“A toast,” she says, raising her glass. “To the end.”
“I was engaged once,” Ari tells Danny. “I really thought she was the one. I really thought, This is it. I met her while I was in school—we volunteered at the same shelter. Perfect, right? She was a nurse, so that made scheduling a little hard. But we managed. For three years, we managed. I proposed to her the first time she flew with me. My instructor lent me his Cessna. At first, Anna was really nervous—she wasn't a big fan of flying. But I asked her to trust me, and she did. I took her up over the Rockies—it was a gorgeous day, you could see everything. When we hit ten thousand feet, I put on the autopilot, pulled the ring from my pocket, leaned over to her, and asked her to marry me. Right away, she said yes.
“I thought that was the hard part, but I was wrong. We moved in together, which was great when we were both there, but we weren't both there a lot. I graduated, and Continental picked me up. Denver was still my home base, but I had to go wherever they wanted me to go. At first, Anna understood this. She supported it. But after a while it wore us both down. Finally, one night I came home—it must have been two in the morning—and she said it was too much. She said she wasn't sure she was old enough to be anybody's wife. And she sure as hell wasn't old enough to be a pilot's wife. I couldn't argue with her. We both realized we'd gotten as far as we could go, and that the only way to go from there was backward. And neither of us wanted to go through that.”
Ari pauses and takes another sip of his water. “How about you? Anything like that?”
Danny shakes his head. “Nothing.”
“Not even a little?”
“Not even a little.”
At first, Elijah thinks he's misunderstood her. Or that she's misunderstood him.
“To the end?” he asks.
“To the end,” she repeats, taking a sip of wine.
“But tomorrow's my last night. I leave Sunday.”
“I know.”
He still doesn't get it.
“So why is this the end?”
Julia puts down her glass and says, simply, “Because it is.”
Danny is amazed that he feels so comfortable. He is amazed that while there are some people you can see every day and not say a word to, there are other people whom you can see once a year—or once a decade, or once a life—and say anything.
“How's your brother?” Ari asks. “God, he must be old now, right? I remember you writing to me about how you were going to teach him multiplication, even though he was only four. You were going to make him the smartest kid in his nursery school class.”
Danny starts off by saying Elijah's fine. Then he finds himself telling Ari everything that's happened—from the moment he got his parents' call to the moment Elijah left the hotel room in Florence. He remembers that Ari has two brothers of his own—two brothers and three stepsisters.
Ari listens carefully. Danny isn't just talking to say things aloud. He is talking directly to him.
“I don't know how we got this way, Ari. I don't know when I stopped wanting to help him, or even when I stopped wanting him to be smart. I dreaded coming here with him. I really didn't want him to come—I figured I'd be happier alone. And I don't know whether it's because he was here and then he left, or whether I was just wrong in the first place, but right now I wish he was here. Not at this table with us. But I just wish I knew where he was.”
“It's hard.”
“Yeah, it's hard.”
Ari puts down his fork and looks right into Danny's eyes.
“Brothers are not like sisters,” he says. From his tone, Danny can tell this is something he's learned. “They don't call each other every week. They don't have secret worlds to share. Can you think of two brothers who are really, inseparably close? No, for brothers it's a different set of rules. Like it or not, we're held to the bare minimum. Will you be there for him if he needs you? Of course. Should you love him without question? Absolutely. But those are the easy things. Do you make him a large part of your life, an equal to a wife or a best friend? At the beginning, when you're kids, the answer is often yes. But when you get to high school, or older? Do you tell him everything? Do you let him know who you really are? The answer is usually no. Because all these other things get in the way. Girlfriends. Rebellion. Work.”
“So this is normal?” Danny asks.
“Don't go for normal,” Ari suggests. “Go for happy. Go for what you want it to be instead of settling for what it is.”
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.