Chapter One: The Price of Wishes

The price of wishes had officially gone up. As I walked out of the Soupberg Diner into the open air of Manhattan's Upper East Side, with the first pages of my new screenplay sizzling in my messenger bag, I found myself debating. Not whether Angelina Jolie would be too pretty to play me in this screenplay, but whether the waiter who just asked me to eat him actually peed on my bacon cheeseburger. So if ever there were a time to make a wish, it was now.

A few short steps away on the corner of Seventy-second and Second Avenue sat Max, our neighborhood homeless man; or as he liked to call himself, freelance minimalist-lifestyle expert. He was staked out in his usual place, wearing his usual garb and holding up his usual hook: a tattered Jack Daniel's box with the words "MAKE A WISH-50o" written in dried ketchup. The sign was taped to a nine iron as a way to draw attention to his secret powers of wish granting while also being a handy way to keep himself from falling off his industrial-size spackle pail. I couldn't understand how Maria and Emmy never noticed him outside of the Soupberg Diner. After all, how often do you run into a homeless man who looks like Santa Claus wearing a garbage bag? This night the 50 cents part of his sign had been crossed out and replaced by $1. Curious to see the reason behind the fare increase, I gave him his expected bowl of corn chowder and some peanut-butter crackers.

"MTA fare hike. Two bucks a ride now," he said, reaching for the soup.

"Does that mean my wish will come true twice as fast?" I asked.

"Does the subway come twice as often as it did before?"

He made a good point. I reached into my pocket and produced a shining new Sacajawea gold dollar coin. As soon as I put it in the bowl, he grimaced.

"I hate those."

"It's legal tender, Max. It counts." But secretly, I agreed with him. Even though I liked the fact that a Native American woman was finally getting the recognition she deserved, a thousand plus years after the fact, I hated when I got eighteen of them as change for a twenty from the MetroCard vending machines. It made my wallet feel like a brick and made me constantly overpay for a pack of gum.

"But the triple cherry slot machines don't take gold dollar coins."

"She's Native American. They have to take it."

"Got any singles?"

"I gave them to an insulting waiter."

"How about those state quarters? I need Mississippi... "

"Max, you're wearing a Hefty bag! You're homeless, remember?"

Just as that kind remark hung in the air, a woman walking her French bulldog overheard my comment and called me a bitch under her breath. And she would have been right, too, had I not sworn I'd seen Max stroll out of the Polo store on Seventy-second Street, wearing a tuxedo and swinging a large shopping bag. The doorman of the store even called him a cab and waved him off like Donald Trump at Christmas. But the guilt soon stung me. This could be my daily dose of being wrong. For karma's sake, I dropped another dollar coin into the bowl.

"Here ya go, Maxy. Sorry about that."

Max just shook his dusty head and laughed at me. He dunked a peanut butter cracker into his soup and took a bite. His beard caught all the crumbs that flew out when he talked.

"Geri, you're a good kid. A bit of a potty mouth but a good kid nonetheless." He reached over and picked up the small black cauldron at his feet.

"Here," he said, handing it to me. "Give it a good hard shake."

There it was. The infamous bowl of wishes. In the middle of this little black cauldron sat a worn, chipped brass bell balancing on a mound of loose change. My two gold dollar coins topped the heap.

"Come on. You know the drill."

And I did. But the last six times I rang that bell, the only wish that seemed to come true was that I would find love in the least likely place. That turned out to be walking in on a forty-year-old woman giving a blow job to a twenty-something waiter in a bathroom stall at Brother Jimmy's Bar and Grill. It seemed that if the bowl was to work, it not only needed a dollar but specifics and faith. None of which I possessed much of after the age of eight. If there was one thing that my life seemed to be hell-bent on teaching me, it was that any jingle that was jangled from Geraldine Agnes O'Brien fell on deaf ears.

"You make a wish for me," I told Max.

He gently placed his dinner on the sidewalk. "Suit yourself, oh ye of little faith."

Max rubbed his hands together as he peered into my face. He tried to excavate from my puzzled expression what sort of wish I would want granted. After an uncomfortably long moment of direct eye contact, he put his hands on his knees and stared up into Manhattan's evening sky. I looked up as well, wondering what Max could actually be staring at. His eyes rolled around the few stars that could peek through the constant pink glow of the city's atmosphere. In Manhattan, it's almost impossible to find the moon in the early evening. The lights of the city seem to outshine outer space. As if New York has no use or need for a moon in the first place. Max's body rocked back and forth as a slow hum vibrated through his throat. After a minute of watching Max fall into some kind of soup-induced trance, I felt completely insane. Forget this, I thought. I could be here all night.

Bending close to his ear, I whispered, " 'Night, Max. Stay safe and keep warm." And with that, I walked up Second Avenue toward home. Max made no motion toward ringing that bell.

Tuesday night on the Upper East Side is like Friday night in Pittsburgh. All of the rich and rich-in-waiting seemed to be outside, taking advantage of the warm late spring night. Handsome couples sat at sidewalk cafes enjoying the fresh air and a cigarette as they dug into monstrous salads covered with oil and cheese. Women in velour sweatpants fussed over the mini-turds that their mini-dogs left behind. Older couples walked hand in hand down the sidewalk discussing the lecture at the 92nd Street Y on rustic whole-food cooking while enjoying their fat-free, low-calorie, brownie-batter yogurt cones. As I walked past these outdoor diners, smokers and yogurt connoisseurs, I caught a glimpse of Emmy and myself five years ago. Two fresh-out-of-college girls were holding another girl's hair back as she threw up on the sidewalk in front of our neighborhood bar, Doc Watson's. I sidestepped the vomit and the heartfelt, "I so fucking love you guys," and asked myself the same painful question that I'd asked myself every day since I moved to this fateful town. When did New York cool turn so... state college? Why was I not in the hard-core artist section of the Lower East Side having sex with Ethan Hawke look-alikes? Why was I not lugging cables around for a film shoot or beating tourists away from the craft services table? How did I, the cool, edgy writer, land in the brunch capital of the world? Where everything was so "okay" that I took every opportunity I could to endanger myself just to feel the thrill of being alive? Was I abnormally brave or crazy from boredom? I figured it had to be one or the other. After all, I was the only one on the block who didn't hit the deck when the bang barreled down Seventy-eighth Street.

Instead, I did what anyone who has lived in Manhattan more than five years did. I stopped, waited two seconds and did the math. 1 bang + 0 scream = 1 car backfiring. 1 bang + 1 pause + 1 bang = 2 sets of tires running over a steel grate. 1 scream + 1 pop + 1 pop + 1 pop +soft patter of feet = 911. But this bang I knew all too well. It came from my neighbor's 1984 Nissan Maxima. A distress signal sent out by the car to its owner that it wanted to die.

Todd's car was the easiest one to spot on Seventy-eighth Street. Out of all the SUVs, kidnapper vans and black Town Cars that normally lined both sides of the block, his usually sat catty-corner under the streetlight with a soft stream of smoke leaking from under the hood. This night was no different. With the hood up and half a tool box splayed out on the sidewalk, Todd grunted as he banged a screwdriver on his battery.

"How's it going, Todley?" I asked as I peeked over his shoulder at the engine. His wide shoulders and tall frame doubled over the engine did not allow for a clear view of anything. Todd turned his head and peeked back at me, giving me a tired but sweet smile.

"Hey there, Geri girl. You look amazing."

"I bet I do." I chuckled as I plopped my messenger bag down. "What's it this time?"

He tucked in his chin and pouted like a girl. For a handsome, square-jawed man, he looked ridiculous. Adorable but ridiculous. "It won't start, Geri. Why?"

"'Cause it's old and made in Japan."

"But why?"

Rolling up my sleeves, I nudged him out of the way and took a quick look at the engine. "Well, with this car it could be a number of things. A discharged battery, a busted catalytic converter, warped engine heads, a bad ignition switch or neutral interlock. Or..." I stuck my nose close to the engine and sniffed. "Or it's just a pile of crap. What does it do when you put the key in and turn it?"

"Well, it started initially... "

"So we all just heard."

"But then it died. Now it just clicks."

"It's probably the battery." I walked over to the toolbox and pulled out a pair of his oversized work gloves. But as I shook my head in disbelief that a chiropractor would drive such a death trap, he threw me one of his smiles that made his cheeks dimple so deep you could stick your finger in it. One of those smiles that always made my brain say for a split second, if only. If only Todd Boyd wasn't my downstairs neighbor of five years. If only he didn't have a long-term girlfriend who looked like she modeled sweater sets for JC Penney. If only he drove American. But as always, the second passed. And I let it go. "By the way, did you ever wind up getting that wrench kit?"

Todd bent over and removed the first tray of his toolbox, revealing a row of shiny new Crescent wrenches. He held one of the gleaming silver tools up to the streetlight for me to examine.

"I did good, right?"

Upon closer inspection, I could feel my heart drop. Wrinkling my nose, I said, "You bought SAE wrenches."

"Like I said, I did good, right?"

"Todd, SAE are used for American cars. Your car, my dear, uses the metric system." By the look on his face it appeared that I had just let the air out of his tires. Not wanting to disappoint the only man other than my father who'd ever bought a tool set on my recommendation, I reached over and rubbed the side of his arm for encouragement. When my hand slid over his triceps, he instantly flexed. "Don't worry," I said, barely suppressing a smile. "You can make do with these. Just remember, with a bit of metal wire a half-inch wrench will do in a pinch for a 12 millimeter."

The smile returned to his face. "Hey, some girls like flowers. Some like tools."

"And I've liked my fair share of tools. We all can't be as lucky as Cassie."

This breakdown marked the third time in a month that I'd spent quality time with Todd under his hood. Which was not a very bad place to be. His brown bomb not only kept my knowledge of foreign engines fresh but enabled me to hang out with the only neighbor I really knew in the building. He sat on his bumper and rifled aimlessly through the toolbox as I scrubbed the rust off his terminal caps.

"So other than car troubles, how's everything going?" I asked as I tried to loosen one of the caps.

He paused for a moment and fumbled with a clamp. Noticing the silence, I glanced back at Todd. His face had lost its smile. All was not good in Apartment #18.

"Know anyone who needs a roommate? I'm looking," he said as he clicked the clamps to his belt buckle. I shifted my attention back to the battery.

"I don't know anyone who would want to live with a couple," I said. "Could you pass me a rag?"

He leaned in next to me to examine my handiwork. The clean smell of a newly washed shirt and Speedstick replaced the odor of burnt oil. "It's just me," he said as he handed me the rag. I stopped working.

"And Cassie?" I asked.

He shook his head. "Over. It was a long time coming."

"I'm sorry to hear that." And I was. The last time I fixed his fuel injector, he was thinking about buying a ring. Between the fuel injector and the battery, their relationship seemed to have hit the skids. I didn't know much about Cassie except that she worked as a hairdresser in Midtown and had an addiction to Altoids. In five years I'd only passed her a handful of times in the hall. She never spoke to me. Even when I held the front door for her, the most I would get would be a nod of recognition and a strong whiff of peppermint. But on appearance alone, Cassie and Todd seemed like a genetic match. Both were extremely fit, with black hair so thick you couldn't even see a part. Their eyes were the kind of gray-blue eyes I've only seen in cats, and their skin was the color and texture of my grandma's china. It would be safe to assume that if one of them needed a kidney, they wouldn't need to go far to find one.

But though Cassie would walk over me in a fire, my relationship with Todd couldn't have been more different. Ever since the day I slim-jimmed his car door open, Todd and I could never pass each other without stopping to have a twenty-minute conversation. Between questions on how my dad taught me about big block engines to how many query letters I'd sent out that week on my screenplay, Todd seemed to genuinely care about the comings and goings of my life. He also seemed to be open about his. To a point. He never hesitated to tell me about the characters he'd seen at the chiropractic office he shared with his father in Queens or stories about his days on the swim team at UMASS. But when I asked him about the woman he lived with, the only thing he would say was that they'd dated in high school and that Cassie's dream was to get out of doing hair and move into facials. Nothing more.

As I scrubbed the wire brush around the battery, I tried to figure out why a man who never threw anything out, no matter how old or broken it seemed to be, would break up with his girlfriend of eight years. And what girl in her right mind would leave a guy who could give her free adjustments and bought ratchet wrenches?

When I turned my head to answer, I found his face uncomfortably close to mine. So close that I could feel his breath on my cheek. So close that I only needed to whisper to be heard. "I'll keep my ears open. If I hear something, I'll let you know."

Then I did hear something. The bell. Max's bell. The bell I'd rung unsuccessfully for true love, a million-dollar deal for my screenplay and a cool new job seemed to be going off right next to my left ear. That sound made me jerk up so fast that I smashed my head on the inside of the hood.

"What happened?" he asked as he reached for my pulsing skull.

"Did you hear that?"

"What?"

"That bell."

(to be continued…)

Excerpted from No Good Girls © Copyright 2012 by Jean Marie Pierson. Reprinted with permission by Love Spell. All rights reserved.