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NINE

“ I t used to be a little nightclub,”

Cookie is saying as she gnaws on a bit of pizza crust and studies the photo Eddie

took of the shoe repair shop before he went in. “Well, sort of a nightclub.

It was also like a café. Eve’s Hangout, it was called. That was before

my time, though. It was shut down when I was still a toddler. The cops said they had

no choice because there was alcohol on the premises, and it was Prohibition. But I

don’t buy that reason. Thousands of places served alcohol back then. I think

they shut it down because they didn’t like the clientele.”

“Why not?”

“Some people say they had a sign on the door that said, Men are admitted, but not welcome . See what I mean?” Cookie shakes her head. “I don’t know if it’s true. Anyway, the cops decided they didn’t want it there and so they raided the place. Took everyone to jail, and I don’t even want to think about the stories I’ve heard about Welfare Island.”

“Isn’t that where Mae West went?”

“Yes, but she was different. She was a star. They treated her well. If you weren’t a star, you were treated very poorly. Very poorly.”

“That’s terrible.” Eddie remembers how determined the boy was to get him out of Eve’s when the cops showed up. He must have heard those stories about Welfare Island, too. He was trying save me, Eddie thinks.

“It gets worse. They convicted Eve of obscenity, and it would have been bad enough if they’d just kept her in prison here. But Eve was born in Poland, so they deported her back to Poland. After a few years back in Europe, the German Nazis arrested her because she was Jewish. She died in a concentration camp.”

Eddie’s stomach sinks when he hears this. The club he’d just been in, or imagined, was so joyous, so boisterous, so romantic, so fun. Why did its story have to have such a brutal ending? And what about the boy? Did the cops haul him off to Welfare Island, too?

Cookie notices. “You look like you swallowed glass.”

“I’m fine,” he says.

It’s late now, very late, and Eddie’s not sleeping. Cookie’s been talking in her room for the last hour or so, to Dottie or Tallulah or Mae, who knows. Her voice is muted and calm. Every now and then she laughs, a muffled giggle from the next room. It’s a happy sound, and it makes him feel peaceful after this strangest of all days. It makes him feel secure, safe, calm. At home.

He casts his eyes at the folded piece of wrinkled paper on the table beside him. It shouldn’t be there, he thinks. It came from inside a vision, a fantasy, but there it is, sitting there. Let me find you.

Or is it? Is Eddie just imagining the note, too? Is it a mirage? Is this whole trip to New York just a giant hallucination? Eddie shuts his eyes tightly. Maybe if he keeps them closed all night, everything will make sense in the morning.

But the note is still there. Pulsing. Alive. Insistent, like a chant. Let me find you. Let me find you. Eddie takes it back up in his hands. Yes, it’s real. Listen to it crinkle as he unfolds it.

He reads it again. Let me find you. Let me find you. Let me find you.

What does it mean? Is it telling me to wait, to be patient? Is it telling me to leave a window open? Is it just fucking with me? Did I write this note?

Eddie gets off the sofa anyway, gets a pad and pen out of the drawer, and tries to mimic the handwriting. No luck. It’s not his hand. Not even close. But whose?

Who are you? he thinks, staring at the letters. What is your name?

He lies back down and takes the Polaroid camera in his hands. Its vinyl casing is cool under his touch. What is it about this camera? All these visions, these episodes happen when I have this camera in my hands. There’s no other explanation, is there?

A shard of light from the disco ball above sweeps across the camera, across the floor, and up the wall opposite, animating the bright-eyed boy in the picture. Let me find you.

Here, under the lazy spin of the disco ball, it almost sounds like a dare.

Eddie decides, in his midnight state of mind, that it’s a dare he should take. He doesn’t have to wait for the boy to find him. He can use the camera. He can find the boy himself. He’ll do it first thing in the morning.

Or so he tells himself, for about two minutes. Because Eddie will never sleep now. He has to find out if the camera works, if he can call the boy. He has to know if the boy made it out of the Hangout. He has to know if the boy is okay.

He has to know if any of this is real.

Cookie will be fine without him here. She has Dottie and Tallulah and Mae to keep her company for now. And if he’s wrong, if he can’t call the boy, maybe New York will distract him from this feeling. Maybe New York will calm his relentless questions.

He ties on his shoes, grabs the camera, and slips out the door, silent as a secret. He doesn’t bother leaving a note. He won’t be gone long.