Are We There Yet? (22 page)

Elijah doesn't see how he and Julia can go on with the meal, but they do. She asks him about home, and he finds himself telling her about the time Mindy got fired from her temp job at the Gap because she couldn't fold properly, and the time his friends Max and Cindy got caught making out in Cindy's parents' bed. Her parents never said a word about it, but her mother threw out the sheets.

Julia is laughing, and Elijah is smiling, and to any other person in the room they must look like a happy couple. But all Elijah can think is,
It's over
. And there's nothing in Julia's face that says anything different.

“What do you want?” Julia asks over dessert.

“From what?” Elijah asks.

“From love. I mean, from the person you're with.”

“Love is enough,” Elijah answers.

Julia shakes her head. “It's more complicated than that. I know I'm only, what, three years older than you? But let me tell you, it can get so complicated. Try to keep it simple. Here's what I think. We all want someone to build a fort with. We want somebody to swap crayons with and play hide-and-seek with and live out imaginary stories with. We start out getting that from our family. Then we get it from our friends. And then, for whatever reasons, we get it into our heads that we need to get that feeling—that
intimacy
—from a single someone else. We call that growing up. But really, when you take sex out of it, what we want is a companion. And we make that so damn hard to find.”

When dessert is over, Julia pays with a Gold Card. Then she touches Elijah's hand and tells him it's probably time to get his things.

She seems sad when she says it. But he can tell he's not going to change her mind.

Ari walks Danny back to the hotel. He has an early flight the next morning, otherwise they'd probably walk all night. They are talking tangents now, but somehow the tangents connect. Ari is talking about all the places he's been. Danny feels like they are all the places he wants to go. The Sahara. Budapest. Sydney. New York.

Danny pulls Ari into a 7-Eleven and shows him the Italian translation of his work. Ari is amused, and asks if the snack cake is suitable for framing. Danny says he doesn't think so—but perhaps that can be the slogan for the new Pop-Tarts campaign.

Ari wants to buy one of the Divines, but Danny is afraid he might actually try to eat it. So instead they get Slurpees—their own shamelessly American way of celebrating the Fourth of July.

“So your job sounds like fun,” Ari says as they leave the convenience store.

Danny nods. “I'm afraid that's the problem. Maybe I enjoy it too much.”

“I know what you mean.”

“Someday we'll have a balance, right?”

“Someday. Yes.”

Across Rome, towers chime midnight. Danny raises his Slurpee in a toast.

“To reunions,” he says.

“To reunions,” Ari echoes.

The Slurpees don't taste the same as they used to. Maybe that's because it's a foreign country. Maybe it's because nothing
ever tastes the same as it did when you were ten. Or maybe the 7-Eleven syrup has changed.

Danny and Ari ponder this and soon ponder other things. Before they forget, they exchange addresses and phone numbers and e-mail addreses. Danny promises they will keep in touch.

At the hotel, Ari hugs Danny goodbye. Danny is not used to being fully hugged—just the sports-guy hugging-without-touching. But this is the real thing, the hug that lets you feel held.

They say goodbye at least five times, and then Ari leaves. Danny heads straight back to his room—he's had a wonderful night, and he doesn't want to press his luck. He sticks his tongue out at himself in the mirror and finds that it is still the color of a neon sky. He remembers how he and Elijah would have contests to see whose tongue could stay blue the longest. Hours without drinking, trying not to swallow needlessly. This makes him smile now. He realizes it will always make him smile, if he can hold on to his brother in some way. If he can make his way through all the distractions, back to what they once shared. And still share.

He takes a shower and heads to bed, ready for a good night's sleep. Then, at the last minute, he thinks of something else to do.

He reopens his letter to Will and adds another page.

He writes about how things have changed and how things don't have to change. He can't go back to the past, he knows. But maybe there's a chance of getting Elijah back.

Elijah's possessions haven't been scattered far, so it doesn't take him long to gather them. Julia keeps asking him if he's sure he knows where Danny is staying. She offers to call, to let Danny know Elijah is coming. Elijah tells her not to bother.

She won't give him an explanation about what's happening, and why he has to leave. All at once, he's realizing she's not the kind of person who gives explanations. She might not know herself.

He wants to ask,
Are you sure?
But he's afraid the line between a yes and a no would be frustratingly unclear.

Soon his bag is packed. There's nothing else to do. The maid has already cleaned up. There's just the matter of leaving.

“So goodbye, I guess.”

Julia hands him a slip of paper.

“My parents' address,” she says. “You can always reach me there.”

“Oh.”

“Look, I know this probably isn't what you thought would—”

“It's okay. Really. I just have to go.”

Julia hovers in front of the door.“I mean, when I said it was the end, it wasn't—oh, I don't know. The end doesn't have to be the end, you know. You can stay, if you'd like.”

“No. It's okay.”

“I see. No, you're right. Can I get your address?”

Elijah writes it down for her. It feels like an empty gesture now, whereas once he thought it would be the key to their future.

“I'm sorry,” she says. She hasn't opened the door, but she's no longer standing in front of it. “Tell Danny I'm sorry, too.”

“For what?”

“For ruining your holiday.”

Elijah knows that any goodbye kiss won't end up being a goodbye kiss. So he just bows his head a little and thanks her for dinner. Then he opens the door and leaves. In the hallway, he stops for a moment and waits to hear her turn the lock.

She doesn't, but he heads to the street anyway.

Elijah needs to walk. He needs to forget about destinations and meanings and plans. He feels like a door has opened and he has walked into a world filled with his own mistakes.

Once, when he and his friend Jared were on acid, they stumbled across a pad of Post-its. Immediately, they began to label everything they encountered: DOOR and BOOK and HAND. Each Post-it bestowed a cosmic sense of clarity. The door was a door because the writing said DOOR. The floor was a hand because the writing said HAND. It seemed, for a moment, that they could live their lives that way, as omniscient identifiers and casual illusionists.

Elijah wishes he had the acid now, and the Post-its, so he could make Julia the JULIA he wanted her to be, and his life the LIFE that he had thought he had been living. He wants to bend time backward, so he could write dozens of postcards to Cal, so he could label as SORRY the very things he's now done. If Danny's Post-it said BROTHER instead of DANNY, would that work? Could Elijah take an eraser to ROME and suddenly make it HOME?

He is not angry with Julia. He is confused by her actions, and his own. As he walks through the midnight streets, he tries to reach into her side of the conversation, to pull out the cardinal truths.

He keeps picturing Cal in Providence, walking to the P.O. box, hoping for some word from him.

He imagines them building forts.

He thinks of his parents, and how concerned they'd be to see him walking where all the stores have long since closed.

He imagines Julia back in her hotel room, sitting absolutely still, or moving completely on.

There can be no destination. He can't go back to her, and he can't go on to Danny. He doesn't want to have to account for himself right now. Either Danny will say something and Elijah will explode, or Danny will say nothing and Elijah will disappear completely.

It's not about the city, it's about the walking. Really, he could be anywhere now, because he wants to be nowhere. Rome is lost on him. It's the time of night when no one walks alone. Couples eye him warily, as he walks with his bag slung over his shoulder. He finds himself on the same street he and Julia took to the Colosseum, only it's totally different now.

Every ounce of his soul tells him this will make a good story to tell his friends—an anecdote in the biography, an incident in the life. But part of the sorrow he feels—and it is that—comes from the distance he sees between himself and the storytelling, the hole that has ripped open between the here and the there. He hasn't been thinking of there nearly enough. He hasn't been a good enough friend.

I'm sorry
, he says to Cal, and to his parents, and to Julia, and to Danny.

Because he doesn't know what else to say.

“
Stai bene?
”a voice asks.

He has been standing still on the sidewalk. Now he looks across the street and sees a young woman and her date. The man wants to keep walking, but the woman has stopped.

“I don't understand,” Elijah explains.

“Are you all right?”

“Oh, yes. Thank you.”

“Are you lost?”

“I'm not sure.”

“Where are you going?”

“The Pantheon?” Elijah says. It's the first building that comes to mind. “I'm supposed to meet someone outside the Pantheon.”

The man laughs and takes hold of the woman's elbow. She shrugs him off, whispering,
“Un attimo.”
Then she crosses the street, pulling a pen from her pocketbook. Her mouth is all lipstick, her eyes dark as the lashes.

“Give me your hand,” she says. Elijah holds out his palm. She takes hold of it and draws a map. At the end of the map is a star.

“That,” she says, “is the Pantheon.”

“Sofia!”
the man calls. With a curious smile, she turns and runs back across the street.

“Thank you!” Elijah shouts.

“Avanti diritto!”
she calls back, and is gone.

Elijah stares at his hand. It is a complex map, without any names. Just a beginning, an ending, and a path.

Remarkably, he finds his way. Never once closing his fingers. Never once looking anywhere but where he is.

By the time he reaches the Pantheon, there are hints that the sun will soon rise. He sits on a bench and stares at the building's exterior—rather plain, with only a hint of what's inside.

As he waits for it to open, he falls asleep.