Beautiful Ruins

They walked down an alley and through a gate marked CENTURIONS. And sure enough, inside the high fence, costumed Roman centurions were standing everywhere, smoking, eating panini, reading newspapers, talking to one another. There were hundreds of these men wearing armor and holding spears. There were no cameras or film crews anywhere, just men in centurion costumes wearing wristwatches and fedoras.

He felt rather foolish doing it, but Pasquale followed the line of men not yet in costume. The line led to a small building, where the men were being measured and fitted. “Is there someone of authority around?” he asked the man in front of him.

“No. That’s what’s so great.” The man opened his jacket and showed Pasquale that he had five of the numbered cards that had been given away at the hotel. “I just keep going through the line. The idiots pay me every time. I don’t ever even get a costume. It’s almost too easy.” The man winked.

“But I’m not supposed to be here,” Pasquale said.

The man laughed. “Don’t worry. They won’t catch you. They won’t film today anyway. It’ll rain or someone won’t like the light or after an hour someone will come out and say, ‘Mrs. Taylor is ill again,’ and they’ll send us home. They film only one of every five days, at most. During the rains, I knew a man who got paid six times each day just to show up. He’d go to all of the extra locations and get paid at each one. They finally caught on and kicked him out. Do you know what he did? He stole a camera and sold it to an Italian film company and do you know what they did? Sold it back to the Americans at twice the price. Ha!”

As they moved forward, a man in a tweed suit was walking toward them, down the line. He was with a woman holding a clipboard. The man was speaking English in quick, furious bursts, telling the woman with the clipboard various things to write down. She nodded and did as he said. Sometimes he sent the people out of line and they left happily. When he got to Pasquale, the man stopped and leaned in extremely close. Pasquale leaned back.

“How old is he?”

Pasquale answered in English before the woman could translate. “I am twenty-two years.”

Now the man took Pasquale by the chin and turned his face so that he could look directly in his eyes. “Where’d you get the blue eyes, pal?”

“My mother, she has blue eyes. She is Ligurian. There are many blue eyes.”

The man said to the interpreter, “Slave?” and then to Pasquale, “You want to be a slave? I can get you a little more pay. Maybe even more days.” Before he could answer, the man said to the woman, “Send him over to be a slave.”

“No,” Pasquale said. “Wait.” He dug out the paper again and spoke to the man in the tweed suit in English. “I am only try to find Michael Deane. In my hotel is an American. Dee Moray.”

The man turned his body fully to Pasquale. “What did you say?”

“I am try to find—”

“Did you say Dee Moray?”

“Yes. She is in my hotel. This is why I come to find this Michael Deane. She has wait for him and he doesn’t come. She is very sick.”

The man looked down at the piece of paper and then made eye contact with the woman. “Jesus, we heard Dee went to Switzerland for treatment.”

“No. She come to my hotel.”

“Well, goddamn it, man, what are you doing with the extras?”

A car took him back to the Grand Hotel and he sat in the lobby, watching the light glint off a crystal chandelier. There was a staircase behind him, and every few minutes someone would saunter down, as if their appearance would lead to applause. The lifts dinged every few minutes as well, but still no one came for him. Pasquale smoked and waited. He thought of going to the room at the end of the hall and asking someone where he could find Michael Deane but he was afraid they’d just put him on a bus again. Twenty minutes passed. Then another twenty. Finally, an attractive young woman approached. There seemed to be no shortage of these.

“Mr. Tursi?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Deane is so sorry to have kept you waiting. Please, come with me.” Pasquale followed her to the lift and the operator took them to the fourth floor. The hallways were well-lit and wide and Pasquale was embarrassed to think of Dee Moray leaving this beautiful hotel for his little pensione, with its narrow staircase, where there hadn’t been room for the full height of the ceiling and so the builder had simply used the native boulders, blending the wall into the rock ceiling, as if a cave were slowly eating his hotel.

He followed the woman into a suite, the doors co

Pasquale was rushed through the suite and onto a terrace overlooking the church of Trinità dei Monti. He thought again of Dee Moray, of her saying what a beautiful view she had from her room, and he was embarrassed.

“Please, sit down. Michael will be right with you.”

Pasquale sat in a wrought-iron chair on the terrace, the sound of all that typing and talking going on behind him. He smoked. He waited another forty minutes. Then the attractive woman returned. Or was it a different one? “It will be a few more minutes. Would you like some water while you wait?”

“Yes, thank you,” Pasquale said.

But the water never arrived. It was after one now. He’d been trying to find Michael Deane for more than three hours. He was thirsty and hungry.

Another twenty minutes passed and the woman returned. “Michael is waiting for you down in the lobby.”

Pasquale was shaking—with anger or hunger, he couldn’t tell—as he stood and followed her through the suite again and out into the hallway, back down in the lift and to the lobby. And there, sitting on the very couch where he’d been an hour earlier, was a man far younger than Pasquale had imagined—as young as him—a fair, pale American with thin, reddish brown hair. He was chewing his right thumbnail. He was handsome enough, in that washed-out American way, but he lacked some quality that Pasquale would have assigned to the man that Dee Moray was waiting for. Maybe, he thought, there is no man good enough for her.

The man stood. “Mr. Tursi,” he said in English. “I’m Michael Deane. I understand you’ve come to talk about Dee.”

What Pasquale did next surprised even him. He hadn’t done anything of the kind since a night years ago in La Spezia, when he was seventeen and one of Orenzio’s brothers impugned his manhood, but at that very moment he stepped in and punched Michael Deane—in the chest, of all places. He’d never hit anyone in the chest, had never even seen anyone hit in the chest. It hurt his whole arm, and made a dull thud, and dropped Deane right back onto the couch, folded over like a garment bag.

Pasquale stood above the folded man, shaking and thinking, Stand up. Stand up and fight; let me hit you again. But slowly Pasquale’s anger faded. He looked around. No one had seen the punch. It must’ve looked as if Michael Deane had simply taken his seat again. Pasquale stepped back a little.

After he caught his breath, Deane unrolled, looked up with a grimace, and said, “Ow! Shit.” Then he coughed. “I suppose you think I deserved that.”

“Why you leave her alone like this! She is scared. And sick.”

“I know. I know. Look, I’m sorry about how things turned out.” Deane coughed again and rubbed his chest. He looked around warily. “Can we talk about this outside?”

Pasquale shrugged and they walked toward the door.

“No more hitting, right?”

Pasquale agreed and they left the hotel and walked outside to the Spanish Steps. The piazza was full, merchants yelling out prices for flowers. Pasquale waved them off as they walked deeper into the piazza.