The Lost Language of Cranes

by David Leavitt

  Hundreds of them passed through Owen’s office; sat across from him, cowed and intimidated in their stiff black suits. Owen, himself dressed in a stiff black suit, sometimes had to fight the impulse to laugh at the ridiculousness of his position; that he, a grown man with a Ph.D. in comparative literature, was being paid to frighten little boys. Usually he flashed a smile to console them after the first five minutes. Sometimes he remained stern and watched their shoulders tighten. It was easy to cut past the spiel their parents had prepared for them. He liked to get them talking about what they liked, whether it was the Hardy Boys or chess tournaments or Twisted Sister. Some of them had long hair they had clearly refused to cut. Others had no instinct for rebellion and seemed eager to follow in the footsteps of their parents, to become exactly what would make everyone in their families most relieved and happy. Those were the boys Owen liked the least.

  Sometimes he wondered what all those parents would think of him if they knew the truth about him. Already, when their sons were accepted, their attitude imperceptibly changed. Their original smugness returned, and they treated him with the same patronizing glibness that they lavished upon the faculty; now that they had gotten what they needed from him, there was no need to kowtow to this middle-class Jew. Sitting in his office across from a scared little boy, the door closed, he often pondered the implicit sexuality of the interview, which was somewhere between a rape and a seduction. The candidate was obliged to make himself as attractive as possible to the interviewer; the interviewer was expected to terrorize and dominate the candidate. If they found out about him, Owen quickly decided, the Harte parents would demand his resignation immediately, figuring that if he hadn’t already, it was only a matter of time before he went off the deep end and started taking advantage of their desperate little boys, many of whom had been promised cars and computers if they got into Harte and might have done just about anything to get them. Which was doubly ironic, since Owen was not in the least attracted to boys and had little sympathy for men who were. His own taste ran to very masculine men with chiselled faces and hairy chests, although it was something of a joke to claim he had any “taste” in men at all. He knew which images on a screen or in a magazine excited him; that was all. None of it seemed to have much to do with reality, with the possible exception of Winston Penn, the new English teacher, whose blond hair and strong-jawed face and wire-rimmed glasses had more than once found their way into Owen’s masturbatory second life. He liked Winston Penn, liked his slow, careful voice, liked his sweater-vests and bow ties. But he could never approach Winston Penn, except as a colleague. He had learned early on, in prep school, how much it hurt to grow close to men who would never return that closeness.

  It was now ten-thirty on a Tuesday night, and Owen was sitting in his office, in the dark, alone, fingering a very creased piece of paper the numbers on which had long since been worn past legibility. No matter; he had them memorized. The scrap was a totem. Earlier this evening he had delivered to a group of prospective Harte parents a speech so familiar to him that he joked to Rose he could give it on automatic pilot. As he talked, his mind moved in other directions, in circles, endlessly recombining the two sets of seven digits and their letter equivalents, creating anagrams, creating a language.

  The man was named Alex Melchor, and he was going to save Owen’s life—that is, if Owen could only get up the nerve to call back. He had been sitting now for forty-five minutes, his hand cradling the black receiver, which was already slick with sweat. Occasionally panic seized him. He would get up and pace the room, his mind gripped by a sense of the madness and danger of what he was doing so potent it could have been something he had only just conceived, not lived with for years. On his desk, pictures of Rose and Philip stared up at him with an almost pornographic intensity. Periodically he would sit down again at his desk, calmly dial the number (though his hands were shaking), then press down the two nubs on top of the phone with terrible violence and hold them there, to make sure he had actually cut the call off. His office was purgatory, a middle ground where rest was impossible. He knew he could not leave until he had made the call he could not bring himself to make. And yet, as the night wore on, he wondered, if he didn’t make the call, which would be stronger: the feeling of relief at having resisted temptation and evaded potential danger, or the feeling of pain as he walked through the dark, empty streets of the Eighties toward the subway, the longing to touch and be touched by another man beginning again its wail inside of him. That longing pulsed stronger in him tonight than it had for years. He must make the call, he told himself. It was no longer a matter of choice. He must make the call, and for the first time in his life speak of these things, and he would not leave this room until he’d done it.

  But what if this Alex Melchor wasn’t home? Then the ersatz ringing in the phone’s heart would go on and on, and no human voice would interrupt it. He could walk all the way home easily, propelled by the beat of a heart pounding in his chest, then decelerating, easing. No one could accuse him of cowardice, of not trying. (No one but himself.) He would wash his hands, and sit down in his favorite chair, and read, and eat a piece of Rose’s apple cake. Or would he? He remembered Alex Melchor’s voice, shaky with breath as he whispered in the dark theatre: “Please. I can’t do it here. Can’t we go somewhere else?”—words so unexpected, so unlikely in a place like that, so surprisingly tender. He was in love with Alex Melchor, with all he knew of him, his underwear and his voice and his telephone number, and as fiercely as fear pulled him away from the telephone, desire pushed him toward it. Hope had stolen into his life just as he was growing comfortable with despair. And why now? He didn’t want hope. He didn’t believe in hope. He didn’t even think he needed hope. Yet he was in its grip.

  He was imagining things that would have been unimaginable to him just a year ago, a month ago. It was the same fantasy that had carried him through prep school, only recast to fit his current life and shrunken expectations. Over the years, as it gained in intensity, Owen’s desire had become less and less specific; now what was growing in him was simple, undifferentiated need. The man no longer had to have dark curly hair, or be over six feet tall; it no longer had to be perfect, enviable love of the sort that bloomed in the movies of his adolescence. All he wanted was a man to make love with—fully, exhaustingly, more than once—and perhaps a little companionship. And yet, even that was as impossible now as it had been then. He had a job, a wife, a son. Perhaps he could have pulled it off if he were younger and less established; but it seemed to him that each year he lived as a hypocrite, his identity as a family man, a husband, a professional hardened in the minds of those around him, not to mention those he loved. For twenty-seven years, after all, he had been Rose’s husband; he held her fate like a hand grenade. To break out of that mold now—well, he would lose his job. He would lose Rose. He would lose Philip. And still he knew he would not leave this office until he had dialled that number, spoken to that voice; that if not tonight, he would come back tomorrow night, and the next night. It was out of his hands now.

  So he sat there, his heart pounding, and the phone squatted shamelessly before him, offering to unlock for him the secret safe at its heart for which the seven long-memorized digits of Alex Melchor’s phone number were the combination.

  He picked up the phone. He dialled in a kind of delirium, and it was only when he was finished, and the ringing started, that he came to consciousness and realized what he had done so easily, and that there was no turning back. He could hang up, but he wasn’t going to. He would let it ring five times. One. Two. Three.

  There was a clicking noise. He took in his breath. A crash sounded. “Oh shit!” a male voice said. He heard music in the background—he couldn’t recognize exactly what. For some unknown reason, relief flooded him. His pulse slackened. He wanted to laugh.

  “Sorry, I dropped the phone. Hello?” The voice was raspy, slightly effeminate.

  “Is this Alex Melchor?” Owen said. He was bent over in h
is chair, his feet tucked under his buttocks, smiling broadly and holding back laughter.

  “No, just a second, I’ll get him. Oh, who’s calling?”

  “You can tell him my name is Owen Benjamin. But he won’t recognize it.” He could hear the voice that said these words distinctly, although it seemed to have nothing to do with him.

  “Okay, just a second. Al-ex! He’s in the kitchen, hold on a minute.”

  It was Vivaldi. The Four Seasons. Owen closed his eyes and concentrated on the birdsong of the violin, the tiny pips of music as the bow darted back and forth. He tried to think of birds in trees in parks in summer, as his music appreciation teacher had taught him to do in fourth grade, Birds in trees in parks in summer. He had never forgotten that. Strange, he thought, how things come back. Things are not lost.

  More crashing. Then the music was obliterated by a hand over the phone.

  “Hello, Alex Melchor,” said a new voice, this one deeper, more threatening. Some sort of muffling noise sounded. Owen, frozen, couldn’t identify it. For a few seconds, he said nothing, expecting his other voice, the confident voice, to take over, but it had run off, leaving him high and dry and alone. Strings broke on a violin somewhere.

  “Alex,” he said. “This is Owen Benjamin. Owen. Oh—you don’t know my name, do you? But you—we—met—you gave me your name and number and said I should call you, I should give you a call.”

  There. That was fine. That sounded fine.

  “I did what?” the voice said. The muffling noise continued. Food. He was eating. And Owen thought, Don’t destroy me, please, don’t destroy me.

  “You left it for me. Your name. You said to call.”

  “Um—Owen—I don’t think so,” Alex Melchor said. “Are you sure it was my name, and my number? That you didn’t dial wrong?”

  “Yes. Work and home.” Owen repeated the numbers.

  “Those are right. I’m sorry, but I really can’t recall giving you this note. Where did I supposedly do it?”

  Owen stammered, strangled. “A theatre,” he said.

  “At the theatre!”

  “Yes.”

  “What show? I was at the theatre twice last week. We saw Tango Argentino and that new Sondheim thing—”

  “No, no—not the theatre—a theatre.”

  “A movie theatre?”

  Owen faltered. “Yes.”

  “Well, which one?” He sounded impatient.

  “The Bijou,” Owen said. He closed his eyes.

  “Did you say the Bijou?”

  “Yes.”

  Alex Melchor started to laugh. Hard. Loud. “Then, honey, that note must be pretty old, because I haven’t been in that dump for ten years! Are you someone from my deep dark past?” he asked. “Hey, Leo! My deep dark past is on the phone!”

  Owen was close to tears. “I’m sorry, there must be a mistake. I’m sorry. Something’s wrong.” He gritted his teeth, prepared to slam down the receiver.

  “Hold on,” Alex Melchor said. “Don’t hang up. I’m curious about this. Now, you’re saying that someone at a porno theatre gave you my name and number? Needless to say, I’m very curious to know who this person was.”

  “No. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t hang up! You sound upset. What did you say your name was, Bowen? Listen, Bowen, don’t mind me, my shrink tells me fifty thousand times a day my bark is worse than my bite. Now calm down. Just calm down.”

  “It’s Owen,” Owen said. “Owen, not Bowen.” He laughed a little. Who would have the nerve to name a kid Bowen? he wondered. His voice shook. His throat seemed to constrict. But he did not hang up.

  “Now, Owen, can you describe the man who gave you my number?”

  “It was dark.”

  “It certainly was,” Alex Melchor murmured.

  “Anyway, I told you. I think it was a mistake. After he left, I found the note on his chair.”

  “You found the note on the—” There was a moment of silence. “Oh my God!” Alex Melchor said. “What day was this?”

  “Sunday.”

  Suddenly the voice on the other end of the phone burst into a fit of hysterical laughter. “It was Bob Haber!” he said. “Hey, Leo!” he called away from the phone. “Guess who’s been hanging out at the Bijou! Bob Haber!”

  “I knew it. I knew it,” Leo said in the background.

  “Forgive me for leaving you on the hook like that,” Alex Melchor said. “I think I’ve figured out the answer to this dilemma. You see, I gave my number and name to this actor named Bob Haber. He’s an old college friend of Leo’s—that’s my lover—and I met him at this dinner party. I’m an agent, you see, and he had a lot of—well, to be perfectly honest, I liked his looks. So I gave him my number and told him to give me a call and we’d have lunch. That was on Saturday. And on Sunday—”

  “It fell out of his pocket. I know.”

  “So the mystery’s solved.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry to have—”

  “Oh, don’t worry. I’m sorry too. I mean, Owen, you sound like a very nice guy. But I am sort of married to Leo. And Bob Haber—well, I wouldn’t recommend him to you. He’s a real closet case.”

  “Sure,” Owen said, and wanted to say, “Tell me, show me. Invite me to dinner. Introduce me to Bob Haber. Save me.” But he did not.

  “Goodbye,” he said.

  “Bye now.” Then Alex Melchor hung up the phone.

  Owen fell back in his chair. He could feel his heartbeat, a tiny persistent pulsing in his forehead. Sweat trickled down and dried under his arms. Through his half-closed eyes, he saw that it was past eleven. He realized, quite suddenly, that he had been breathing through his mouth. His throat was dry, his lips chapped to the point of bleeding.

  He went into the bathroom. It was a classic boys’ school bathroom, with a big trough instead of urinals and three tiny toilets for the first-graders. At one of a row of white enamel sinks he washed his face with a cake of industrial soap. The room smelled strongly of disinfectant. After he had combed his hair, he went back into his office, straightened his desk, put on his coat, and left. It was a cold night out, but windless. He pushed his hands into his coat and started off. The sky was still and clear and full of stars.

  For the first twenty blocks he hardly knew what he was feeling. Fragments of the conversation replayed in his head, out of order, along with bits of The Four Seasons. Then, around Seventy-second Street, he realized to his great surprise that he did not feel bad. No, not bad at all. To his own shock, he discovered that his hope was still alive—greatly reduced in bulk, it was true, modest and a little ashamed, but there, alive, and fighting fiercely to hold onto him this cold night as he briskly marched downtown. It no longer had a firm grip. It crawled on him, rather, like a baby kangaroo that must struggle blind, in earnest, to find its mother’s pouch. Hope breathed choppily but defiantly in Owen, searching for a place to grow again.

  He pushed up the collar of his coat and walked faster. His breath became visible in the dark and cold. He had done it. He had made the call. He had come through it alive, still himself. That mattered more to him than the fact that there had been no note, no last-minute offering. He had set a goal and carried through on it, as his father might have put it to him when he was a child, trying to build a model of a car, a Ford Model-T, and if it hadn’t turned out quite perfect—Well, what of it? his father had said. You did your best. I’m proud of you, and you deserve a reward.

  Owen did deserve a reward. Right now. So he walked into an all-night newsstand and bought himself a Hershey bar, with almonds.

  The evening of Derek Moulthorp’s dinner Jerene stood with her foot on the edge of the tub. She was wearing a pale silk slip; below her knees, her legs were half covered with shaving cream.

  “Wow,” Philip said. “You look—”

  “I know, I know,” she said. “Don’t tell me. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Do you ever cut yourself?” Philip asked. “I cut myself a lot.”


  “Remember,” Jerene said, “I haven’t done this in six years.”

  The scraping noise of the razor against her skin made Philip wince. He sat down on Jerene’s cot, being careful not to muss the dark blue wool dress splattered with wildflowers which had been carefully laid out next to him. He gazed at her. Jerene had a date.