Wish Club (11 page)

“Wish Club.”

“We’re using the energy of our group, the strength of women working together to empower our wishes and make things happen. I think it’s why I’m losing weight now, when I could never do it before. I made a wish for it.”

James looked skeptical.

“I can tell what you’re thinking,” Lindsay said. “You’re thinking it’s just a coincidence.”

“No. It’s…I’m just trying to understand. What is it you’re doing, exactly?”

“Well,” Lindsay was getting more winded. “Everyone gets to make a wish. We get in a circle…and hold hands around a candle…with herbs and maybe some scented oil or something—you know, to add the right energy. Then we chant for the wish to come true. It works. Look.” She waved a hand up and down her waist. “I’ve lost six pounds already.”

James watched her for a minute. “What you’re doing sort of sounds like witchcraft to me.”

Lindsay pressed her lips together. “It’s not…witchcraft.” Her words came out in puffs. “It’s wish…
ing.
It’s different.”

“I don’t know, Linds. What I know about witchcraft could fit in a thimble, but this wishing thing you’re telling me about doesn’t sound too different. I think people might…I think people could misconstrue what it is you gals are up to.”

Gals? Ick.
She hated “gals.” Lindsay turned the treadmill off. Its rumbling stopped immediately, creating a startling silence.

“Oh come on. What’s to misconstrue? We’re making wishes. It’s fun.”

Lindsay toweled her face and neck. She slid the white terry-cloth headband up even farther. Blond streaks of hair puffed out on the top of her head, standing out in contrast with the rest of her damp head. Her own hair-band hairstyle.

James still hadn’t said anything.

“Look at you. C’mon, it’s not like we’ve formed a coven or anything.” She picked up the wheat-grass shake and took a drink.

A dark look passed across James’s face. He was probably all worried about what rumors of a witchy wife would do to the burgeoning new-construction branch of his already lucrative real estate brokerage.

“Ohh,” she grunted and flipped her wrist down at him. “You worry too much. What’s the worst that could happen?” She laughed, before taking another drink of the shake. “Thanks for this.” She held the glass up an inch higher, her mouth full of wheat grass. She swallowed and started to head out of the room. “I need to hit the shower right away. I’ve got lunch at the Women’s Foundation today.”

Mara
put the bills into the blue mouth of the mailbox and hoisted its bottom ledge up. The big hinge squeaked, twice, because she had to peek in again and make sure all the envelopes had dropped down. That done, she turned back down the block toward home. Normally she didn’t make a special trip out just for the mail, but some of the bills were late.

She retraced her steps down the sidewalk, which was covered in a slushy snow, making a game of finding her old footprints going in the opposite direction. She could recognize the tread of her boots in some of the footprints. Others were just a foot-shaped impression in the slush.

Something caught her eye on the sidewalk, partially buried in a boot print—maybe hers. It was unmistakable, what it was—but whenever she discovered it on the ground unattended, there was always that hesitation. As if she weren’t sure it could be hers. And then of course the thrill when she picked it up.
It is. And it’s mine. And I just
found
it.
Money.

Mara reached down and pulled the bill out of the slush, the tips of her wool gloves getting drenched in the process. A one-hundred-dollar bill. She giggled.
A one-hundred-dollar bill!
The bill was wet and folded in half. It had been partially buried under the icy muck. Mara looked around to see if anyone had dropped it, or was around to claim it, or had seen her pick it up. She must have walked right over it earlier, missing it completely. No one else was on the street.

How cool was this? She’d just found one hundred dollars. How lucky was that?

But then, maybe luck had nothing to do with it. Maybe it was abundance already heading her way. Mara smoothed out the bill, wiping some slush from the back of it. This was her wish from Wish Club starting to manifest. It must be. You don’t just find one-hundred-dollar bills lying around every day.

Mara folded the bill and put it in the pocket of her coat with a smile. She started walking back home, a new spring in her step. She would take the bill home and let it dry.

Chapter Eleven

The
light had gone all wrong. Or that’s what Jill told herself. It really only happened around this time of the year, when the sun was so low in the sky that the blinds couldn’t quite keep all the light out. It had been cloudy all day, the sky in keeping with the slush on the ground, but the sun had just burst through a few minutes earlier, and now it was blaring through the window of her studio, ruining everything.

Jill had been working, rather half-heartedly, for the previous hour or so, but her mind had kept straying to the portrait artist downstairs. She hadn’t seen him since that day a couple of weeks earlier when he had moved in, but she couldn’t stop thinking about him. His eyes, his smile, his cute butt as it bent over to move the cinder block when he closed the door. Marc with a “c.”
He’s gay,
she remembered thinking when he had introduced himself—that whole “with a ‘c” thing. But then he’d really flirted with her: the way he held her eyes, her hand. But he still could be gay, because gay men sometimes did that, flirted with straight women.

Coffee. That’s what I need. Just a quick little break.
Jill looked at the painting she’d been working on and grunted with disapproval. Any excuse to get out of here for a little while.
Maybe I should ask Marc to join me for coffee. He probably doesn’t even know about Sally’s yet, the way it’s hidden under the El tracks.
Sally’s coffee shop looked like such a dump from the street, like the kind of place where every head turns to see who’s walked in and where the welcome isn’t warm if you’re not a regular. Judging from the outside, anyone who didn’t know better would be afraid to venture in there.

Jill took off her smock. She thought about stopping to freshen her makeup, but then she might look as if she were trying too hard, showing up at his door with fresh lipstick. But every single morning since she’d last seen him, she’d been showing up at the 4400 North Studios with fresh lipstick. Fresh lipstick in the morning was normal.
Would a straight man be observant enough to question fresh lipstick during the day?

She was dying for another glimpse of him. He was so unbelievably gorgeous. She’d walked away from the studios that first day convinced that her wish for the perfect man was coming true. Look who’d just moved into the studio below hers! Just what the Wish Club ordered.

But now she was starting to have doubts. If this was the man of her dreams, shouldn’t he make an appearance in her reality, too? One morning earlier in the week, the light in his studio had been on when she’d come up the sidewalk, and her heart had jumped. But when she had gotten inside the building his door had been closed and instead of knocking, she’d just walked past, disappointed.

He’d dropped everything, almost literally, on that first day to come up to her studio and help her with the big canvas and she’d thought that was so sweet. He’d seemed really
into
her, as if he couldn’t imagine a better thing to do right then, than help a damsel in distress stretch some canvas—even though, obviously, he had a ton of things to do himself.

She’d had to get in close to him while he held the 10 duck taut so she could staple it onto the stretcher bars. She’d been afraid she was going to miss the canvas—send a staple shooting across the room—because she hadn’t been able to take her eyes off of his flexed bicep holding the stretching pliers. She’d never met an artist that
cut
before. Standing so close, she’d had a hard time controlling her breath. She’d had to force herself to make it smooth, a problem not unlike what happened whenever she thought about blinking her eyes; the more she thought about it, the less natural it became. And he hadn’t been making it easy on her, not really moving far enough out of the way for her to get in and staple. She’d suspected he was doing it on purpose.

Jill walked down the stairs and along the front hall of 4400 North. The light was on in 1W.
Okay, just do this. Just knock on his door. What do those ads say, “It’s only lunch?” Well, this is only coffee.
This was so not like her. She couldn’t believe how fast her heart was racing.

Jill beat her knuckles on the door and waited, committed now. No answer. She waited, almost walked away, then knocked a little harder—too hard. The door latch clicked and the door swung open of its own accord, revealing the naked back of a woman, seated on top of his model’s platform. Her legs were spread wide, and pockets of cellulite rippled in the back of her thighs each time he thrust into her.

Marc looked up and the model turned to look over her right shoulder when Jill gasped.

Neither of them seemed terribly embarrassed about the interruption. Marc had even put forth a couple of perfunctory thrusts as he looked up at Jill, as though he’d been going at it so fast he needed a few seconds to spool himself down.

“Sorry!” Jill closed the door so quickly it was almost a slam.
Okay. So definitely not gay.
She cupped her hand over her mouth as she hurried out the front door of the building and down the sidewalk, trying to muffle the horrified laughs that were burbling out of her cheeks, pressing against the palm of her hand. Halfway down the block she let them free, cracking up by herself like a lunatic, one of those crazy people you see walking down the street. Some wish-come-true this was.

Jill tried to regain her composure. What had come over her, anyway, running away, giggling, acting like such a kid? She was behaving like Mara. And why was she laughing? She sure hadn’t felt happy or thought it was funny. What a weird, nervous reaction. Especially for her. Jill wasn’t used to laughing much at anything.

She took a deep breath and kept walking down the block toward Sally’s. As she pulled her gloves out of her pockets and put them on, the picture of Marc and his model burned in her mind’s eye: the waves of her long black hair cascading down her back, her face in profile, his serene expression as he stared bare-chested over her white shoulder. She was almost at Sally’s when she had an interesting thought: What a nice portrait they would have made.

“So
, um, I guess I could come back tomorrow—you know, if you need me.”

Gail held the phone to her ear, fighting the urge to pull it away and check the caller ID again. This was her babysitter, Ellen, on the phone—wasn’t it? Saying she’d be able to return to work—
sooner?

Ellen worked for Gail three mornings a week. That was, up until three weeks ago, when Ellen had dropped a stapler on her big toe and broken it. Only Ellen could find a way to break her toe with a stapler—well no, actually, Claudia probably could too, but only Ellen would turn it into an opportunity to get so much time off work. “Six weeks
minimum
is, like, what the doctor’s saying.”

Gail and the kids had gone to visit her, and the cast went all the way up to her knee. Gail wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t seen it for herself. The whole odd situation sounded like the kind of story Gail might have concocted in order to get some time off of work, adding that one bizarre detail—a stapler—to make it sound like a story you couldn’t possibly make up.

“Sooner?” Gail asked.

“Yeah. The doctor says it’s healing well and I don’t have to stay off my feet so much anymore, so, you know, I could work, like, maybe one day to try it out and then, if that was okay, then do, like, one day a week—or something.”

“How soon can you get here?”

How awesome was this? Unexpected free time. What was she going to do? She had tons of errands to run—she really needed to take the minivan in. No. Wait. She should stop that line of thinking. This was a bonus. A free gift. She shouldn’t squander something like this on
need to’s
and
have to’s.
She should
enjoy
the day tomorrow. Do something fun—just for her—

The wish.
Is that what this was? Was this her wish from Wish Club?

Gail had had something more substantial in mind than just one day when she’d made her wish. But this single day could turn into more,
like, you know, if everything went okay.
Guiltily, secretly, Gail had just recently allowed herself to start thinking about maybe going back to work. About writing the next big jingle. Well, so what if her wish wasn’t going to give her the big chunks of time she’d envisioned. Maybe it was just one day—but she’d take it. And tomorrow she would spend the day at a coffee shop with a book, or maybe the newspaper, maybe looking at want ads, just for fun.

Someone
tapped on the door to Jill’s studio. “Door’s open,” she called.

“Hey.”

“Well, if it isn’t Marc with a ‘c.’” Jill tried to remain calm, keep her cool exterior cool. She smiled at him. He smiled back.
Ooof.
She could feel the effect in her solar plexus.

He continued smiling, being coy, his hands jammed into his front pockets, seemingly trying to use his smile to say all the things it would be hard to use words to say about what had happened two days earlier when she’d seen him with his model.

Employing his boyish mannerisms, he looked even younger than she remembered. Still cute, though. Very.

“I haven’t heard you up here in a couple of days.” Marc ran a finger down his thin goatee. “Thought maybe someone was breakin’ in or something. Decided I’d better have a look-see.”

Jill hadn’t been at the studio since Wednesday; she’d been avoiding him. She tried to get the picture of him in action out of her head. “Nope, it’s just me up here rattling around, trying to get the creative juices flowing.”

He nodded his head and flashed her an understanding look, as if to say
I know the feeling.
He looked around the studio. “Wow, I like this one. Is it new?”

“Yeah.” Jill hated that one; the colors were off. She’d just decided it wouldn’t make the show.

His eyes continued to scan her studio, checking it out. He was wearing a pookah-shell necklace.
Kids,
Jill thought. She wondered if he’d ever heard of David Cassidy.

Marc looked back at her, gave her a penetrating smile. It seemed clear his smile was something he was used to falling back on when words failed him.

Cute, and knows it, too.
But what, really, is the harm in that?

“Well, just wanted to make sure everything was kosh up here.” He smiled at her again, stuffed his hands back into the pockets of his jeans.

Had he intended for it to be a double entendre?
No hard feelings between us, no one up here breaking in? Probably not. He looked nervous, like he was struggling.

“Everything’s kosh,” Jill said, then, uncharacteristically, decided to show him some mercy. “Say, I’m up for a break. You want to go grab some coffee or something?”

Marc locked his eyes on hers, giving her a sly smile when she said, “or something,” and she could tell he’d almost said something naughty but had decided better of it. “Sure, that’d be great,” he said. “We can go to my place.”

“Your place?”

“Yeah, Sally’s—the coffee shop under the El. Not many people know about it—the sign’s mostly hidden under the tracks.”

“Right.”

Sally’s
was up breakfast and lunch and closed at two in the afternoon. It hadn’t been redecorated since sometime in the 1970s, and it featured a décor with lots of brown, gold, and orange. No lattes here. Sally’s served plain old Superior Coffee, roasted and packaged down on Elston Avenue. When the wind was right, the Superior Coffee factory could make the whole north side smell like Colombian roast.

Marc opened the door to Sally’s and stood aside to let Jill pass through in front of him. He did it naturally, without ceremony, as if he were used to being polite. He paid for both their coffees. Jill thought that was sweet, too, the way he’d insisted, with a gentle wave of his hand as he pulled out his money, especially since Jill had been the one to suggest they go get coffee.

“So why portraits?” Jill asked him after they’d sat down at their booth.

“Portraits let me get inside people’s heads.” He looked away from her, his eyes roving through Sally’s, as if maybe he were scouting for subjects, heads to get inside of. “You know how when you paint something, you
know
it.” He fixed his eyes on her now. “I mean you really, really
know it.
It’s like that with people, too. Maybe even more so. A series of portraits on one person and, BAM, you’re inside their head.” He slammed his hand down on the table, Emeril-like, when he said “bam,” and Jill jumped. The coffee quivered in her mug.

Marc continued, not noticing that he’d startled her. “People walk around their whole lives and they never let you
in.
They’re closed-off, shut down, isolated. I hate that. I like to
get inside,
take a peek.” His eyes had been wandering again, and now he turned back to Jill, holding them on hers. “After I do someone’s portrait, it’s like I’ve been inside their head for so long…It’s like I really know them, maybe even better than they wanted me to. I love that—I
live
for that. The portraits I do—well, they’re not usually the interpretation people expect, that’s for sure. But that’s
why portraits.
” He smiled his smile. “With most people, the experience is pretty cool.” He paused. “Sometimes…” He shrugged. His smile turned wicked, finishing his thought…
it isn’t.