Wishes Read Free

Lady Caroline Lamb. There was a square dance with cowboys, a Victorian party with parlor games, a thirteenth-century feast with some fine-looking young acrobats that tempted Berni, a Japanese tea ceremony, and an amazing Tahitian dance, but in the end she chose a party from the sixties. The blaring music of the Stones, the bright mini dresses, the Nehru jackets, the smell of marijuana burning, the writhing bodies of the long-haired people reminded her of her youth.
    “Yes,” she whispered, and she stepped inside. In a moment she was wearing a micro-mini dress, her hair was long and straight, and there was a boy asking her to dance. She never looked back to see what had happened to Pauline.
     
    Berni was huddled in a pile with other flower children, smoking grass and listening to Frank Zappa talk to Suzie Creamcheese when Pauline came for her. Berni looked up and knew she had to leave. Reluctantly, she left the party and followed Pauline out of the room.
    Once they were through the golden archway the fog closed in over the room and hid all sights and sounds from them. Berni’s beads and tie-dyed shirt disappeared along with her headband. Her head cleared of the effects of the marijuana, and she was once again wearing the silk suit in which she’d been buried.
    “I just got here,” Berni said sulkily. “I was just beginning to enjoy myself.”
    “By earth time you have been partying for fourteen years.”
    Berni could only blink at Pauline. Fourteen years? She felt as though she’d entered the party but moments before. She had been aware that now and then her clothes were different, but surely she couldn’t have been in there fourteen years. She hadn’t slept or eaten, had drunk very little, and hadn’t had a single conversation with her fellow party-goers. She’d meant to talk to them about the Kitchen and about their assignments, but there had never seemed to be an opportunity.
    “There is an assignment for you,” Pauline said.
    “Great,” Berni said, smiling. If she passed this test and went to heaven, what pleasures awaited her there? Heaven must be some super place to be better than the Kitchen.
    Pauline led them down a hallway, past several golden arches that Berni was dying to explore. One said “Harem Fantasy” above it, another “Pirates.”
    At last Pauline turned through an arch labeled “Viewing Room” and led them into a large room with a half circle of banquettes covered in peach-colored velvet. All around the seats was thick, white fog.
    “Please make yourself comfortable.”
    Berni snuggled down into the soft, velvet-covered seat and looked where Pauline did, at the foggy wall in front of them. Within seconds the fog drew back and a scene appeared before them. It was like a movie, only not as flat, and like a play, only more real.
    A young woman, slim, pretty, with light brown hair pulled back from her face, was standing before a full-length mirror. She was wearing a long dress with very large puffed sleeves. The dress was of dark green silk with sparkling black beads across the bosom, and it was so tight in the bodice it was a wonder she could breathe. There were three hatboxes on the floor, and the woman was trying on one hat after another. The room was pleasant, with a bed, a wardrobe, a dresser, a washstand, a rag rug, and a fireplace, but it certainly wasn’t a palace. There were invitations open on the mantelpiece.
    “I don’t guess she can see us,” Berni said.
    “No, she has no idea anyone is watching her. Her name is Terel Grayson, she’s twenty years old, it is 1896, and she lives in Chandler, Colorado.”
    “You mean I’m to make a Cinderella out of some antique girl? I don’t know anything about history. I need someone from my own time.”
    “In the Kitchen all earth time is the same.”
    Berni looked back at the screen and sighed. “All right. So where’s Prince Charming? And where’s the wicked stepsister?”
    Pauline didn’t answer, so Berni watched in silence.