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ELEVEN

I s Eldridge Street today so different from a hundred years ago? New shops, maybe. New cars. New noises, a few new buildings. But not everything is new. Some of the stoops are the same. Some of the window frames, the rooftops, the doors. And the people. The errands are different, the clothes, the slang slung from their mouths. But not so different. The same worried looks, the same generous laughter, the same recognition exchanged between neighbors.

Eddie trots up the block, and back down again, his pace increasing from building to building as he searches for a way off the sidewalk and back to the ball. A promising door, a Cole Porter melody on the air, a glimpse of Francis. Something. But there is nothing. Nothing but a mundane overcast day at an ordinary hour, a procession of people tugging on dog leashes or mumbling into their Bluetooth earbuds or pushing bikes as they stroll, sipping coffee from paper cups.

What’s going on behind the doors here now? A dance? A ball? A room full of people celebrating, dancing, sipping licorice seltzer? Remember the way it tasted, Eddie? Remember the pins and needles on your tongue? Remember the way you and Francis fit together, Eddie? The way you moved together. The way your head nestled into him, like it was sculpted just for that. But that’s over now. Vanished. Instantly, inexplicably gone, brutally gone, leaving nothing. You knew it would be, Eddie. It always ends too soon, doesn’t it? But this time feels different. This time, it’s not just the floor that’s fallen out from underneath. This time you want to blame someone. But who? Francis? Fate? Yourself?

Have you done this to yourself, Eddie?

The thoughts feel like panic. He has to find his way back. He has to know, to see, to understand. To believe. Nothing will be right until he does.

He feels the camera hanging from his shoulder.

Maybe this, he thinks, suspending the truth, pretending he doesn’t know better. Maybe this is the way. Maybe this has been the way all along.

But when he aims it at the building behind him and presses the button, nothing happens at all. Just a picture of a building. He takes another, and another, impatient for the camera to spit out every plastic card before he turns the camera on another doorway, another window. He snaps, and snaps, one after the other, hoping for something to happen, for some alchemy to occur, for that phantom boy to reappear. Another picture, nothing. Another, another. He shoots until he runs out of film, and then keeps shooting, tears leeching from his eyes.

This time, you haven’t just lost Francis, Eddie. This time, you’re losing hope.

People talk about loneliness like it’s a slow feeling. A dragging, dull sense of missing someone you’ve loved for a long time, someone you’ve grown accustomed to, someone who’s nestled into the crevices of you. But this, here on Eldridge Street, is a different loneliness, a sharp, swift, brutal, piercing loneliness, the kind you only feel when you’re missing someone you’ve barely begun to know, when you’re missing not just what was, but all that hadn’t yet been. Francis was still new to Eddie—his movements, his enthusiasms, his smile, his smell. And now he’s gone, and the space he’s left in Eddie is too big for Eddie to fill for himself. His sense of logic won’t fill it. His imagination won’t fill it. Cookie won’t fill it. Theo won’t fill it. Only a return would fill it. But how?

I will see Francis again, Eddie tells himself. I am going to find him. I am going to prove he is real, that all of this is real. It has to be real. I don’t know who I am if this isn’t real.

Let me find you.

“Are you okay?” a woman pushing a stroller asks him.

How is he supposed to answer her? He’s anything but okay. He doesn’t know how to slow the spinning of his mind. He doesn’t know where he is. But he is standing. His feet are on the ground and he’s breathing. And so Eddie, conspicuous Eddie, nods. That’s enough for her. She doesn’t care about him. Not really.