Nicholas Kelton
2.0
The exhilaration is as familiar as rain. He takes a step up, then another and another. The design of the crane’s neck, the cross-hatched regularity of its beams and slats make the climbing smooth and standardized. He simply applies a method which, as he continues the assent, burgeons into routine—right arm, left leg, left arm, right leg, right arm…. In its repetition, the climbing is as monotonous and blank as a morning commute. But by implementing the technique, he ascends with the ease of a monkey.
From the shape of his body, the man is seasoned climber. He is thin but sinewy, with muscular fingers and leathery palms. A man built for summiting cranes.
1.0
It’s nothing but trumpets and bassoons up there, which is strange because he doesn’t know the first thing about music, hasn’t taken so much as an oboe lesson and yet it sounds like there’s a whole marching band banging away just behind his eye balls. The insistent fluting, those treacherous drums. Nothing ever quite playing together, each instrument flailing to its own obscure song. The result is a fractured score of half-baked melodies and maniacal sound that irritates the man, and occasionally induces a headache.
He once mentioned the band to his doctor, who feared the music could be a side-effect of a tumor, so he sent the man to the hospital where they tested for everything. They drew blood and swapped spit. He filled containers with urine that were carried away by tired nurses with bored expressions. They stripped him naked and scanned his brain with beautiful machines in cold rooms. When they were done, he was left feeling like a car at a body shop.
The results came back negative in every category. A physically fit specimen. Tumor-free. The doctor delivered the message while writing the man a referral to a Midtown psychologist.
The psychologist turned out to be a white-haired woman with a great orange couch. He began seeing her on Tuesdays. Her building was just a few blocks from his office so once a week, during his lunch break, he’d walk over. It was on one of these walks that he saw the crane anew, as an object to be climbed rather than a device facilitating the building process, as it had always seemed. A shift in his perception, in the association of object and utility, brought on by little more than a deranged man and the glint of metal.
1.1
It was another day, plain as any. He took the usual streets. They were not abnormally busy. The sidewalks teemed with the long strides of suited men and the aimless bumble of tourist scum. The air was sweet with the smell of alluring women and car exhaust. Traffic flowed judiciously. The quack of angry taxis, the jabber of fists and excited fingers. The entire scene was hopelessly average, and in fact, as the man marched down the street, he had every intention of discussing this very averageness with the shrink, his immense discontent and just how deeply rutted in it he truly felt, like his life was on some horrible rail system, taking him to the same places and situations over and over again. The whole business somehow out of his control, as if assembled for him, something a technician ought to be called out to fix.
But as strolled down Franklin Street that afternoon, just before the bodega and little souvenir shop, construction site coming into view, the crazed antics of a wild man caused him to detour. He crossed the street, with the rest of the foot traffic, to avoid the feral behavior, but he couldn’t escape the man’s whooping which echoed through the streets and bounced around his ears for many blocks.
1.2
The other side of the street was in the sun and put the construction ahead and diagonal of the man, giving him a much wider view of the site, a perspective from which he was not at all accustomed to.
Because it was so sunny, and given the crane’s position in relation to him, the glare off the machine was inevitable. It bounced off his eyes like a flash of lightening, like stars after a thwack to the head. Reflexively, he shielded himself, turning first from and then back towards the great green thing. It stopped him dead and the only thing to do was stare. It was tall even against the infinite blue of the summer afternoon, looming over the bustling streets like the future. It struck him then, in that instant, that this was its beauty, for although the surrounding buildings were much taller than the crane’s present height, they were finished, completed works, fact. Stagnant and unchanging. With buildings, what you see is what you get, whereas the crane represents the exact opposite. The crane is movement; it’s potential; it’s action. A prodigious tool in the act of creation. The crane is what will be. It’s promise, hope, possibility.
Incompleteness is the crane’s true power.
2.1
When he began climbing he wondered whether crane operators left the keys in the cockpit or not. He put two theories forth:
One: yes, since cranes are usually located in precarious spots within a fenced-in region, often many stories up, the tenacity required for a non-operator to reach the cockpit (or cab) of a crane afterhours is on par with spider-man, i.e., there aren’t many people nutty enough to try and, of those nuts, even fewer have the conviction to go through with it.
Two: no, because cranes are such expensive machines, either rented out or owned by enormous contracting firms, there must be a whole bureaucratic system dedicated to their safety, a system involving rigid procedure and password protection, involving a key for a box wherein lies another key for another box for another key and so on. Like Russian dolls.
The “key question”, however, was never an impetus to why he climbed; in fact, he’d never considered it until his first assent, when he found himself in the operator’s seat.
1.3
He ceased all communication with the psychologist that Tuesday he saw the crane, called only to let her know. She advised strongly against it and attempted to coax the man back into his appointment. But he hung up before she could get too far.
After, he found himself in fresh time, for never had he been on Franklin this late in the afternoon. Normally he’d be two blocks over, sprawled out on the great orange couch, unfurling. But now he had new coordinates in space and time.
With the rest of his lunch break stretched out before him like a prairie, and all of Manhattan at his disposal, he resumed starring at the crane.
1.4
At 1705hrs Franklin is gridlocked. The man stands on the curb, watching as the construction crew winds-down. They are all wearing the same white helmets and yellow vests, and move through the site with prowess of big cats. The collective effect, however, looks more like ants crawling over ice cream.
The building is already twenty-odd stories and, he’d researched, would eventually hit seventy-three. It was to be luxury apartments, not a unit under a million dollars and, judging by the 3-D models on the architect’s website, destined to be devastatingly modern, a new wave in the blue-glass sea of Midtown Manhattan.
He watched attentively as the crane operator descended the enormous ladder leading to the cab. The operator, unlike the others, wore a green vest. The first thought that crossed the man’s mind was: how much more does that guy get paid? The next was an appreciation for the crane’s simplicity. A massive machine vital to the creation of a cutting-edge building whose cockpit is accessible only by ladder, climbed a rung at a time. Hilarious.
2.2
It’s not enough to reach the top, he must walk the arm too. Since his first crane it’s been this way, the edge beckoning him like transcendent art. The walking out as essential to the act as the climb up. It’s also the most thrilling part, much more so than the assent which is purely route, mechanics—right, left, left, right. Not until the arm is reached, the mountain summited, does his heart begin to pump.
1.5
Soon it’s fall, and the cranes mottle the skyline like a medical condition.
The man had spent the summer in the streets, taking the nights by crane. It’s the strangest thing, he’d realized: one day you’re on your way to the psychologist, the next you’re climbing cranes.
He rubs the newly formed lump and grins.
1.6
These autumn nights are as crisp as mint. Like the summer, he spends them searching for cranes like a mad-eyed hunter after ten-point bucks. The lump on his neck has multiplied and since, the music in his head has begun to organize. It’s far from cohesive but is occasionally harmonious, for which the man was initially delighted. But the thing is: they only play one song, so in a way, it’s almost worse now, almost more maddening than the arbitrary clangs and shrieks of the previous incarnation, because now the tune is lodged way down in the nape of his neck, deep into the tissue, and refuses to budge.
1.7
As the multiplication progressed, the texture of his neck became like turtle shell, all honeycomb and knotted. His co-workers, who always found him amiable, hard-working and an all-around solid dude, grew cold and aloof, ostracizing him like herd animals do the sick.
Last week, however, an acquaintance at the office sat him down and advised he see a doctor. Not knowing what to say or how to explain his aversion, the man simply nodded and smiled until the acquaintance was satisfied.
It wasn’t long after that.
2.3
He likes to dangle from the outer beams of the arm, sometimes by just one hand. He’ll do push-ups, too, and swing from the beams like a child on a jungle gym. All this, forty-something stories above the earth, where it’s always windy and the sounds of the night eerily distant. He’s so high that both people and cars look like toys. Detached but not removed, simultaneously within and apart. A Manhattan, not the Manhattan.
1.8
On a brisk winter morning, the trees as bare as menopause, his boss scheduled a private meeting. The man was thinking: promotion. His numbers were up and just last week he successfully negotiated the renewal of the Ferris-Bachman account, which was one of the company’s biggest clients.
The boss’ office had a floor-to-ceiling window with a nearly panoramic view of Midtown West. The man counted fifteen cranes, nine of which he’d climbed, including the great green one.
He could think of six places he’d rather be.
1.9
To his surprise the meeting was about the lumps. They were making his co-workers uneasy, like they were working next to a dying thing, and it was affecting their productivity. His boss had delivered an ultimatum: treatment or else. Though disappointed, the man understood. It was a perfectly reasonable request, not to mention humanitarian. But it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried in the past, he’d made plenty of appointments, each time with every intention of going, and yet when the day of the appointment came, infallibly, he never showed. It was like his very skin was keeping him from the doctor, as if the same impulse that had put his ass in the orange couch each Tuesday was now the very force keeping him from the appointments.
He knew how the whole thing would end before making the call.
1.10
The original song, simple and pleasant, was now bursting in places, the howl of horns and explosive percussion. It was as if the very fabric of the melody was tearing and the rips fascinated him. When they started up, which was happening with increased frequency, the man would stop whatever he was doing and carefully listen. Unlike the base melody, the plain and dependable rata-ta-ta, these blasts of sound were not at all catchy, they were shrill and cacophonous, difficult to hum or whistle, but the man couldn’t help thinking there was something connecting them all, a higher order somehow, if only he could put his finger on it….
The increase in frequency coincided with the number of lumps, which over the last few weeks had metastasized rapidly and now covered the entirety of his head. He’d taken to wearing a baseball hat in public, otherwise people would invariably stare at the lopsided lunacy that was his skull. The rest of him, however, remained as physically fit as ever; in fact, he was growing stronger, the act of climbing becoming less arduous, his muscles more familiar to the movements. The side-effects of the lumps did not manifest themselves in any other way. He did not suffer fatigue or morning sickness. There was no doubled vision or hallucinations of any kind. Only the music which rose and rose.
1.11
Even after receiving the letter of termination he found himself on the train each morning. But now instead of a briefcase, he held binoculars.
He worked the streets, keeping his eyes to the sky, a hand over his brow. For a while he lived off savings and credit cards. He ate lunch at the same Greek place each day, where the profusely sweaty owner told him stories of his son, a boy who had also developed a very large, lumpy head. According to the Greek, his son ended up moving to Switzerland, where he trained as a mountaineer.
Other than head gear and Greek food the man seldom bought much else. And when his lease expired, except for a backpack’s worth of stuff, donated his belongings and took the train back into the city. There he lived, sleeping in parks and under bridges. His clothes turned to rags and his hair grew nappy and wild so that his face appeared only as two points of blue light admits a jungle of ferocious hair.
The music, however, never sounded more coherent. The explosions had expanded into searing landscapes of melody. Spidery jangles and euphoric smatterings. And yet, for all the pyrotechnics, the song’s most elemental features remained the same, the core harmony resolute and unflinching—rata-ta-ta, rata-ta-ta. From the original tune, all else flowed and, in a more recent development, he was flowing with it.
During especially violent crescendos, as the mad wham of drum and key spiral towards a limit they never reach, the man, temporarily possessed by the score, leaps and twists in fantastic displays, often accompanied by whoops and screams. The sounds are guttural and sharp. Never words but tongues. Garbled letters with jagged edges, as if the words had been dropped, shattered and spit out. The displays themselves aren’t new, he’s had episodes like these for months now. But never in public, not with his hat on. Up until now the yelps and contortions have been confide to his apartment, behind walls of stereo, or under bridges, alone and unheard.
1.12
On a Tuesday afternoon, walking up Franklin, past the construction site and towards the bodega next to the souvenir shop, the music began its insatiable climb and his body followed like a shock-trained organism. The radical twists and cries parted the busy sidewalk like Moses before the Red Sea, people nearly trampling over one another to get out of his way. The man flailed and gnashed until the immediate sidewalk was empty, until he was consumed by his own tango. The massive head atop a wicked blur, cars zooming by in the heat.
2.4
All around star-speckled edifices twinkle like acres of space and below, the streets organize into a great grid of sequence and degree. The man straddles a beam, heart practically bursting from his chest, as he takes the city in where he is untethered and most real. The rail system of his past life replaced by the patterns of the climb, the question of the key. The prospect of going back to it seems as impossible as the prospect of escaping seemed. He’d exchanged air conditioning for heat, couches for beams and this was his reward….
2.5
In a nearby building, he spies a team of cleaning ladies swarming over a field of cubicles. He imagines the roasted dust of vacuuming, the acidic tang of cleaning products. For a second he can almost smell them both. But probably it’s just some funk blowing in from New Jersey.
The man closes his eyes and smiles. For now, his brain is quiet and the lumps gone, his head returned to its normal size. The possibility of falling never enters his mind, but the impulse to jump throbs insistently, like a wounded knee. He isn’t sure what this means, if it means anything, but doesn’t let it bog him down, not up here, at the top of the future.