The Lost Language of Cranes by David Leavitt

Author:David Leavitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

When they got back, they made love with a sweetness and clarity Philip would always remember, even long after his other memories of Eliot had faded. It seemed to him that in the strange pocket of that single lost night, the simple instinct to take care of someone he had hurt had generated a new feeling in Eliot, one that had nothing to do with the troubled, arguable love he claimed he could no longer abide.

“Eliot,” Philip said later, when they were lying quietly in the dark, listening to the traffic, “I think I’m going to go and shave.”

“Wouldn’t you rather wait till morning?”

“No, I think I’ll shave now. I feel grimy. It would make it easier for me to sleep.”

“Well, it’s up to you. Just be careful not to wake Jerene.”

“Okay,” Philip said. Naked, he tiptoed past Jerene’s cot into the bathroom, and closed the door. He shook the bottle of shaving cream, turned on the tap, and began to splash hot water on his face.

After a few seconds, Eliot came in to pee. Philip listened to the gentle, almost musical tinkling, spread shaving cream on his face, and almost immediately cut himself.

“What are you doing?” Eliot said, joining him in front of the mirror.

“I cut myself.”

Eliot shook his head crossly. “Clearly you’re doing it all wrong. Here, wash off all that shaving cream and let me show you.”

Philip complied. “The trick,” Eliot said, “is making sure your face is really drenched in good, hot water before you put on the shaving cream. Like this.”

The heated, wet slap of Eliot’s hand against his face shocked him. “There,” Eliot said, satisfied, and spread shaving cream on Philip’s cheeks, smoothed it over his upper lip, down below his ears. “You better let me do it,” he said, “or you’ll cut yourself again.” It was true. When he did it himself, Philip always cut himself.

Eliot took the blade and began deftly to drag it down the length of Philip’s face. In the blade’s wake Philip’s cheeks tingled, suddenly smooth, and he remembered distant comic scenes from the TV shows of his childhood, of fathers teaching sons to shave for the first time, awkward laughter, men and boys in flannel pants and T-shirts attacking each other with spray cans of shaving cream. His own father had never shown him how to shave, and he had been too embarrassed to ask. Such awkward bonding was unthinkable with Owen. He had taught himself, in secret, hoping neither his mother nor his father would notice the mistakes, the scabs on his neck and chin, and as a result, he had never really learned the tricks of wetting his face, angling the blade and arching his cheek with his tongue. But now Eliot was teaching him, and he thought how this intimacy—Eliot carefully maneuvering the razor around his chin, washing off the extra shaving cream, patting his face dry; this thrill of smooth, wet skin, shining—this belonged to men who were lovers alone. It seemed to him a kind of celebration.

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