Beautiful Ruins

Michael Deane continued to rub his chest. “I think you broke something.”

“Dispiace,” Pasquale muttered, even though he wasn’t sorry.

“How is Dee?”

“She is sick. I bring a doctor from La Spezia.”

“And your doctor . . . examined her?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Michael Deane nodded grimly and started in on his thumbnail again. “Then I don’t suppose I need to guess what the doctor told you.”

“He ask for her doctor. To talk.”

“He wants to talk to Dr. Crane?”

“Yes.” Pasquale tried to remember the exact conversation, but he knew the translation would be impossible.

“Look, you should know that none of this was Dr. Crane’s idea. It was mine.” Michael Deane pulled back, as if Pasquale might hit him again. “All Dr. Crane did was explain to her that her symptoms were consistent with cancer. Which they are.”

Pasquale wasn’t sure he understood. “Are you come to get her now?” he asked.

Michael Deane didn’t answer right away, but looked around the piazza. “Do you know what I like about this place, Mr. Tursi?”

Pasquale looked at the Spanish Steps, at the wedding-cake ascension of stairs leading up to the church of Trinità dei Monti. On the steps nearest him, a young woman was leaning forward on her knees, reading a book while her friend drew on a sketch pad. The steps were covered with people like this, reading, taking photographs, and in intimate conversations.

“I like the self-interest of the Italian people. I like that they aren’t afraid to ask for exactly what they want. Americans are not like that. We talk around our intentions. Do you know what I mean?”

Pasquale didn’t. But he also didn’t want to admit it and so he just nodded.

“You and I should explain our positions. I’m obviously in a difficult position and you appear to be someone who can help.”

Pasquale was having trouble concentrating on these meaningless words. He couldn’t imagine what Dee Moray saw in this man.

They had reached the Fountain of the Old Boat in the center of the piazza—the Fontana della Barcaccia. Michael Deane leaned against it. “Do you know about this fountain, the sinking boat?”

Pasquale looked at the sculpted boat in the center of the fountain, water roiling up through the center of it. “No.”

“It’s unlike any other sculpture in the city. All of these earnest, serious pieces and this one, it’s comic—ridiculous. To my thinking, that makes it the truest piece of art in the city. Do you know what I mean, Mr. Tursi?”

Pasquale didn’t know what to say.

“A long time ago, during a flood, the river lifted a boat and dumped it here, where the fountain sits today. The artist was trying to capture the random nature of disaster.

“His point was this: sometimes there is no explanation for the things that happen. Sometimes a boat simply appears on a street. And as odd as it may seem, one has no choice but to deal with the fact that there’s suddenly a boat on the street. Well . . . such is the position I find myself in here in Rome, on this movie. Except it’s not just one boat. There are fucking boats on every fucking street.”

Again, Pasquale had no idea what the man meant.

“You may think what I’ve done to Dee is cruel. I won’t argue that, from a certain vantage, it was. But I just deal with whatever disasters arise, one at a time.” With that, Michael Deane produced an envelope from his suit coat. He pressed it into Pasquale’s hand. “Half is for her. And half is for you, for what you’ve done and for what I hope you can do for me now.” He put a hand on Pasquale’s arm. “Even though you’ve assaulted me, I’m going to consider you a friend, Mr. Tursi, and I will treat you as a friend. But if I find out that you have given her less than half or that you have talked to anyone about this, I will no longer be your friend. And you don’t want that.”

Pasquale pulled his arm away. Was this awful man accusing him of being dishonest? He remembered Dee’s word and he said, “Please! I am frank!”

“Yes, good,” Michael Deane said, holding up his hands as if he were afraid Pasquale would hit him again. Then his eyes narrowed and he stepped in close. “You want to be frank? I can be frank. I was sent here to save this dying movie. That’s my only job. My job has no moral component. It is not good and it is not bad. It is merely my job to get the boats off the streets.”

He looked away. “Obviously your doctor is right. We misled Dee to get her out of here. I’m not proud of myself for that. Please tell her, Dr. Crane shouldn’t have chosen stomach cancer. He didn’t mean to scare her. You know doctors—almost too analytical. He chose it because the symptoms could match up with those of early pregnancy. But it was only supposed to be for a day or two. That’s why she was supposed to go to Switzerland. There’s a doctor there who specializes in unwanted pregnancies. He’s safe. Discreet.”

Pasquale was a few steps behind. So it was true. She was pregnant.

Michael Deane reacted to Pasquale’s look. “Look, please tell her how sorry I am.” Then he patted the envelope in Pasquale’s hand. “Tell her . . . it’s the way things sometimes are. And I am truly sorry. But she needs to go to Switzerland as Dr. Crane advised her to do. The doctor there will take care of everything. It’s all paid for.”

Pasquale stared at the envelope in his hands.

“Oh, and I have something else for her.” He reached in the same jacket pocket and removed three small, square photographs. They appeared to have been taken on the set of the movie—he could see a camera crew in the background of one—and while the pictures were small, Pasquale could see clearly, in all three of them, Dee Moray. She wore a kind of long, flowing dress and was standing with another woman, both of them flanking a third woman, a beautiful, dark-haired woman who was in the foreground of the pictures. In the best photo, Dee and this dark-haired woman were leaning back, caught by the photographer in a genuine moment, dissolving in laughter. “These are continuity photos,” Michael Deane said. “We use these pictures to make sure we get the setup for the next shot right. Costumes, hair . . . make sure no one puts on a wristwatch. I thought Dee might want to have these.”

Pasquale looked hard into the top photo. Dee Moray had her hand on the other woman’s arm, and they were laughing so hard that Pasquale would have given anything right then to know what was so fu

Deane was looking down at the top photo, too. “She has an interesting look. Honestly, I didn’t see it at first. I thought Mankiewicz had lost his mind—casting a blond woman as an Egyptian lady-in-waiting. But she has this quality . . .” Michael Deane leaned in. “And I’m not just talking tits here. There’s something else . . . an authenticity. She’s a real actress, that one.” Deane shook off this thought and looked back at the top photo. “We’ll have to reshoot the scenes with Dee in them. There aren’t many. What with the delays, the rains, the labor stuff, then Liz got sick, and then Dee got sick. When I sent her away, she told me she was disappointed that no one would ever know she was in this movie. So I thought she would want these.” Michael Deane shrugged. “Of course, that was when she thought she was dying.”

It hung in the air, the word dying.

“You know,” Michael Deane said, “I sort of imagined that she’d eventually call me and we’d laugh about this. That it would be a fu