The Lost Language of Cranes Read Free Page B

red.
    After they ate dinner, Philip put on his coat to walk his mother to Broadway, where she could catch a cab. "This is a very African area," he said as they maneuvered their way among covens of menacing children. "The hallways of the buildings smell like Berber pepper."
    On the way out of the door they had to step over a man asleep in the vestibule. "Our doorman," Philip said, and laughed.
    "Philip," Rose said, "is that man all right?"
    "Don't worry," Philip said. "He lives here. Sometimes he just has trouble making it up the stairs."
    "I see."
    They walked down 106th Street. "How long do you think you'll stay in this place?" Rose asked.
    "As long as I can. The rent's dirt cheap, and the landlord would kill to get rid of me so he can up it. But it can't go co-op. I checked. Some obscure footnote to the building code, having to do with pipes or something."
    "This place?Co-op?" Rose was incredulous.
    "Believe it or not, it's happening all over the neighborhood."
    "My."
    They kept walking. On Amsterdam Avenue, a man was urinating in the gutter. "Is this where you go out?" Rose asked, looking away from the man.
    "What do you mean?"
    "You know," Rose said. "What you do. With your friends."
    "Oh no," Philip said. "Not around here. In fact, lately I've been spending a lot of time in the East Village. It's a wild neighborhood—full of punks and street people and bad artists dressed up in outlandish clothes."
    "You're not any of those things," Rose said.
    Philip's mouth opened at that statement, but he didn't answer.
    Instead he looked away and wrapped his scarf tighter against his throat.
    Rose had the sense that she had asked the wrong question. Or asked it in the wrong way. What she meant was, Will you please explain to me what happened, why your life is so different from mine? But Philip said, "Have you decided if you're going to buy the apartment or not?"
    She smiled, and shook her head. "We're waiting to hear what the accountant has to say. And then what the lawyer has to say. But it's hard. Your father and I are so set in our ways."
    "I can't imagine you living anywhere else, quite frankly," Philip said. He looked away from her. "I hope it works out for you. Look, here comes a cab. I'll get it."
    Forget the cab, Rose wanted to say. Tell me something, anything. I am tired of living in the past. But the yellow cab had pulled up, and she had no choice but to get in.
    Philip's hand was cold as it took hers, his lips cold as he kissed her on the cheek. "I'll see you soon," he said. "Maybe lunch next week?"
    "Yes," she said, and wanted to say, No, not lunch. Then the cab door closed, and she was speeding downtown.
    "Cold night, huh, lady?" the driver said.
    "Sure is," said Rose.
    "I like working nights. Lots of guys prefer the days, but nights, you get more interesting customers. The later it is, the more interesting. I took a lady home to Fifth Avenue the other night? She asked for change, right? It turned out she was a guy."
    "Really," Rose said.
    "You bet," the driver said. "But I say, 'Live and let live.'"
    The driver was young. From above the glove compartment, a photograph of a pitted face with a bushy mustache contrasted oddly with the long, clean-shaven neck Rose stared at. A triptych of little girls was taped to the sunvisor: Slavic faces, big smiles on two, the one in the center thin and dangerous-looking.
    "Well, the world is changing, that's for sure," the driver said. "A lot of things you wouldn't have seen twenty years ago don't surprise you too much today."
    "So true," Rose said.
     
    When Rose woke up, late, on Sunday, Owen was already gone. As always, he'd be back in the evening. She wouldn't ask him where he'd been. It wouldn't be polite.
    Still, she wondered. He knew perfectly well what she did with her Sundays. She drank coffee and read the paper, and then she took out one of her manuscripts, and worked until it was time for "Sixty Minutes." She enjoyed the quiet of the apartment, the luxury of having the whole