Beautiful Ruins

They walked ashore and straight into Gualfredo’s recently remodeled albergo, the Hotel de la Mar in Portovenere. The desk clerk required even more of the money from Pasquale’s payoff from Michael Deane, but after they’d negotiated his outrageous price, the man gave them the bottle of cognac that Richard Burton wanted and the number of Dee Moray’s room. The actor had slept a little in the boat—Pasquale had no idea how—and now he swirled the cognac like mouthwash, swallowed, patted down his hair, and said, “Okay. Good as gold.” He and Pasquale climbed the stairs and walked down the hallway to the tall door of Dee’s room, Pasquale looking around at Gualfredo’s modern hotel and becoming embarrassed again that Dee Moray had ever stayed in his grubby little pensione. The smell of this place—clean and something he thought of as vaguely American—made him realize how badly the Adequate View must stink, the old women and rotting, damp sea-smell of the place.

Richard Burton walked in front of Pasquale, weaving on the carpet, righting the ship with each step. He patted down his hair, winked at Pasquale, and rapped lightly, with one knuckle, on the hotel room door. When there was no answer, he knocked louder.

“Who is it?” Dee Moray’s voice came from behind the door.

“Ah, it’s Richard, love,” he said. “Come to rescue you.”

A moment later the door flew open and Dee appeared in a robe. They crashed into each other’s arms and Pasquale had to look away or risk betraying his deep envy and embarrassment that he’d ever imagined that she could want to be with someone like him. He was a donkey watching two Thoroughbreds prance in a field.

After a few seconds, Dee Moray pushed Richard Burton away. In a voice both chiding and sweet, she asked him, “Where have you been?”

“I was looking for you,” Richard Burton said. “It’s been something of an odyssey. But, listen, there’s something I need to tell you. I’m afraid we’ve been the subjects of a frightful bit of deception here.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Come in. Sit down. I’ll explain the whole thing.” Richard Burton helped her back into her room and the door closed behind them.

Pasquale stood alone in the hallway then, staring at the door, unsure what to do, listening to the hushed conversation inside and trying to decide whether he should simply stand there, or knock on the door and remind them that he was out here, or just go back down to the boat with Tomasso. He yawned and leaned against the wall. He’d been at it for about twenty hours straight. By now, Richard Burton would have told her that she wasn’t dying, that she was in fact pregnant, and yet he heard none of the noises he’d have expected coming from behind the door at the revelation of this news—either a loud expression of anger, or the relief at the truth of her condition, or the shock that she was having a baby. A baby! she might yell. Or ask, A baby? Yet there was nothing behind the door but hushed voices.

Perhaps five minutes passed. Pasquale had just decided to leave when the door opened and Dee Moray came out alone, her robe pulled tight around her. She had been crying. She said nothing, just walked down the hall, her bare feet padding on the carpet. Pasquale pushed off the wall. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. He put his arms around her, the tapered notch of her waist; he felt the silk against her skin, and beneath her soft robe, her breasts against his chest. She smelled like roses and soap and Pasquale was suddenly horrified at the way he must smell after the day he’d had—trips on a bus and in a car and in two fishing boats—and only then did the unbelievable nature of this day fully register. Had he actually begun the day in Rome nearly cast as an extra in the movie Cleopatra? Then Dee Moray began to shudder like the old motor in Tomasso’s boat. He held her for a full minute and tried simply to let the minute be—the firmness of the body beneath the softness of that robe.

Finally, Dee Moray pulled away. She wiped at her eyes and looked into Pasquale’s face. “I don’t know what to say.”

Pasquale shrugged. “Is okay.”

“But I want to say something to you, Pasquale, I need to.” And then she laughed. “Thank you is not nearly enough.”

Pasquale looked down at the floor. Sometimes it was like a deep ache, the simple act of breathing in and out. “No,” he said. “Is enough.”

He pulled from his coat the envelope of money, much lightened since it had been handed to him on the Spanish Steps. “Michael Deane ask for me give you this.” She opened it and shook with revulsion at the bloom of currency. He didn’t mention that some of the money was meant for him; it made him feel complicit. “And these,” Pasquale said, and handed her the continuity photos of herself. On top was the picture of Dee and the other woman on the set of Cleopatra. She covered her mouth when she saw it. Pasquale said, “Michael Deane said I tell you—”

“Don’t ever tell me what that bastard said,” Dee Moray interrupted, not looking up from the photograph. “Please.”

Pasquale nodded.

She still hadn’t looked up from the continuity photos. She pointed to the other woman in the photo, the one with the dark hair, whose arm Dee Moray was holding as she laughed. “She’s actually quite nice,” she said. “It’s fu

Dee Moray looked back toward the open door of her hotel room. And then she wiped her teary eyes again. “I guess we’re going to stay here tonight,” she said. “Richard’s awfully tired. He has to go back to France for one more day of shooting. And then he’s going to come with me to Switzerland and . . . we’ll see this doctor together and . . . I guess . . . get it taken care of.”

“Yes,” Pasquale said, the words taken care of hanging in the air. “I am glad . . . you are not sick.”

“Thank you, Pasquale. Me, too.” Her eyes became wet. “I’m going to come back and see you sometime. Is that okay?”

“Yes,” he said, but he didn’t think for a second that he would ever see her again.

“We can hike back up to the bunker, see the paintings again.”

Pasquale just smiled. He concentrated, looking for the words. “The first night, you say something . . . that we don’t know when our story is start, yes?”

Dee nodded.

“My friend Alvis Bender, the man who write the book you read, he tell me something like this one time. He say our life is a story. But all stories go in different direction, yes?” He shot a hand out to the left. “You.” And the other to the right. “Me.” The words didn’t match what he’d hoped to say, but she nodded as if she understood.

“But sometimes . . . we are like people in a car on a train, go in same direction. Same story.” He put his hands together. “And I think . . . this is nice, yes?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and she put her own hands together to show him. “Thank you, Pasquale.” One of her hands fell to Pasquale’s chest and they both stared at it. Then she pulled it away and Pasquale turned to leave, summoning every bit of pride in his body to wear on his back like the shield of the centurion he’d almost become that morning.

“Pasquale!” she called after only a few steps. He turned. And she came down the hallway and kissed him again, and although it was on the lips this time, it was not at all like the kiss she’d given him on the patio outside the Hotel Adequate View. That kiss had been the begi

She wiped her eyes. “Here,” she said, and she pressed into his hands one of the Polaroid photographs of herself and the woman with dark hair. “To remember me by.”