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SEVEN

B ack upstairs, Eddie realizes he has no fennel tea for Cookie. What’s worse, he’s got to figure out a way to tell her that she’s only getting a half glass of sherry today, like the doctor ordered.

He looks for a smaller glass and finds one, but she’ll notice. He considers watering the sherry down, but she’ll notice. He considers dropping a big ice cube into her glass along with the drink and saying that’s how Dorothy Parker took hers when he “saw” her at the Algonquin. But she’ll notice. He has no choice but honesty. He won’t disobey the doctor, so a half glass is all she’ll get, and that’s that. He pours two half glasses.

Cookie taps her glass with a lacquered nail. “Why so stingy?”

Eddie shrugs, hoping she’ll read in the gesture that he’s doing the best he can.

“That damn doctor,” she says, her voice thick with disappointment.

Eddie kisses Cookie on the cheek, hoping the gesture will soften her, and it does.

“You’re forgiven this time. But you could have least brought opera cakes.”

Opera cakes. The words bring Theo to mind and Eddie closes his eyes. Theo’s disappointed expression out on Sixth Avenue. Theo’s soliloquy to no one down on Bedford Street. Theo’s kindness, consistency, strength. Shame sweeps through Eddie. He’ll never be able to face Theo again. He’s going to have to find some way to keep her supplied with opera cakes from Patisserie Gaston, without going himself. He can’t find another bakery. Maybe Theo has a day or two off each week, Eddie thinks. He could stake out the shop to figure out which days those are. He pictures himself hiding behind a car, watching, waiting to see who unlocks the door at two o’clock in the morning.

Swat. It’s Cookie’s back scratcher smacking him on the shoulder. She smacks him again, then waves it in the direction of her dresser.

“I said,” she says, her voice rising. “You could have at least brought—”

He sees the white bag with the twisted-paper handles on the dresser. “Opera cakes!” he yelps. He jumps up and into the kitchen for plates and forks.

After they sip their sherry and finish their cakes, he hands her the picture he took before his strange vision, the shot of the Jefferson Market Library spire set against the blue sky.

“Oh, the old courthouse,” she says brightly. “And the women’s house of detention. That’s where they held Mae West after her arrest.”

“Who?” Eddie asks.

“Mae West. She was such a big star when I was a child. The most famous woman in the world. An actress, a playwright, a movie star, a rebel. They arrested her for obscenity. Or, come to think of it, they officially called it something like public nuisance. All because she wrote a play with homosexuals and hedonists and other so-called deviants. It was too popular, I guess, standing room only, and that’s why they had to arrest her. The cops wouldn’t have cared if it wasn’t a hit. It was such a scandal. I was just a kid but I remember. She loved it, gave interviews to all the papers. It made her even more popular.”

She points at a stack of books on her nightstand. “That’s her book. The one on the bottom.”

Eddie studies the book cover. There’s no title on the front, just a photograph of a glamorous bleach-blond woman reclining luxuriously in a lavishly decorated bedroom, admiring her face in a hand mirror just like Cookie does.

“She had the best one-liners. Like, ‘It’s not the men in your life that counts, it’s the life in your men!’ And ‘When I’m good, I’m very good. But when I’m bad, I’m better.’” Cookie laughs and taps the book with her back scratcher. “Go ahead, read!”

“Aloud?”

“How the hell am I supposed to hear you if you read silently? And don’t start at the beginning. Never start a book at the beginning. Pick a page in the middle.”

Eddie opens the book at random, about halfway through, clears his throat, and begins reading: “‘The homosexuals I had met were usually boys from the chorus of some of the shows I’d been in. I looked upon them as amusing and having a great sense of humor. They were the first ones to imitate me in my presence.’” He feels his face get hot. He closes the book.

“Cat got your tongue?” Cookie asks.

“No, it’s just,” Eddie starts, then stops. “I don’t feel like reading.”

“The fairies and pansies loved her,” Cookie says, looking at herself in her hand mirror. “She always put them in her plays and the crowds loved them. They were the toast of the town!”

Fairies? Pansies? Eddie stiffens at the words. They sound like slurs.

“Oh, Lollipop,” she says, reading his expression. “I know we don’t use those words anymore. They were typical at the time, but no more. Words are always changing. Fairies, pansies, queers, inverts, gays. I’m always hearing a new one. It’s not easy for an old lady like me, but I try to keep up. Anyway, the authorities couldn’t stand Mae West. But they’re always so shortsighted, authorities. Don’t you think?”

Eddie looks again at the photograph of the woman on the cover of the book. “Why isn’t there any title on this book?” he asks.

“Flip it over,” she says, and he does. There, on the back of the book, in bright pink letters, is the title: Goodness Had Nothing to Do with It .

He stares, unbelieving. That’s exactly what the woman said in his vision. Exactly. Word for word. It’s happened again. He waits for the familiar fluid to rise in his throat, the panic, but it doesn’t come. Somehow, he’s not surprised.

“I’ll go wash the dishes,” he says.

“Forget the dishes,” Cookie says. “Let’s listen to some music.”

Soon he’s sitting at the foot of her bed, fiddling with the Polaroid camera as she swings her back scratcher in the air to keep time with the old blues song playing on her turntable. Eddie is fascinated by the music. Even though the recording is old and scratchy, the instruments and beat are lively and quick, and the singer’s voice is like something he’s never heard. It sounds far away, scratchy and obscured because the recording is so old, but the tone is so rich and precise and brassy and full. Red beans and rice , she sings. Greasy bacon in the pot.

“Who is that singer?” Eddie asks.

“That’s Gladys Bentley,” Cookie says, pointing at a photograph on the wall of a tall black woman in a men’s suit—white tails and top hat—posing with her shoulders squared and her head tilted back, smiling confidently. “She was something else. She packed ’em in at the speakeasies. Oh, I wish I’d seen her sing back then. You know, she used to change the lyrics of the songs she sang, depending on where she was performing.”

“Why?”

Cookie leans forward. “Because sometimes, she wanted to sing about women, not men. So she changed ‘he’ to ‘she’ in her love songs.”

“You mean she—”

“Draw your own conclusions,” Cookie says. “All I know is that people went wild for it. She was famous for flirting with women in the audience. The newspapers said she even got married to a woman in New Jersey, but I don’t see how that could be true. Two women can’t get married to each other.”

“Yes, they can,” Eddie says.

“Oh, that’s right,” Cookie says, straightening the marabou collar on her polka-dot dressing gown as the music begins to fade. “Two women can get married now, can’t they? Or two men. It still seems incredible to an old lady like me. Incredible and beautiful. Flip that record, will you?”

Eddie turns over the record, and the music begins again.

“Now,” Cookie says. “How about another errand? In the closet, you’ll find a stack of shoeboxes. The second-to-bottom box contains a pair of shoes. Blue ones, with a strap across the front. Fetch them for me.”

Eddie stands up and enters Cookie’s closet, so overstuffed with a million shades of fabric that it’s hard to push through to the stack of shoeboxes. “Is there a light in here?” he shouts.

“Good one,” she says. “You think I’m a Rockefeller? Second-to-bottom box. Got ’em?”

“I think so,” he says, backing out of the closet and placing the box on her lap. She opens it to reveal a pair of pale blue, stack-heeled Mary Janes with gold clasps on the buckles and shiny lavender tips. She claps her hands together delightedly.

“Ah, my lovelies. I haven’t seen you in years. But you are the perfect shade to wear with my turquoise and gold caftan, which I intend to put on as soon as I get out of this bed, but you need new soles.” She turns to Eddie. “I need you to take them to the shoe repair on MacDougal Street. I need them to be ready for me when I am.”

“There’s a shoe repair shop right around the corner, you know. A lot closer than MacDougal.”

“How interesting,” Cookie says. “But these shoes need to go to Hangout Shoe Repair over on MacDougal. Got it? Flowers from Val’s, shoe repair at Hangout, opera cake from Gaston. That’s how it’s always been, that’s how it will always be.”

“I’ll do it tomorrow,” he says, sinking lower in the chair. He’s more tired than he realized.

“Wrong,” she says. “You’ll do it today.”

“But it’s already six thirty and—” he begins, but he can see in her face that she’s not listening. It doesn’t matter if he’s still shaken from today. It doesn’t matter if the sherry’s made him a little drowsy. It doesn’t matter that even if he takes the shoes tonight, there’s no way anyone will get to them before tomorrow. None of it matters. When Cookie makes up her mind, her mind is made. Eddie has no choice.

“You better hurry if you want to make it there before they close at seven. Oh, and pick up some pizza on your way home, would you? A few slices from Joe’s on Carmine Street. It’s on the way home from MacDougal. Here’s another twenty. Off you go.”

“Carmine,” Eddie repeats. “MacDougal. I’ll go now.”

“Wait!” Cookie says, and that’s all she needs to say. Eddie leans down to kiss her.