conversation begins.
ELIJAH LOVES THE CONVERSATION. WHATEVER CONVERSATION. THE tentative first steps. The shyness. Wondering whether it’s going to happen and where it will go. He hates surface talk. He wants to dive right through it. With anyone. Because anyone he talks to seems to have something worthwhile to say.
The first steps are always the most awkward; he can tell almost immediately whether the surface is water or ice. The dancing of the eyes – Are we going to have this conversation or not? The first words – the common ground. And how have you found yourself here? Where are you going? – two simple questions that can lead to days of words.
“You like New Order?” Elijah asks.
The woman laughs. “In college. I loved New Order, but I had a Joy Division boyfriend. I wanted to hang out, he wanted to hang himself. We were doomed from the start.”
The conversation continues.
DANNY CAN’T HELP BUT OVERHEAR THEM. ELIJAH IS, AFTER ALL, sitting at his elbow, taking up the armrest. Chatting away with the woman about disco groups. Unbelievable. Talking about college and girlfriends and Elijah’s prom. (“She disappeared after the second song, but that was OK …”) Danny usually assumes that lonely people are the only ones who have conversations on airplanes. Now he is faced with a dilemma: is he wrong, or is Elijah lonely? To sidestep the issue entirely, Danny decides that Elijah is an exception. Elijah, as always, is being unusually kind. While he himself is not lonely, he doesn’t mind talking to lonely people. He is the Mother Teresa of banter.
Danny silently waits for his introduction, the moment when Elijah gestures to him and says, “This is my brother.” Danny plans to put his guidebook down, smile a hello (taking a good look at the woman, who’s about ten years older than him, but still attractive), and then make a hasty retreat back to Inns & Hotels.
But the conversation never drifts his way. Instead, they are talking about Roman Holiday. Danny can’t believe it when Elijah says how much he loves Audrey Hepburn. He can understand it, but he can’t believe it, for it’s an adoration that he himself shares. Danny isn’t used to having something in common with Elijah, however slight. Their last name is the rope that ties them together. And now there is also this tiny thread. Audrey Hepburn.
Danny thinks about this for a moment. (If Elijah were to look over, he would notice his brother hasn’t turned the page in the past ten minutes.) As Elijah and this stranger discuss the ending of Roman Holiday and how it makes them feel (sad, happy), Danny wonders whether it’s true that everyone, at heart, likes Audrey Hepburn. So the similarity isn’t that strange at all. It’s as commonplace as the desire to eat when hungry. It doesn’t link the two brothers any more than that.
That is something Danny can believe.
“SO THIS IS YOUR BROTHER?” PENELOPE WHISPERS, POINTING OVER Elijah’s shoulder. He doesn’t know why she is whispering. Then he turns and sees that Danny has fallen asleep on his tray table, the edge of his shoulder spotlighted by the overhead lamp.
“Do you think he needs a pillow?” Elijah asks.
“No. He’ll be all right.”
Elijah reaches over the armrest and presses the lightbulb button. Then he turns back to Penelope and asks her if she has any brothers or sisters. She has three sisters, one of whom is getting married in a matter of months.
“She’s older than me, thank God,” Penelope says with a sigh. “I have to wear this hideous dress. I told her – I said, ‘This dress is hideous.’ Her dress is gorgeous, by the way. Bridesmaids only exist to make the brides look good. I don’t care what anyone says. It’s not an honour. It’s a mockery.
“Her dress has a train. When I saw it, I just started to cry. Not because I’m not the one who’s getting married. I can handle that. But to see my sister in a white satin train – it was like we were playing dress-up again. She’d always let my mother’s dresses trail behind her. Of course, I’d jump on them and try to trip her up. And I was always the one who got in trouble for the footprints – it didn’t matter that the bottom was also covered with dust. Anyway – seeing her at the fitting, it struck me that I can’t jump on her dress any more. I can’t pull it over her head and show her underwear to the congregation. I can’t even tell her that it isn’t hers, that she has to put it back in the closet before our mother comes home. No, it’s hers. And it’s her.”
Penelope shakes her head.
BOYS NEVER DRESS UP AS GROOMS, ELIJAH THINKS. THEY NEVER practise their own weddings like girls do. But there are other kinds of pairs. He remembers Batman and Robin. Luke and Han. Frodo and Aragorn. Cowboy and Indian.
There was only a year or two for those games, before Danny started dressing up in a different way. This time, the character he was playing was the cooler version of himself, shopping at the mall for the perfect costume, trying to blend in and stand out at the same time. It was never explained to Elijah, and he wasn’t old enough to figure it out. All he knew was that one day his brother stopped wanting to be a superhero, stopped wanting to save their backyard world. Elijah stopped dressing up then, too. He retreated to the realm of his room, to his drawings, to his stuffed animals.
It wasn’t the same.
Sisters dress up to rehearse for what will really happen to them. But brothers, Elijah realises, are never rehearsing that way. They rehearse their own illusions, until reality takes a turn and they are asked to rehearse for other things. You go to school. You graduate. You sell snack cakes. You hang up your cape and put on a suit.
DANNY WAKES UP INTO THE STRANGE TIMELESS NIGHTTIME OF AIR travel. The window shades are drawn. The flight attendants float down the aisle like guardian angels. The guidebook has fallen at his feet. A woman is talking.
“… And then, it was the strangest thing, I walk into the room and there’s Courtney Love. Have I told you this? No? Good. So I can’t believe it. Now, this is after she was the lead singer of – what was it called? – Hole. Don’t think I’m that old. I’m not that old. So it’s after Hole, and I walk into the room, and there she is. I can’t believe it. So I walk over to her and offer her a joint. Real cool. I can tell that my boyfriend’s real impressed at how smooth I am. And she says yes. But neither of us has a match. I’m fumbling around, pulling the rolling papers and the dope out of my pockets, and I can’t find a light! So my boyfriend just leans over, Courtney looks up at him, and all smooth, he lights her up. I’m still there fumbling. She says thanks to him, offers him a puff, and when he’s done he doesn’t even offer it to me. Because now they’re talking and sharing and it’s like I’m not even there. I say his name, and he just gives me one of those side smiles. I can’t believe it. Some other guys join the conversation and I’m out of the circle. And I’m sure Courtney has seen me. But does she say anything? No. Not a word. My boyfriend’s treating her like the Pope and my head’s all screwed up, so I just say real loud, ‘Well, why don’t you just kiss her ring!’ Everyone stares at me. Like, it makes perfect sense to me, but I’m the only person in the room with the context. I have to get out of there. Right away. My boyfriend’s staring at me like I just called his mother a whore. And everyone else thinks I’m insulting Her Highness Courtney Love. So I run out of the room. But I’m not looking where I’m going – I crash into this guy in the doorway – and that’s how I met Billy
