We check it out. It’s not possible. We walk up town to search for other places. Perhaps Lincoln Center. Not high up but long.
When we stop for coffee I say first thing, “I thought you were a cat burglar.” He looks startled—as if I’d found him out. Or maybe just that he hadn’t ever thought of doing that before.
“Oh, I don’t mind. I do it myself.”
He’s still looking shocked. Even more so.
“I don’t ever take valuable things.”
Have I made myself unlovable in just one sentence?
“I only take little things. Actually I’ve only taken one thing… ever.”
I don’t like the way he’s looking at me.
“Actually I’ve never climbed beyond the second floor.”
Why doesn’t he say something?
“Actually I only did it for you. And I brought you this.”
I try to give him the clock. (He already has one exactly like it, too. I saw it in his apartment.)
He waves it away.
He hasn’t said a word since I mentioned cat burglar.
Do I know his secret?
You should never know a man’s secret, especially if it’s illegal—though I’m part of that now myself.
Well, that’s the end of that. I can see it in his eyes. Even with the gift.
There’s plenty more—men that is. Maybe I should forget about them altogether. But I don’t want to.
“I can get you more things.”
I guess not.
We part. Not even with a kiss.
Anyway, his eyes were too close together, he’s too short, I’m just as tall as he is. His voice is the opposite of bass.
The moon is out. The city shines. It’s full of men. I look into faces. I stare. I check out ways of walking. I follow first one and then another. Bald men with hairy bodies. Hairy men with smooth bodies. Joe, Pete, Sam, Henry, Louis, Bob, Charley….
COO PEOPLE
WE’VE LIVED HIDDEN in your cities for longer than we can remember. Top floors, mostly. Word of mouth… our word of mouth, tells us we’ve been here since your cities began. How we’ve managed it is, we pretend we’re you, dress like you, wear your kinds of hairdos, when your eyeglasses have little wings at the sides, ours do, too. We walk around looking at things that you’d look at, otherwise we’d be staring at your ceilings all the time. We thumb through your Playboy and Cosmopolitan whether we like them or not, we get the TV Guide and watch what you watch so we can talk about it with you, we jump and yell as much as you do at your baseball games, we read your best sellers, look at your art shows. It’s all pretend. We’ve forgotten our own kind of art. We don’t even dare think about it. We may have lost our art forever though it’s better than yours. Or so we always tell each other. We used to have our own language, too. We say it was so full of asides and embellishments that it was of a beauty inconceivable to anyone but us.
Even your doctors can’t tell we’re us. Of course they wouldn’t suspect anyway since they don’t know we exist.
If you knew about us, we don’t know what you’d do. You’ve never liked the different. Especially you don’t like those people who are fairly close to exactly what you are yourselves. So—dull and drab… invisible is what we aspire to. How else live among you and get along as well as we do?
We only trust each other. We only dare tell each other about ourselves when we’re old enough to handle the information. That’s about ten years old. To us, all the wonderful things about ourselves are more interesting than sex. Unimportant, some would say, but wonderful anyway. “Dear Child, you’re entirely different from everybody else except us and you were born to dance.”
Most of the time we know who we are. There’s our springy walk, our singsong voices, our screechy laugh. And we’re double-jointed. If you can’t bend your thumb down to touch your forearm, you’re not one of us. (Even if you can do it, you may not be one of us, anyway.) And, though just a teeny tiny bit, we can fly. I shouldn’t call it flying. It’s more like lift. We can lift a little bit and if frightened or exhilarated we can, maybe, make it over a car—a small one. There’s not much need for such a talent. It’s hardly worth having. And when your life depends on never being noticed, it’s a big bother because when we get excited, sometimes we have to hold each other down. And always we have to hold down our babies. Until they get their balance that is. By the time they can sit up, they can usually keep themselves down except when they’re too happy. We sew little weights into their clothing. Otherwise you’d know that we were us. We take the weights out when the child has more control, though with some children….
We came to the cities in the first place—or so we always tell each other… (Oral history is all we have. It’s too dangerous to write things down)… came because we wanted your city advantages: opera and ballet. Especially ballet. That little bit of lift makes us good dancers, though we have to make sure not to overdo it.
I’m just in the corps de ballet. It’s never good for us to be soloists.
Nijinsky was one of us. He went mad because of having to keep himself secret without any time off. He should have had a vacation from dancing now and then, before it was too late, and gone back to one of our secret retreats to rest up from always being surrounded by you people. We need to go away every once in a while or we’ll go crazy just as Nijinsky did.
I can’t think what use that little bit of lift could be except as a help in ballet. (Though it’s also good for magicians lifting beautiful women with no visible means of support. In our case there actually is no means of support.) As far as I know, it’s just a bother trying to hide it and trying not to do it when we’re excited and happy. It’s always safer for us to be sad.
But now I go coo, coo, cooing as if a mourning dove. I try to stop, because who else but one of us would do such a thing? But I’m too happy. If I didn’t coo I’d lift by mistake. I sing, coo, as if a song of spring even though we’ve already had the first snow. You don’t look as crazy if you coo in springtime. I hope people do think I’m crazy so as not to think I might be one of us, and then go on to realize that we exist.
(I think we coo because our mouths like the shape of it.)
But oh, coooo, I’ve met a man. Unfortunately he’s one of you. He doesn’t look like us. He’s dark and broad and muscled. I can’t imagine him having any lift at all.
He has a broken nose. I like it. He also has a bald head with a fringe of black hair around the edges. I like that, too.
First thing this man said to me was, “I know who you are.”
I got scared. I thought he meant he knew about us, but he just meant he knew my name. I don’t know how. Perhaps he’s been to the ballet, though he doesn’t seem the type.
We talked for a minute. He just moved in to my building. He lives on the first floor. We couldn’t stand living that far down. I felt so good that he’d stopped to talk to me, I heard very little of what he said. I just looked into those glittery black eyes. I wish I’d listened. I wonder what it was he was telling me.
I know a few things about him from listening to people in the lobby. He’s a fireman, so he does all sorts of things it would be better for us to be doing considering they often involve heights, but we’re not strong enough for that. We have a lot of endurance, but we’re willowy. They say he loves the risks but we can’t take any in case we reveal ourselves. They don’t think he rescues because he cares about people, he just wants to take another risk. He likes storms and fires and earthquakes—all sorts of catastrophes. And he rescues even when he’s on vacation. He just can’t stop. It’s his passion.
We must, as is easy to see, only mate with our own kind, otherwise we might lose our double joints and our only talent. Whatever children this man might have would be the opposite of us: wild and free and into everything and much too big.
I’ve tried not to fall in love with your kind, and, up until a few days ago, it was easy not to, even though there are many men among you that could be said to be my typ
e; but I never cared anything about them.
Right after I first met him, I saw him at our apartment roof party. He didn’t dance, but he was swaying a little bit. You’d not think a man of his nature would sway. We looked at each other. He might have winked. (He doesn’t seem the type to wink either.) Perhaps he was looking at somebody behind me. I looked to see who was there, but even though she was beautiful, I’m not sure which of us he was looking at. I’m not so bad looking myself—if you like your blond hair lank.
I sneaked up behind him and eavesdropped. I heard him tell yet another beautiful girl that he was going off to the mountains, to Manchester Peak to join their search and rescue team for a vacation. I’ll go to that mountain, too. I’m going to see if he’ll rescue me. Of course he might be out rescuing somebody else at the time I’m in trouble, but I’ll take that chance. He doesn’t like the city. I suppose he stays because of all the fires and rescues, though of course there’s plenty of rescuing to be done in the mountains. Maybe he doesn’t like rescuing out there because those mountain accidents are so often from carelessness or stupidity. (Exactly what I’m going to be: stupid.)
So I’m off to climb Manchester Peak where that man is vacationing. I mean I’ll start to. I hope I don’t have to go too far. I hope a snowstorm comes. I’ll listen to the weather report and if it says not to go I’ll go.
Since it’s fall, it’s a risky stupid season for going as high as I plan to go, but it has to be a real rescue. He’d know if it was phony. Up in that altitude I suppose I’ll be able to lift all the more. Or will it be the opposite because the air is thinner?
I hope I don’t inadvertently skim over snow drifts to make things easy for myself after I’ve sunk in up to my crotch. I hope I remember (even when I get tired) to at least have my toes dragging in the snow so I look right in case somebody sees.
I have to get the paraphernalia for it. Carabiners, ropes, pitons, ax, and such. A lot to carry but I have to look as if I’m making a serious (if stupid) try. (I doubt if I can lift with all this stuff, but I can drop a lot of those things along the way so as to leave a good trail.)
Of course I might get rescued by some entirely different person. Most likely some old hermit who lives in the mountains all year long in a smelly hovel and never says a word to anybody. There are still a few of those people around.
I wonder if it would be a good thing to sprain my ankle? And when would be the best time for it, early on or farther up? (We never sprain our ankles. Our lifting is a reflex. Hard not to do it when we’re about to fall down. I wouldn’t know how, but I suppose I could figure out some way—slip my foot between two rocks and then…. I don’t even want to think about it.)
So here I am exactly where I want to be, out in the middle of nowhere cooing in a whisper, one coo to each breath, and looking up at the snowy tops of things: snowy trees, snowy mountains…. We like white best of all. It’s so airy. Of course we like blue, too. It’s so sky.
I begin dropping things right away, carabiners first. After those the pitons. (I hope the snow doesn’t cover everything up.) Then I let go the ax. I may be sorry but, if I drop such an important thing, that’s a sure sign I’m in trouble. Leaving that takes as much courage as spraining my ankle would, but I laugh out loud anyway because of where I am and what’s (maybe) going to happen.
It isn’t until I’m stuck, having slipped…let myself slip (we don’t slip) onto an icy ledge and can’t go up or down, nor sideways (exactly what I wanted to have happen) that I think: What if he watches me even right this very minute to see, now that I’m in real trouble, what I’m going to do next? I can’t wait to see what I’ll do next myself. Actually I don’t do anything. I wait.
But…. Oh for Heaven’s sake! Here’s one of those wizened old, hermit kind of men I was thinking about before. He’s above me, leaning towards me with an unraveling old rope, unraveling black knit cap, unraveling black sweater, whiskey voice that hardly sounds out. I can’t hear him. I have to guess what he’s saying. It’s most likely, “Grab the rope.”
I almost tell him to go away. I’ll not let anyone come between me and what’s supposed to happen. But I think twice and I do grab the rope. At least I won’t have to test how I lift in this altitude. I won’t have to find out whether, if I jump off a cliff this high, I’ll be able to land softly.
At the top I reach and grab his hands—or rather his unraveling mittens. I stare at him. He’s a willowy man. I’m wondering if he’s one of us. I’m wondering if he’s wondering if I’m one of us, too.
I see he has my carabiners hanging all over him, and, at his belt, clipped on by one of my carabiners, he’s got my brand new ax. The mind’s eye sees more clearly than the eye. The mind’s eye ought to trust itself. Understanding comes later—usually does, and always in the middle of the night.
And it is the middle of the night, though so far I’ve not understood anything. I’m bedded down in an alcove, covered with half a dozen old army blankets, listening to the old man snore. This is probably where he sleeps but he’s on the floor across the room by the dry sink.
He only has this one room and it’s full of art—if you can call this art. I don’t know what art is any more than I know who I and we are, but the room is full of complicated things with curlicues and convolutions, twists and whorls. You can hardly tell where one begins and another ends. Or maybe they are all just one sculpture. There’s hardly room to walk around. It’s not like your art at all. It’s stormy looking and lumpy…. There’s a hint of wings. (Hermes was one of us, wings on his feet where they ought to be.)
The old man told me this is how he spends the time when it storms. I asked him, but how did he happen to be out so as to rescue me?
“I fear my dog has met with coyotes and either been killed by them or run off with them. Most likely killed. I was looking for him.”
He has a funny accent. I can’t place it. He actually rolls his r’s and he asked me if I’d “et.” You don’t suppose…. Could it be that that’s from speaking our old lost language?
I wish I knew more about what our art used to be like. Who would dare carve things like this but way out in the woods? (Hack out is a better way to say it.) There’s nothing shocking to it as to sex, but it looks shocking anyway. Maybe there is sexuality to it and I just don’t know enough to see it. Or maybe it’s the power of it that shocks me. Or maybe just that it’s so different.
Nothing is worse than different. We’re all taught that first thing. All of you are also taught that, too. And nothing is more the same than ballet. Full of rules of how it used to be done so we can do it exactly that way now. Even our bows are choreographed according to how they used to do it. It’s said, “Good ballet is never blunted by verisimilitude.” There’s no verisimilitude to blunt this man’s art either.
But I don’t want to think about it. I turn away and try to sleep though all these sculptured things looming over me are scary.
And I do have a midnight revelation. I wake up suddenly when I finally realize that that fireman probably isn’t in search of me at all, but of us! All of us, maybe including this old man? Maybe he’s been sent out by the government? I can’t let him hear this old man’s accent. I can’t let him see this… art.
Even so, perhaps when he winked, it really was for me.
In the morning I look out the door first thing—at the sun and the shiny snow—and see somebody wearing camouflage. A broad man, looking at the shack through field glasses.
I start to coo again. I can’t help it. The old man gives me a look I can’t read. Well, we hardly ever talk about being us unless we’re at one of our retreats and even then we don’t talk much about it. We just give each other raised eyebrows and such. I stop my cooing right away and switch to an entrechat starting from fifth position. I have to do something. If he’s us he’ll know I’m us, too, and if he’s not us, he’ll think I’m crazy.
Then I see the dog, limping up to that camouflaged man. You can’t fool a dog no matter how much you look l
ike a tree in fall foliage. Besides, it’s a little late for all this brown and yellow. The dog has a bloody stump where his tail used to be. No doubt coyotes, like the old man said. The bald man squats down and pets him, examines his wound. Now isn’t that a nice thing for a big bald man with a broken nose to do!
He sees me, there by the door. He pulls off his hat by one of its earmuffs, letting the sun shine out on his bald head which makes him even more lovable. So not only dark and dangerous, but more polite than need be under the circumstances. He could have just waved.
I don’t want him meeting this old man and seeing his odd art, but here he comes, crunch, crunching across the snow. I give another coo. The old man humphs a humph as if: I knew she was us, or, on the other hand: I knew she was crazy.
(Come on in. Rescue me. Take me back with you. I’ll keep my voice on an even keel. I’ll not singsong. I’ll not smile too much. I’ll never coo in public. I’ll pull my long limp hair back tight and weave it into a bun so it doesn’t fly around by itself. I’ll not screech when I laugh.)
“Coo…. I mean come. Come on in.”
“You shouldn’t be up here. There’s another storm on the way. There isn’t much time.”
I do love how his voice rattles out from someplace way down deep in his chest.
I lift. I actually lift out of pure joy. I stoop to greet the dog at the same time as I lift in order to hide it. It must have looked kind of funny, down and up at the same time.
That bald man has to lean over to get through the door, and there’s hardly room inside for somebody as big as he is. Even so he wanders back and forth, peering at the “art” close up, touching things. The old man stays in a corner and mutters to himself. He had just asked me if I wanted breakfast but now it’s clear he’s not going serve either of us anything.
After looking around the bald man takes out his first aid kit and treats the dog’s wounds.
I Live With You Page 9