New Fic-Wishful thinking -18

I almost didn't recognize Carmen. Her hair was piled on top of her head in a prim bun. She wore some sort of shapeless broadcloth blouse, tucked into a hideous ankle-length skirt that looked like a refugee from the seventies. Her limpid eyes blinked behind granny glasses.

She was the very embodiment of Marian the Librarian.

And it wouldn't matter that her speech lilted with a Venezuelan accent. Not for Silent Stage.

Of course, she saw me immediately. She dragged Rob over so that she could deliver a cosmopolitan kiss on each cheek. "Cara," she purred, after I stammered out a greeting. "Will you excuse me? I see an old friend."

Her smile was flawless as she darted over to the director. Rob and I watched her fall into animated conversation with the man who would decide our theatrical fates.

"Hi," I finally said to my once-beloved, when the awkwardness had become thick enough to cut with my father's meat cleaver.

"Hi," he said.

Twenty years of constant chatter, and we were reduced to this.

"There aren't a lot of auditions these days," Rob finally said.

"No. There aren't."

Sheesh. If I were a director, I'd throw both of us out, for being the most stilted, uncomfortable couple in the history of American theater. Not, um, that we were a couple anymore. I didn't know what we were.

"You look great this morning," Rob managed, and I couldn't help but beam. "Did you cut your hair?"

No! I wanted to scream. It's twelve inches longer. By magic! So much for wooing him back with my perfect, genie-created body. What a stupid idea that had been.

And that's when I realized what I had to do.

Dad had intended to help me when he'd passed along Jaze's lamp. He'd meant to get me through a rough patch, to comfort me when Rob went to New York as a brilliant theatrical success.

But Dad wasn't responsible for the wreck I'd made of things. Truth be told, Jaze wasn't either. And Rob was totally innocent; he'd just been caught in the magical backlash.

I could fix things. Now. Before they got any worse.

"I'll be back in a sec," I said. Rob nodded. He knew that I always had to go to the bathroom before auditions. Rob knew everything about me.

I saw the relief on his face. He was being spared more of our horrible, awkward conversation.

Fortunately, the bathroom wasn't occupied when I got there. Everyone else was waiting to strut their stuff onstage. Every woman there was wasting her time, though. Carmen was a shoo-in.

But that didn't matter now.

Nothing mattered, except making my fourth wish.

I raised my hand in the flickering fluorescent light, studying the almost-invisible flames on my fingertips. What would happen to them, after I called Jaze for the last time?

There was only one way to find out.

I pressed my fingers together and said my genie's name.