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SIX

E ddie stands in front of 119 Bedford Street, staring up at the drab brick building, completely devoid of adornment and badly in need of a makeover, especially a paint job. This is nothing like what he imagined on the bus. There’s no grand building, no welcoming lobby, no uniformed doorman. Expectation versus reality and all that, again. He re-checks the address.

Yes, Eddie. This is it.

Maybe it’s different inside, he thinks.

He shifts his duffel bag to his other shoulder, then climbs the three brusque stairs to the front door, flanked on one side by a panel of buzzers, and on the other side by a sign reading, NO SOLICITATIONS . It’s not a very effective note, judging by the number of takeout menus littering the top step. He raises his finger to buzzer 2A. He holds it there for a moment and then presses.

Nothing happens, so he presses again.

Still nothing.

Eddie blinks, and in the tiny moment when his eyes are closed, a new vision sweeps through him. He’s alone in New York City, locked out of Cookie’s apartment and forced to make his own way. He spends a few weeks on the streets, sleeping on park benches and stoop steps, his clothes progressively rattier, his pockets endlessly emptier. He scrounges the gutters for change. It’s a bleak image.

Turn it around, Eddie. You know you can.

Eddie re-directs the vision to the city tennis courts where he finds three cast-off tennis balls and takes them to the subway, where he juggles for cash until he’s discovered by a Broadway producer who casts him as an extra in a revival of Pippin .

That’s more like it. A little optimism goes a long way in this town.

He buzzes again, but there’s still no answer. Maybe she’s sleeping? Maybe this isn’t the right building? Or maybe she’s dead, just as he’d pictured on the bus. He pinches his finger to stop the vision before it takes shape. It’s an old trick he taught himself when he was young. To help him keep control.

Just open the door.

He turns the knob and the door unlatches. It’s been open all along. He looks around. No one else is in sight. Tentative, worried that someone may appear to ask what he’s doing here, he steps into the building, then up the stairs to the second floor.

The hallway up here is just as dull as the building’s exterior. Patchy flooring, peeling paint, a flickering Exit sign at one end that appears to be nowhere near an exit. He walks the length of the hall, finally arriving at apartment 2A, a dull brown door at the very end with two key slots and a peephole. He kicks away a dust bunny at his feet, and then raises his hand to rap on the door. He knocks twice, softly, and then once again, more emphatically. Nothing happens.

You know what to do. Turn the knob.

Suddenly, a flood of color and life washes over him like a wave, so dazzling and riotous that his breath catches and his heart spikes and his ears begin to thrum. Opening the dull door has unleashed a fantastical new vision that spins like a kaleidoscope, a swirling blur of light in a million hues and textures, shapes and objects vibrating so quickly that he feels his sense of balance dissolve beneath him. Overwhelmed, he grabs the doorjamb to steady himself. He blinks twice to try to clear the vision. But it doesn’t clear. It only spins faster. He shakes his head, but it only spins faster. He rubs his eyes, pinches his finger, tells himself to stop it, just stop it right now, but the vision only spins faster, until finally, in a breath of relief, it stops. The colors remain, the shapes and objects and textures, but the motion calms. Eddie regains his breath.

He steps over the threshold and lowers his duffel bag to the floor. He draws the door shut behind him, and as the latch clicks into place, it sounds like a signal: You’re someplace else now, Eddie. A whole new world. And it’s beautiful. Come inside.

As the room comes into sharper focus, Eddie starts to take stock. Opposite the doorway is a wall of bookshelves, rising from floor to ceiling, filled with hardbacks and paperbacks and photographs and ceramic figurines and rows of paper flowers. An art deco settee upholstered in marigold velvet with amber trim sits just in front of it, next to an emerald-green quilted ottoman trimmed with black fringe just long enough to tickle the brown-and-orange-patterned carpet on the floor. Along one wall is an ancient television console, a bulbous screen fitted into an expanse of woodgrain and brass, its surface crowded with tiki cups and blown-glass bottles in every imaginable shade of green. A pair of spinning barstools covered in pony-print vinyl stands over three pairs of cartoonish old Dutch wooden shoes. He sees a headless dressmaker’s mannequin draped with a beaded cape. A glass-front hutch is filled with dozens of snow globes, this one depicting Paris, that one London, another one Honolulu. An elaborate chandelier with pink crystals hangs from the center of the scarlet-lacquered ceiling, casting its translucent shadows over a steel-and-glass coffee table, itself covered in knickknacks and trinkets and stacks of travel magazines.

Are the walls also lacquered red? It’s hard to tell because every square centimeter of wall space is covered by portraits—photographs, drawings, etchings, paintings, prints. There must be a hundred faces staring out from the walls, maybe a thousand. A few he recognizes (Queen Elizabeth in regal regalia, Marilyn Monroe in a white dress), but most he does not. He sees a woman holding a golf club over her head. A man in a silk scarf so long it reaches his feet. A pair of people in beekeeper’s bodysuits. A child at a microphone, arms spread joyfully. Two women with exaggerated eyelashes, standing cheek to cheek. A man in matador trousers. A woman with a camellia brooch on her shoulder. Faces everywhere. Gazes and gestures and poses. Some are smiling, some are sorrowful, and some seem to be staring straight at Eddie, assessing him, deciding something, judging. His knees begin to buckle again.

Just then, just before he loses his balance again, a voice cuts through the air, high-pitched and singsong and a little bit raspy. It’s coming from the corridor to his right. “Yoo-hoo! Is that you, Lollipop?”

He follows it to a door that’s been left slightly ajar. A warm, pinkish light seeps through the crack, beckoning him as a song grows louder.

In old-en days a glimpse of stocking / Was looked on as something shocking…

Ah, yes. You know this song, Eddie. Remember? It’s “Anything Goes” by Cole Porter, the song that your seventh-grade band teacher insisted you learn to play. Except, you didn’t, did you? You quit band instead. Not because of Cole Porter, but because you didn’t think you were talented enough to make the music sound good.

“Are you going to stand out there forever? Don’t be shy! Come on in!”

Eddie nudges the door open, just enough to crane his head through the opening. And there she is. Cookie. And she looks about as far from death as anything he’s ever seen.

She’s sitting up at the head of a massive four-poster bed, draped in a resplendent leopard-print dressing gown over a blue satin pajama top, colorful patterned bedclothes gathered all around. Her face is open, broad, with glistening scarlet lips and deep lines crinkled around her eyes and across her forehead. She’s wearing a fuchsia beret cocked to one side, with a shocking-orange spit curl snaking out just at her temple. She’s beautiful, isn’t she? Our Cookie.

She waves a bamboo back scratcher in the air like a conductor’s baton, her expression one of intense concentration like a child over-seriously playacting as a bandleader. She shimmies her pointed shoulders in time with the music: And good’s bad today / And black’s white today…

Eddie’s mouth tenses as he watches this alien creature who looks like she sprung from the walls of this apartment, even more colorful and fantastical and bizarre than the rooms around her. He’s never seen anyone like her. Is she nuts? Is she unbalanced? Her smile is joyful but her movements are jerky and arhythmic, like she could suddenly hurl that back scratcher at him, inadvertently or by design, and take out an eye. He stands stick-still in the doorway, cautious, ready to duck.

The song is nearing its big finish, and when it reaches the final notes, Cookie throws both hands into the air in a thrust of exuberance and celebration, jangling the stacks of bangles on her wrists.

“ Anything goooooeeesss! ” she belts triumphantly, holding the note long after the music fades out. She thrusts the back scratcher at the ceiling, punctuating the moment like a virtual double exclamation point, before bowing her head twice, once to the left, and once to the right, as if acknowledging an audience, a standing room–only crowd of fans.

After another moment she raises her giant eyes. She is beaming. “How’s that for an opening number?” she asks, expectant. “Did you love it? Did you just love it?”

Eddie opens his mouth to answer but no sound comes out. He just stares, agape, stunned and fascinated and frozen in place by this newest vision. This brilliant, baffling, bewildering vision. What on earth has he signed himself up for?