Page 65

THIRTEEN

W hen Eddie gets to the hospital, he learns the good news: Cookie’s condition was even better this morning, and Albert took her home first thing. When Eddie finally makes it there, too, Albert goes on and on about how hard it was to get her back up to the apartment, and how Eddie should have been there to help, and where the hell has Eddie been anyway?

“Where is she?” Eddie asks.

“Out at the disco, obviously,” Albert hisses. He grabs his bag and leaves.

Eddie steps quietly into Cookie’s room.

“Hi, Cookie,” he whispers. She answers with a snore. He won’t wake her.

He tucks aside a pile of bad get-well cards on her dresser— Heard you’re sick / Get well quick! —and sets the box of opera cakes there. He reaches into his tote bag for the Polaroids he took yesterday when he was out—Stephen Sondheim’s apartment, the old Loew’s theater, Mr Chow’s—and leans them against her record player, one by one. They really are boring, just pictures of stone, steel, and glass buildings with almost no evidence of life. None of the magic that Cookie talks about. He sets the camera next to them.

He pulls the chair closer to her bed. She seems so small today, her polka-dot dressing gown bunched around her tiny shoulders. He reaches over to straighten it, and she stirs. Her eyes open slowly, like it’s an effort.

“Lollipop,” she says in a scratchy voice.

“How are you feeling?” he asks gently.

“Happy to get out of that—” She starts, and then stops, like she’s straining to speak. She swallows.

Eddie can’t tell if Cookie’s having trouble finding the word she wants, or having trouble forming it with the muscles of her mouth. Two different things, as he learned back at Sunset Ridge, neither of them uncommon in a ninety-nine-year-old. He waits a beat, then offers, “Out of that hospital?”

“Out of that hellhole,” she says, with surprising force. She draws a hand up over her mouth and raises her eyebrows in mock shock. Eddie does, too, and they laugh. She starts to sing, softly. “ Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above…”

Eddie joins in. “ Don’t fence me in! ” He’s proud that he can finish the Cole Porter lyric.

She taps the side of her cheek.

Eddie leans in to kiss it.

“Ah, that was lovely. You know I really am fascinated by aviation.” She raises a playful eyebrow.

“Huh?”

“Haven’t you ever seen Auntie Mame ?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“Oh,” she sighs dramatically. “Still so much work to do. Now, where is my beret?”

Eddie opens the dresser drawer and chooses a blue one, bejeweled with magenta rhinestones. He helps her put it on. Her bangles jangle as she adjusts it, cocking it to one side. “How do I look?”

“You look great, Cookie.”

“Great?”

“Captivating. Stunning. Fabulous.”

She flutters her eyelashes. “Oh, go on.”

“Devastating. Glorious. Magnificent. Divine.” He spies her hand mirror on the side table and holds it up so she can see herself.

“Thank you,” she says, touching her lips, her nose, her curl. “Albert was kind enough to do my makeup earlier.”

“Where’s he gone?”

“Who cares?” She winks, and Eddie can see the blood coming back into her face. “He’s being a real jerk today.”

“But he brought you home.”

“Yes, cussing a blue streak the whole way. You’d think he’d be a little better behaved considering I almost died.”

“Cookie! You just said—”

“Kicked the bucket. Bought the farm. Went belly-up. Tripped the light fantastic and launched like a rocket into the great beyond.” She giggles.

“That’s not funny,” he says.

“Oh, lighten up, Lollipop. You’re not dead until you’re dead, right? Who was it that said everyone on this side of the grave is the same distance from death? Was that Saul Bellow? William Saroyan? I can never keep all those dead guys straight. Whoever it was, I wasn’t ready to join them yet. I still have some things to do.”

She nods at the dresser. “What’s in the box?”

“You know what’s in the box.” Eddie unties it and opens it to reveal the opera cakes.

She claps her hands together in delight, then swipes a finger across the top of one cake, harvesting a fingerful of chocolate ganache. She lifts it to her mouth and closes her lips around it, and Eddie swears he sees her skin brighten.

“Oh, that Gaston.” She sighs blissfully. “No one makes cake like he does. A genius.”

Eddie pictures Theo making the cakes. There is a part of him that would love to tell her about Theo. There is a part of him that would love to tell her about everything. About Francis, about the beach, about the ball and the speakeasy and everything else that he’s experienced. But when he asks himself the question every storyteller asks themselves— where should I start? —he comes up short. No one would understand. Not even Cookie.

“Gaston didn’t make it,” he blurts out. “The cake.”

Cookie leans back. “Why would you say such a thing? I know this cake. It’s from Cornelia Street and nowhere else.”

“Yes, but, Gaston doesn’t actually make the—” he starts, but then he stops himself. “Forget it. It’s not important.”

She tilts her head. “I think you’ve got something to tell me.”

“No,” he says. “Not really. Just—the person who actually makes the cakes is named Theo.”

“Ah, yes, Theo,” she says, and a look of recognition fills her eyes. “Gaston’s handsome apprentice. He must be a very attentive young man, to have learned Gaston’s genius ways.”

“I suppose he is,” Eddie says.

“You’ve met him, then?”

“Yes,” he says.

“And?” She raises an eyebrow. “Is he a nice boy?”

Oh, Cookie, he thinks. Yes, Theo is a very nice boy. But Eddie doesn’t really want to talk about Theo right now, so he doesn’t answer the question. Instead, he says, “He sends his best.”

“Well, that is very sweet of him, I’m sure. But that’s not what you want to talk about, is it?”

“No,” he says.

“Well?”

“Oh, Cookie. I want to apologize. I said some terrible things last time we talked. I didn’t mean them. I really didn’t. I’m sorry.”

She tilts her head at him and squints. She puts a hand up to touch his chin. “Apology accepted, of course. I was no angel, either.”

Eddie doesn’t answer.

“But that’s not it. That’s not what you really want to talk about, either. Is it?”

Is she reading his mind again? How can she know that he wants to talk about anything? How can she know how eager he is to say so many things out loud, to try to make sense of them with words, to ask if she will help him understand? To have her tell him, once and for all, what is real, and what is not?

“No,” he says. “It isn’t.”

“Then talk,” she says. She leans back on her pillow. “I’m listening.”

And so, after a breath, Eddie begins to talk. Over the next hour, the stories spill out of him. He tells her about the strange experiences with the camera, about the boy with bright eyes who kept showing up in the pictures, about his visit to the Algonquin, about the waiter who sang “I Happen to Like New York” with his hand on Eddie’s shoulder—the boy.

As he speaks, her own eyes brighten. Her posture strengthens, her skin brightens. She listens carefully, rapt, never interrupting.

He tells her about what he saw at the Jefferson Market Library, not just about Mae West but about the boy and how he posed for a picture that didn’t develop. He tells her about the subway ride uptown, about the concert at Eve’s Hangout. He tells her about Central Park, when he finally learned the boy’s name. Francis.

She sits up taller.

He tells her about their walk downtown, the party at the speakeasy, their day at the Rockaways, the drag ball. He tells her about meeting Francis at the dock and their wild ride up to the marina on Seventy-Ninth Street. He tells her about his boat ride around Manhattan, and the way he and Francis had looked up at the sky.

He tells her how Francis makes him feel adventurous, and brave, and how he laughs so easily and swims so effortlessly and dances so smoothly. How everyone he comes across seems to know and respect him—the boys at the beach, the queens at the ball, the doorman at the speakeasy, the chestnut vendor. He tells her how their hands fit so perfectly together, how his breath raises goose bumps on Eddie when he whispers. He tells her that every time they were separated, every time Eddie found himself back in this world, he still felt the invisible string connecting them.

He tells her everything.

Well, almost. There’s at least one important thing he doesn’t tell her: the story of what happened this morning on Cornelia Street. He starts to tell it, then stops. He starts again, and stops. Because when he imagines asking the question, was that you? , it sounds impossible. Yes, he believes it happened. (Doesn’t he?) He is sure he was there. (Isn’t he?) He is sure she was there. (Isn’t he?) There can be no other explanation. (Can there?)

No, he can’t tell her that story. He can’t ask if she remembers. What if she says no? What if she says the story is ridiculous, that her bookshop wasn’t even on Cornelia, that she never once in her life went to work so early in the morning, that she certainly would have recalled meeting a strange boy with a camera on the street. What if she says his story is sweet but silly, charming but absurd, just a lovely daydream? What if even the woman who talks to pictures doesn’t believe him? What then? Would any of it matter then? Would any of it be real?

“That’s all,” he says. “Do you believe me?”

She sits silently for a moment, studying his face, then says, “Francis.” A wave of color sweeps across her face, a rainbow almost, a prism. “Francis,” she says again.

“Yes. Francis.”

“Hmm,” she says, considering. Her eyes seem to glaze over and she bows her head slightly. A breath, and then another, deeper breath. “Well, I’d say he sounds lovely.”

Eddie nods slowly. Does she believe him? Does she understand?

“When will you see him next?” she asks.

The question twists around his chest because he doesn’t know the answer. When will he see Francis again? How will he see him again? How can he know? Francis comes when he comes, and not when he doesn’t. Will it be today? Tomorrow? Yesterday? Never? What does when even mean when time itself is a double knot? He looks at his hands, his shoes, her face, the ceiling.

“I don’t know,” Eddie says finally.

“If you want to find that boy, then go and find him.”

“But how?” he asks, desperation in his voice. He grabs the camera and holds it up. “Is this the way? Will this camera bring him to me?”

She smiles and shakes her head.

“No,” she says. “The camera is only a camera, that’s all. Just a little machine. It can’t perform miracles. It can’t create magic. All a camera can do, and only sometimes, is help you see the magic that’s already there. Remember?”

“But why can’t I see the magic without it?” His frustration is mounting. Impatience, urgency. “Where is it? Where is the magic?”

Cookie raises her arm, bangles hanging heavy on her tiny wrist, and points around the room, at the photos, the bric-a-brac, the clock, the doorway, the window, the floor. The gesture is a labor.

“Where?” he repeats.

“Everywhere,” she says, sounding sleepy again. “I see it everywhere. Don’t you?”

He turns the camera over in his hands, feeling every surface. “I don’t understand,” he says. “I don’t understand anything. The camera, the visions, the beach, the ball, Francis. I don’t understand what’s real anymore.”

“Does anyone?” she asks.

He slumps back in the chair, confusion and anxiety clashing in his head.

“Look at me,” she says, sounding serious again. “Even the longest life is too short. When you see something that you know is true, hold it.”

“But that’s just it. I don’t know if he’s real.”

“I didn’t say real. I said true.”

“Aren’t those the same thing? Real and true?”

“Are they?”

“Cookie, I—”

“Shh,” she says. She reaches for his hand, and they stay quietly like that for a few minutes, just being.

After a while, she speaks. “By the way, didn’t you bring me a picture?”

Eddie points at the pictures leaning up against the record player. “You mean those?”

“No, not those. Those are bad pictures. I want the other one. The good one.”

He doesn’t know what she means. Maybe she’s confused.

“In your bag,” she says.

Just humor her, Eddie. He fishes into his tote bag and feels a little plastic card inside. Surprised, he pulls it out and hands it to her without looking at it.

Her eyes flash when she sees it, almost like sparks. “Yes. This is the one. Thank you.”

“Can I see?” he asks, reaching for it.

She yanks the photo away from him and presses it against her chest. “No,” she says. “This one’s mine.”

Suddenly, Eddie’s mind floods with realization. She’s talking about the photograph he took this morning, or was it seventy years ago? Back on Cornelia Street, when she stood in the doorway and cocked her beret, and shouted Cheese, Lollipop! The same photograph!

So she must remember that morning! She must remember him ! She must know everything! She must know he was just there. She can confirm that all of it is real! Not just true, but real !

“Cookie!” he exclaims. “I have another question!”

“Not now,” she says. “I’m too tired.”

“Please! Cookie! Do you remember a morning seventy years—”

She turns onto her side, away from him, clutching the photograph.

“Cookie! Please tell me what you—”

“Shh,” she says. She pulls the cover up over her shoulders. “You have something more important to do.”