Are We There Yet?

by David Levithan

  “So give me an idea.”

  She just shakes her head.

  “I don't want to taint you. I want you to remain clear.”

  Can't you see you're confusing me already? Elijah wants to say. But he doesn't. He wants to unburden her, not the opposite.

  He lets her turn back to the window. He takes out Pictures from Italy. As she looks out the glass, she reaches back for his hand. He lets her take it. The book rests against his chest, open and unread.

  Elijah feels like a grown-up, with a grown-up love.

  Danny gets lost, so incredibly lost on his way into Rome that he almost pulls off to the side of the road and abandons the car. His hotel, d'Inghilterra, must be on some obscure street, since everyone he asks just shrugs or points vaguely. Hemingway once slept there, but that doesn't help.

  It's always a low when life begins to imitate an old Chevy Chase movie. He circles the same roads at least ten times, searching for any sort of direction. He vows never to rent a car in a foreign country again. Next time, he'll take the train, or a taxi between cities, if that's what it takes.

  Danny curses up a storm. And feels stupid. Because cursing in front of company at least generates an effect. Cursing alone is like taking a Hi-Liter to futility.

  At the seventy-eighth red light, Danny leans over and asks directions from a cab driver. The cab driver, amazingly, says, “Follow me.” In just two short minutes, Danny is in front of the hotel. He tries to run out and pay the driver, but the taxi is gone before he can even make the gesture.

  “Your reservation is for due,” the stark man behind the reception counter says, his voice carrying through the grand hallway before being absorbed by the curtains.

  Danny nods.

  “And the other party?”

  “Is coming.”

  “Oggi?”

  “I believe so.”

  Danny is perversely afraid that word will get back to his parents: Your sons didn't check in together. They must have had a fight.

  Danny knows this will be viewed as his failure.

  “What did you do?” his mother will ask, followed by a dollara-minute pause.

  “Nothing,” he'll reply.

  And then she'll say, “That's exactly what I thought.”

  As they pull into the Stazione Termini, Julia turns to Elijah and says, “It's okay. I'm here now.”

  “But where have you been?” he cannot help but ask.

  “It doesn't matter,” she replies. Even though it does.

  With all due respect to d'Inghilterra, Danny decides he is sick of Italian hotels. There is something to be said for opulent lobbies, but he would trade in every last ornamentation for a well-lit, generously bedded room where the towels are not made of the same material as the tablecloths.

  All of the driving has taken its toll, and although Danny refuses to nap, his senses are blunted as he walks outside the hotel. I am in Rome, he says to himself, trying to muster the vacation's last waning pulse of enthusiasm. It is too late and too gray to go to the Pantheon—he wants more celestial weather for that. So instead of the Usual Attractions, Danny shifts gears and decides to go shopping. Not for himself. He can't imagine anything more boring than shopping for himself. But his gift list must be reckoned with. He must lay his souvenirs at the altars of his co-workers, lest they think he hasn't been thinking of them while he was away.

  The list is still neatly folded into his wallet. Gladner and Gladner. Allison. Perhaps John. Mom and Dad, of course. His assistant, Derek.

  Since his hotel is near the Spanish Steps, Danny decides to duck his head into the posher stores. Especially for Gladner and Gladner. He thinks it would be most appropriate to buy them ties. And maybe a tie for his father.

  So he heads to the men's stores and is met with gross indifference. Clearly, a customer is not important unless he or she is Japanese. Danny has never been able to stand disdainful salespeople, but after he storms out of four stores, he realizes he must accept his least-favored-nationality status if he's going to get Gladner and Gladner something classy.

  The prices are extraordinarily high. But Danny thinks, If you're not going to buy an expensive gift for your bosses, then who are you ever going to spend money on?

  He thinks this for a good five minutes as he shuffles through the tie racks. Then he asks himself, What the hell am I doing?

  Gladner and Gladner already have ties. They have closets full of ties. And most of them are spectacularly dull. Polo stripes and wallpaper prints.

  When Gladner and Gladner go away on vacation, they don't bring anything back for Danny. Not even a pen with a floating Eiffel Tower or a paperweight of the Sphinx.

  Danny steps away from the tie racks. He steps out of the store. The salesmen do not nod a goodbye. He is not even there to them. He is nobody.

  The street is aswarm with people. Danny stands like a hydrant and looks over his list. It is so short, really. Take off Gladner and Gladner, and he is left with five people. Two parents. One coworker. One assistant. One work-friend.

  The question blasts through him. Paralyzes him.

  How did my world get so small?

  A pack of students pushes him aside. Two girls giggle at his slow reaction.

  Two parents. One co-worker. One assistant. One work-friend.

  This is not my life, he thinks. There are college friends, and Will, and his high school girlfriend Marjorie, who he meets for lunch every now and then.

  They're just not on the list.

  But they could be.

  Danny shoves his hands in his pockets, digging for a pen. He needs a new list.

  Allison, yes. Derek. And John, without a question mark this time. And Will. And Marjorie. And Joan and Terry, even though they live in California and the gift will have to be shipped.

  No Gladner. No Gladner.

  Allison first. Allison, who puts up with him. Allison, who smiles and kvetches and asks him out for a beer, even though he's technically the boss. He wants to buy her something special. Not chocolate—he's always brought her chocolate, even when he went to Houston and other areas not known for their confectionary. No, he wants to find her something that she especially would like. So she can know that he has an inkling of who she is.

  Three stores later, he finds it: a hand-sewn journal, its cover a painted river.

  And for John, a pair of opera glasses.

  And for Derek, a tie more expensive than Gladner's or Gladner's.

  And for his mother, a scarf made of seven fabrics, woven with gold threads.

  And for his father, an antique deck of cards.

  And for Will …

  Danny doesn't know.

  Is Will the same person now, or would any gift bought for Will be one year, five months, and now five days out of date?

  Is the Jesus night-light still appropriate? The clapping nun?

  The blue-glass lamp that glows rather than burns?

  They all seem right, but uncertainly so.

  So Danny returns to his room, takes out the hotel stationery, and begins to write a very long letter.

  Meanwhile, Elijah and Julia are in another hotel room, in another part of town. Elijah is feeling amorous, but Julia fends him off with her Let's Go! guide. Relenting, Elijah says he wants to go stoned to the Vatican. Julia vetoes this idea. Her rebellious streak goes only so far.

  “You've offended my inner nun,” she says, slipping her wallet into her bag.

  “You have an inner nun?”

  “Of course. Every girl has one. Some are just louder than others.”

  Elijah pauses for a moment, packing his backpack. “Even Jewish girls?”

  “Especially Jewish girls. Thank Julie Andrews for that.”

  Outside, it is a strange combination of hot and cloudy. Taking hold of Elijah's hand, Julia leads the way. She does not slow down to talk or to point out any of the sights (the shop entirely devoted to chess sets, the man who is putting birdseed on his shoulders to attract the pigeons). Elijah can tell she is d
etermined, but he can't say exactly why.

  “Hold on.” He's trying to slow her down a little. But she takes it a different way, and holds his hand tighter, pulling him along.

  Something has changed between them. The challenge for Elijah is to find out what exactly it is and what it means. They have left the first stage of romance—the rhapsody of us. Where everything is you-me or me-you or a giddily tentative we.Now him and her are asserting themselves, each given a private, pensive depth. Within the rhapsody of us, Elijah could think, I don't really know you, but I will. Now he is not so sure.

  But he will not stop trying. She is still here, and that means something. She is still smiling, and he doesn't wish that to be gone.

  The Vatican, Elijah has always been told, is the size of Central Park. And the crowds therein, he soon learns, are akin to a free concert on the Great Lawn. Although it's possible he's seen so many people in one place before, he's never seen them levered into an art museum—pushing, wending, photographing, grasping onto children and purses. It is hard to stand still, not to mention contemplate.

  The art is overwhelming. It is overload. There is too much of it to be truly breathtaking. Instead, it comes across as bragging. Or perhaps only the non-Catholics feel that way.

  It's disorienting. Julia and Elijah try to trace a coherent path, but the building defies them. There are more twists in the halls than there are angels on the ceiling. Packs of foreignexchange youth and tough gangs of elderly pilgrims block the corridors as they listen to their overenthusiastic guides.

  It's only in the Sistine Chapel that the quiet returns. The hushed, respectful movements subdue most of the flashbulbs.

  “It's amazing,”Julia whispers, and Elijah has to agree. The creation of Adam is surprisingly small—Elijah had always assumed it took up most of the ceiling. But no, there is so much more. It doesn't even stand on its own—it is part of a history, part of a story. The triumph is the space between the fingers: if God exists anywhere, he exists there. That almost-but-not-quite touch.

  Elijah and Julia drift slowly through the chapel. And when they are through, they walk backward and drift through again.

  Outside, Elijah debates going into the gift shop. He can hear Cal saying, “Don't do it, don't give them a penny.” So he saves his postcard money, but doesn't say anything when Julia buys a souvenir book.

  “Who knows when I'll be back?” she says.

  “Tomorrow?” Elijah offers. “A week from now?”

  Julia shakes her head and smiles.

  “A month from now?” Elijah pursues.

  They are walking through St. Peter's Square, which is actually something of a circle. Elijah is not asking the question he wants to ask, but Julia picks up on it anyway.

  “I don't know what I'm doing next,” she says. “I don't know where I'll be.”

  “You could stay here.”

  “I could.”

  “Or go back to Canada?”

  “Not an option.”

  “California?”

  “Ditto.”

  “How about the East Coast?” Elijah asks, his voice a nervous suitor. “I know this great town in Rhode Island. You'd really like it.”

  “You're sweet,” she says, patting his arm.

  And it's funny the way she says it, because he'd always assumed that sweet was a good thing.

  Now he's not so sure.

  It is July twilight by the time Danny finishes his letter to Will. His hand is raw—he is not used to writing like this. Not on such a scale.

  He has told Will everything he could think of and, in doing so, told himself many things that he hadn't thought he'd known.

  Whenever I am asked about my life, I invariably answer with a reference to work.

  At work I feel needed in a way that I've never been needed before.

  My parents tricked me into coming to Italy.

  I think they are worried about me.

  I don't know.

  Elijah is somewhere else in the city. Perhaps that's for the best. Perhaps it's enough that one of us is happy. I can give him that much, and not much more.

  It's so strange to have words mean exactly what they're supposed to mean. No manipulation, no subtext, no enticement to buy.

  Danny puts the letter in an envelope. He puts the envelope in a book. He puts the book in his bag.

  Then he looks around the hotel room, his glance settling on the second, still-made bed.

  He wonders where Elijah is. And Julia. But more Elijah.

  He imagines Elijah as he is back at his boarding school, the center of his friends' orbit. Always there for a midnight call. Always ready to listen. Voted Most Likely to Succeed—not because he is the most likely to succeed, but because everyone likes him the most.

  It is a dangerous thing with brothers, to think that you could be as strong as them, or as wise as them, or as good as them. To believe that you could have been the same person, if only you hadn't gone a different way. To think that your parents raised you the same, and that your genes combined the same, and that the rest of what has happened is all your triumph … or failure.

  This is why so many kids want to believe that their siblings are adopted. So that the potential isn't the same. So that you can't look at your brother and say, I could have been like him, if only I'd tried.

  Danny doesn't want to be as strong as his brother (Elijah is basically a wimp) or as wise as his brother (Danny has no desire to read Kerouac). It is the goodness that grates. Even if it's mostly false (Danny would like to believe, but doesn't really), Elijah has the gift of talking to people, of being liked by people, and Danny can't help but wonder why he didn't turn out the same way.

  Restless, he leaves the hotel. The shops are more welcoming now that they're closed. Danny examines the windows of the Via Borgognona and the Via Condotti. Then he has a leisurely dinner; he is getting used to eating alone in public. He watches the people at the other tables and drinks plenty of wine.

  After dinner is over, he wanders farther. He keeps expecting to bump into Elijah and Julia. Instead, he comes to Trevi— the fountain of youths. Teenagers from various nations are perched around its rim, cackling and flirting and preening. It is a point of convergence for those who are not wearied by midnight and everything after.

  Danny stands to the side and watches the swagger, banter, and anguish. The packs of girls and the packs of boys collide and separate at will. For Danny, it is like visiting a neighborhood where he once lived. The familiarity and the distance of it.

  He is no longer young, and he is far from old.

  They laugh so hard around the fountain. He misses that acutely. Not the folly of entanglements or the drama of indecision. But the laughter. The bold bravado that can take you through the night.

  Danny doesn't want to be them, and he doesn't even want to stay and watch them. He only wants to find an intensity to match their own.

  Elijah and Julia go to a French movie with Italian subtitles. Then, as the languages intermingle in their memory, they return to the hotel.

  That night, the rhapsody of us returns, in physical form. They have a conversation of movements, silent from the moment they walk in the door. They undress each other completely—tracing, gliding, holding. Only the bodies whisper. Breath signals. Fingers entwine.

  It is almost like floating. It is that simple, that understood.

  Elijah closes his eyes. Julia kisses his eyelids. He flutters them open, and Julia whispers “no.” So he closes them again, and the moment continues.

  Elijah feels colors, and wonders if he's in love.

  The next day is July 4th. Danny wears a red-and-white Polo shirt and a pair of blue shorts. He can't help himself.

  In the morning, he heads to the ruins. He thinks he will beat the midday heat, but in this he is wrong. The day is scorching, the lack of shade relentless. Danny loses interest quickly. The area he sees, with its rows and rows of broken columns, must have once been grand. But now it is only rows and rows of broken c
olumns. They are not even beautiful. They are merely, admirably, old. Danny takes a few photos, but it's more for historical reasons than out of any visual pleasure.

  It is soon unbearably hot. Danny throngs to a streetside vendor in search of Evian. The line is long, but Danny doesn't see he has a choice. As he waits, a hand taps him on the shoulder.

  “Danny Silver?” a voice asks.

  Startled, Danny turns—and is even more startled to see Ari Rubin, from Camp Wahnkeemakah.

  “Ari?”

  It must be—what—seven years? More?

  “So it is you. That's unbelievable.”

  Ari looks amazing. Tan, tall, his hair no longer in a bowl cut.

  From Camp Wahnkeemakah. Ages ago.

  He doesn't look at all the same. Except it's recognizably him.

  “What are you doing here?” Ari asks.

  “Vacation,” Danny replies, still stunned. Ari was his best friend for three straight summers. They were pen pals for two summers after that, and then drifted apart.

  Seven years? More like ten.

  Danny has to turn away to buy his bottles of water. But when he turns back, Ari is still there, beaming.

  “And what are you doing here?” Danny asks.

  “Working.”

  “Business?”

  “Pilot.”

  Danny laughs. Of course Ari is a pilot. Ari, whose mother would send him a new model airplane every week. Ari, whose bunk smelled like Krazy Glue and balsa wood.

  A pilot.

  “I can't believe I recognized you.”

  “Me neither.”

  They lost touch because Danny lived in New Jersey and Ari lived in Ohio, and neither of them liked to talk on the phone. But when they'd been at camp, they were nearly inseparable. They planned all their activities together, requested the same bunks, and even tried to be on the same Color War teams. There was one time, the second summer, when Danny had been stuck in the infirmary with a flu bug. The only thing to do in the infirmary was watch videos. Which would have been an unparalleled delight, except the only two movies they had were Annie and Predator. Danny would have gone absolutely bonkers if Ari hadn't come to his window at every available break, telling him what was going on and making jokes to count away the hours.