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Daniel walks out the door, holding his hand in his tight back-pocket. Elijah smirks as he walks ahead of him, down the white halls, and across the vast marble tiled floors, down staircases and twisting around to find the elevators when their calves started to hurt. Finally, they reach the entrance, and push through the glass doors, swiftly enveloped in the fresh autumn scent of leaves, trees and car exhaust. New York is gorgeous in the fall.
They talk about cars as they watch the many taxicabs start and stop down the busy street.
“You’re sixteen, right?” Elijah asks conversationally.
Daniel’s fifteen. “Yeah,” he answers. He’s not about to correct him, as that age is an important factor in today’s relationships.
“Do you have a car?”
“Actually, I don’t.” Daniel shrugs when Elijah peers curiously at him. It’s not as though he can’t afford some hot-shit-sex-mobile, “I’m just not home very often, and so I don’t really see the point of owning a car. Then, when I am home, I’m always going places with people, and they typically drive. So, it beats the purpose.”
“I see,” Elijah’s shoes crunch over the golden and red leaves, and Daniel’s struck by how philosophical he looks when he’s thinking. “How long are you going to be in town?”
“Three days. I can’t stay too long... I have to get back to filming. I’d like to go to some of the museums though, and I’d like to go see something on Broadway. I heard Cabaret‘s playing.”
Elijah smiled shyly, “I haven’t seen it.” Daniel says nothing, it seems the conversation has ended, and he waits for a new one to arise. Finally, Elijah sighs, “So where do you want to go eat?”
“No idea. I’ve never been to New York before, I don’t know what restaurants are around here.”
“You’ve never been to New York?” Elijah seems shocked. “Where do you typically go for photo shoots?”
“Los Angeles. Or else London.”
“Odd,” Elijah shakes his head. “Well, we could have pizza, Italian, bagels, Thai, Chinese, Mediterranean, burgers, there’s a vegetarian cuisine I was thinking of checking out... but some people aren’t really into tofu. Greek,” he adds to Daniel’s silence.
“Greek sounds good.”
“Chiron was a centaur in Greek mythology. Most of the other centaurs were drunken savages that ate raw flesh in the woods. But anyway. This other guy, Heracles, stopped to visit Pholus, who was another civilized centaur; and Heracles was thirsty and so he persuaded Pholus to open a jar of wine that was the common property of the centaurs. The other centaurs smelled the wine and came running. A fight broke out between Heracles and the centaurs. Chiron took no part in the fight but was accidentally wounded by Heracles. But Chiron was immortal and he didn’t die, but he spent the rest of his life in agony. Then little Persephone got stuck in the Underworld, and Chiron gave up his immortality for Persephone to come back and live with her mother.”
Daniel blinks. “Wow.”
“Yeah, I used to be really into Greek mythology.” Elijah glances around the restaurant with a smile perched upon his pink lips. “I love this place. They have myths painted on the walls and random quotes from Plato and Socrates.” He picks up his glass of water and practically inhales it, the condensation drips icily through his fingertips and leaves bare imprints when he sets it down.
“So what’s good here? I mean, I don’t usually eat Greek food.”
Elijah nods, “Well... gyros, Greek salad rocks my world, um...” He leans across the table and runs his finger down Daniel’s menu, pointing at piroski, he explains in a breathy voice, “That’s really good. Then there‘s spanakopitta, and as far as deserts go, baklava is a classic, but they also have Greek doughnuts and really fucking good rice pudding.”
“Mm,” it’s the only sound he can utter when Elijah is leaning across the table and giving his commentary on food. He scans the sea food section and remarks, “Wow, they have octopus.”
Elijah raises an eyebrow, he settles himself back into his seat and queries, “Have you ever had calamari?”
“I’ve heard of it...”
Elijah’s mouth drops open in horror. “You’ve never had calamari?” Daniel’s frozen. The eyes. The mouth. The tongue that was glistening through the opening, framed by white crooked teeth. “Oh my God.” In a hoarse whisper he adds, “And people tell you you’re a movie star? Oh my God.”
Daniel has to laugh.
As he takes the last bite of baklava, he watches Elijah dip his napkin into his water and reach across the table once more, brushing away stray crumbs from Daniel’s mouth. He wishes time and inertia could be synonyms, as Elijah nonchalantly slides back to his seat once more and starts talking about the aurora borealis and how much he wants to go to Alaska. Daniel isn’t really listening, just thinking about the slide of the wet cloth and the pressure of Elijah’s fingertips - he purses his lips and licks them, tasting water and olive oil.
“I’ve seen pictures. Seen movies, read books. Have you read any Phillip Pullman?”
Daniel’s attention comes back with a thud. “Yeah, I read The White Mercedes.”
“Well, His Dark Materials -- which is The Golden Compass series.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen those around,” Daniel answers.
“Well,” Elijah continues. “The aurora borealis plays a really large part, because that’s how the characters get swept away into this other world, which is, essentially ours, with little portals that we don’t take notice of, that can take you to other worlds. But when you think about it, and when you see the pictures, it seems plausible. I mean, the Northern Lights are just... magical.”
Daniel thinks Elijah’s eyes are like the Northern Lights. All blue and ice, crazed, watery, glassy, smoky, creamy and whipped, just like meringue, and he could see how a person could be transported to another dimension when they fell into his irises. It was entirely possible.
“I agree.”
“You know what we should do? We should make a movie and film it in fucking Alaska!”
Daniel’s a bit surprised by this outburst, and has to pin his knees together to keep them from shaking.
“Not a movie about Eskimos, but, like, we could do one of Jack London’s stories. THE SEA WOLF!”
“Never read it.”
“Neither have I,” he admits. “But my brother left it in my room last time he visited, and all I know is that it’s gotta be set in Alaska since it’s Jack London, and knowing Jack London, it’s gotta be about a dog.” Elijah slumps in his chair a bit and Daniel jumps a little when he feels Elijah stretch his legs and they brush his own. “Jesus, I have never found another person more obsessed with wolves and dogs. Honestly. Living or dead. Real or imagined. No one can beat Jack London.”
“Cruella DeVille,” Daniel supplies with a smirk.
Elijah laughs and his eyes twinkle, “But she only likes them when they’re dead. London’s like obsessed with their fur and obsessed with their stealth and their elusive, enigmatic, rogue beauty. Like they’re sophisticated but wild at the same time.”
Daniel bites his tongue because Elijah has just unintentionally described himself.
“I wonder how he would describe the sky at night,” Elijah thinks aloud. “He’s so eloquent... he’d probably describe it like the instant when a wolf has just kicked up snow and his tail melds into the flurry of white and...”
“Outlines,” Daniel breathes.
“Shadows.”
“But like a bucket of paint has just spilled all over it and soaked into the white.”
Elijah smiles. “Exactly.” He picks up his untouched spoon and jabs the end onto the table top. “Vibrant. A slice between a movie frame.”
“Not a movie frame. A slice between two moments, the slice between, the...”
“The fleeting moment that’s so ephemeral, you can’t catch it, and you don’t notice it. All fucking caught in the night sky.”
The look on Elijah’s face is dreamy and addictive. He thinks this is one of those moments, and he wants Mr. Freeze from Batman to come bursting in and capture Elijah, just like this. His mouth voluptuous and slightly parted, his eyes magnetic but surrounded by the fringe of black lashes, his hair is drooping in thick tails onto his forehead. Daniel wants to lean over and kiss him, but he doesn’t want to disrupt the moment that has been elongated by some benevolent will of the Gods.
That evening, when Daniel’s waiting in the lobby for his mother to arrive, he feels a hand slide into his back pocket. Turning around he finds himself staring at Elijah, who quickly pulls his hand out and smirks, leans close and whispers, “Just make sure everyone else is in bed.”
The hairs on the back of Daniel’s neck shiver. He can smell the clove cigarettes on his breath, which simply adds to the lewdness of it all. Daniel wants to kiss him right there, right in front of the video camera perched in the corner of the high ceiling, right in front of the security guards, right in front of the fucking secretary. He wants to push him against the marble walls and slip through the vortex of sanity, right into Elijah’s eyes and come out in Alaska with those fucking wolves roaming through the snow, howling. He wants to hear Elijah howl and get lost in the frigid wind, and Daniel wants to attack him and screw him right against the stone-cold wall--
“Daniel, honey, the limo’s waiting.”
He closes his eyes and thinks he’d like to murder his mother, but then he sees Elijah’s toothy grin and he remarks offhandedly, “Those pants are damn tight. Sort of defeats the purpose of having pockets, doesn’t it? If you can’t hardly get your hand in them.”
“Daniel.”
He doesn’t know what to say. But the words fall out of his mouth without any help from his brain, which is crunching in a highly annoyed fashion. “I’ll see you around.”
“I’ll see you tonight,” Elijah whispers and he winks, which is enough for Daniel to turn on his heel and run towards the door.
