But now—what does it mean? Cal is suddenly a homemovie presence. The feeling of non-feeling is inescapable. Elijah assumes it will pass. He reasons it out—in a corner of a restaurant in a corner of a city, it is natural to feel Away and Apart. As soon as he gets back to the hotel, he'll be able to pull out his Magic 8 Ball keychain and conjure Cal from the radio-waved ether. Simple as that.
As Elijah drifts off and Joseph mercifully brings the first course, Danny's thoughts also turn to the distance from home. He thinks about voice mail and conference calls, even though he hates himself for doing so. He's not so far gone that he doesn't know such thoughts are inappropriate. But such thoughts bring urgency to his life. Without them, he would have no clear game to play.
“Remind me to call Allison when we get back to the hotel,” he tells Elijah.
“Allison?” Elijah echoes with a distinct question mark.
“Yes. She's working on the ranch-dressing account with me. I need to check in with her. See what's going on.”
“Oh.” Elijah's curiosity deflates.
“We're supposed to get the shooting script in for this great ad. Spike Lee might direct it.”
“Oh.”
You'd think I had the most boring job in the world, Danny sighs to himself. You'd think I was an accountant. Or a dentist. I mean, Spike Lee's a big deal. Advertising is as creative as being a snotty English-major-in-training. Elijah's problem, in Danny's mind, is that he has no sense of what it takes to make a living.
Danny's problem, in Elijah's mind, is that he has no sense of what it takes to make a life.
When Danny mentioned Allison's name, Elijah had been hoping she was a girlfriend. Danny used to have dozens of girlfriends, most of them nicer to Elijah than Danny himself. In high school, Marjorie Keener had brought along an extra flower for Elijah when she picked Danny up for the prom. Angelica, Danny's freshman-year college girlfriend, had spent most of their spring break playing Boggle with Elijah until the wee hours of the morning. (Danny never played, because Danny always lost.) Sophie—from junior year—had been cool, even if Elijah had spotted her eating disorder before Danny ever noticed. That relationship didn't last very long.
Now Danny didn't have anyone. He had Allison—an office full of Allisons. No doubt the only thing he ever shared with them was an elevator ride.
“So how's your job going this summer?” Danny asks. He's already plowed through his pasta. Elijah has taken two bites.
“It's okay,” Elijah replies. He'd almost forgotten about working in his school's admissions office. It was that kind of job.
“So you sort through applications?”
“Nah. We just file last year's applications. There was this one girl—she painted her whole room the school colors and sent in a photo with her holding a paintbrush. Just to get in.”
“Did she get in?”
“Yes, actually.”
“And that's all you do all day—file? Will that get you into college?”
“Well, we can't all be in advertising.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
Elijah bends back over his pasta. Danny tries to signal Joseph for more wine, but Joseph is nowhere to be found.
Danny and Elijah are both struck by the abruptness of their conversation. They both know they've gone a little bit too far. They've broken their unwritten agreement—they are allowed to gibe each other, but it's never supposed to get too personal.
Danny had always been too old to beat up Elijah. Even to a ten-year-old, a seven-year difference seems unfair. Danny was not above using force to get his way—an arm twist for the remote control or a shove to get the front seat. But it was not the habitual violence symptomatic of a usual brother-brother relationship.
Instead, Danny showed Elijah the depth of his disdain. There were times of pure love, for sure. But when Danny wanted to strike out, he did it with a shrug, not a fist. If he wanted to, he could pretend Elijah wasn't there. Elijah could preen or caterwaul—whatever he did, he only made it worse in Danny's eyes. Eventually, Elijah gave up. He found his own private universe. And he learned his own form of disdain.
The bad can be found in anything. It is so much easier to find than the good. So when Elijah hears advertising, he thinks sellout and phony and liar. Most of all, he thinks, My brother is so different from me. He is so wrong.
And when Danny hears I'm going to be an English major when I get to college, he thinks pothead fallback and no sense of reality and penniless. He thinks, Anything but me.
Perhaps Joseph senses this divide as he brings the main course. He has brought them different dishes, but knows they will not share. There is sadness in his eyes, because he knows they will not experience the full joy of the meal.
The meal is, in fact, one of the best they've ever had. Even Elijah, who never thinks of food as something that can be enjoyed like a CD, is enraptured.
It is an experience they will talk about for years to come. And, more important, it is a meal they can talk about for the rest of the evening, all the way back to the hotel.
Elijah is nervous when the time comes to pay the check and leave the tip. But Danny surprises him by leaving thirty percent. They both chorus Joseph with thank-yous before they leave into the night. Joseph smiles and pats the two brothers on the back. He watches as they slowly walk to the vaporetto station. Then he returns to their table and pushes the chairs together before he leaves.
They are due to visit Murano the next morning.
Elijah cannot believe it is already their last day in Venice. He feels like he's only just arrived. The prospect of Florence (and furthermore Rome) excites him, but not as much as before. It is the traveler's great dilemma. When he arrived, Elijah had felt he was wandering over vast sands. Now he realizes he's been in an hourglass the whole time.
Will that get you into college?— Danny's words from last night. His question. The ever-present question.
The applications lie in unopened envelopes. Cal has put them in alphabetical order on his desk. She scribbles comments under the postmarks, the things she's found from visits he hasn't made, information sessions he hasn't even considered.
He knows he's supposed to hate high school. Everybody says they hate high school. The cliques, the insecurity, the pressure. But Elijah has somehow found a place that he loves. It is not childhood. It is not adulthood. It is now, and it too resides in the hourglass.
He'd chosen a high school his brother had never been. Teachers who had never heard Danny's name. Hallways that wouldn't bear his echo. He hadn't been sent away, although maybe he'd made it sound that way to the friends he was leaving back home. But he had wanted to go. He had wanted to live there and sleep there and wake there. He had wanted to be somewhere entirely new. Not because of Danny or his parents, who were at first a little sad about him going away, but then felt better when he said it was about getting a different experience, not about escaping. Funny, but at the time it had seemed like a grown-up thing to do. Planning for your future, his father had said. Once he got there, though, the future was the last thing on his mind. When he went home to his parents and his old friends, that was the past. And Cal and Ivan and the others were the present. The future? Maybe Danny was the future. But less so. The avoidable future.
Elijah lies awake for an hour before he rises from the hotel bed. He drifts from the past to the near past. He wishes memory could be as easy as breathing.
Thoughts of Julia begin to blur within the air.
The sound of small waves seems to bring on the daylight.
Danny has trouble waking up. The time zones have finally caught up with him. Reluctantly, he gets dressed and plods his way to breakfast with Elijah. He realizes he has become a full member of the Society of Temporary Expatriates—the dining area is filled with people from their flight or from the synagogue or from loud American conversations on the street. Danny feels a displaced sense of community. Even on the vaporetto ride to Murano, he spots a teenager from the plane, who was wearing a Wolverines T-shirt yesterday and now pledges sartorial allegiance to the Bulls.
Murano is an island known throughout the world for its glass. Danny is surprised to find that most of its buildings are stone. With jet-lag weariness, he allows himself to be led to kilns and hammerings. He admires without touching. He is amazed when color appears from the wand of the glassblower. He expects to find the glass clear, but instead discovers it rimmed with red or blue.
By the third stop, Danny is ready to leave. He feels very much like his reflection—worn out and only vaguely present. Elijah is kept awake by his wonder. Danny subsides.
“A nap,” he says. But Elijah isn't listening. He is looking around, as if for someone else.
“Who are you looking for?” Danny asks.
“No one,” Elijah replies, focusing now.
Yeah, right, Danny thinks. He figures his brother is looking for some old lady he helped to cross the street. Or maybe that girl from the plane who wouldn't shut up about herself.
“Do you want to go back for a quick nap before we leave?” Danny asks, even though it's only eleven.
Elijah nods. He wants to go back.
But he doesn't have any intention of napping.
The laws of gravity vary from city to city. In Venice, the laws state that no matter where you want to go, you will always be drawn back to St. Mark's Square. Even though you know it will be immensely crowded, and even though you have nothing in particular to do there, you will still feel yourself drawn.
Elijah diverges from Danny at the gates of the hotel and finds himself gravitating. He moves as if he knows the place. It is a spiritual familiarity.
Past the coffee bars and through the crowds of pigeons, Elijah heads for the basilica. It is busy, as it always is. There are numerous signs prohibiting photography. Some tourists rankle at this and fail to put their cameras away. Others would never imagine taking a photograph in such a place. They stand solemnly before the statues and say prayers of thanks or pain.
Elijah pays his admission and walks into the entryway. Immediately he is amazed by the floors. Marble of every color— triangles and squares dancing in greater shapes. As others rush past, Elijah kneels down. He runs his hand over the marble. Other people stop to watch him, and it is only then that they too see the floors. Elijah is overwhelmed by the sheer fact of all the people who have walked over this very spot. As he watches Nikes and loafers glide past, he tries to fathom the feet of centuries ago. A person could stay in this same place his whole life and meet millions of people from all over the world. But instead, everyone moves on, and meets no one.
From the floor, Elijah looks to the ceiling—all gold tile and mural, epic scenes and godly interventions. The ceilings speak a different language from the floors. Both are art, but the ceilings are story while the floors are mathematic. People walk between, every single one of them a foreigner.
Elijah stands back up and re-enters the flow. He veers toward the corners, delicate shrines that counterbalance the immensity of the building. He stops in front of a saint he doesn't know. Candles flicker at her feet. Elijah loves the ceremony of candles—his mother waving her hands over the flames on Shabbat, or the two memorial candles that beacon through the house on Yom Kippur. This is, of course, a different context. Yet Elijah is tempted to light a candle, just the same. He puts three thousand lire in the box and pulls a candle from its stand.