Beautiful Ruins

The most painful thing about Saundra’s milk-fed-veal rant (as he’s begun to think of it) was not the truth of it, which was undeniable. Yeah, she was right; he could see that. The awful thing is that he didn’t see it before. As Saundra said with incredulity, I think you really believe your shit. And he did. He really believed his own shit. And now, after she’d blown it all up . . . he really didn’t.

For the first few months of their divorce, Shane felt empty and alone in his humiliation. Without his old belief in his slow-brewing talents, Shane was rudderless, adrift, and he sank into the depths of depression.

Which is why—he realizes now—he’s got to make the most of this second chance, to go out and prove that ACT wasn’t simply a motto or a tattoo, a childish delusion, but the truth. He is not milk-fed veal. He is a bull, a man on the come, a wi

Shane takes a deep breath in the studio bungalow offices of Michael Deane Productions, looks from Claire Silver to Michael Deane and back, and with all the old, Mamet-inspired confidence he can muster, says: “I came here to pitch a movie. And I’m not translating another word until you hear it.”

6

The Cave Paintings

April 1962

Porto Vergogna, Italy

The narrow trail was etched into the cliff face like bunting on the side of a wedding cake, a series of switchbacks zigzagging the steep ledge behind the village. Pasquale stepped carefully along the old goat path and continually looked back to make sure Dee was behind him. Near the top, the trail had been washed out by this year’s heavy winter rains and Pasquale reached back for Dee’s warm hand as the path gave way to bare rock. At the last switchback, an unlikely orange grove had been planted on the cliff side—six gnarled trees, three on each side, tied to the rocks with wire to keep them from blowing over the side. “Is a little more only,” Pasquale said.

“I’m fine,” she said, and they made their way along the last stretch of trail, the lip of the cliff just over their heads now, Porto Vergogna peeking out from the rocks sixty vertical meters beneath them.

“You feel bad? Stop or go?” Pasquale asked over his shoulder. He was becoming accustomed to speaking English again.

“No, let’s keep going. It’s nice to be out walking.”

Finally, they crested the cliff and stood on the ledge above the village, the drop-off right at their feet—wind ripe, sea pulsing, foam curling on the rocks below.

Dee stood near the edge, so frail that Pasquale had the urge to grab her, to keep her from being blown away by the wind. “It’s gorgeous, Pasquale,” she said. The sky was hazy-clear beneath a smear of faint cloud, washed-out blue against the darker sea.

On top of the cliffs, trails spiderwebbed the hills. He pointed up one trail to the northwest, up the coast. “This way, Cinque Terre.” Then he pointed east, behind them, over the hills toward the bay. “This way, Spezia.” Finally, he turned to the south and showed her the trail they were going to take; it carved the hills for another kilometer before dipping back into the craggy, unpopulated valley along the shoreline. “Portovenere this way. Is easy at first, then difficult. Only for goats is trail from Venere.”

She followed Pasquale on the easy part, a series of switchbacks up and down the pitched hills. Where they met the sea, the cliffs had been carved by shore break, but here, on top, the terrain was friendlier. Still, a few times, Dee and Pasquale had to reach for scraggly trees and vines to descend the steep hills and climb the sharp creases. At the crest of a rocky knob, Dee paused at the remnants of a stone foundation, Roman ruins rounded by weather and wind until they looked like old teeth.

“What was this?” she asked, pushing brush away from the smoothed stone.

Pasquale shrugged. For a thousand years, armies used these points to look out over the sea; there were so many ruins up here Pasquale hardly noticed them anymore. Sometimes the rubble of these old garrisons gave him a dull sadness. To think that this was all that was left of an empire; what mark could a man like him ever leave? A beach? A cliff-side te

“Come,” he said, “is a little more only.”

They walked another fifty meters and Pasquale pointed out where the hillside trail started down the cliffs into Portovenere, still more than a kilometer away. Then, taking Dee by the hand, Pasquale left the trail and scrambled over some boulders, pushed through brush—and they emerged on a point with a stu

Pasquale helped her climb on top of it, the wind dancing in her hair. “This was from the war?” she asked.

“Yes,” Pasquale said. “Everywhere still is the war. Was to see ships.”

“And was there fighting here?”

“No.” Pasquale waved at the cliffs behind them. “Too . . .” He frowned. He wanted to say lonely again, but that wasn’t quite right. “Isolato?” he asked in Italian.

“Isolated?”

“Sì, yes.” Pasquale smiled. “Only war here is boys play shoot at boats.” The concrete for the pillbox had been poured into the boulders behind it, so that it wasn’t visible from above and it looked like just another stone from below. Jutting from the brow of the cliff, the bunker had three open horizontal windows—inside was a machine-gun nest with a 280-degree view on the jagged cove of Porto Vergogna to the northwest, and beyond that, the rocky shoreline and the less drastic cliffs behind Riomaggiore, the last village of the Cinque Terre. To the south the mountains receded to the village of Portovenere, and beyond that Palmaria Island. On both sides the sea foamed on the rocky points, and the steep cliffs rose into green bursts of raggedy pine, clusters of fruit trees, and the furrowed begi

“It’s wonderful,” she said, standing atop the abandoned pillbox.

Pasquale was pleased that she liked it. “Is good place to think, yes?”

She smiled back at him. “And what do you think about up here, Pasquale?”

Such an odd question; what does anyone think about anywhere? When he was a kid he’d imagine the rest of the world up here. Now, mostly, he thought about his first love, Amedea, whom he’d left behind in Florence; he replayed their last day together, and wondered if there was something else he could’ve said. But occasionally, his thoughts up here were of a different order, thoughts about time and his place in the world—big, quiet thoughts, difficult to speak of in Italian, let alone English. And yet he wanted to try. “I think . . . all people in the world . . . and I am one only, yes?” Pasquale said. “And sometimes I see the moon here . . . yes, is for everyone . . . all people look at one moon. Yes? Here, Firenze, America. For all people, all time, same moon, yes?” He saw lovely Amedea, staring at the moon from the narrow window of her family’s house in Florence. “Sometimes, this same moon, it is good. But sometimes . . . more sad. Yes?”

She stared at him a moment, as it registered. “Yes,” she said finally. “I think so, too.” She reached over and squeezed his hand.