Sean Michaels - Us Conductors

ONE DAY YOU SAID, “Can I show you something?”

There were screws in my mouth; my answer came out mumbled. “ ‘V cur …” I was on my back under a plywood display case, mounting bolts along its lower lip, twisting a screwdriver at an awkward upward-tilted angle. I had the vague feeling there might be ants coming up through the floor. Lucie Rosen had said something about ants next door. Something was at my scalp. Was it ants? I did not know.

“You have to come out,” you said.

I grunted and began extruding myself from under the case. I was thinking of the ants. I sat up, brushing at my hair and neck. You were standing at the far side of the room, behind a space-control theremin. DZEEEEOOOoo , it said. If there were still ants on my head, I forgot them.

Later, you told me how you had come to visit the day before. It was the early evening. You let yourself in but the house seemed empty; there was a breeze coming through the first-floor blinds; nobody was practising. I was away at the kwoon. Sifu was tapping the back of my knees with his stick.

You walked into the living room and found Henry Solomonoff and Charles Ives, waiting for their tea to steep. “Hello!” Henry called out. You removed your hat. They invited you to sit with them, the two composers, and you did; you waited together for the tea to steep. They were talking baseball. Shortstop , they said, RBI , and after a little while you got up. “I’m going to go upstairs,” you told them. On the second floor you wandered through the workshops. You picked through a box of drill bits. You flicked a television screen with your finger. You stood on the inert terpsitone stage, bowed, waved your hand. A theremin sat in the corner, painted flowers on its sides. My former gift to you. You eyed it. “Is everything all right?” asked Solomonoff. He had appeared at the top of the stairs. You looked at him. You were no longer a violinist. You asked him, “Will you show me how to turn this on?”

Now I sat on the floor, astonished. You plucked nineteen notes from the air. The opening bars of “The Swan”: just nineteen notes, nothing more. The last of these, set apart, came out wrong — a quivering F instead of high C. In spite of this, in spite of sharps and flats (and you grimaced comically with each mistake), in spite of the way you slid between each note, unable to control glissando, I was dumbstruck. Accuracy with the theremin is a learned thing, a knack that comes with practice. But you showed even in that clumsy playing a delicacy of tone like I had never heard. Every player of the space-control theremin draws his or her music from the same loose current, the same air, the same relationship of hands and antennas. We are all siblings, summoning the same songs. Somehow yours are more beautiful.

“Well?” you asked.

I was speechless.

“Well?” you asked again, a crooked smile spreading.

“Clara Reisenberg,” I uttered finally, the only words I could say.

I GAVE YOU LESSONS in how to hold your hands. There are some bends of wrist, positions of fingers, that work better; others less well. “Like this,” I said. “Like this.” “Like this.” You stood beside me and asked, “What about this,” touching thumb to forefinger, and it sounded finer than anything I had ever heard.

I sent two theremins to your apartment. The car carried my first gift and a new, modified RCA kit; also a sour cherry tart, a bouquet of jasmine, a bottle of bootlegged gin. I am not sure I knew how to do things by half measures. You practised at home; you practised with me. After the third lesson we went dancing. We played on the Capitol Club’s dance floor, skipping and mirrored, your hair pinned up and me with cufflinks glinting, the whole night glinted, mirroring, and skipped. My hand rested in the fragile strong supple small of your back.

Later, at an automat, I paid a man a dollar and he filled my palm with nickels. The walls had a hundred tiny slots and into these I slipped the coins. Two perfect plates of pie came swinging round on rollers. We poured black coffee from taps, silver spouts shaped like dolphins. We sat side by side. You used a spoon and I used a fork and we ate our pie, speaking of other lemon meringue pies we had eaten, made by bakers in Queens, by hotel chefs, by grandmothers. The automat’s recipes, you told me, were kept in safes. The makers of these mechanisms knew the machines were useless without pie, cake, little pots of crème brûlée. Customers want to spend their nickels on delights. I put my hand on yours. The room shone white and felt like the future. You drew the spoon from your mouth, savouring tart and sun-bright. There, your inclined jaw. We kissed.

We still had more dancing in us. We caught a cab to the Savoy. Harlem’s mixed clubs were our favourites. The air felt thicker, the music better. The big band hollered and you leaned your head into my shoulder. I breathed in, deeply in, gazing into this flowering overgrown throng. We parted. You sparkled on the end of my arm.

We were on the steps outside the Savoy, much later. Lamplight rested on us like a benediction. I could feel the sweat inside my collar, between my shoulder blades, at my wrists. You were tilted away from me. We could hear each other’s breathing, still quick from dancing. The cherry trees were full of petals. The sun was rising. It felt yet like moonlight. I looked toward the city and then back toward you. Now there was a sparrow beside you. She stood near your heels. She was small; she pecked at the stones.

When you turned toward me, the sparrow stayed. You did not see her. You showed me your happiness, and your dark eyes, and the curvature of your silhouette. There was a sparrow at your heels. You held out your long hand to me.

“Clara,” I said softly.

“Yes?” The word was like a silver link.

“Will you marry me?” I said.

You did not move. You stood on the steps and stared at me with stillness. Your eyes trembled. You began to smile and then you did not smile, but my heart was lifting.

I looked down at the sparrow. The sparrow had gone.

MY HANDS WERE FLAT on the table at Mud Tony’s. Three men sat opposite me; one was a stranger. I had arrived late. I had almost not come at all. There was poison in my chest. There was withering jasmine. There was nothing. I do not know if it was fear that brought me to L’Aujourd’hui or simply the sense that things should have a sequence. This was the sequence. The restaurant smelled of smoke. I had not slept the previous night. Karl smiled, and Karl smiled, but the man sitting between them did not smile.

“So,” I said. I almost did not recognize my voice.

“So,” said the Karl on the left. “Do you have news to report?”

“No,” I said. We were speaking in English. My voice was acrid. It was as if every hidden inside part of me were made of ash, just ash, bare ash.

“Did you meet with Griffiths?” Griffiths was a man from Douglas Aircraft. They had told me to meet with him.

“No.”

“Lieutenant Groves?” Lieutenant Groves was a man from the navy. They had told me to meet with him.

“No.”

The Karl on the left opened a folder. “Did you deliver the proposal to G.E.?” The proposal was for a long-term teletouch contract. Its smallest print was full of tricks.

“Not yet,” I said.

The man in the centre had not spoken. Whereas the Karl on the left had a beard, and the Karl on the right had a moustache, this man had no hair on his face. His head was shaved almost to his scalp. He had square shoulders but a narrow chest. His forearms were like clubs.