He'll light one for Cal. She's Christian, so that must be legal.
He wonders what she'd wish for. He wonders what she'd want to tell the saint.
He touches the wick against another candle. He wonders if its wish transfers with the flame.
The wax drips onto his hand. An old woman shuffles up and takes a candle for herself.
Cal. Cal. Cal.
“Happiness,” Elijah whispers. Then he places the candle at the altar. The wax cools on his hand as he pulls away.
The old woman lights her candle, and a smile flickers across her face. Elijah thinks of birthdays, and wonders why birthday wishes aren't made when the candles are lit. If he could have his way, candles would never be blown out.
After a few minutes of candle staring, he drops some extra coins into the candle box. Not for the candle, but for all candles. No payback necessary.
Back at the hotel, Danny realizes too late that it's too early to take a nap. He wrestles across his bed and tries to contort himself into sleepfulness, but it's no use. After a half hour of impatient waking, Danny shifts to the side of the bed and picks up the phone. It takes a showdown with a contentious operator (who seemingly wouldn't know an AT&T calling card if it rode a gondola up to her desk) for Danny to place a call to his voice mail. There are nine new messages, which makes Danny happy, even as he mentally chastises all the people who have left him messages when his outgoing message clearly states that he is away.
4 to save, 6 to delete, 1 to respond. These dialing commands have become an essential part of Danny's being, his voice-mail mantra. Even after a live phone conversation, Danny finds himself hitting 6 to erase what he's just heard. Now he plows through the messages with corporate efficiency. He is happy to hear that there aren't any emergencies, and he is happy to hear that not much else is happening, either. Message six is from Cody in Legal, who informs Danny that one of his catchphrases has just been registered for trademarking. Danny smiles at that and forwards the message to Allison. He tells her he loves to be working in a country where the phrase “All the Oil You Need” can be owned.
After listening through the messages (sometimes twice), Danny faces a different set of options. 1 to record a message, 8 to change a message, 3 to listen to saved messages. Danny 1s his work-friend John, just to say hey. Then he 1s Allison to tell her all is well and that he hopes work isn't too chaotic with him gone. As soon as he's hit the # key to end, he realizes he has something more to say, so he 1s her again and tells her he hopes she's not working too too late. Then he phones his assistant and says the same thing. He thinks about 1ing Gladner or Gladner to thank them for the time off. But even he sees how ridiculous this would sound, especially since they've sent him away to think of things other than work.
Impulsively—reluctant to hang up quite yet—Danny hits 3. Then he lies back on the bed and closes his eyes.
You have eight old messages, the voice-mail femail says. Your first message is one year, five months, and twelve days old.
Cue: The Twilight Zone theme. Starting with a click of the tape recorder, then growing louder.
“Yes, folks, we've entered a world of bright lights and big cities …a world of wine, women, and thongs … a world where debutantes still roam the SoHo plains in search of the perfect two-hundred-dollar T-shirt bargain. Yes, we have entered … the Danny Zone! Do-do-do-do Do-do-do-do. My name is Enigo Montoya, but you can call me Will for short. I will soon be entering the Danny Zone and need to arrange the peculiars. So PLEASE give a call back at 415-66—hell, you can use your ESP to complete the number. I eagerly await your call. If you don't call back in fifteen seconds, I will self-destruct. Fifteen. Fourteen. Thirteen …”
One year, five months, and twelve days old. Which would make it one year, five months, and two days since he last saw Will, his best friend in the whole wide world—until the whole wide world intervened. He had flown in five days after the message, while Danny was caught in a tempest of work.
“Can you make time?” Will had asked.
“I can't make time,” Danny had responded,“but if you know someone who does make time, I'd be more than happy to buy a lot of it from him.”
Before the call, it had been another year since they'd seen each other. In that year, Danny had stayed in the same place and had progressed in the same job. Will had lived in Spain, Nebraska, and California.He'd been a playwright, a computer consultant, and a door-to-door salesman. He had a million stories to tell. Danny only had one or two. He didn't want to bore Will with the details of his work, and at the same time he resented the way such details became boring. Will wanted to stay up late and go to clubs where the barmaids were playfully cruel. He wanted to hit galleries and pawnshops and diners where a grilled cheese still cost two dollars and the tomato came free. Danny didn't know such places. After two days, he felt he didn't know the city at all.
“What have you been doing?” Will asked with mock exasperation.
And the only answer Danny could think of was, Living my life.
Will wanted Danny to cut work. Danny felt he couldn't. Will wanted Danny to get a tattoo. Danny wouldn't.
They parted on good terms, but it felt like parting, and it felt like terms. Danny hadn't meant to lose touch with Will— but all it took was one lost change-of-address card and the fact that Will refused to have e-mail. Danny heard word through friends of friends—Will was now a potter in Oregon—but he knew it wasn't enough to send word back. After all, Will knew where Danny was. It wasn't like he'd moved.
Please press 4 to save, 6 to delete, or 7-3 to listen to this message again, the voice-mail femail insists. Danny hits 4.
1—to respond—is only an option for internal calls.
While Danny dials transatlantic, Elijah walks to the top of the basilica. Not to the dome, but to the balcony. Touched fullforce by the sun, he watches over the square, tourists moving like rivulets of water, birds shifting like newsprint fingerprints. A string band concertos to the left, while a trumpeter blasts from the right. Strangely, the two sounds complement rather than conflict.
The bell tower begins to ring. The time is marked.
Elijah breathes. He breathes deeply and tries to pull his sight into his breath, and his hearing into his breath, and his feeling into his breath.
He knows this will be his goodbye to Venice. The rest will be walking and packing and checking out. This is the height. This is the time for thanks.
He thinks of Julia, the stranger, and says goodbye to her as well.
He thinks of Julia, and she appears.
She doesn't see him at first. She steps out onto the balcony and walks to the edge. She leans against the railing and dangles her head over. She is smiling at the square, like a child tummydown on a swing, pretending to fly.
Elijah knows he is not part of this picture. He knows he is seeing more of her than he would be brave enough to give of himself.
Wonder lights her face. She stands up straight again and shakes her head in a barely perceptible motion. She is watching sunset, even though the sun is still high in the sky.
Then, with another shake of her head, she moves a step back. Her smile is now self-aware. She knows she is a bit loony in her wonder, but she doesn't really mind.
Elijah walks over before he can think about it. He walks over because what he feels is strange enough to be a dream, and in dreams ordinary rules do not apply.
“Hello again,” he says.
She turns to him and looks momentarily surprised. Not displeased. But surprised.
“Hello,” she says. “Isn't this wonderful?”
He looks back over the square.
“Absolutely.”
“It makes me want to—”
“—fly?”
Julia laughs. “Yes! Exactly! How did you know what I was going to say?”
And the answer is: Because I was going to say the same thing.
Elijah feels the electric rush that comes when coincidence turns into coinciding. He feels nervous and comfortable, disbelieving and amazed.
He does not need to know what is happening in order to know something is happening.
“Where are you from?” he asks.
“Toronto,” she replies, her inflections now explained.
“Have you been here long?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
They are not looking at each other. Instead, they stare out into the square, each extremely aware of the other's every breath, every move.
This doesn't make sense, he thinks.
Her arm brushes his, and when she turns to see him, loose strands of her short hair blow over her eyes.
“I'm going to Florence,” he says.
And she says, “I am, too.”
III. FLORENCE
Since Danny can stand Elijah's driving even less than Elijah can stand Danny's, it is Danny who drives the rent-a-car. Within five minutes, they are lost on a road where it's prolongedly impossible to make a U-turn.In response, Danny swears like a drag queen with a broken heel as Elijah bends and folds the map into something approaching origami.
It is not a good moment.
Danny swerves through the lanes, dodging the European cars that whiz by at incomprehensible speeds. Elijah wonders how guilty his parents will feel when both their sons get trapped in a fiery wreck in the middle of a prepaid vacation.
We are going to die, Elijah genuinely thinks. Or, at the very least, we are going to kill a cyclist.
He takes some comfort in the fact that the stop signs still read STOP.
Eventually, the road they're on turns into the road they had meant to get on in the first place. Once on the highway, Danny relaxes behind the wheel. Elijah puts a CD in the stereo—Paul Simon's Graceland, something they can agree upon.
Once the music is in, Elijah decides to close his eyes. If he can't see, he won't be scared.
He thinks of Julia and the hour they'd managed to steal before Elijah had to leave Venice. A spare cafe hour of signals and conversation, sharing the arcane facts of their lives, touching upon the founding of Rhode Island and the temperature of a Toronto summer day. Finally, he'd had to leave, their goodbye drawn out over a number of goodbyes and one-last-things to say. He didn't know where he'd be staying in Florence, but she had been able to write down the name of her pensione.He promised to be there as soon as she arrived.
Danny had not been happy when Elijah returned so late. When Danny demanded to know why he was so tardy (such a schoolteacher word), Elijah disguised Julia in a fit of mumbles and evasions, saying quite simply that he'd been lost. Danny could believe this easily enough.
Now they are making up for Elijah's delay, as Danny fulfills all of his test-drive fantasies. Even with his eyes closed and the music playing, Elijah can sense the impatient speed. There are two kinds of drivers, he thinks: those who see the world around the road, and those who fixate on the road itself.
We'll end up where we want to be. We always do.
Elijah reclines in the melody of “Under African Skies” and thinks once more of Julia. The promise of Florence has become the promise of their next encounter. But unlike Danny, he is not in a rush. He wants to feel the nervous sweetness of expectation, if only for a little while longer.
“Open your eyes.”
Elijah hears Danny's voice and wants to reject it. He's been safely, happily asleep, dreaming of a gondolier who sings love songs to a maiden on a bridge. Surely, Danny doesn't need to wake him. Surely, he can read his own map. Why can't he leave Elijah to his reverie?