Beautiful Ruins

He checks the number on the phone. Claire? At four forty-five on a Wild Pitch Friday—what could this be? His assistant is whip-smart—and he has the superstitious belief that she might have that rare quality: luck—but she makes life so tough on herself. The girl anguishes over everything, is constantly measuring herself, her expectations, her progress, her sense of worth. It’s exhausting. Michael has even become suspicious that she’s looking for another job—he has a sixth sense for such things—and this is probably the reason he holds up a finger to Kathy and takes the call.

“What is it, Claire?”

She rambles, chatters, titters. My God, he thinks, this girl, with her unshakable upper-middlebrow taste, her world-weary, faux cynicism. He always warns her about cynicism; it is as thin as an eighty-dollar suit. She’s a great reader, but she lacks the cool clarity required for producing. I don’t love it, she’ll say about an idea, as if love had anything to do with it. Michael’s producing partner, Da

On the phone, Claire is at her mumbling, apologetic worst, droning on about Wild Pitch Friday, about some old Italian guy and a writer who happens to speak his language, and Michael starts to interrupt, “Claire—” but the girl won’t even pause for breath. “Claire—” he says again, but his assistant won’t let him in.

“The Italian guy is looking for an old actress, somebody named”—and Claire utters a name that momentarily takes away his breath—“Dee Moray?”

Michael Deane’s legs go out from under him. The phone drops from his right hand onto the counter as the fingers on his left hand skitter for purchase; only Kathy’s quick reflexes keep him from falling all the way to the floor, from possibly hitting his head on the counter and impaling himself on his erection.

“Michael! Are you okay?” Kathy asks. “Is it another stroke?”

Dee Moray.

So this is what ghosts are like, Michael thinks. Not white corporeal figures haunting your dreams, but old names buzzed over cell phones.

He waves his wife off and grabs the phone from the counter. “It’s not a stroke, Kathy, let me go.” He concentrates on breathing. A man so rarely gets the full sweep of his life. But here is Michael Deane, chemically enhanced erection straining his silk pajamas in the open kitchen of his Hollywood Hills home, holding on to a tiny wireless telephone and speaking across fifty years: “Don’t move. I’ll be right there.”

The first impression one gets of Michael Deane is of a man constructed of wax, or perhaps prematurely embalmed. After all these years, it may be impossible to trace the sequence of facials, spa treatments, mud baths, cosmetic procedures, lifts and staples, collagen implants, outpatient touch-ups, ta

Suffice it to say that, upon meeting Michael for the first time, many people stare open-mouthed, unable to look away from his glistening, vaguely lifelike face. Sometimes they cock their heads to get a better angle, and Michael mistakes their morbid fascination for attraction, or respect, or surprise that someone his age could look this good, and it is this basic misunderstanding that causes him to be even more aggressive about fighting the aging process. It’s not just that he gets younger-looking each year, that’s common enough here; it’s as if he is somehow transforming himself, evolving into a different being altogether, and this transformation defies any attempts to explain it. Trying to picture what Michael Deane looked like as a young man in Italy fifty years ago, based on his appearance now, is like standing on Wall Street trying to understand the topography of Manhattan Island before the Dutch arrived.

As this strange man shuffles toward him, Shane Wheeler can’t quite get his mind around the idea that this lacquered elf is the famous Michael Deane. “Is that—”

“Yes,” Claire simply says. “Try not to stare.”

But this is like ordering someone to stay dry in a rainstorm. Especially when he shuffle-walks, the contradiction is just too much, as if a boy’s face has been grafted onto the body of a dying man. He’s dressed strangely, too, in silk pajama pants and a long wool coat that covers most of his torso. If Shane didn’t know this was one of the most famous producers in Hollywood, he might go with escaped mental patient.

“Thanks for calling, Claire,” Michael Deane says once he’s reached them. He points to the door of the bungalow. “The Italian’s in there?”

“Yeah,” she says, “we told him we’d be right back.” Claire has never heard Michael so shaken; she tries to imagine what could have happened between these two to upset Michael this way, to have him call from the car and ask Claire and “the translator” to meet him outside, so he could take a minute before seeing Pasquale.

“After all these years,” Michael says. He usually speaks in a clipped hurry, like a forties gangster rushing his lines. But now his voice seems strained, uneasy—although his face remains remarkably neutral, placid.

Claire steps forward, takes Michael’s arm.

“Are you okay, Michael?”

“I’m fine.” And only then does he look at Shane. “You must be the translator.”

“Oh. Well, I studied for a year in Florence, so I do speak a little Italian. But actually I’m a writer. I’m here to pitch a film idea—Shane Wheeler?” There is no recognition on Michael Deane’s face that the man is even speaking English. “Anyway, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Deane. I loved your book.”

Michael Deane bristles at the mention of his autobiography, which his editor and ghostwriter turned into a how-to-pitch-in-Hollywood primer. He spins back to Claire. “What did the Italian say . . . exactly?”

“Like I told you on the phone,” Claire says. “Not much.”

Michael Deane looks at Shane again, as if there might be something in the translation that Claire has missed.

“Uh, well,” Shane says, glancing at Claire, “he just said that he met you in 1962. And then he told us about this actress who came to his town, Dee—”

Michael holds up his hand to keep Shane from saying the whole name. And he looks back to Claire to pick up, as if, in this verbal relay, he might find some answers.

“At first,” Claire says, “I thought he was pitching a story about this actress in Italy. He said she was sick. And I asked with what.”

“Cancer,” Michael Deane says.

“Yeah, that’s what he said.”

Michael Deane nods. “Does he want money?”

“He didn’t say anything about money. He said he wanted to find this actress.”

Michael runs a hand through his postnaturally plugged and woven sandy hair. He nods toward the bungalow. “And he’s in there now?”

“Yes, I told him I was going to come get you. Michael, what’s this about?”

“About? This is about everything.” He looks Claire over, all the way down to her heels. “Do you know what my real talent is, Claire?”

Claire can’t imagine a satisfying answer to a question like that, and thankfully Michael doesn’t wait for an answer.

“I see what people want. I have a kind of X-ray vision for desire. Ask some guy what he wants to watch on TV and he’ll say news. Opera. Foreign films. But put a box in his house and what’s he watch? Blow jobs and car crashes. Does that mean the country is full of lying degenerates? No. They want to want news and opera. But it’s not what they want.