Beautiful Ruins

“What I do is look at someone”—he narrows his eyes at Claire’s clothing again—“and I see straight to her desire, to what she truly wants. A director won’t take a job and insists it isn’t about the money, I go get him more money. An actor says he wants to work in the States to be near his family, I get him a job overseas so he can get away from his family. That ability has served me for almost fifty years—”

He doesn’t finish. He takes a deep breath in through his nose and smiles at Shane, as if just remembering he was there. “Those stories of people trading their souls . . . you don’t really understand them until you get a little older.”

Claire is stu

“Okay,” he says. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Pasquale Tursi narrows his eyes and stares at Michael Deane. Can this possibly be the same man? They are sitting in Michael’s office, Michael sliding easily behind his desk, Pasquale and Shane on the couch, Claire in a chair she’s dragged in. Michael has kept his heavy coat on, and his face is placid, but he squirms a bit, uncomfortable in his chair.

“Good to see you again, my friend,” Michael tells Pasquale, but it comes across as oddly insincere. “It has been a long time.”

Pasquale simply nods. Then he turns to Shane and asks quietly: “Sta male?”

“No,” Shane says, and tries to think of how to tell Pasquale that Michael Deane is not sick but has had numerous procedures and surgeries. “Molto . . . uh . . . ambulatori.”

“What did you tell him?” Michael asks.

“He, uh . . . he said you look good and I just said you take care of yourself.”

Michael thanks him, and then asks Shane, “Will you ask if he wants money?”

Pasquale jerks at the word money. He looks mildly disgusted. “No. I come . . . to find . . . Dee Moray.”

Michael Deane nods, a bit pained. “I have no idea where she is,” Michael says. “I’m sorry.” Then he looks at Claire, as if for help.

“I Googled her,” Claire says. “I tried different spellings, looked at the IMDb listing for Cleopatra. There’s nothing.”

“No,” Michael says, chewing his lip. “There wouldn’t be. It wasn’t her real name.” He rubs his lineless face again, considers Pasquale, and turns to Shane. “Please, translate for me. Tell him that I am sorry for the way I behaved back then.”

“Luièdispiaciuto,” Shane says.

Pasquale nods slightly, acknowledging the words if not accepting them. Whatever is between these two men, Shane thinks, it runs deep. Then there is a buzzing and Claire brings her cell phone to her ear. She answers it, and says calmly into the device: “You’re go

All three men stare at her. She clicks off the call. “Sorry,” she says, then opens her mouth to explain but thinks better of it.

Michael looks back to Pasquale and Shane again. “Tell him I’ll find her. That it’s the least I can do.”

“Egli vi aiuteràa . . . um . . . trovarla.”

Pasquale simply nods again.

“Tell him that I plan to do this right away, that I consider it an honor to be able to help, and a chance for redemption, to complete the circle of this thing that I started so many years ago. And please tell him that I never had any intention of hurting anyone.”

Shane rubs his brow, looks from Michael to Claire. “I’m not sure how to . . . I mean . . . Um . . . Lui vuole fare il bene.”

“That’s it?” Claire says. “He said fifty words. You said, like, four.”

Shane feels stung by the criticism. “I told you, I’m not a translator. I don’t know how to say all of that; I just said, He wants to do good now.”

“No, that’s right,” Michael says. He looks with admiration at Shane, and for a moment, Shane imagines parlaying this translation job into a screenwriting deal. “That’s exactly what I want to do,” Michael says. “I want to do good. Yes.” Then Michael turns to Claire. “This is our number one priority now, Claire.”

Shane watches all of this with fascination and disbelief. This morning he was sitting in his parents’ basement; now he’s in Michael Deane’s office (the Michael Deane’s office!) while the legendary producer barks orders to his development assistant. In the words of the prophet Mamet, Act as if . . . Go with it. Be confident and the world responds to your confidence, rewards your faith.

Michael Deane pulls an old Rolodex from a desk drawer and begins spi

“Look,” Shane Wheeler says, surprising even himself, “I told you. I’m not a translator. I’m a writer.”

They all turn to look at him, and for a moment Shane questions his resolve, recalls the dark period he’s just come through. Before that, Shane Wheeler always knew he was headed for great things. Everyone told him so—not just his parents, but strangers, too—and while he didn’t exactly tear it up in college and Europe and grad school (all on his parents’ dime, as Saundra liked to point out), he never doubted he’d be a success.

But during the collapse of his brief marriage, Saundra (and the crabby marriage counselor who clearly took her side) described a very different pattern: a boy whose parents never said no, who never required him to do chores or to get a job, who stepped in whenever he got into trouble (Exhibit A: the spring-break thing with the police in Mexico), who supported him financially long after they should have. Here he was, almost thirty, and he’d never had a real job. Here he was, seven years out of college, two years out of his master’s program, married—and his mother still sent him a monthly clothing allowance? (She likes buying my clothes, Shane argued. Isn’t it cruel to make her stop?)

In that doomed final month of the marriage—in what felt like a live autopsy of his manhood—Saundra tried to make him feel “better” by insisting it wasn’t entirely his fault; he was part of a ruined generation of young men coddled by their parents—by their mothers especially—raised on unearned self-esteem, in a bubble of overaffection, in a sad incubator of phony achievement.

Men like you never had to fight, so you have no fight in you, she said. Men like you grow up flaccid and weak, she said. Men like you are milk-fed veal.

And what milk-fed Shane did next only proved her point: after a particularly heated argument, when Saundra went to work, he moved out, taking the car they’d bought together and heading for Costa Rica and a job on a coffee plantation he’d heard about from some friends. But the car died in Mexico, and—broke and carless—Shane made his way back to Portland and moved back in with his parents.

Since then, he’s come to regret his behavior and has apologized to Saundra, even sending her the irregular check for her part of the car (birthday money from his grandparents, mostly), and promising that soon he’d pay her back completely.