The Leading Man

The boy was born with fingers shaped like keys. All except one, the pinkie on the right hand, had

sharp ridges running along the inner length, and a point at the tip. They were made of flesh, with

nerves and pores, but of a tougher texture, more hardened and specific. As a child, the boy had a

difficult time learning to hold a pen and use scissors, but he was resilient and figured out his own

method fast enough. His true task was to find the nine doors.

• • •

Door one he found as a kid; it was his front-door key. He did not expect this because it seemed

so obvious but one day he came home from school and was locked out; his mother, usually home, had

just begun taking some kind of sculpture class and was off molding clay and forgot to leave a key

under the welcome mat. So he was unwelcome, in his own home. He cried for a bit and tromped on

some pansies as revenge and got so frustrated staring at the lock, such a simple piece of metal

separating him from his palace of food and bed and TV and telephone, that he stuck the index finger of

his right hand inside. It shoved deep into the lock, bumping around, trying to find a perfect spatial

match. Nothing clicked. But he’d enjoyed the sensation so he tried the middle finger next. Too big.

The pinkie on the left hand: too small; it wiggled inside like a wire. It was the ring finger on his right

hand that slipped inside, easy as a glove, ridges filling the humps and the boy settled it deep, rotated

his entire hand, heard the click, and the door opened cleanly. Inside. He ripped his finger from the

door and let out some kind of vicious delighted laugh.

When his mother came home, two hours later, hands red with clay, he pulled her straight to the door

and showed her the trick. Shove in, turn, click, open. His mother kept laughing. And I didn’t even

want to buy this house! she said, holding him close. And to imagine, what if we hadn’t? The boy

shrugged. He had no idea how to answer that question.

The second key fit the lock of the bank deposit box that held all the securities of the family. The

two had gone on a trip to the bank and the boy was bored in the room of security boxes while his

mother spoke worriedly with an accountant. He stuck the pinkie on his left hand into their security box

and ta da. He was very surprised. So was his mother. I didn’t especially like this bank either, she

said. Can I have some of this money? the boy asked, looking with interest at the large piece of gold

sitting in the box like a glowing turd. No, she said, but I’ll buy you a burger. They went to his favorite

burger joint where the lettuce was shredded and the soda ice crushed, and she told him about how she

was making a clay version of him. It’s you, she said, but you are surrounded by doors. You are

standing on doors and wearing doors and your hand of keys is held up like a deck of cards. The boy

splayed his fingers out on the table. Gin, he said.

The third, fourth, and fifth keys opened his camp trunk, the neighbor’s car, and the storage room

of the school cafeteria, respectively. He opened the cafeteria door one day at school when he was

wandering around, not wanting to go home yet because there was nothing to do and no one to be with.

All the other kids were off playing sports. The boy opened the back of the cafeteria with his right

pointer, to his own almost dulled surprise, and sat with the frozen chicken nuggets for a while. It got

boring quickly so he went home, opened the door with his other finger, and watched TV. His father

was away at war. No one knew what war it was because it was an unannounced war, which made it

worse because he could tell no one because that would cause great governmental problems. So he just

held on to that information and when his friends asked where his dad was on Open House Night at

school, he said, He’s away on business. He wanted to yell out, The business of saving everyone’s

life! but he knew that would cause further questions so he kept his mouth shut.

His mother brought home the clay sculpture. It was about two feet tall and looked very little like

him, and the doors resembled flying walls. One day when he was home alone and she wasn’t back

yet, having enrolled in another course, this one called How to Make Glass, he threw some baseballs

at the sculpture but the clay held strong. The boy was twelve now. His hands were growing, but his

fingers still fit the same locks. Somehow they stayed the size they needed to be, while the rest of the

hand-palm, knuckles, wrist-grew with him.

The sixth and seventh keys fit doors in France. His mother and he went to Paris to visit his father

who was on leave from the mysterious war and together the three of them had lunch at a café

surrounded by iron lamp poles and they ate crusty bread and soft cheese with red ripe tomatoes. His

father looked older and stronger than ever, with big arms and a ruddy tan, and the boy stood next to

him and wanted to push all his keys at once into the man’s palm, to click and turn his father open, to

make him tell what was happening. Secrets. His father and mother shared a room in the hotel and the

boy had the room next door, with its strange-smelling comforter and a weird phone that had numbers

in different configurations. He learned how to say Ou est la porte? which means Where is the door?

and the porter at the hotel, after ignoring the question for the first five times, finally showed him a

door, standing alone, on the lobby level, hoping to shut the boy up. Using the middle finger on his left

hand, the boy opened to reveal just a closet, empty, with a few clothes hanging up and several

swinging hangers. The porter babbled in amazement, Mais qu’est-ce que c’est que ça?! and took one

of the hanging shirts straight away to the maitre d’ at the restaurant who had been bemoaning the loss

of it for more than a year and the boy said, to no one, I suppose I’m just going to sit here, and he went

inside the closet and curled up on the floor. The porter, when he returned, brought the boy a glass of

wine and a piece of apple. When his mother found him, asleep on the floor of the closet, she hugged

him for a long time, and he showed her how his hand was international.

At the Louvre, the boy felt the pointer finger on his left hand itch after greeting Mona Lisa under

glass. He found the docent room the way a hound finds blood, and played gin rummy with a pooped

guide whose earrings were little diamond stars. His father was off doing military business that day.

When they returned to the hotel, the mother angry at the boy because he’d vanished, they found the

father weary on the bed, looking worried, his ruddy tan fading like a bright couch left too long in the

On the airplane home, the mother cried and the boy went to the bathroom and thought of his

father as he peed, and then when he flushed he sent his pee like a message to his father because he

imagined it flying out of the plane, free of him, into the world.

Go win the war, the boy thought, and come home. Or, he thought, don’t win the war and come home.

Or, he thought, don’t come home but make Mother stop missing you. Or, he thought, make me stop

missing you.

He rubbed his keys against his palm. He was almost thirteen. He washed his hands with the

lavender airplane soap and returned to his seat.

He didn’t fit his eighth key until he was twenty years old.

His father did come back from the war after another year, but he was not the same man. He was

scared of noises and he had a strange white blindness that he experienced when the day got too hot.

The family considered moving, over and over, to cooler quarters; considered it, then unconsidered it.

The boy took drama classes but always played the funny weird guy and never the leading man. He

watched his mother take How to Make Glass II, the second in the series of five, and one afternoon she

came home with a tote bag full of huge clear squares. She said this was her final exam for the class,

and she’d gotten an A. Look, she said, pointing, no bubbles, she said. The boy asked her what they

should do with it now that she’d made it. She said break it. So they took it outside and broke it in two

and then his mother looked sad and sat down and the boy broke it in four, then eight, then sixteen, and

his mother was still sad, she started to weep, softly, and the boy shattered the glass into hundreds of

pieces.

His first girlfriend bought the chastity belt as a joke. He couldn’t open it. They scrambled

around, used the tin key that it came packaged with, opened her up, had sex anyway. Her underwear

was thin and full of holes and the boy kept it that night in his bed, after they had parted, and thought

about the way she butted her head into his shoulder like a goat. When they broke up, he walked to the

bank and put the underwear in the safe deposit box right on top of that one piece of gold. His mother

never said a word about it. The bank had changed ownership by now and had a new color scheme-
navy and dark green-but the lock was exactly the same.

His father went to the hospital for the blindness. He told the doctor that he saw whiteness

everywhere, as if he’d been driving in the snow for days and days, and that he couldn’t find his

balance or his peace. The hospital gave him painkillers and sunglasses. The boy’s father sat in the

kitchen with a cup of milk in a mug, his palm covering the opening so he wouldn’t have to look at its

white flat top and he said, It’s not like I saw anything that horrible. The son said, Really? and the

father said, Son, the truth is I can’t even quite remember what I saw. Is it bright in here? he asked. The

son looked outside at the setting sun and the lucid calm of dusk.

The eighth key fit the cabinet at a weaponry store. He went there for his college war survey class

to learn the difference between muskets and spears. The man who owned the weapon store had a big

belly and cheeks stretched over his face like poorly upholstered furniture. He would be hard to make

in clay. The man was reading a book called How to Meet Girls, and when the boy asked to see some

stuff, the man said he’d lost the key to the back cabinet where the small revolvers lived. The boy felt

his finger itching, walked over, and opened it himself. The man’s cheeks raised a full inch on his face,

furniture renewal. The boy shot some targets and felt like a soldier and wrote a brilliant report. He

read How to Meet Girls cover to cover.

His mother came to his college graduation. His father could not because the light of the sun

blinded him and seeing people all dressed in one kind of uniform reminded him of the army and made

his head feel like it would explode. I can’t stand it, he told his son. All those bodies on the lawn in

black graduation gowns. It’s like one huge goddamn foxhole. His mother wore a dress she’d made in

her sewing class, with contrasting patches of velvet, burlap, silk.

He went to France for a graduation present. He returned to the Louvre, deciding he wanted to play

more gin rummy. He located the door, but when he stuck his finger in the lock, it didn’t fit anymore.

They had apparently changed locks since his last visit. This made him feel unsettled, as if kicked out

of his own home. He wondered if that finger would find a new lock now. He thought: Yes. And no.

And I don’t know.

He met a French girl named Sophie, sitting in a yellow-and-brown wicker chair at a café, eating a

butter-and-sugar crepe. He fell in love with her within a couple of days. She puffed her lips when she

spoke, like the French do. In bed, he put his finger inside of her, the ring finger on his left hand, the

finger that means marriage, as if to turn her inside and unlock her body. She came fast; she was loose

and loving, and loud, and luscious, but she hadn’t been locked, either. I love you, she told him, after a

week, with a thick French accent, lips puffing. He decided to stay for the rest of August. They made

love all the time and he told her his “uncle” couldn’t see because he’d watched bad things in the war

and Sophie said, What war? and the boy shook his head. I don’t know, he said. Some war somewhere

kind of near here.

When he left France, Sophie said she’d write but she only sent one letter total. He returned to his

hometown and found an apartment near his mother and father. He went to the man, still sitting around

the kitchen.

Do you know who were you fighting? he asked.

Some other guy, said his father, stirring his tea.

What did you see? asked his son.

Not much, said his father. Some blood, he said. I think something got taken away from me, his

father said. I think they took something from me but I never even felt it happen when they did.

The boy placed his right hand of keys into his father’s open palm: the security box, the neighbor’s

car, the closet in France, the docent room at the Louvre that had been changed.

You say you’ve opened eight so far? said his father. Which is the ninth?

The son waggled his ring finger on his left hand. Well, go open some doors, his father said,

squeezing his hand. The one you open with the ninth key will be connected to the woman you will

marry. Maybe.

The boy took his hand back, and agreed that would be very sweet, if it worked out like that. He had

been feeling a vague dissatisfaction at the mundane nature of the other eight keys. There was a report

on the news that NASA had lost the key to the space shuttle, and so the boy called up right away and

offered his assistance. The whole flight over he had the national anthem singing in his head. NASA

took him straightaway to a sealed white room with serious people who shook his hand and had fierce

eye contact, and members of the FBI lined the walls in case he was a terrorist in disguise. The boy

tried all his fingers twice but none worked. The NASA people shook their heads, and he heard

someone say, I told you so. He had a fleeting feeling of terror that the FBI might arrest him for

something his father had done and an even bigger wish that an FBI man would arrest him, take him

aside, and tell him what had happened. What is the greatest mystery of your family? he asked the

older lady on the flight home, as they watched the movie without sound, and she looked at him

thoughtfully but never answered. At home, he shoved his finger into every door he could see for a few

weeks, but decided to stop, as it was starting to make him unhappy, and signed himself up for a

sculpture class.

In the second class in the series on figure sculpture, the boy met a woman he wanted to marry.

After a year, they married. They spent the gold piece in the safe deposit box on the wedding and did it

up, and also did it dark so that his father could stand it. It was a night wedding. His father stood at the

microphone and made a toast with his eyes closed. The son danced with his bride, luminous in her

white dress; his father never once looked at the bride for fear his head would explode. That night, in

the hotel room, the bride looked at the ring on his key finger and asked him what that one opened and

he said he didn’t know. They made love in the big hotel bed with the strange-smelling comforter and

fell asleep face-to-face, feet tangled together.

They went to Paris on their honeymoon and found the closet in the hotel that the boy, now a man,

could open, and when the porter wasn’t looking, they snuck inside and made love. Due to the intrusion

of the walls, sex was uncomfortable in the closet, so they ended up going to the front desk and getting

a room anyway. There, on the bed in the hotel, the man told his new wife about his father and the war.

He told her everything he knew which was very little but still, other than the quick “uncle” confession

to Sophie, he’d never told anyone. He had to continually smother down a fear of the FBI busting into

the wiretapped room and taking him to FBI jail as he spoke. The new wife was understanding but

equally confused. We were at war then? she said. The man said, You are the first person I have ever

really told. Her face was dim in the light of Parisian dusk, filtering through the windows and turning

the room golden. He felt glad he’d married her. They went downstairs and had a feast of duck in

apricot sauce in the hotel dining room and the porter, who was now significantly older, recognized

him and gave him a free crème brülée. After dinner, the porter insisted he open the closet again,

which he did, with embarrassment, because to him it still smelled like his wife’s desire and not like

an abandoned closet in the least.

They found a good apartment in town, near his parents. They got a dog at the pound who had been

abused but was responsive. His mother came over with teas from around the world and sat at the

kitchen table in her patchwork outfits, and she and the dog got along. The son still tried to ask his

father the right question that would reveal everything but all he ever got in reply was a sad shaking of

the head.

On his thirtieth birthday, he was walking to work, to the factory where he broke glass for a

living, when he heard screaming in the streets. He passed a TV in a bar, and the local news was

explaining how a little boy was locked in a metal shed by accident and the door was too thick and

couldn’t be banged down. The young man took a detour on his route and went toward the noise and

the banging. Apparently the boy had been in the shed for hours and air would run out soon. This was a

special boy too-the one known about town whose elbows were pointed in such a way that made it

easy to open tin cans.

As he approached, the crowd, who knew him well, parted willingly when they saw him walking

over. He could hear the boy inside the metal room, sobbing up the air. The young man with the hands

of keys paused a moment in front of the metal door. He could feel his finger itching. He wanted to

wait for a second and hold this moment, the moment before he became a finite person. He could feel

the air ringing with it-his life span a life span, the world a round ball. The crowd screamed and the

boy sobbed and the young man put the ring finger on his left hand in the lock.

Click.

Hero.

The trapped boy ran out crying, gasping, elbows in wings, and the town lifted the young man

with the key fingers on their shoulders and they wrote headlines and gave him a medal and the mayor

shook his now-complete hand.

After the award ceremony, he went to his parents’ house. His father was sleeping in a quiet dim

room, and the young man slipped the medal over his father’s head. He’d passed many doors that day

and thought: so I can’t open that one or that one or that one. From now on, all the doors in the world

were as closed to him as to everyone else. The older man kept sleeping and the young man hummed a

song to himself inside the cool dark room.