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TWELVE

E ddie hasn’t said hello yet, and Cookie hasn’t noticed that he’s here. He watches her from her doorway. She’s sitting up in bed, holding a picture frame in her lap, smiling and whispering and tapping her lacquered nail on the glass. What’s that feel like, he wonders, to just sit in bed and be content, and not worry about who you are or where you belong?

Eddie is pissed off. Not at Cookie, not at anyone, really. Only at himself. There’s no one else to blame for the way he feels right now, for getting so caught up in the idea of Francis. He really should know better. He’s so good at staying inconspicuous, quiet, out of the way in the world he knows. Why should this wrinkle in time, this glitch in the matrix, be any different? It’s just another fantasy, or maybe another reality. It’s not like he’s any different, right?

Yes, he’s pissed off, but he can’t show it to Cookie. All she’ll do is ask him about it, and the last thing he wants to do is talk. He’s going to have to conjure up a happy face and sip sherry and listen to her go on about whatever dead movie star she’s got in her lap.

“Hello, Lollipop,” she says without looking up. There’s a cheerful nonchalance in her voice. “It’s such a beautiful day today. When I was little, on days like this, we always went to the beach. We’d get in the car and Daddy would drive us. Coney Island, Long Beach, Jones Beach. We’d stay all day until I was as red as a cooked lobster. Is that what you did today? I don’t know why, but I had a feeling you might go to the beach. Did you? Did you go to the beach?”

Eddie answers reflexively, too quickly. “No, I didn’t go to the beach,” he says, but of course yes, in a way, he did go to the beach. But it wasn’t today, not exactly. Or was it? “No,” he says again, knowing how much energy it would take to explain, knowing he doesn’t have it.

Cookie’s eyes narrow, a suspicious expression. She leans back against her pillows and picks up her hand mirror. She wets her thumb and forefinger on her tongue to tend to her spit curl. “I see.”

His brain is so muddled right now, his words so clumsy. But she knows he’s lying. He knows he won’t get away with it. Better fix it now. “Oh, Cookie. I forgot. I did go to the beach. It was so beautiful. I wish you could have been there to see it.” He chirps his words, hoping to distract her from the lie he just told. “The sun was high and bright but it wasn’t too hot. The breeze off the ocean was so nice. I went into the sea twice. We bought peanuts on the boardwalk—”

She interrupts. “We? We who?”

Eddie stumbles. “I mean, there were a lot of people out there and—”

Cookie lowers her mirror and looks up at him, the tiniest crinkle forming just at the corner of her eye. The beginning of a smile. “Did you make some friends?”

Did he? Did Eddie make some friends? He met some people, sort of, or something. He saw Francis again, or something. But are those friends? He shakes his head. “No,” he lies again. “Not really.”

Cookie sighs, returning her concentration to her spit curl. She’s not convinced. He can see that.

“That’s a shame,” she says coolly. “Honestly, I don’t know what it is with you young ones. In my day, we made friends at the drop of a hat. Just walked right up to people and said hello, and they said hello back, and that was that. Like Tallulah here.” She taps the photograph in her lap. “I just started talking to her one day, and now we’re bosom buddies. But you kids, I don’t know. It’s all different now. Everyone’s scared of one another. Everyone’s too busy with their little phones. Don’t you young ones like people?”

Eddie tries to fake a look of indifference, but inside he’s stung by what she’s said. Even though she’s talking about an imaginary friendship with a photograph of a dead person, he’s stung.

“It’s a shame you kids will never know the kind of freedom we had,” she says. Her tone straddles pity and smugness, with another foot in resignation. “You’ll never have that kind of fun. You could, of course, if you tried. But you don’t. You won’t. You don’t have it in you. I guess you just like things easier.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“I think you’re scared. That’s what I mean.”

“Scared? Of what?”

“To let go. To be yourselves. To rebel. To break a rule every now and then. To try something you don’t know anything about. To take chances. You can’t even walk across town without looking at your little map things. You won’t even go to a movie without checking to see what other people think of it. Not like us. We weren’t afraid. Everything was new, everything was risky, no one told us what was safe, or not safe, but we went for it anyway. We weren’t afraid to fail, we weren’t afraid to fall. But you kids? Timid. Afraid to be different. Afraid to be yourself. Even your movie stars are boring. Carbon copies, one just like the next. It’s sad, it really is.”

Eddie balls his hands into fists, digging his fingernails into his palms to keep from saying something unkind to Cookie. Something like shut up.

“Don’t you agree, Tallulah?” she says to the photograph in her lap. “We knew how to have fun, didn’t we? The kids today, though? Not a chance. They wouldn’t dare. No guts.”

This tips him. This tips Eddie into something he’ll regret later. But the cynicism spills out before he can stop it, and he feels his voice rising. “Oh, of course, Cookie. Your life has been so much better than mine. Is that what you want to hear? That the way you lived was so brilliant and fearless. The way you lived was the only way. No one else will ever measure up. Is that it?”

“That’s about it,” she says, smirking.

“Except it’s not the 1920s anymore, Cookie. We don’t walk around wondering if someone’s going to tie us to the train tracks like in a Charlie Chaplin movie.”

“That never happened in a Charlie Chaplin movie,” Cookie says.

Eddie explodes, uncontrolled now. “Whatever! It’s not the 1920s! It’s not the 1950s, or the ’60s, or even the ’80s! We don’t walk around worried about switchblade dance-offs like in West Side Story , or catching the mumps from someone in gym class! We walk around wondering when a psychopath is going to pull out a semiautomatic rifle at school and shoot us all. We wonder how many of our friends are going to die from overdoses! We don’t even know if the planet’s going to be inhabitable by the time we’re thirty! And that’s all thanks to you! You and your fun-loving ways! Look at the mess you’re leaving us! No, the world is different now, Cookie. But you, you wouldn’t understand. You wouldn’t be able to. You’re too—” Something inside tells him to stop himself, and so he does.

“Too what?” she snaps. “Too old? Is that what you think?”

Eddie doesn’t answer. He stares at the wall, grinding the inside of his cheek between his teeth.

“I stand by what I said. No guts,” she says. “No guts. No moxie. No imagination.”

“Says the expert on imagination!” Eddie shouts. “Says the lady who stays up all night talking to pictures in frames! Says the lady who’s lived in the same apartment for eighty years! Says the lady who calls herself eccentric, but who everyone knows is nothing but crazy!”

Cookie’s jaw twitches, and then her cheek. Her shoulders fall and her mouth turns down. Her gaze drops from his eyes, to his mouth, to his neck, to the floor. She looks wounded, hurt, angry. She clutches the photograph to her chest and turns away from him. “Why are you here, Eddie?”

Eddie , she called him. Not Lollipop . Just Eddie . He’s so stunned to hear his real name from her mouth that he just stands, staring.

“Well?”

“I—”

“I think it’s time for you to go,” she says, not quietly, not loudly, just flat and clear. “I think it’s time.”

“Fine, I’m going to lie down.”

“I said it is time to go,” she says, and he can hear a finality in her voice, like a door slamming, and it shocks him. She doesn’t just mean go, she means go .

“But,” he says, choking on the words. “Where? Where am I supposed to go?”

“What are you asking the crazy lady for?” she says flatly. “You know everything, don’t you? You’ve got it all figured out. You’re not crazy. So go wherever you want. I don’t care. I don’t need you here. Just go. Just—” She grips her back scratcher tightly, knuckles whitening. “Go.”

That familiar flavor of panic floods his throat, that anxious bile. He hasn’t tasted it in a while, but it rushes back now, nearly choking him. He tries to swallow it, but it bubbles, like lava. “Cookie,” he says. “I’m—”

He reaches for her hand but she swats him away, cold, hardened, distant.

“I said go.”