The Lost Language of Cranes (6 page)

"Philip!" Sally said. "Everyone knows that."

Philip was quiet. "You know, of course, what I'm wondering," he said.

"Yes, and I don't think it matters. I think what matters is that Eliot's a terrific guy, and that he's apparently benefitted from a terrific upbringing. And he wears the best socks. You'll love his socks. He collects them—incredible colors, weird patterns.

At this party last week he had some on that he was showing everybody—they had what looked like little root beer floats on them."

"Really."

"I don't know where he finds them. Anyway—can you be there?"

"How could I miss it?" Philip said.

But a few nights later, when he walked into Sally's apartment, he almost turned around and went out again. The room was fall of distant familiar faces he hadn't seen in years. There was Joshua Treadwell, and Connie Moss, and Chris Fletcher, and a host of other people he had spent most of his time in college avoiding. Indeed, the only person he saw whom he knew and liked was Brad Robinson, who had been his friend in the Gay and Lesbian Campus Coalition. They waved to each other across the room, and then Sally ran up to him, smiling. "Philip," she said, "I'm glad you came. Come meet Eliot."

Then, from behind some plants near the sofa, where he stood admiring her view of the Hudson, she beckoned a tall young man with curly dark hair, a cigarette in his hand. Philip's eyes widened, and Eliot threw him a smile so intense and unwavering he had to turn from it.

He was standing with Eliot, close enough that the tendrils of wool on their sweaters were touching (a delicious, barely perceptible sensation). They looked each other in the eye. Eliot's were framed by round gold glasses. Philip's mouth was open and words were coming out of it, though he hardly knew what they were, and he had to fight to bring each sentence to the end. He felt as if something was blooming in him—a flower, a fire, a possibility that moment by moment became, unbelievably, more real, as they kept smiling, as Eliot did not stop staring straight into Philip's eyes. For the first time in his life there seemed no doubt. The answer was yes.

"Sally tells me you work in publishing," Eliot said. A slight shifting of the knees. Eyes unwavering. Philip was relying completely on peripheral vision to make out the tuft of hair emerging from Eliot's collar, the clean, close-cropped fingernails, all the tiny, erotic details.

"Well, actually I work for what's called a packaging company," Philip said. "We're in the romance field. What I do is edit and rewrite these terrible novels—all about desert islands, pirate ships, cruise ships; the line's called Wavecrest Books. Right now, l or instance, I'm working on
Tides of Flame
, which is all about how hardy and tempestuous Sylvia falls in love with evil Captain Dick Tolliver."

Eliot laughed, and Philip was relieved.

"Are you living uptown too?”

"More uptown than this—105th Street, off Amsterdam.How about you?"

"I live in the East Village."

"How's the rent down there?"

"Mine isn't bad. I was lucky."

"Do you have a lease, or is it a sublet?"

"Oh no, it's my lease."

"That's great."

"Uh-huh."

Then there was nothing else to say. They stood there, not looking away. Philip was studying Eliot's eyes. They were dark, almost black, but when he looked at them closely he could see pulsating rings of green and yellow encircling the pupils.

A minute passed without a word, and still they stared. Every now and then Philip let out a snort of breath, almost a laugh, and his smile widened a little, and Eliot smiled too and let out a thin stream of smoke.

"So what do
you
do?" Philip asked finally, mostly because there was no one else there to interrupt, no Sally, no dinner bell.

"I'm sort of self-employed," Eliot said.

"Doing what?"

"Oh, I write copy for ad agencies and publishers. And draw. I'm working on a book cover now. A jack-of-all-trades, I guess you could say."

"That's great," Philip said. He's rich, he thought enviously, but then, because he was trying to fall in love with Eliot, he changed his mind. Freedom, he thought. Integrity.

"You must like the freedom," Philip said. "It must be great not to be stuck in the nine-to-five grind."

"I love it," Eliot said. "And anyway, I doubt I'd be able to live any other way. I don't like planning things more than a few days ahead if I can help it. It's just not a comfortable way of being for me."

"You know," Philip said, suddenly remembering Sally's game plan, "my mother was your father's copy editor. Or, I mean, your stepfather. Or—I'm sorry, I'm not sure what to call him."

"Really!" Eliot said. "She copy edited Derek's books? Which ones?"

A new panic replaced the old one. He didn't know. "I'm not sure, exactly—" he said. "The ones that Motherwell published."

"That's fantastic," Eliot said.

"You think so?" Philip said. He sputtered out a little laugh. "I thought it was a pretty neat coincidence myself. Of course, theynever met. Though Mom always wanted to meet him. She loved his books. I did too."

"Yes, they're great. Derek's a remarkable person, a real character. You'd like him."

Something in the way Eliot said "You'd like him" alarmed Philip. He wondered if perhaps he was all wrong, if Eliot was going to shake his hand and say, "We should have lunch sometime."

Then Sally was between them, flashing a tight smile. For the first time they observed the party. People stood around in nervous little groups. "You two sit across from each other," Sally said, ushering them to the table, then arranged the other guests according to some elaborate plan of her own invention.

The dinner was long. Philip hardly had a chance to talk to Eliot, who was caught up in a conversation about the legitimacy or fraudulence of certain East Village performance artists. Every now and then someone at the table would make a half-hearted effort at nostalgia but always ended up slipping back into the inevitable refrain: "I'll quit if I don't get a raise by next month"; "It's an illegal sublet, so unless the landlord finds out, I'll be fine."

Everyone drank to excess. At some point in the wine-and boredom-induced haze of the meal, Philip made his grand gesture of the foot, only to be topped by Eliot's grander gesture. It astonished him—that quick response, that firm clutch of Eliot's calves. Eliot did not look at him, did not break the stride of his sentence. It was as if such things happened to him at dinner parties all the time.

Dessert was David's Cookies and Häagen-Dazs. Still they did not talk. Philip wondered if his posture gave anything away. Cautiously his foot explored, wiggled as it could, and finally felt warm flesh under the pants leg. He was thrilled. Could anyone see?

Then Sally got up, and everyone followed her to have coffee in the living room. Eliot let go of Philip's foot, looking at him for the first time during the meal. They walked into the living room separately. "I know another party we could go to," Eliot said.

"Yes," Philip said.

The other party was at a club in Chelsea. They went by cab. In the cab they did not touch, though their legs brushed. A long line was forming outside the doors of the club, but Eliot had a special invitation. The bouncer ceremoniously ushered them past a velvet rope, and a woman nearby shouted in a hoarse voice, "Hey! What's going on? We've been waiting here an hour, and you let those fags right in?" Then they were inside. They checked their coats, and Eliot led Philip into a big room where loud music pulsed into the darkness. All around them were Chemical Bank employees, complete with nametags, staring dumbly at Philip and Eliot. "Do you like to dance?" Eliot asked, and they danced—the only same sex couple on the floor, as far as Philip could tell.

In the middle of "Like a Virgin," Eliot said, "I don't really want to stay here. Let's go somewhere else."

Philip faltered. "Yes, sure," he said.

They slipped away, then, and went to Uncle Charlie's, where, in the midst of a massive and undifferentiated crowd of men, they ran into someone they both knew, Desmond, and his friend Brian, and a dancer named Martin. It was too loud and crowded to talk, so Martin suggested they go to the River Club to watch the wet jockey shorts contest "as a joke," but when they got there, it turned out the wet jockey shorts contest was on Tuesday night. They danced some more, and in the middle of dancing Eliot moved close to Philip, Philip thought, in order to suggest leaving, or deliver some whispered confidence, but when he bent his ear to Eliot's mouth, Eliot's nose hit his mouth. "Oh Christ, I'm sorry!" Philip said to Eliot, who was reeling against the wall, his hand over his nose. But Eliot said, "No, no, I'm fine. I was just trying to kiss you." "What?" Philip said. "Louder!" Eliot mouthed the words:
I'm trying to kiss you.
Then he kissed him. Philip was so surprised he almost laughed, but he caught himself, and kissed Eliot back, and put his arms around his neck.

They stayed a while longer at the club, until they lost Brian and Desmond, and Martin decided to go home, which was uptown. Philip noticeably didn't offer to share a cab with him. "Well," Eliot said, as they stood outside on the curb. "Would you like to go to Boy Bar?"

Philip smiled. "Sure," he said.

At Boy Bar, the bouncers, two tall, emaciated young men with shellacked hair under their bowler hats, were standing just inside the door to escape the cold. "Good to see you, Eliot," one of them said. He was reading from a large red sociology textbook. Philip told Eliot a story about the one gay bar in the town where he'd gone to college. The owner employed his mother washing dishes. When the bar closed at three, and you were waiting in line to get your coat, you'd see her in the back—a pasty old woman with a white apron twisted around her middle, putting hundreds of beer steins through a big industrial washer. Eliot laughed. They were standing in a room painted in Necco wafer shades of green and pink, and
The Exorcist
was playing on a video screen. A dozen or so men stood lined up against the wall, their eyes large and bright as those of nocturnal animals, and occasionally threw each other needful glances. Philip knew from experience that they didn't really expect to pick anyone up this late but were staying out of a simple fear of going home alone. He watched the movie. During the scene where Linda Blair masturbates with a crucifix, Eliot began to rub Philip's back and shoulders without ever taking his eyes from the screen. His hands bunched the tightened muscles together, and Philip's eyes closed.

"Let's go," Eliot said.

Then they walked silently together from Boy Bar to East Sixth Street, where Eliot lived. There were ten or twenty tiny Indian restaurants on the block, their names glared from all directions. Philip's clothes were thick with cigarette smoke from all the bars and clubs. He sneezed, and the phlegm on his handkerchief was black. They walked down East Sixth Street, and Eliot turned the key in the door to his building. Cumin scented the hallways. They climbed three flights of stairs to the apartment, and Eliot put his fingers to his lips. Inside the door a figure thrashed and breathed on a small cot in the kitchen.
Jerene,
he mouthed.
My roommate.
They tiptoed past Jerene, into the second room. A blue futon lay in the middle of the floor, clothes strewn around it. They sat down, and their arms went around each other, their lips touched. Eliot's breath was warm and faintly sweet. Philip's hand moved slowly down the length of Eliot's left leg, until finally it lifted the cuff of his jeans. His socks were brilliant, as Sally had promised: royal blue, with a ring of white snowflakes around the fringe.

They made love, that night, with passion and industry, then afterwards lay on the blue futon, Eliot asleep, Philip wide awake, his heart beating too fast. In the morning he realized that he must have been asleep for some of that night, but that his mind had been so full of Eliot that he had dreamed he was still awake, gazing at him; he was living, at that moment, the strongest wish-fulfillment fantasy he could muster; his dreams ran parallel to his reality. The radiator in Eliot's apartment made wheezing noises. Inside its world of pipes water sloshed and high-pitched whistles sounded, like wind in the country in winter. At one point Eliot woke to find Philip staring at him, wide-eyed. "You can't sleep," Eliot said. "Here, let me rub your back." Philip rolled over and Eliot's fingers began their tugging. "Imagine that inside that radiator is a tropical island," Eliot whispered, "and a hurricane, and a little raft. And on that raft is a little bed—our bed. The wind howling, the rain pouring. But we're safe on our raft. It tosses and turns, but it will never sink." A sound like rushing water came out of the radiator, as if on cue. Philip's mind was full of thunder-swept islands, boats, arms clutching for survival. Images from the novel he was editing. Or was it from that poem his mother used to read to him before he went to bed? What were the words? "Far and few... far and few... they went to sea in a sieve..."

Far and few, far and few

Are the lands where the Jumblies live.

Their heads are green and their hands are blue

And they went to sea in a sieve...

The voice was Eliot's. Philip opened his eyes, and turned over.

"I was just thinking of that poem," Philip said.

"You were?" said Eliot. "Well, keep thinking of it."

Philip looked up at him, puzzled. Then he closed his eyes. The raft rocked, but he was safe.

Three Sundays later winter started. The wind was so fierce that on a certain block of Madison Avenue, where huge buildings towered over brownstones and tenements and the street tilted upward at a sharp angle, two parked cars were blown wholeacross the street. Hardly anyone witnessed this spectacle except the bag ladies who had staked out territories for the night in the dark indentations of grilled and grated storefronts. Newspapers clutched to their chests, they sat back and watched the refuse of the world blow by—mangled umbrellas, lost gloves, a child's tricycle. At the intersection of Broadway and Ninety-sixth Street, most of the mice had died from cold or shock or from having been run over by cars. Caught up in a dust of snow, their carcasses blew down the boulevard, block after block, as if in flight. Philip, in the taxicab with Eliot, found himself, just for a moment, turning to notice the mosaic of bright yellow squares encrusting the horizon of skyscraper spires, and beyond it, the resonant glow of more distant East Side lights, flickering and splintering, as if seen through water. The snow fell before this vision of the city, and Philip imagined that he was inside one of those tiny globed worlds where the air is viscous water, and the bright snowflakes little chips of plastic that fly up when the globe is shaken, then slowly fall back to earth. He looked up at the sky and tried to make out the vast, transparent shell, with its faint hint of reflection. My God, he was thinking, I live in that thing.