Buoyed by his discovery, Danny returns to the hotel. But he's not ready for the night to end—not quite yet. Elijah isn't back, so Danny heads for the bar. Since he thinks there is something disreputable about drinking a bottle of wine alone, he drinks by the glass until the world goes soft. He drinks, even though drinking always makes him remember rather than forget. He tells the bartender about the snack cake. The bartender smiles happily and congratulates him.
Danny is happy in return.
With the right person, you can have a late-night conversation at any time of the day. But it helps to have it late at night.
Elijah and Julia are back in Julia's room, in Julia's pensione. Elijah touches the blanket and stares at the pictures on the wall, which he thinks of as hers, even though they are not hers at all. All of her possessions are still in a suitcase.
“I didn't have time to unpack,” she explains. “You were here so soon.”
“I'm sorry if I disturbed you.”
“Don't worry—I was already disturbed.”
She takes off her shoes, and he follows suit. Although there are chairs in the room, they are far too rigid for casual conversation. So Elijah and Julia sit on the floor, leaning on the same side of the bed.
“I wish we had candles,” Elijah says.
“What if we turn the lights off and leave only the lamp on?”
As Julia rises to get the switch, Elijah closes his eyes. He can feel her moving across the room, he can see the change from light to dark, and then the small step back to light. He can feel her returning to him. Sitting next to him. Breathing softly.
“Relax,” she says, and the word itself is relaxing.
Do you wonder?
“Who are you thinking about?” Julia asks quietly.
“Nobody. Just my best friend. Wondering what time it is over there.”
“Is he back in Rhode Island?”
“Yes.”
“Then the night is just beginning.”
Elijah opens his eyes, and finds that Julia has closed hers.
Their voices travel at the speed of night.
It takes three tries for Danny to fit his key into the lock. “Elijah?” he asks. But the bed is empty, and the room is alone.
Slowly, Elijah and Julia begin to lose their words. They fall from the conversation one by one, lengthening the pauses, heightening the expectation. Her hand moves from his arm to his cheek. He closes his eyes, and she smiles. He is so serious. The first kiss is clear, ready to be set for memory. The second and the third and the fourth begin to blur—they are no longer singular things, but part of something larger than even their sum.
“Thank you,” Elijah whispers in one of the moments of breath.
“You're welcome,” Julia replies, and before he can say another word, she kisses him again.
They kiss and touch and trace themselves to sleep. They will wake at sunrise, in each other's arms.
Danny goes to sleep easily, and wakes up two hours later. Nausea infuses every pore of his consciousness. Part of him wants to throw up and get it over with. And part of him remembers what he had for dinner—veal, asparagus, tomato bread soup—and wants to keep it in. Finally, he decides ginger ale is the way to go, and overrules his inner cheapskate to take a swipe at the minibar. Sadly, ginger ale is nowhere to be found. Fanta will have to do.
“Elijah—are you sleeping?” Danny fumbles for the bottle opener and cuts his hand on the cap. He follows the rug to the lip of the bathroom, then liberates four Tylenol from his travel kit. The first Tylenol falls down the drain, but the other three hit their mark, drowned in a tide of too-sweet soda.
Danny still feels sick. But he falls asleep anyway.
In the morning, the phone winks red at him.
“Meet us at the Uffizi,” Elijah's voice says. “We'll see you at eleven.”
It's Julia's dope and Elijah's idea to go to the museum stoned. Julia rolls him a joint, and then—seeing the happiness in his smile—gives him a little extra to go. After they've smoked, they hold hands through the lobby. The pensione's owner nods a good morning. Julia and Elijah giggle and smile in return. When they reach the door, they break into a skip.
It is eleven-fifteen.
Danny waits by the entrance, and then he waits on line. He searches for his brother, and then he gives up. Perhaps Elijah is already inside. Perhaps he won't show at all. Danny is not in the mood for empty minutes. He can barely stand it when he wastes his own time; for someone else to waste it is unconscionable.
The line is very long and very slow. Danny is bracketed by American families—restless children and desperately agreeable parents. The walls of the museum are touched by graffiti: KURT 4-EVA and MARIA DEL MAR 4/4/98 and CLARE 27/03 FRANCESE…TI AMO JUSTIN. One of the American families is accompanied by an abusive tour guide, who takes the children's listlessness to task. “Boredom is a dirty habit,” she mutters. The American mother has murder in her eyes.
Five minutes and no Elijah …fifteen minutes and no Elijah …the ticket taker asks Danny to enter, and he does not argue. He decides to start at the beginning of the museum and work his way through history. Elijah will no doubt meet him somewhere in the middle, without realizing he's late.
Elijah isn't surprised that his brother hasn't waited. Really, it doesn't matter. Elijah is happy to be here, is happy to be with Julia. His buzz is just right—enough so things seem real close, but not so much that things seem real far away. He and Julia are surprised by the length of the line; luckily, Elijah strikes up a conversation with the trio of Australian women in front of them, so the time passes quickly. Maura's fortieth birthday is three days away; Judy and Helen are planning to take her to the most expensive restaurant in Siena, bringing at least four bottles of wine. They are legal secretaries—they met in high school and their fates have been tied together ever since. They ask Elijah and Julia how long they've been together, and Elijah revels in the fact that they've seen fit to ask.
“It's been ages,” Julia replies, wrapping her arm around Elijah and snuggling close.
“At least three hundred years,” Elijah adds.
Once inside the Uffizi, Elijah is dizzied by the ceilings. Julia has to remind him to watch where he steps. A guard looks at him curiously, so Elijah says hello, and the guard suddenly becomes less guarded.
There are so many paintings, all with the same plot. Mary looks stoned, and the Jesus babies are still scary. It's the glummest Sears Family Portrait in history. The angels are all the same person, and the skies are always the same blue.
“Come here,” Julia whispers, pulling Elijah to his first Annunciation of the day. “Look closely. I love this scene. Gabriel is telling Mary the story of the rest of her life. Every artist has a different take on it. Like this one.”
Elijah leans closer. Indeed, Mary's slight boredom—all too evident in the mother-son shots—has disappeared. In this painting—by someone named Martini—Mary looks uncomfortable. She's not sure about what she's being told. Gabriel, meanwhile, wears a pleading expression. He knows what's at stake.
“Let's see all the Annunciations,” Elijah says, a little too eager, a little too loud.
“Absolutely,” Julia agrees.
Elijah takes one last look at Mary and Gabriel. Mary winks at him and tells him to move on.
Danny's guidebook talks about Piero della Francesca's “daring search for perspective”—and, quite frankly, Danny doesn't get it. How can you discover perspective? Why did it take thousands of years for artists to discover a third dimension? How can you discover something that is already there?
It's only the fifteenth century and already Danny is getting tired. All these people in robes, with their wooden pastures and wooden expressions. Then the burst of Botticelli. The people are no longer bloodless; Danny can almost believe they have hearts.
“Hey there,” someone says. Danny assumes she's talking to someone else. Then he feels a hand on his arm. He turns to find Julia.
“Where's Elijah?” he asks.
“Oh, around. I figured I'd try to find you.”
“He didn't want to join you?”
“I don't think he realizes I left. He's rather transfixed.”
“Good for him.”
Julia gestures to the painting, Perugino's Crucifixion.“I wonder about the red hat on the ground.”
Danny nods. “I was just thinking the same thing.”
“I also wonder why they're so clean.”
“As opposed to what? A pornographic crucifixion?”
“No. I mean clean. Think about it. People in the sixteenth century—not to mention in Jesus's time—didn't look like this: perfect skin, perfect hairdos, spotless clothes. These are people who went to the bathroom in the street, for God's sake. There's no way they looked like this. But that's how we're going to remember them. Our alabaster past. When nothing else is left, art will become the truth of the time. Then people will get to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and wonder what hap-pened—how we all became so imperfect.”
Danny doesn't know what to say to this, and Julia becomes immediately self-conscious.
“Sorry,” she says, ducking her head down. “Shove me into shallow water, you know.”
“No—you're absolutely right. I've never thought of it that way.”
Danny sees that Julia can't decide whether he's being true or whether he's just being kind. It doesn't occur to her that the two can be one and the same.
Elijah figures Julia has made her way to the ladies' room or something, so he continues on his trail of Annunciations. Primavera momentarily gets in the way—Elijah is shocked at how dark it has become. Elijah has always looked to the painting for joy, but now the dark angel in the corner gains prominence. The right-hand maiden is trapped in his grasp. The woman in the center of it all seems detached, resigned.
Still, people flock to her. Elijah stands in front of the tourist flashbulbs, trying to protect her. A torrent of foreign words tells him to move. But he will not. Each time a camera is raised, he gets in the way. There are signs everywhere saying not to take pictures. And yet everyone acts like he's the one doing something wrong.
Once the latest tour group has passed, Elijah returns to Mary and Gabriel. In Botticelli's version, Mary seems demure, almost faint. Gabriel looks like a woman—perhaps an easier way to convey the news, with a flower held like a pen in his hand. Elijah wishes Julia were around to ask—How did Gabriel persuade her? Why isn't she frightened by the sight of his wings? In the frame, Mary sits on the edge of what looks like a tomb. Isn't she surprised the angel is kneeling at her feet?
DaVinci's Annunciation is almost like a sequel to Botticelli's. Gabriel is in the same pose, but Mary seems to be acknowledging him. She has become regal, undoubting. She is no longer sitting in a room, with the wide world merely alluded to through a window. It is the opposite now. Elijah does not like this Mary. She is too steely, whereas Botticelli's is too weak.
A few galleries later, Elijah gazes again at the ceiling. The details are surreal. A knight stands atop a dragon, about to swing his sword at an armless angel who has br**sts, a tail, and a mermaid limb that trails off into a small tree.
“Man, that's so messed up,” Elijah murmurs.