Free Tabloid Dreams by Robert Olen Butler

in New York. It was a night filled with music and a kind of dance.
    Then the sunlight came, and the doorbell. I peeked out my window at Eva. She had a plate of cookies. I figured I knew what they were. The fatal Butterballs. Sprinkled with powdered sugar. I had the same impulse myself the night before, but from Eva the sweetness of the cookies made me strangely restless and pouty and I let the curtain fall shut and I crawled back into bed and curled up and I didn’t answer.
    I did talk to her on the phone later in the day and I lied.
    â€œHoney,” Eva said, “I rang your bell over and over.”
    â€œI was asleep,” I said. “I took some pills.”
    â€œI understand.”
    She didn’t, of course. That’s what I realized. I barely understood myself, at that moment.
    â€œI brought you some cookies,” she said.
    â€œI’m sorry I missed them,” I said.
    â€œI put them in a Baggie and left them in your mailbox,” she said.
    â€œI’ll get them,” I said.
    â€œI’m oh so sorry about Karl.” She began to cry.
    â€œDon’t cry,” I said, a little harshly, I think. But she didn’t seem to notice.
    â€œWe’re both bereft now,” she said.
    â€œI better get the cookies before the mailman thinks they’re for him,” I said and I hung up.
    They weren’t the Butterballs. I lifted them from the mailbox and they were red and round and fusing wetly together. She was experimenting. I opened the bag, and the smell—sweet and liquory—made my head spin. They were for Wolf. And Karl, not even buried yet, would have loved them too. I could see him licking the ooze off his fingers. I zipped the lock on the bag and carried the cookies through the house and punched the pedal of my stand-up galvanized trash can with my toe and the top popped open and the cookies were gone and the lid clanked shut.
    I stepped into the middle of the kitchen floor and I found that I was breathing heavily. What was the rest of my life to be? That was the question of the moment. But I had no answers and I fought off the other question: what had all of my life been? I just stood panting in the middle of my kitchen and all I could hear was my breath. I couldn’t hear the clock. The wind was moving the trees outside and no doubt was humming in the gutters but I couldn’t hear that either. I could hear only my own breathing. In spite of the Hold-Me-Tights still coursing in my veins, I had to make some cookies.
    Something basic. A simple chocolate chip. Chewy. I like them chewy. And I moved quickly to the cabinets and I laid it all out: uncooked oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, unsalted butter, eggs, vanilla, cinnamon, milk chocolate chips, granulated sugar, brown sugar. And the Crisco. I’d use a lot of Crisco. When I was a little girl I always wanted my cookies chewy and I never outgrew that.
    And my own daughters were the same way. We’d make cookies in this very kitchen, always chewy, and I was lucky, I guess, that Karl liked them chewy, too, and on the first morning of my widowhood, I could see those girls around me in this place and the cookies were shaped into balls and they were on the cookie sheet and I said, “Come, my sweet ones, come and make your thumbprints here on the cookies,” and they did, they came and pressed their thumbs into the cookies and these little images of my daughters went into the oven.
    I was breathing hard again. So I made the chocolate chips, just the way I knew to do it. Two and a half cups of the oats. One and three-quarters cups of the flour. One cup of the granulated sugar. One cup of the brown sugar. And so forth. Going straight to the oven with the mixture—no chilling in the fridge—so that they would be chewy. And when they came out, I put them on the table and I could smell the sugar in them and my hands suddenly wouldn’t hold still and the thought of the milk