Beautiful Ruins

The tour guide chutters into his headset, telling the tram-people in something like English how a certain famous breakup scene from a certain famous television show was famously filmed “right over there,” and as Shane approaches, the driver holds up a finger so he can finish his story. Sweating, near tears, in full overheated self-loathing, fighting every urge to call his parents—his ACT resolve now a distant memory—Shane finds himself staring at the tour guide’s name tag: ANGEL.

“Excuse me?” Shane says.

Angel covers the headset microphone and says, heavily accented, “Fuck jou want?” Angel is roughly his age, so Shane tries for late-twenties camaraderie. “Dude, I’m totally late. Can you help me find Michael Deane’s office?”

Something about this question causes another tourist to take Shane’s picture. But Angel merely jerks his thumb and drives the tram away, revealing a sign that he was blocking, pointing to a bungalow: MICHAEL DEANE PRODUCTIONS.

Shane looks at his watch. Thirty-six minutes late now. Shit shit shit. He runs around the corner and there it is—but blocking the door to the bungalow is an old man with a cane. For a second, Shane thinks it might be Michael Deane himself, even though the agent said Deane wouldn’t be at the meeting, that it would just be his development assistant, Claire Something. Anyway, it’s not Michael Deane. It’s just some old guy, seventy maybe, in a dark gray suit and charcoal fedora, cane draped over his arm, holding a business card. As Shane’s feet clack on the pavement, the old man turns and removes his fedora, revealing a shock of slate hair and eyes that are a strange, coral blue.

Shane clears his throat. “Are you going in? ’Cause I . . . I’m very late.”

The man holds out a business card: ancient, wrinkled and stained, the type faded. It’s from another studio, 20th Century Fox, but the name is right: Michael Deane.

“You’re in the right place,” Shane says. He presents his own Michael Deane business card—the newer model. “See? He’s at this studio now.”

“Yes, I go this one,” says the man, heavily accented, Italian—Shane recognizes it from the year he studied in Florence. He points at the 20th Century Fox card. “They say, go this one.” He points to the bungalow. “But . . . is locked.”

Shane can’t believe it. He steps past the man and tries the door. Yes, locked. Then it’s over.

“Pasquale Tursi,” says the man, holding out his hand.

Shane shakes it. “Big Loser,” he says.

Claire has texted Daryl to ask what he wants for di

Sometimes she makes a guess about Wild Friday Pitchers, and she does this now: mop-haired sideburns in factory-torn blue jeans and faux Western shirt? Michael’s old coke dealer’s son. And old silver-haired, blue-eyed charcoal suit? This one’s tougher. Some guy Michael met in 1965 while getting rimmed at an orgy at Tony Curtis’s house?

The frantic younger guy sees her approaching. “Are you Claire Silver?”

No, she thinks. “Yes,” she says.

“I’m Shane Wheeler, and I am so sorry. There was traffic and I got lost and . . . Is there any chance we could still have our meeting?”

She looks helplessly at the older guy, who removes his hat and extends the business card. “Pasquale Tursi,” he says. “I am look . . . for . . . Mr. Deane.”

Great: two lost causes. A kid who can’t find his way around LA, and a time-traveling Italian. Both men stare at her, hold out Michael Deane business cards. She takes the cards. The young guy’s card is, predictably, newer. She turns it over. Below Michael’s signature is a note from the agent Andrew Du

The other card is a mystery, the oldest Michael Deane business card she’s ever seen, faded and wrinkled, from Michael’s first studio, 20th Century Fox. It’s the job that catches her—publicity? Michael started in publicity? How old is this card?

Honestly, after the day she’s had, if Daryl had texted anything other than kfc and unrated hookbook, she might just have told these two guys the game was up—they’d missed today’s charity wagon. But she thinks again about Fate and the deal she made. Who knows? Maybe one of these guys . . . right. She unlocks the door and asks their names again. Sloppy sideburns = Shane. Popping eyes = Pasquale.

“Why don’t you both come on back to the conference room,” she says.

In the office, they sit beneath posters for Michael’s classic movies (Mind Blow; The Love Burglar). No time for pleasantries; it’s the first pitch meeting in history in which no water is proffered. “Mr. Tursi, would you like to go first?”

He looks around, confused. “Mr. Deane . . . is not here?” His accent is heavy, as if he’s chewing on each word.

“I’m afraid he’s not here today. Are you an old friend of his?”

“I meet him . . .” He stares at the ceiling. “Eh, nel sessantadue.”

“Nineteen sixty-two,” says the young guy. When Claire looks curiously at him, Shane shrugs. “I spent a year studying in Italy.”

Claire imagines Michael and this old guy, back in the day, tooling around Rome in a convertible, screwing Italian actresses, drinking grappa. Now Pasquale Tursi looks disoriented. “He say . . . you . . . ever need anything.”

“Sure,” Claire says. “I promise I’ll tell Michael all about your pitch. Why don’t you just start at the begi

Pasquale squints as if he doesn’t understand. “My English . . . is long time . . .”

“The begi

“There’s this guy . . .” Claire urges.

“A woman,” Pasquale Tursi says. “She come to my village, Porto Vergogna . . . in . . .” He looks over at Shane for help.

“Nineteen sixty-two?” Shane says again.

“Yes. She is . . . beautiful. And I am build . . . eh . . . a beach, yes? And te

“An actress?” Shane Wheeler asks.

“Yes.” Pasquale Tursi nods and stares off into space.

Claire checks her watch and does her best to jumpstart his pitch: “So . . . an actress comes to this town and she falls for this guy who’s building a beach?”

Pasquale looks back at Claire. “No. For me . . . maybe, yes. E— l’attimo, yes?” He looks at Shane for help. “L’attimo che dura per sempre.”

“The moment that lasts forever,” Shane says quietly.

“Yes,” Pasquale says, and nods. “Forever.”

Claire feels pinched by those words in such close proximity, moment and forever. Not exactly KFC and Hookbook. She suddenly feels angry—at her silly ambition and romanticism, at her taste in men, at the loopy Scientologists, at her father for watching that stupid movie and then leaving, at herself for coming back to the office—at herself because she keeps hoping for better. And Michael: Goddamn Michael and his goddamn job and his goddamn business cards and his goddamn old buzzard friends and the goddamn favors he owes the goddamn people he screwed back when he screwed everything that screwed.