“I want to talk to him. Will you translate for me?”
Gerald nodded. “Of course.”
I walked up the man. He was young. Older than me—but young. “Will you tell him that it’s a beautiful thing to love in the face of all this dying? Will you tell him he’s very brave?”
“Excusez-moi, monsieur. Mon jeune ami américain voulait que je vous dise quíl pense que cést une belle chose à aimer face à tout ce mourant. Il voulait que je te dise quíl te trouve très courageux.”
The man handed his sign to Gerald and hugged me. He whispered in English, “We all have to learn to be brave. We can’t allow them to take away our love.”
He let me go. We nodded at each other. And then he said, “You’re much too handsome to be an American.”
I smiled at him. “I’m not sure I am an American.”
* * *
The Ari I once was wouldn’t have had the courage to speak to a stranger in a foreign country. He was gone, the old Ari. I didn’t know where I’d left him—but I didn’t want him back.
Fifty
I HEADED TOWARD THE LOUVRE around noon. I tried not to think of anything. When I got off at the Louvre station, I made my way to the entrance of the museum—then waited in line. It didn’t take longer than twenty minutes to get a ticket to enter one of the most famous museums in the world.
I looked at my watch. I’d never worn a watch before. It was my father’s. Somehow I felt he was somewhere close. It was a strange feeling. I had a map of the Louvre, and I followed it, and made my way to The Raft of the Medusa. And then I found myself standing in front of that painting. I wasn’t disappointed. It was a huge painting. “Magnificent” was the only word for it. I stared at it for a long time.
To have painted that. To have brought into the world a work of art that could make a human heart feel alive. I wondered what it would be like to have such a gift.
I looked at my watch. It was exactly one thirty. I stood in front of the painting—and I felt so small and insignificant. And then I felt him standing next to me.
Dante, who was always late, was right on time. For me.
I kept staring at the painting. And I knew he was staring at the painting too. “I come and look at it all the time. And think of you.”
“The first time I saw that painting in a book, I fell in love with it. I didn’t know I could fall in love with a painting. Just as I didn’t know that I could fall in love with another boy.”
We fell into a silence as if there were no words to say what we had to say. I knew he wanted to say he was sorry. And I wanted to say that I was sorry too. But it was so unnecessary to acknowledge the hurt because the hurt was gone now. And it was unnecessary to say “I love you” at that moment because sometimes it felt cheap to say such an obvious thing—so it was better to keep the silence because it was so rare and so sacred.
I felt him take my hand in his, a hand that held all the secrets of the universe, a hand I would never let go until I memorized each and every line of his palm. I looked up at the painting, the survivors of a shipwreck, fighting the waves of a storm, struggling to get back to the shore, where life was waiting for them.
I knew why I loved that painting. I was on that raft. Dante was on that raft. My mother and Dante’s mom and dad and Cassandra and Susie and Gina and Danny and Julio and Mr. Blocker. And Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Alvidrez, they were on that raft too. And those who had died too soon—my dad and my aunt Ophelia and Cassandra’s brother, and Emma’s son and Rico, and Camila, all the lost people that the world had thrown away—they were there with us on that raft, and their dreams and desires too. And if the raft collapsed, we would dive into the waters of that stormy sea—and swim our way to shore.
We had to make it to shore for Sophocles and all the newly arrived citizens of the world. We had learned that we were all connected, and we were stronger than any storm, and we would make it back to the shores of America—and when we arrived, we would throw out the old maps that took us to violent places filled with hate, and the new roads we mapped would take all of us to places and cities we’d never dreamed of. We were the cartographers of the new America. We would map out a new nation.
Yes, we were stronger than the storm.
We wanted so much to live.
We would make it to the shore with or without this ragged, broken raft. We were in this world, and we were going to fight to stay in it. Because it was ours. And one day the word “exile” would be no more.
I didn’t care what was going happen to Dante and me in the future. What we had was that moment, and right then, I didn’t want or need anything else. I thought of everything we had been through and all the things we had taught each other—and how we could never unlearn those lessons because they were the lessons of the heart, the heart learning to understand that strange and familiar and intimate and inscrutable word “love.”
Dante turned away from the painting and faced me.
I turned to face him, too. I’d missed his smile. Such a simple thing, a smile.
“Kiss me,” I said.
“No,” he said, “you kiss me.”
And so I kissed him.
I didn’t ever want to stop kissing him. But we couldn’t kiss forever. “You know,” I whispered, “I was going to ask you to marry me. But they won’t let us do that. So I thought maybe it was best just to skip the wedding and get straight to the honeymoon.”
“Have you decided where you’d take me?”
“Yes,” I said. “I thought I’d take you to Paris. We’ll spend our time writing our names on the map of the city of love.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It took me five years to write a book I never intended to write. Aristotle and Dante came from somewhere inside me and I thought I was finished with them. But they were not finished with me. I came to feel very strongly that I had left too many things unsaid and I became very dissatisfied with Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. Somehow, it seemed too easy. Slowly and reluctantly, I started entertaining the idea to finish what I had started. But what was it that I had left unsaid? I decided that only the writing of the sequel would I discover the answer to that. And I must be honest, this was the most difficult book that I have ever written.
Nothing in this novel came easily, which surprised me. At times, I felt that my heart was at war with itself. I was able to finish only because of the people who supported me with their love and their belief in me and their faith in my writing. I have said this before, and it bears repeating: No one writes a book alone. I would like to acknowledge those who were present to me in the writing of this book. It seemed, at times, the people who filled my life with a lovely and impossible affection were in the room with me as I wrote. Some were present to me almost as ghosts. Others were present quietly, almost silently. Still others were present to me in far more “real” ways. Mostly I heard their voices through telephone calls, texts and e-mails. Writing a book in the middle of pandemic changes things.
First on my gratitude list is my agent, Patty Moosbrugger. Through the years she was been so much more than an agent—she has become one of my closest friends. I do not know what I would do without her—nor do I wish to find out. As I wrote most of the book during the pandemic, I owe a debt of gratitude to the three people who were a part of my everyday life. Without their presence, I don’t know how I would have survived. Danny, Diego, and Liz became my family—and the emotional support that I needed as I wrote. Without their presence, their patience, and their love, I am quite sure, this book could not have been written. My sister, Gloria, was always close, always in my heart, always a sentry watching over me. She was—and remains—my guardian angel. Through the past year I have seen very little of my friends, but there were many times I imagined each of them in the room with me, silently sitting as I wrote. These names are holy to me: Teri, Jaime, Ginny, Barbara, Hector, Annie, Stephanie, Alvaro, Alfredo, Angela, Monica, Phillip, Bobby, Lee, Bob, Kate, Zahira, and Michael. How many friends can a man have? As many as his heart can hold.