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SEVEN

I t’s funny how sometimes the most shocking ideas, even the reckless ones, start to seem reasonable the more you think about them. As Eddie putters around Cookie’s apartment, he starts to understand Albert’s conviction. Of course Cookie should be here, he thinks, surveying the snow globes. Of course this is the place where she’ll get better, he thinks, eyeing her record player. She doesn’t belong up in that sterile hospital. She should be at home, with all her things. With her books, her bric-a-brac, her portraits, her friends—Dorothy, Tallulah, and the rest. Besides, isn’t Cookie the one who warned Eddie about total compliance with authority, even in matters of medicine? In very little time, Eddie’s convinced Albert’s idea is the right one.

He spends an hour changing the sheets on her bed, just in case. He fluffs the pillows, straightens the shelves, polishes her hand mirror. He dips out for a box of fennel tea from Citarella, and picks up a tub of soup from Grand Sichuan. He’ll pick up some alstroemeria tomorrow. Just in case.

Eddie can’t remember the last time he had a good shower, and he really needs it. Standing under the stream of warm water, letting it run over his face, chest, waist, he can sense the grit and sweat of the past couple of days (decades, lifetimes) being rinsed away. But not the feelings. Not the crystalline feeling of panic this morning when Cookie wasn’t breathing. Not the clouded feeling of anxiety at the hospital while watching her in her oxygen tent. Not the fleeting feeling of tenderness for Albert as he steadied him in the waiting room. And most of all, not the feeling of Francis.

Feelings of Francis, he means. Multiples. Francis was so beautiful there on the floor of the boat, and so protective, and it made Eddie feel beautiful, too, and brave. It was the first time he understood what all the fuss was about, the fuss about the first time. He felt like his body was breathing with more than one set of lungs. He’d never felt stronger. But all that’s been eclipsed now, by today. And he’s back to one set of lungs, and here, under the shower, after all the waiting and wondering and worry, they feel inadequate. If only he had another set of lungs to help him breathe through the night tonight. How will he ever sleep?

He pulls on a fresh T-shirt, downs a glass of water, and climbs onto the fainting couch, his wet hair still matted to his head. He should be hungry, he thinks, but he can’t think of anything he wants to eat. Not noodles, not pizza, not even roasted chestnuts. And so he just lies on his side, staring at the photograph of Francis. Oh, this ache.

Where are you? he thinks. Why aren’t you here? What happened to forever?

A thought sweeps through him, leaving a pit in his stomach. What if Francis doesn’t want to see Eddie again? What if Francis has another Eddie somewhere else, or sometime else?

He turns away from the photograph and stares up at the slowly spinning disco ball, and tries hard to think of something else, or of nothing at all. He tries to gin up a fantasy, an imagination to distract him. He chooses a photograph on the wall, a grizzled man with a bushy beard. He looks like an old-time sea captain, just back from piloting his trade ship along the coast from New Orleans to Nova Scotia, stopping at ports along the way to trade sugar for seafood, gunpowder for grain. But the fantasy doesn’t take, and soon Eddie’s staring at Francis again, wondering.

He knows he should sleep. He knows there’s no reason not to sleep. He is exhausted. But it doesn’t come. It won’t come. Now that he knows how it feels to fall asleep next to Francis, it’s like he’s forgotten how to fall asleep alone.

Eddie gives up, then gets up. He pulls on his jeans, ties up his sneakers, slips his phone into his pocket, and slings the tote bag and camera over his shoulder. He grabs his windbreaker, just in case, and steps out into the hallway, locking the door behind him.