Exhilaration.
Acceleration.
Exhilaration.
Acceleration.
Stop.
He almost runs into the wall of people. He is flying along, and then the crowd looms like a dead end. He could turn around, but curiosity encourages momentum. He touches the back of the crowd and then makes his way forward.
“Doctor? Medico?” a small female voice cries from somewhere in the front. Elijah pushes forward some more and then sees the girl and her distress. She is holding the same travel dictionary that Danny carries. “Può chiamare un medico, per favore?” From her accent, it's clear she took French in high school.
At her feet, a guy lies bleeding. Elijah steps back. He stares at the wound and then traces its trail to the pavement. The guy and the girl, both easily American, are no more than a year older than Elijah. The guy is bleeding, but he's also trying to smile. Elijah immediately feels a kinship and offers help.
He looks at the young man's wound. It doesn't seem too serious—the girl explains that he tripped on a wet stone and hit his head. She wonders whether he should be moved. No one in the crowd seems to have the answer—many are starting to walk away.
The young man rests his head on an L.L. Bean backpack. Elijah introduces himself and pulls a Kleenex out of his pocket to help stanch the flow of blood. The young man—Greg—is calmer than his partner—Isabel. As she frantically procures a handkerchief from a shopkeeper, he tells Elijah it's really not so bad.
“Liar,” Isabel says. “The shopkeeper said help is on the way. Do you know what the Italian word for ‘stitches’ is? It's not in this stupid dictionary.”
Just then, help arrives. Elijah almost laughs. The “ambulance” is a wicker chair placed on a wheeled cart. Elijah moves away from Greg as two men lift him into position. The blood has now spread over his shirtfront in baby-food dribbles. Despite his Eddie Bauer wardrobe, Greg looks like a bloodied prisoner being taken to the gallows. Isabel steps from one side of the chair to the other—she doesn't know where to be. Elijah hands her the backpack and stands to follow. But the paramedics are already on the move, with Isabel running hastily behind them. Greg looks over, one hand holding the Kleenex to his brow, the other hand raised in a Tom Hanks salute.
Elijah watches the chair disappear around a corner and immediately feels a loss. He can't believe that you can meet a person in this way and then lose touch with them forever. He could check all the hotels in Venice and look for a Greg and an Isabel, but he knows he won't. He wants to, though. Because he wants to believe in sudden fate.
The crowd has dispersed. People are obliviously stepping across the lines of blood, turning them into streaks and footprints. Those people who didn't see the incident look at the stain with disgust and dismay. Elijah just stares—his momentum is over, his giddiness lost. A hand touches his shoulder.
“I'm sure he'll be fine,” a voice says. Elijah turns around, and there she is—easily one of the loveliest girls he's ever seen. She has short brown hair—light brown—and dazzling azure eyes. Her complexion is smooth. (Elijah, who never notices these things, not even when stoned, suddenly notices them now.) She isn't wearing any make-up. She looks twenty, give or take a year. And she is concerned about him. He sees that right away.
Elijah is afraid to speak, for fear that any word he says will come out as “uh.”
“What you did was very nice,” the girl continues.
“Thank you.”
They hang on a pause. Elijah looks to the ground, looks back up, and she's still there.
A second pause will lead to departure. Elijah wants her to stay, so he gives her his name.
“I'm Elijah.”
“Nice to meet you, Elijah. I'm Julia.”
A bell chimes. Then three bells, and five bells, and seven bells at once.
It is six o'clock.
“Oh my God, I'm late!” Julia's eyes flash a genuine panic. Then they refocus on Elijah.
She touches his forearm.
“I'll see you soon. I promise.”
And there is, that moment, a shock of recognition. Elijah doesn't even know yet what he is recognizing. There is only the shock. The sense. That feeling of something happening that was meant to happen. Two people fitting in a space and time.
For a moment.
Julia smiles sorry at him and then is gone.
Elijah stands still. Julia is the kind of person who leaves a vapor trail. Traces of an accent, carried into memory. A perfume of kindness and expectation. A strange sense of certainty.
Elijah cannot explain it. The I'll see you soon could be mis taken for a generic farewell. The I promise cannot be.
Julia knows she will see him soon.
He hopes she's right.
It is quiet when Elijah returns to the room. It is quiet, but not completely silent. Danny's breathing is as barely noticeable as the rise and fall of his body.
As Elijah steps gently over the floorboards, a bigger sound arrives. Underneath the hotel windows, a gondolier begins to sing with great passion, to cheers from all along the waterway. Elijah peers out and watches as other gondoliers move closer to be nearer to the first gondolier's boat. An accordion begins. Elijah opens a window wide. The only smell is the breeze. Even though the water is a churnish brown, for a moment Elijah can imagine it's a sapphire blue. That is how he feels. The gondolier is passing by, leaving the sound of the waves and an undertow from the Gritti's cafe.
This is why we go on holiday, Elijah thinks. You can't get moments like this at home. The familiar can only bring another kind of wonderful.
Even though the sun is lowering, even though there are dinner reservations to be upheld and clothes to change, Elijah lets Danny sleep. He pulls a chair to the window and takes Dickens's Pictures from Italy from his bag. He reads five pages and then, on his sixth page, he finds these words:
“Sunday was a day so bright and blue: so cloudless, balmy, wonderfully bright…that all the previous bad weather vanished from the recollection in a moment.”
And Elijah thinks, That is exactly it.
The serendipity of the printed page.
Danny wakes up as Elijah turns the twenty-first page of that day. He is happy until he looks at his watch (sitting guiltily on the bedside table). Then he becomes frantic.
“Why didn't you wake me?” he accuses as he pulls on his pants. He can't help it—he feels sabotaged.
“I'm sorry,” Elijah says in a tone that isn't sorry at all.
Danny hustles Elijah out of the room and orders the concierge to call the restaurant and pronounce a delay. Elijah is glad he spent the afternoon wandering, because Danny sprints him to the vaporetto so fast that there isn't much time to look at anything. Even on the boat, the air between them is tense and time-concerned. Elijah wants to let go of Danny's thoughts— after all, no amount of grimacing will make the boat go faster. But Danny's aggravation is inescapable. It imposes.
Elijah closes his eyes and thinks of Julia. He tries to count the number of words they exchanged—whatever the number is, it is unbelievably small. There is no real reason for Elijah to be thinking about her with such wistful longing. And yet, it is exactly because there's no real reason that the emotion is more intriguing.
After a time—a time filled with water and alleyways—they arrive at Antico Capriccio. It is a tiny restaurant, on the corner of somewhere and nowhere. It has been recommended by a friend of a friend of Danny's. He had to mention the friend of a friend's name when making the reservation—the Continental equivalent of a secret handshake.
They are greeted at the door by an old man named Joseph.
It soon becomes clear that he is owner and waiter, maitre d' and busboy. Whenever possible, he stays out of the kitchen. That is his wife's territory.
Joseph doesn't speak much English, and doesn't care to hear it anyway. Danny starts to ask if Visa is accepted, but Joseph brushes the question away like a foul odor. Chatting amiably, he seats Danny and Elijah by an ancient fireplace. They are the only ones in the restaurant—or, at the very least, the only ones they can see. Joseph brings them wine before they even see the menus. Danny tries to protest—he prefers white to red. But Elijah takes the wine gladly; just the sight of it makes him feel warm.
The menus are entirely in Italian. Danny and Elijah both feel the need for Danny's travel dictionary, but they are too abashed to take it out. It doesn't matter anyway—when an answer isn't immediately forthcoming, Joseph pulls the menus from their hands and orders for them. He clearly revels in their confusion, but not in a mean-spirited, French way. Let me take care of you, his smile says. Elijah relaxes and submits willingly after it is made clear that he is vegetariano. Danny has never been able to submit willingly to anything besides his boss's whims. He is not about to start now. He asks if the fish is good. Joseph laughs and walks away.
“So how was your day?” Danny asks, his fingers tapping the table.
“Fine.”
“Where did you go?”
“Around.”
“The weather was good?”
“Yeah.”
“It didn't rain?”
“Nope.”
“That's good.”
“Yeah.”
Talking like this is like throwing small, round stones— nothing can be built from them, except perhaps the cairn of a lost conversation. Neither brother is trying. Instead, they are filling the space, united by their mutual dislike of awkward silence.
Joseph returns to light a candle. Elijah spots a medal on his lapel and asks if he's ever been in a war. This is clearly the right question to ask. Joseph takes the medal from his jacket and lets Elijah hold it in his hand. In a river of Italian broken by crags of English, he talks about his days in the military—il paese, il fiume, la morte. Elijah hears the word diciannove, but cannot tell whether it is an age or a number of years.
As Joseph leaves to compel the first course, Elijah finds himself thinking once more about Julia. It surprises him—to be hearing an old man's reminiscence of the war one moment, and to be recalling her eyes in the next. The segue is in the story-telling—he sees Joseph's words as something he wants to share with Julia. He doesn't know whether he'll ever see her again, but still he feels the need to tell her things.
How strange, he thinks. How very strange.
His hope to see her again is prayerful—not because it is addressed to a spirit, but because it is mysteriously drawn from an unknown part of his soul.
My soul. How very strange.
“So how's your girlfriend?”Danny asks. Elijah is jarred—how could Danny know about Julia—and why would he call her that?
Danny sees the confusion on Elijah's face and tries again. “You know—what's her name—Cat?”
“Cat?”
“You know, the girl you hang out with.”
“Oh. Cal.”
“Yeah, Cal.”
“She's not my girlfriend.”
“Whatever you say.”
Elijah thinks about Cal and feels a vague sort of distance. For the first time, she seems out of reach. All of their Wonder Twin Telepathic Powers have failed him. “Whenever you need me,” she'd say, “wiggle your ears.” Elijah never had the heart to tell her he couldn't wiggle his ears. He'd just smile and nod, and know (wiggle or not) they would never have distance, even when they were apart.