Page 73

THREE

E veryone knows that Cookie wanted a party, and they came for one. Dozens of people have already shown up in the gardens at St. Luke’s, and it’s just getting started. Eddie’s not sure who they all are, but how would he? Whenever he spent time with Cookie, it was just the two of them. With an occasional cameo from Albert. These must be all the friends she mentioned, the ones she couldn’t wait to see again once she got out of that bed, the ones who’d sent all those get-well cards. They stream in, one after the other, filling the courtyard and spilling onto the manicured lawns. The melancholy of Cookie’s death is eclipsed by the joy of remembering her life. It makes sense for a centenarian. Her death is not a tragedy. But it bears observing. It requires a gathering. It calls for a party. A big one.

And they come. Waves and waves of them. Musicians, actors, writers, dancers, cabaret performers, poets, all the neighborhood artists and eccentrics. The guy from the deli downstairs, the couple from the Chinese restaurant on Seventh Avenue, the house-call doctor who allowed a half glass, the daisy-jumpsuit florist from Val’s, even comb-over Paulie from Hangout Shoe Repair.

They come in feathers, leather, sequins, fringe. They wear pony prints and cheetah prints and paisley prints and stripes. Every color of the rainbow, and a thousand more besides. No one comes in black. There’s nothing mournful or gloomy here today, just glitter, glam, disco gear and drag. Even Eddie, inconspicuous Eddie, brings the color—Cookie’s glitziest beret, bedazzled in blue and purple rhinestones, set jauntily on his head. Donna helped him pin it into place.

Albert, after shouting at everyone to shut the hell up, sings “I Happen to Like New York,” entirely off-key. Two guys who used to dance with the David Parsons company perform a modern number in which they unwrap several yards of rainbow gauze from each other, leaving them in nothing but a Speedo and ballet shoes. Donna, wearing one of Cookie’s tiaras and two of her boas—pale blue and fuchsia—chats with an old flame from high school, who she doesn’t actually recognize until several minutes into their conversation. When she turns and makes a gag-me gesture to Eddie over her shoulder, he comes to her rescue.

“May I?” he asks, holding out his hand.

“Thank you,” she says, draping her arm over his shoulder as they move closer to the pianist. “That guy needs a dentist. Don’t they have toothpaste in New York?”

The pianist, wearing a purple faux-mink stole, is only playing Cole Porter songs today. But she’s played too many of the tame ones (“Night and Day,” “Begin the Beguine”), and it’s time for something a little more upbeat. Cookie wouldn’t just want people to sway politely, she’d want people to dance , so Eddie asks for the first song he ever heard her play on her bedside turntable: “Anything Goes.”

“Gladly!” the pianist says. “Let’s add some octane to this shindig.”

As she strikes the first bouncy notes and launches into the tune, Eddie grabs Donna’s hand and puts his arm around her waist, spinning her clumsily but confidently, doing his best to approximate the few steps he can remember from the speakeasy with Francis.

In olden days a glimpse of stocking / Was looked on as something shocking!

She trips along with him as the song’s pace increases, doing her best to keep up with his haphazard hops and kicks. “Where did you pick this up?” she asks.

“Everyone knows the Turkey Trot!” he shouts, leading her through another twirl. She laughs, and the woman swaying by the piano laughs, and the laughter catches on, as laughter does, and the dance catches on, as dances do, and by the second verse the whole party is dancing, in ones and twos and circles of six, twisting and shimmying and whooping and waving hands over their heads. The pianist shakes her shoulders and hits the keys even harder, faster, and Eddie and Donna twirl and shake right up to the final crescendo, the big-finish note, which Eddie marks by throwing his beret into the air in triumph. Anything gooooes! he sings, belting as loud as he can, every cell in his body feeling carefree and conspicuous. Everyone claps and cheers and asks for more.

The pianist moves on to “Blow, Gabriel, Blow” and “Give Him the Ooh-La-La,” and Eddie and Donna dance some more. At the first notes of “You Do Something to Me,” Eddie, sweating now, leads Donna over to the makeshift bar to catch their breath. The bar—really just a couple of picnic tables covered in Cookie-style zebra-print fabric—is filled with bunches of alstroemeria from Val’s and bottles of sherry. They take cans of soda from the ice bucket at one end and guzzle them too fast. Donna burps, Eddie laughs, and they drink some more.

“I’m proud of you, you know,” she says, popping a pignoli cookie into her mouth.

“What for?”

“I just am,” she says. “I could give you a bunch of reasons but really, I just am.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I’m proud of you, too, Donna.”

She ruffles his hair, like he’s four years old again. “You’re nuts, Eddie.”

“You always say that,” he says.

“And I’m always right.”

Theo comes, too. He carries a stack of large, flat bakery boxes, so many he has to peek around from behind them to stay on the walk. Gaston doesn’t help at all. He just pulls over, drops him off, looks at the gathering of people, and drives away, mumbling in French.

“For him, that counts as paying respects,” Theo says when they finally get to talk.

Eddie smiles, knowing Cookie would have approved, and appreciated.

“Wanna see?” Theo asks when he sets the boxes down at the bar table. “I made these special for today.”

He tugs at the twine on the top box, setting the songbird tattoos in motion. Inside the box are twelve perfect opera cakes, each decorated with a little red curlicue.

“Her spit curl,” Eddie whispers.

“I made ninety-six of them. Do you think that’ll be enough?”

“That must have taken forever!”

“What is sleep?” Theo says.

Later, after Donna gets into an Uber with a tipsy Albert to see him home, and the other guests trickle out, Theo stays behind to help Eddie gather the fallen napkins and sweep up the glitter from the walkway. Eddie gives up after a few passes with the push broom, but Theo is determined to gather it all. He sweeps for nearly an hour before the property manager lets them off the hook.

“Leave it,” she says, taking the broom back from Theo. “Knowing her, it’ll probably sprout into a field of tutti-frutti wildflowers. And we should be so lucky.”

The sun is just starting to fade as Theo offers to walk Eddie back to Bedford Street, but that’s only a couple of blocks, not far enough. Eddie wants to keep walking. And so they keep walking, winding their way through the Village, across Washington Square, all the way over to the subway station on Twenty-Third Street, where Theo will catch his train uptown.

“That was great,” Theo says at the top of the steps. “She would have loved that.”

“I think you’re right,” Eddie says.

An ancient woman pushing a little grocery cart nearly runs into Eddie’s feet. She looks up, squinting at his beret. “Hmph,” she growls, and pushes on. Eddie smiles, and Theo, too.

“So will you stay in New York?” Theo asks.

Eddie looks up at the last of the sunset reflecting off the art deco buildings above them, illuminating Madison Square with a rich orange glow. Theo looks up, too.

“What do you want?” Theo asks.

That question again. Only this time—thanks to Cookie, Francis, Albert, New York—Eddie has an answer. Many answers. I want to see more. I want to do more. I want to prove I can walk through this city with confidence. I want to believe that I know where I’m going. I want to know more about me, about New York, about photography. I want to know what’s real and what’s not, what’s true and what’s not. I want to know you. Theo.

He swallows. “I want to stay here,” Eddie says. He likes the way it sounds—confident and clear—so he says it again. “Yeah. I want to stay here.”

“Me too,” Theo says. “I mean, I want you to stay here, too. Seems like you belong here. Seems, you know, like you’re part of this now.”

“Part of what?”

Theo gestures around the square at the shoppers, sidewalk vendors, skateboarders, dogwalkers. “This, I guess.”

“I used to dream about it, you know,” Eddie says.

“And now it’s reality,” Theo says.

Reality. The word winds through Eddie’s ears and snakes through his brain. It tickles in there, and Eddie laughs a little bit.

“What’s so funny?”

“Oh, I don’t know. There’s something about New York that makes me wonder whether any of it is real.”

“I know what you mean,” Theo says. “This place keeps you guessing.”

And then Theo opens his arms and wraps them around Eddie. They stand just like that, breathing together, and Eddie remembers how nice it felt to have Theo’s arms around him, like that night in the kitchen. Pedestrians squeeze past them to get to the subway stairs, so Eddie presses even closer. Theo feels so solid against him, so grounded. So real.

“So real,” Eddie whispers, not sure if Theo can hear him or not.

After a minute or two, or five, Theo kisses the top of Eddie’s head. It’s a tender kiss, warm and rich, right on the crown. And then on the forehead, where he holds his lips in contact with Eddie’s skin, stopping time. New York rushes around them. Eddie tightens his grip.

A siren fires just a few feet away, one of those sharp, high-pitched beeps that startles everyone on the sidewalk. Both boys jump, falling away from each other, then laugh.

“I better go,” Theo says. “I should get home and force a few hours of sleep on myself before work.”

“What time is your shift?” Eddie asks, a wave of anxiety low in his stomach. He wants to stand here a little bit longer with Theo, to stop time again. He takes hold of Theo’s forearm and turns it over to trace a songbird with his finger.

“Two,” Theo says, watching Eddie draw. “I’ll be there at two.” It almost sounds like an invitation, and it settles Eddie, grounds him. He has somewhere to go, if he wants to. Someone to see. Someone to be with.

After a minute, Eddie inhales deeply and releases Theo’s wrist. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay.”

“Thank you, Theo. Thank you for a whole bunch of things.”

Theo squeezes Eddie’s shoulder. His curls blow softly across his forehead and his eyes crinkle into a smile. “See you around?”

Eddie looks up at the broad, lovely boy, and smiles back.

“Yeah,” Eddie says, suddenly so sleepy. “Soon.”