The Lost Language of Cranes: A Novel

by David Leavitt

  Philip, in angry tears, said, "You can't just tell me to hate him,

  Jerene; it's never that goddamned easy just to decide you hate someone when they're the person you love." He pulled a ragged tissue out of his pocket, blew his nose again. "Tell him he has to talk to me," he said. "He owes it to me."

  "I'll tell him, Philip," Jerene said. "But I can't promise it'll do any good. It's like when you haven't paid your phone bill. You just don't pay it and don't pay it. And then you get a letter. And then you get another letter. And still you don't pay it. And then, suddenly, your phone's been disconnected. Well, Eliot is somewhere in the stage just before he gets the first letter. I don't know what good it'll do, but I'll tell him you want to talk to him."

  Calmer, Philip said, "Thank you." And across the way, the owl-eyed woman dried her eyes. "Jesus, where are we, Bellevue?" the waitress said to the cook. "Greenwich Village, land of fruits and nuts," he replied, and threw a hamburger patty onto the grill.

  They paid their bill and left. Nervously, on the sidewalk, they hugged and parted, walking in opposite directions in the wind. Philip put on a pair of dark glasses he had recently purchased. He felt like one of the betrayed, beaten-down women he saw sometimes walking in his parents' neighborhood, wrapped in pale coats and scarves and with their eyes hidden behind night-black shades, as if all clothing were a bandage to cover unspeakable scars. He thrust his hands in his pockets. He did not want to think. Across the street a dark-haired young man with small glasses, wearing an old black blazer, sat on a bus-stop bench reading a newspaper, and Philip's heart leapt to twice its normal speed. But then he saw the man wasn't Eliot. He didn't even look like Eliot.

  After that, Philip went to many parties. He called up everyone he knew, asking about parties. Eliot was never at any of them. He remembered his mother telling him about a divorced couple she knew who, finding themselves at the same party, were able to coordinate their movements so they were never in the same room at the same time. There was an element of graceful cooperation to their mutual avoidance that impressed Rose. But Philip knew that if he ran into Eliot at a party (and this was unlikely, for Eliot had a talent for prefiguring where Philip was going to be and staying away), he would not be graceful; he would run up to him, grab him around the waist, not let go.

  One weeknight, around eleven o'clock, he was sitting with Brad Robinson, an old friend from college, drinking coffee at the Kiev, a twenty-four-hour restaurant that blazed alive after midnight, like someone on his second wind on late-night Second Avenue. It was indicative of Philip's depressed state that he thought nothing of travelling halfway across the city in the middle of the night just to drink coffee. Now, surrounded by refugees from the East "Village nightlife, packed into a down casement that made him look like the pupa of some rare and ridiculous butterfly, he hugged himself against the chill wind that blew through him every time the door swung open, ate slices of hot babka drowned in cinnamon and butter, and talked about Eliot. The breath of the Indian waitress came in visible clouds as she poured refills of hot coffee for them. Squeezed-out tea bags sweated on saucers. The waitress, who had gloves on, brought more babka, and added figures onto their soiled green bill.

  "I suppose what I miss," Philip said, "is the feeling of euphoria he gave me. Real euphoria. Because everything seemed so right, so comfortable, with Eliot. You never had to tell him anything, to embarrass yourself explaining. He always knew, and he always did exactly what you hoped he'd do."

  Brad was not impressed. "He's a jerk," he said to Philip. "He thinks he's more than human. You speak of him as if he was such a supersensitive person, but I think he just took advantage of your sensitivity, of the fact that little gestures, things which are nothing to him, can mean a lot to you. And, in return, he receives reverence. But of course, reverence gets boring, or so he says. I know the type. Once they get bored, just like that—they cut everything off."

  At twenty-five, Brad, like many of Philip's friends, could still count his lovers on one hand, but believed that density of experience compensated for quantity of experience. He remembered every detail of the seven nights of his life he had spent with his three lovers; indeed, his gift for scrutiny and analysis during as well as after was, he acknowledged, probably one of the reasons most of his "love affairs" hadn't lasted more than a few days. As Sally had often told Philip, people can smell panic a mile away.

  "Was I too reverent?" Philip asked Brad now. "He always said that if he got sick of me he'd let me know. I guess he did. So I wonder—: should I have been more challenging? Tougher? More independent? Should I have played hard-to-get?"

  Brad shook his head. He was small, pale-skinned, compact; at twenty-five he still looked fifteen, always got carded at bars and clubs, even during the months he had a pale blond beard. "You could have been any of those things," he told Philip now. "But it's hard with Eliot. He encourages you to be totally dependent on him from the start. He enjoys that. You have to get over his initial impact before you can recognize that he's just another human being, even though he'd like you to think he's some sort of superior alien, some visitor from another planet or something."

  Philip took a sip of coffee and looked at his reflection in the breath-warmed restaurant window. "I can't deny anything you say," he said. "I can't pretend that it doesn't make me feel better, in some ways, to hear someone talk who isn't in awe of him. But at the same time, you have to admit, he does have a talent, a huge one. He's a real sensualist, I guess you'd say, in that he knows how to make people feel—not different, exactly, but more intensely than they normally might. He did that for me. I only wish I could describe the intensity of it, the wonder of it—"

  But he could not describe it. Eliot's influence was ephemeral; it grew brackish in memory. Already, when Philip visualized their days and nights together, the scenes had a greenish, unreal tint to them, like old film that has sat in a canister too long. They looked as if they were taking place underwater. And as he spoke the word "wonder"—well, he felt nothing now. The memory was fading. Like any Samaritan, Philip knew, Eliot's own pleasure demanded that he give pleasure to others; but was that samaritanism, or greed for control? Had Philip been misreading Eliot all along, thinking he wanted nothing but to give? Every sensualist requires an object, after all, just as every magician requires a volunteer from the audience—some tame, trusting creature, full of earnest feeling and unexpected desire, immensely sensitive to his immediate surroundings, in other words, someone nearsighted, nearly blind. Even Philip's fantasies about how Eliot would leave him were blind, part of a private dream. He never thought of Eliot as needing anything.

  And what might Eliot have needed? Was it surprise, someone to do something to him for a change, to read his mind, to act on his own secret desires? Perhaps. Yet when his phone machine went on and didn't go off, Philip (of course) assumed Eliot to be walking free, rid of a burden, gratified. How did he know Eliot wasn't in his own way searching as well?

  After an hour, Philip and Brad paid their bill and headed out onto the street. Even at this hour, the sidewalk was full of people selling their lives—vast collections of magazines and paperbacks, old clothes, eyeglasses, shoes. They walked among the refuse, uptown a little ways, and Brad, tough and unflaggable as ever in his romantic pursuits, told Philip about Gregg, an actor he was in love with from afar. He wanted one thing in life, and he knew exactly what it was: to find someone he could settle down with, live with forever. Each time Philip saw Brad, it seemed there was another actor, another hope, and though they always disappointed Brad, his spirit never weakened; he never lost faith.

  They wavered on the stoop of Brad's building. Brad stood in his trenchcoat one step up, so that he was slightly taller than Philip for once, and looked across the street, his hands in his pockets, his strawlike hair blowing. Philip could see the clouds of his breath as he shuffled from one foot to the other, whistling.

  "Well," he said.

  "Well."

  They were silent for a few seconds, st
anding there, the outsides of their coats touching. "Around this time of night," Brad said, "I can't help wondering what Gregg's up to. He's just finishing up at the theatre, I guess; taking his curtain call, or changing clothes. Getting ready to go home, or to go for a drink with someone. Sometimes I want to go to the theatre and wait by the entrance until he comes out. But I'm afraid I'd be too scared to say anything, do anything. I'd just hide in the shadows and wait until he was gone down the street." He sighed. "I think I'm in love with him," he said, and Philip wondered if he was giving a hint, if he was letting him down gently.

  "Well, then, you should do it," Philip said. "Be brave, Brad.

  How do you know he's not just sitting there hoping against hope that when he walks out you'll be waiting for him?" But his heart wasn't in it, and Brad could tell. He shook his head sadly. "Well," he said, "I really have to get going now. I've got to get up early. But it was great seeing you. And bear up, will you, Philip? Call me anytime you need anything."

  They hugged and Brad smiled down at Philip. "Anything?" Philip said. "Do you really mean that?" He smiled. It had just popped out of his mouth.

  Brad stepped back a bit. "Uh—well," he said. "Pretty much. Well, goodnight." He patted Philip on the shoulder and headed inside.

  Philip waited until a good few seconds after the building door had closed to turn away. It was just beginning to occur to him how ridiculous that "anything" must have sounded, how embarrassed he'd be by morning; for the moment, he was just numb.

  He wandered down Second Avenue toward Sixth Street, walked down Eliot's block. Across the street from his building he stopped, and counted the floors to Eliot's window. The light was off.

  Then he was stumbling down West Tenth Street at three o'clock on a Saturday morning in February. A thin sheet of ice covered much of the sidewalk. Every few minutes he would feel himself slipping and have to grab onto a lamppost to keep from falling over. Other patches of sidewalk were sprinkled with a thick, brown sawdust that somehow managed to break down the ice and leave puddles of dirty water in its place. This water had long ago seeped through his boots, which in the morning would be covered with a thin layer of salty precipitate, and was now soaking through his socks. He had not felt his toes for over an hour. He had no excuse to be wandering the meat-packing district at this late hour, on a freezing cold night. He thought about going to the Anvil, a bar he'd heard a lot about, to watch the legendary master-slave whipping that happened every night there. He thought about checking into the Hide Away Chateau—the motel above the Anvil, shaped like a piece of pie and occupying its own individual island in the middle of the West Side Highway—and renting a room by the hour. He had nowhere else to be. His Week-at-a-Glance was empty. He was expected nowhere for brunch the next day, nowhere for dinner the next evening, and so on into eternity. If it weren't for his job and his parents, he could quite well disappear.

  He was heading toward Christopher Street, where streetlamps shined brightly and people seemed still to be out. His gloveless hands were getting numb. Snow was piled on the sidewalks. A cab roared past and nearly splattered him with cold, muddy water. He only barely jumped out of its way, twisting his foot, and went sliding along another icy patch of sidewalk. This time there was nothing to grab onto, and he fell and landed hard on his behind. Cold water seeped through his pants. He cried out in shock, but no one heard. After sitting cross-legged in the wet snow for a few moments, he got up, and stumbled toward a pornographic bookstore incongruously decorated on the outside to resemble a ladies' lunch restaurant, with elaborate latticework and pillars embedded in green walls. Inside, a few men milled around, looking at the plastic-wrapped magazines, and the videocassettes, and the giant veined dildos. His entire backside was soaked. Unsteadily he gave two dollars to a man behind a bulletproof partition. The man, who was wearing a T-shirt with the letters E.T. and a picture of Elizabeth Taylor on it, pushed a button, admitting him through a small turnstile. Instantly he was engulfed in darkness. A smell of urine assailed him. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he became aware of two or three men standing around him, leaning against walls, caressing prominent erections through their pants. He headed past them into one of the booths. There was a hard wooden bench inside and a small television screen on which a large black penis was fucking a white rump to the sound of jazz music and moans. Philip fell back on the bench, which was sticky. He closed his eyes. Only a few weeks ago he would have been curled with Eliot at this hour, on the futon. In his memory the radiator whistled.

  Well, at least here it was warm.

  Eliot was really gone. "To Paris," Jerene told him. "Apparently he'd been thinking about it for a while. He was lucky to be able to do it. He flew to Rome, and now I guess he's making his way north. God knows I'd like to take off like that someday."

  Since Eliot's departure, Philip had seen a lot of Jerene, a lot of many people he hadn't spoken to for months or even years. Suddenly he was calling Sally from work to make a dinner date. "I'm sorry I've been so out of touch," he said. "I've been busy."

  "So I understand," Sally said. "Just let me check my book. Well, I'm free Tuesday the week after next. Is that okay?"

  Philip, who had no plans for the rest of his life, said it was fine. Two weeks later, on Tuesday, at a sushi bar on Third Avenue, he was telling once again the story of Eliot's leaving. Sally shook her head in sympathetic agreement with every word he said. "Men are assholes," she concluded. "I could've told you that." She then asked him why he didn't fall in love with Brad Robinson, who was so nice and with whom he would make such a cute couple. Sally's social life still revolved primarily around their friends from college; it was natural she would think of Brad.

  Philip tried to explain that he was hoping to branch out in his life.

  "I don't see why that should stop you from thinking about Brad," Sally said, "who no matter where he went to college is a super guy, really the best. And I hear he's looking."

  Philip thought about it. Brad was all right; Brad was wonderful. But in spite of the blush of lust that had come over him when he was with Brad that night at the Kiev, the thought of sleeping with anyone who wasn't Eliot was still more than he could stomach right now. He feebly explained this to Sally, who shook her head and said, "That'll pass in a week." He was giving up a good thing in Brad, she told him.

  Well, he promised Sally, he would think about it. He would give it a try. He called Brad up, nervous, because he remembered the way he had said "anything" that night on his stoop, and they went for a drink at Boy Bar. The actor, Gregg, had taken another lover, Brad explained. They leaned against a wall, and Brad's eye roved the room, which had recently taken on a second identity as an art gallery and was filled with murals depicting the deconstruction of the smiley face. "Perhaps the boy of my dreams is out there somewhere," Brad said. There really was a boy of Brad's dreams. "Is the boy of your dreams out there somewhere, Philip?"

  Philip surveyed the crowd, thought of Paris, and weakly shook his head no.

  Sometimes, at night, Eliot really was the boy of his dreams. Together they rode a train through lush Alpine hills, past villages as tiny and perfect as those in Advent calendars. There was a smell of ginger in the cold air, a tinkling of chimes. Philip could feel the chugging of the train as it rolled along toward Zurich, toward Venice.

  The next weekend Brad's phone rang and rang, and no one answered; Sally went away on business; there were no parties; he could reach no one. He was alone. He considered calling his parents, then changed his mind. Since he had come out to them, they had become more private than ever, avoiding the topic of his sexuality in conversation, rarely phoning him. And (he had to admit) he was probably avoiding them as much as they were avoiding him, for he had counted on Eliot's presence in their living room to justify all he had said to them, to justify his life. Without Eliot, Philip felt his mother looking at him, narrowing her eyes, tapping her foot. She could prove him wrong. And that he couldn't bear.

  Bored, he made his way downtown. By mi
dnight he was at the southern tip of Manhattan, where funny little nautical gift shops glinted like the seashells and model ships they sold among the huge towers of commercial and investment banking. He wandered back uptown, and it got colder, and still he could not bear the thought of going home. It seemed appropriate that at the end of the night he should find himself in a booth in the porno shop on Christopher Street, crying. As at the coffee shop with Jerene, no one seemed all that surprised that he was crying. A lot of people apparently came here to cry.

  About a half-hour after he arrived, the door opened and a man in his thirties stood in front of Philip. He was wearing blue jeans and a brown leather jacket. "Howdy," he said. Then, throatily: "Are you coming or going?"

  Philip, who was sitting with his elbows on his knees, nodded vaguely.

  "Mind if I join you?" the man said.

  Philip said nothing. The man entered the booth, closed the door, and sat down next to Philip on the little bench.

  "Oh baby," he said. Soon his hand was kneading Philip's groin. "Yeah," he said, extracting a tube of K-Y jelly from his jacket, and unzipped Philip's fly. He began to jerk Philip off with one hand and himself with the other. Philip came all over his sweater; the man, more wisely, on the floor; on the screen, the young army private came while being strip-searched by his corporal.

  Finished, the man wiped his hands off with a handkerchief, patted Philip on the thigh, and went out. Philip thought he might throw up, so he got up and went toward the door. The light of the bookstore interior blinded him at first. Outside on the street, he had to squint. Dawn was breaking. A surprisingly bright sun rose somewhere above the gray sky. It was like a giant egg that had cracked and was bleeding, yolk and white together, against the clouds.