn’t made it to rehearsal in days; I knew that he was working long hours with the welders, trying to get the massive ironwork complete and delivered on time. He’d already made them redo Friar Lawrence’s culvert twice, because the sound echoed too loudly for the actors to be heard during those delicate scenes.
And then, to make everything worse, our fearless director exclaimed, “Picture it! The prince comes in for his first scene. He tells everyone that lives will be forfeited if the street fighting continues. He leaves, and a battalion of city workers, of stagehands, comes in right in front of the audience, to lay down the plastic. The prince’s word is made real, before our very eyes.”
I was conscious of the very eyes of the cast, but I had to say something, had to make the protest that I knew John would make if he’d been there. “Bill, that’s going to take a long time, to complete a transition like that in the middle of the scene.”
He snorted. “Nonsense! If you have enough stagehands, you can do it in no time at all.”
I pictured hordes of workers, waiting in the wings with plastic tarps. We could use the eight guys who would later manipulate the manhole-cover screens. But to cover the entire stage? And to make sure the sheeting was secured at the edges, so that the actors didn’t trip in the dark? It would take a dozen crew members at least. I took one look at the fanatic fire in Bill’s eyes, though, and scribbled a note in the margins of my script. Four more stagehands. The union was going to love this show, even if the audience was mystified.
Bill nodded at my apparent acquiescence. “Let’s start getting used to the new surface today. Unfortunately, Kira doesn’t have the plastic ready, but I want everyone in their socks, right now. In your socks, and let’s tape Hefty bags around your feet.”
Unfortunately? What, did he think I could read his mind? That I could produce plastic sheeting out of thin air?
It wasn’t like I was a genie.
Still, the cast had perfect faith in him. Not a single actor hesitated. Instead, they just looked at me like baby birds, expectant, confident that I would provide. I thought about making one more plea for common sense, but Bill was already looking at his nonexistent watch. I’d lose the battle. Why declare war in the first place?
One complete box of trash bags and two rolls of duct tape later, the cast looked like refugees from some horrific environmental disaster. Or a bizarre operating room with absurd sterilization protocols. Or something else that I was just too frightened to imagine.
We only had one fall that broke the skin. Stephanie was skating across the stage in her plastic getup, a guest at the fateful ball where Romeo and Juliet met. She took a tumble as she capered around, doing her best to manifest the trickster spirit so important to Mercutio. She broke her fall with an out-flung wrist; it was just bad luck that Drew was standing in front of her, winking at me. The corner of his script notebook caught her palm, leaving a gash that bled copiously.
I apologized nonstop as I scrambled for my first aid kit. If Drew hadn’t been clowning around for me, he would have noticed Stephanie’s tumble. He would have snatched away the offending notebook.
At least I was equipped with gauze pads and a roll of white tape.
I shook my head as the cast ripped off their plastic booties at the end of the rehearsal. Drew helped to gather up the last of the garbage, shoving the torn bags into the trash can with an earnest smile. “Dude, that was so cool!” he said to me. “I could totally feel the uncertainty in Juliet’s mind, when she was talking to her nurse.”
“That was just fear that you’d break a leg. Literally,” I added, thinking of the traditional theater curse for good luck.
Drew answered my tartness the way he always did. He folded me into his arms, kissing me until I began to relax. There was still stress in my life—there would be until the play opened—but this was a great way to deal with it. Nevertheless, I forced myself to push him away. “I’ve got to get going,” I said.
“Where?” he whispered against my earlobe.
I shivered. “I told you this morning. I’ve got to drop off our rent check at my father’s office. And you have to finish memorizing your lines. We’re going to be totally off book, starting tomorrow.”
“I want to run lines with you,” he cajoled, backing up the suggestion with deft fingers that did surprising things along the line of my spine.
“Drew, we already talked about this!”
And we had. I’d told him that I needed one night at home. Alone. With Maddy and Jules, just us girls. Both of them had eyed me strangely when I followed Drew to bed the night before. More and more often, I could tell that they’d been talking about me when I walked into the room; there were too many conversations that stopped right when I came in.
Just that morning, Jules had caught me as I dashed out of the bathroom. I was tucking a brand new white blouse into the waistband of my jeans. I’d found the pants at the back of my closet, stranded on the very last hanger, where I’d banished them after outgrowing them almost two years before. Now they zipped up easily, emphasizing the ample bosom that continued to surprise me.
“Wow,” Jules had said tonelessly.
I’d grinned. “I don’t even remember when I bought these.”
“I can’t believe how much you’ve changed, Kira.” She’d frowned a little as she spoke, looking doubtfully at my chest, as if she were trying to remember if I’d always been so well endowed. An unreasoning spike of anger stirred in my belly. What did she have against my getting back in shape? How could she even begin to understand how excited I was to wear my skinny pants—Jules, who was always glamorous and gorgeous and fit? Before I could say something I’d regret, though, Drew came out of my bedroom, carrying my backpack for me.
“Ready?” he’d asked, settling a teasing hand against the small of my back as he guided us toward the front door.
As thrilled as I was with Drew’s unending attention, I worried about the easy balance of my friendship with my housemates. It was time to clear the air—Maddy, Jules, and I would shift back to normal with a night of girls-only Scrabble and Chinese food.
Now, as rehearsal wrapped up, Drew’s lips teased mine. “Call me if you change your mind.” Exercising more willpower than I’d managed in decades, I pulled away from him. The February evening was particularly cold as I turned my key in my car’s stubborn ignition.
At the law firm, Dad’s secretary, Angie, looked up as I waltzed by her desk. “Hello,” I said absently, already digging in my backpack for the check I was going to hand over.
“Hello, Kira.”
That’s when I noticed that something was wrong. By the end of the workday, Angie was always frantically printing out documents for my father’s review and signature. She always chomped on a wad of chewing gum that made her look like a big league pitcher for the Minnesota Twins. She always muttered a constant stream of threats to her printer, tearing open new reams of paper as if she were making sacrifices to a ravenous god.
But today Angie was sitting stock still. Her desk was bare. Her hands twined in her lap. Her computer had gone to a screen saver, an endless chain of colored light spinning its way through an unknown maze.
I barely knew what to say. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
I made out just a hint of emphasis on the first word. Angie was fine. If Angie was fine, but everything else was turned upside down… I turned on my heel and slammed open my father’s door.
And was so surprised that I almost fell back into the hallway.
My father sat behind his desk, ramrod straight, his suit jacket rigid across his shoulders. His tie was perfectly knotted and close to his Adam’s apple; he looked like he was ready to walk into contract negotiations with the archest of his enemies.
But that wasn’t what surprised me. What surprised me was seeing Jules sitting on the couch, the one that had a full view of the Minneapolis skyline. And Maddy standing beside her.
“Come in, Kira,” my father said.
I didn’t want to. Summoning all of my courage, I met my father’s eyes. “This can’t be good for profits per partner,” I said. I’d feared the joke would fall flat. I just hadn’t realized how flat it could fall.
“Come in, Kira,” my father repeated. “And close the door behind you.”
I did. I had to clear my throat, though, before I could get out any more words. “So, I’m guessing this isn’t about the rent? This isn’t about Maddy and Jules all of a sudden deciding that I can’t be trusted to deliver our check?”
My father moved around his desk and gestured to the two Hitchcock chairs, which had been pulled into the stiffest conversation pit known to man. “Please. Have a seat.”
I thought about saying no. I thought about saying that I didn’t want to. I thought about saying that I was going to go out the door and come back in again, that I was going to rewind the last two minutes, so that the world would go back to normal.
Instead, I sat.
Dad joined me in the other chair, seeming not to notice that he had to step over the straps of my backpack to do so. Maddy seemed torn by both of us sitting; she looked around, so ill at ease that I almost didn’t recognize her. Ultimately, she perched on the edge of the couch, twisting her blunt-fingered hands around each other.
I was a little surprised that Jules spoke first. “Kira, I asked everyone to get together tonight.”
“What is going on?” I heard a note of fear in my voice and told myself that I was crazy. This was my father. These were my housemates, my best friends.
Jules glanced at Maddy, looked back at her hands. She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We’re worried about you, Kira. We’ve been worried about you for a long time, and we finally decided that we had to do something.”
My first—totally irrational—thought was that they had found Teel’s lantern underneath my bed. Despite my being silenced by my genie, they had somehow discovered the magic that had permeated my life. They knew that I’d gotten my three wishes, and they wanted their own; they were willing to hold me hostage until they got them.
That was absurd, though. There was no way that my housemates would have gone digging around under my bed. And even if they had, they would have brought the lantern with them—if they’d even bothered to tell my father. There was absolutely no reason to bring Dad into a discussion about Teel.
I crossed my arms over my chest. It seemed like a long time had passed since Jules had spoken, but I knew it could only have been a few seconds. “There isn’t anything to worry about. I’m fine.”
My voice cracked on the last word.
Maddy leaned forward. “You’re not fine, Kira. You’ve changed.”
“What do you mean?”
Maddy held my gaze with the ferocity that was her trademark. Madeline Rubens wasn’t afraid of anyone. Or anything. “Kira, we know that you are anorexic. And we’re here to help you.”
Anorexic?
I shouldn’t have laughed. But her accusation was so preposterous, so far from what I had feared she might say. Me? The woman who had eaten herself into a mountain over the past year? The woman who could match all three of them, bite for bite, on sweets or savories, on any snack in the world?
I glanced down at my arms folded across my Teel-induced cleavage, caught a glimpse of my newly retrieved skinny jeans.
Yeah. Me.
I stammered out, “Wh-what do you mean?”
Jules answered. “Sweetie, we only want to help you.” Sweetie? She hadn’t called me that since…since she’d been holding my hair back from my face in the Hyatt Regency bathroom, the night that TEWSBU left me. I started to protest, but she interrupted, using every ounce of her acting skill to override me. “We know that this has been a really tough year for you. We understand that you’re just trying to control a little bit of the world around you. But you don’t have to do it this way. You don’t have to hurt yourself.”
“I’m not hurting myself!” I snapped. “I’m not anorexic!”
Which didn’t exactly prove my point. After all, what would I have said if I really did have an eating disorder?
My father took over, lending his gravest attorney-voice to the chorus. “Kira, as you know, Maddy and I spoke a couple of weeks ago. She just couldn’t overlook your self-destructive behavior any longer.”
I glared at Maddy, but I had enough sense to keep my mouth shut. Whatever she’d said then, she’d said because she was worried about me. I tried to sound as reasonable as possible as I said, “What happened a couple of weeks ago?”
But I already knew the answer. Maddy kept her voice even as she said, “Drew. Drew happened.”
“Don’t bring him into this!” I said. “He doesn’t have anything to do with what I eat.”
Dad shook his head, leaning forward in his chair as if he needed to distract me, needed to focus my attention away from the vulnerable Maddy. Yeah, right. As if Maddy had ever spent a day in her life being vulnerable. “You have to understand how all of this looks to us on the outside, Kira. One minute, you’re working at Fox Hill, happy as a clam. The next thing we know, you’ve quit your job, taken up with some guy you’d barely even mentioned, and you’ve stopped eating.”
“I haven’t stopped eating!”
Jules sighed, then reached for a legal pad that rested on the end table. “We started talking, Kira. Maddy and me. We made a list of things.” She glanced down, almost apologetic. “Strange exercise—crunches that make you cramp up, yoga in the middle of the night. New food habits: my yogurt for breakfast, instead of Cap’n Crunch. Steamed vegetables from Hunan Delight. One single handful of kettle corn, stretched out over an entire hour.”
“I don’t even like kettle corn! I’ve never liked it! I just ate it so that I didn’t disappoint you guys! You know, my best friends.”
Jules looked hurt, but Maddy was the one who replied in her bluff, no-nonsense way. “We are your best friends, Kira. But we’ve let this slide for too long. Jules and I were both shocked when we realized how much weight you’ve lost. We should have noticed sooner. We should have helped you solve your problem.”
“I don’t have a problem!”
I launched myself out of my chair, using my frustration to carry me across the office. When I got to the photograph of my mother, I stared at her for a long time. If she were here, she’d believe me. She’d explain to them that I wasn’t sick. I wasn’t anorexic. She would have noticed my weight loss as soon as it happened; she wouldn’t have been fooled by some baggy sweats.
After all, she and I looked like sisters. Now that I’d lost my TEWSBU weight.
Unaware of my silent pity party, my father took up the attack. “Kira, you can’t stand there and deny that you’ve lost a lot of weight. We all watched you after the…wedding.” He hesitated before the word, as if he didn’t know what to call it, didn’t know how to refer to the disaster. “We watched you take comfort in food. We knew that you’d put on several pounds, and we waited for you to come around, to stop that. But starving yourself isn’t any better. It’s no more a solution.”
I spoke to my mother’s framed photo. “I haven’t been starving myself.”
My father said, “Then work with us.” His tone was so reasonable that I had to turn to face him. To face all three of them. “Prove to us that you’re eating.”
“What? You want me to videotape every meal?” I felt like a rebellious teenager.
This was all about Drew, a voice whispered in my head. They didn’t like him. They’d never liked him. They were trying to drive him away, trying to make my life so difficult, so unappealing that no man in his right mind would stay with me.
Before anyone could say anything to make me even more furious, Maddy stood up. “We want you to keep a food diary.”
“A what?” I sounded incredulous.
Maddy crossed toward me, sweeping a piece of paper from my father’s desk. Sure enough, it read “Food Diary” across the top. The page was broken into sections, carved up for morning, midday, evening. There were three extra blocks for snacks.
“I don’t have time for this!” As I protested, my father set his jaw. I knew then that he would ignore every one of my arguments, no matter how logical they were. I turned to Maddy and Jules instead. “I have a show opening in a month! You guys know what that means! I won’t have time to do my laundry, much less write down every bite I eat.”
Maddy merely shook her head. “It doesn’t take that much time. You don’t need to calculate calories or fat grams. For now.”
“For now?” I was incredulous. “Is that a threat?”
Dad answered. “Kira, I know you’re angry right now. I know you think that we’re against you. But nothing could be further from the truth. All three of us just want you to be happy. If your life is out of control, if you have too much pressure to function in a healthy manner, we owe it to you to intervene.”
He was absolutely, utterly serious. Maddy took advantage of my speechlessness to add, “You can do this. You’re a stage manager. You keep perfect notes for your productions. Just keep track of your food for a month.”
I wanted to refuse. I wanted to tell them that they were collectively nuts. I wanted to tell them that I was hurt, insulted, furious.
But I knew that they were only speaking because they loved me.
Okay. How hard could it be to keep a food diary? I ate enough, every single day, that I would easily disprove their concerns. And, even though she’d been trying to flatter me, Maddy was right. List-making did come easily to me.
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll keep your stupid diary.” I looked at the three pairs of eyes, at the three people who loved me most in the entire world. (Except for Drew. He loved me more. But he wasn’t exactly a fair test, under the Teel-ish circumstances.) “But it’s only going to prove that you’re all wrong.”
“We can live with that,” my father said. “We can live with that, and we know you can, too.” He offered me his hand, just as he had when I was a child, when we were agreeing to stupid things.
I could have refused to take it. I could have refused to shake. But that would only make me look more defensive, more like a woman out of control.
I closed my fingers around his and pumped once, earnestly. He took a deep breath and exhaled, as if he were profoundly relieved to have our conversation behind him. “Now,” he said to all of us, “how about if I take you ladies out to dinner? Anywhere you’d like—my treat.”
Back in my bedroom, a rib-eye steak and loaded baked potato later, I was feeling a little more charitable toward my father and my housemates. If I’d only been able to share a glass of the shiraz my father had poured so generously, I likely would have overlooked the entire intervention, considered it just another one of those quirky signs of love and friendship that we’d all laugh about, years from now.
As it was, I continued to feel that I’d been treated unfairly, talked down to as if I were a child. But since we were all on the brink of food coma, I wasn’t going to pursue the matter any further with my housemates that night.
I leaned back against my pillows and caught a whiff of Drew’s shampoo. We’d already been together for three weeks. Time flew. Three weeks of his absolutely undivided attention. If I was completely honest with myself, I was grateful to have this evening off, even if my separation from Drew had meant the showdown with Dad, Maddy, and Jules. That didn’t make me strange, did it? I mean, everyone needed a little breathing room from the love of their life.
Didn’t they? Even if the person they wanted space from was so stunningly gorgeous they were still a heart-thudding surprise, each and every morning?
No, I remonstrated with myself. My desire for an evening away from Drew didn’t mean that I would ever dream of taking back the wish that had brought him to me.
I wouldn’t forfeit my new body, either. Sure, I should have handled things a little differently. I could have adjusted my wardrobe gradually, instead of startling everyone with apparent overnight changes. I could have made my actual food likes and dislikes more clear, instead of letting Maddy and Jules think that I was going all anorexic on them.
* * *
And I wouldn’t have given back my first wish, either. I definitely wouldn’t have forsaken my job at the Landmark. Sure, the gender-switched production was strange. Yeah, Bill Pomeroy was making the show more and more bizarre with his daily design changes. Absolutely, we were pushing the envelope for a Twin Cities theatrical production. But I was learning new things every day, proving myself every single time I set foot in the theater. No Fox Hill director would ever have shown the imagination for an entire production that Bill cast off in a single day.
No Fox Hill director would ever have chosen to wrap his set in plastic, three weeks before opening night.
Damn. I still had to let John know about the latest Pomeroy inspiration. I glanced at my watch. It was only nine-thirty, even though it seemed much later. I dug my cell phone out of my backpack, along with my well-used phone list.
Chewing on my bottom lip as I tried to figure out a way to break the news, I punched in John’s number. One ring. Two. He answered halfway through the third. “Hey, Franklin.” Ah, the joys of caller ID. “This isn’t going to be good news.”
Music played in the background, loud enough that I raised my voice a little. “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
“Only to the stage managers who call me after nine. Just a sec,” John said. With a slight grunt, the music was cut off midphrase.
“What was that?”
“Duke Ellington. ‘Take the “A” Train.’”
“You thinking about getting out of town?”
“That all depends on what you’re about to tell me. What’s Bill got in mind now?”
I took a deep breath to fortify myself. “‘I just want to say one word to you,’ Bill told us today. ‘Plastic.’”
There was silence for a long time, and I could picture John measuring out the new command. I was certain he was running a hand over his mustache. “Shouldn’t that be plastics?” he said at last. “With an ‘s?’”
Great. We both knew The Graduate. I gritted my teeth and told him about Bill’s innovation.
“Jesus, Franklin! The actors are going to break their necks!”
“We tried it today, with plastic bags over their socks, and we only had one injury.”
“What happened?” He sounded truly concerned.
“Nothing serious. Stephanie slipped. Cut herself on the edge of Drew’s notebook.” John muttered something that I didn’t catch. “What?”
“Nothing. How many stitches?”
“None! It wasn’t that bad. I mean, I could handle it with my first aid kit.”
I heard him swallow something, and I realized he’d probably been kicking back in his living room, relaxing with some jazz and a beer. Maybe reading a script for some future show. Or a novel, something totally unrelated to work. The last thing he’d needed was my interrupting his night with more design bad news. “I’m really sorry,” I said. “About this latest change.”
“Don’t be,” he sighed. “This is just Bill being Bill.”
“Genius that he is.” I thought it would come out sounding light, funny. Instead, I just sounded tired.
“How you holding up, Franklin?”
There was honest concern in his voice, a frank tone that made me swallow hard. He understood. He knew what I was going through, what this production meant, what it was taking to hold it all together. He’d traveled all the way from Texas to join the show; he had to be questioning whether he’d made the right decision.
John would understand if I admitted that I was tired. That I was worried. That I might have bitten off more than I could chew.
Blinking back sudden tears, I reminded myself that I would not give back any of my wishes. I loved where I was in my life. I loved what I was doing. And even a transgendered, underground, slime-filled Romeo and Juliet beat the LSAT. Anyday.
“Franklin?” John’s voice was soft, as cautious as if he were whispering to a newborn. I could see him sitting up in his chair now, bottle of beer abandoned on whatever passed for a coffee table in his cheap, temporary apartment. I could picture him leaning forward just a little, flexing the hand that wasn’t holding the phone, trying to funnel the tension of concern down his corded fingers.
“I’m fine,” I said, but I couldn’t raise my voice above a whisper. I cleared my throat. “Just a little tired, is all.” There. That was better. “I’m fine,” I repeated, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
As if he knew I needed a little longer to recover, he said, “Well, don’t worry about the plastic. I should be able to get something at Lyndale Garden, that heavy-duty black stuff for putting under flower beds. We can double it up and store it on spools, use a heat gun to add grommets, so the crew can attach it to the set.”
I listened for another minute as John talked to himself, working out the problem. I could imagine him taking notes, sketching out his requirements as he talked. I could picture his steady, firm hand, dashing out letters and numbers on a sheet of paper. As he took hold of Bill’s mandate, as he crafted a solution, I felt the tension ease in my shoulders. My momentary tears retreated, leaving a path of soggy exhaustion in their wake.
“You still there?” he said as he finished his calculations for how many square feet of plastic we’d need.
“Yep,” I said, sniffing and stifling a sudden yawn. “Do you need me to get any of that? What can I do to help?”
“Don’t worry about it. I can load it all into the truck.”
“You make it sound easy.”
“It’ll all work out. Bill might be insane, but we’ll stay one step ahead of him.”
I smiled at his grim determination. “You don’t fool me, John McRae. I know you love this stuff, no matter what you say about Bill.”
“I’m not trying to fool you, Franklin. Not trying to fool you at all.” The reply could have been innocent enough. They were casual words, directly responsive to what I’d said. And yet, there was a layer of meaning sifted over them, a careful seasoning that warmed my cheeks. I could picture his earnest chestnut eyes, warm beneath his shaggy hair.
I cleared my throat. “Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be there.” He started to say something else but settled for repeating, “I’ll be there.”
“Thanks,” I said, surprised to find that I was whispering.
“You sleep well now, Franklin.” He made his voice as soft as mine. “Good night.”
My phone was warm in my palm as I cut off the call. I sat up and realized that the remnants of my flame tattoos were tingling. I rubbed my fingertips together idly and wondered what John had been about to say, what words he’d swallowed during our conversation. I fell asleep, though, before I could figure out anything he might have meant.