Beautiful Ruins

At first it worked. She was stuck in this village. No contact with the world. Burton showed up in Portovenere and found me waiting for him instead. I told him D— had decided to go on to Switzerland for treatment. Don’t worry about her. The Swiss doctors are the best. Then I drove him back to Rome to be with Liz.

But before I could get them back together another problem arrived. Some kid from the hotel where D— is staying shows up in Rome and walks right up and punches me. I’d been in Rome three weeks and I’d gotten used to these Italians gouging me so I gave him some cash and sent him away. But he double-crossed me. Found Burton and told him the whole story. How D— wasn’t dying. How she was pregnant. Then he took Burton back to her. Great. Now Dick is holed up with his pregnant mistress in a hotel in Portovenere. And my movie hangs in the balance.

But did the Deane give up? Not by a long stretch. I called Dickie Zanuck and got Burton back to France for a day of phony reshoots on The Longest Day. And I raced to Portovenere to talk to this D—.

I’ve never seen someone so angry. She wanted to kill me. And I understood why. I did. I apologized. Explained that I had no idea the doctor would say it was cancer. Told her the whole thing had gotten out of hand. Told her that her career was made. Guaranteed. All she had to do was go to Switzerland and she could be in any Fox picture she wanted.

But this was one tough nut. She didn’t want money or acting jobs. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never met a young actor who didn’t want either work or money or both.

This was when I understood the deep responsibility behind my ability to divine desire. It’s one thing to know what people truly want. It’s another to CREATE that want in them. To BUILD that desire.

I pretended to sigh. “Look. This got out of hand. All he wants is for you to get the abortion and stay quiet about it. So you tell me how we can do that.”

She flinched. “What do you mean? ‘All he wants’ ?”

I didn’t blink. “He feels really bad. Obviously. He couldn’t even ask you himself. That’s why he left today. He feels awful about how this all turned out.”

She looked more hurt than when she’d thought she actually had cancer. “Wait. You don’t mean—”

Her eyes closed slowly. It had never occurred to her that Dick might have known all along what I was doing. And frankly it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment either. But in a way it was true.

I acted like I’d assumed she’d known I was acting on his behalf. It was a rush play. I had just a day before Dick got back from France. I had to appear to be defending him. I said he cared deeply for her. That what he was offering didn’t change that. I said she shouldn’t blame him. That his feelings for her were genuine. But he and Liz were under tremendous pressure with this picture—

She interrupted me. She was putting it together. It had been Liz’s doctor who diagnosed her. She covered her mouth. “Liz knows about this, too?”

I sighed and reached out for her hand. But she recoiled like my hand was a snake.

I told her there were no reshoots in France. I said Dick had left a ticket to Switzerland in her name at the La Spezia train station.

She looked like she might vomit. I gave her my business card. She took it. I told her that back in the States we’d go over the slate of upcoming Fox films. She could pick any part she wanted. The next morning I drove her to the train station. She got out with her bags. Her arms slack at her side. She stood and stared at the station and the green hills behind it. And then she began walking. I watched her disappear inside. And I was never surer of anything. She’d go to Switzerland. Then she’d show up in my office in two months. Six at the most. A year. But she’d come to collect. They all do.

But it never happened. She never went to Switzerland. Never came to see me.

That morning Burton arrived back from France to see D— but found me waiting for him instead.

Dick was mad as hell. We went to the train station in La Spezia but the agent said she had only come inside and dropped off her luggage. Then she’d turned around and started walking back toward the hills. Dick and I drove back to Portovenere but she wasn’t there. Dick even made me get a boat to go back to the little fishing town where I’d hid her for a while. But she wasn’t there either. She had disappeared.

We were about to leave the fishing village when the strangest thing happened. This old witch came down from the hills. Cursing and yelling. Our driver translated: “Murderer!” and “I curse you to death.”

I looked over at Burton. That old witch really gave it to him. Years later I’d think about that witch’s curse as I watched poor Dick Burton drink himself under.

In the boat that day he was visibly spooked. It was the perfect time for my come-to-Jesus talk with him.

“Come on, Dick. What were you going to do? Have a kid with her? Marry that girl?”

“Fuck off, Deane.” I could hear it in his voice. He knew I was right.

“This picture needs you. Liz needs you.”

He just stared at the sea.

Of course I was right. Liz was the one. They were in love like that. I knew. He knew. And I made it all possible.

I HAD done exactly what he wanted me to do. Even if he hadn’t known it yet. This was what people like me did for people like him.

From now on this would be my place in the world. To divine desire and do the things that other people wanted done. The things they didn’t even know they wanted yet. The things they could never do themselves. The things they could never admit to themselves.

Dick stared straight ahead in the boat. Did he and I stay friends? Yep. Go to each other’s weddings? You bet we did. Did the Deane bow his head at the great actor’s funeral? Sure I did. And neither of us ever spoke again about what happened in Italy that spring. Not about the girl. Not about the village. Not about the witch’s curse.

That was that.

Back in Rome Dick and Liz rekindled. Got married. Made movies. Won awards. You know the story. One of the great romances in the world. A romance I built.

And the movie? It came out. And just like I thought we lived on the publicity of those two. People think Cleopatra was a flop. No. That picture broke even. Broke even because of what I did. Without me it loses twenty million. Any jackass can make a hit film. It takes giant balls to defuse a bomb.

This was the Deane’s very first assignment. His very first film. And what does he do? Nothing less than keep an entire studio from going under. Nothing less than burn down the old studio system to build a new one.

And when Dickie Zanuck took over Fox that summer you can bet I was rewarded for it. No more Car Barn for me. No more Publicity. But my true reward wasn’t the production job I got from my pal Zanuck. My true reward wasn’t the fame and money about to come my way. The women and the coke and any table I wanted at any restaurant in town.

My reward was a vision that would define my career:

We want what we want.

And that is how I came to be born a second time. How I came into the world and changed it forever. How in the year 1962 on the coast of Italy I invented celebrity.

[Ed. note: Some story, Michael.

Unfortunately, even if we wanted to use this chapter, Legal has some fundamental issues with it, which our attorneys will address in a separate correspondence.

Editorially, though, there’s one other thing you should know: this chapter does not paint you in a very good light. Admitting you broke up two marriages, and faked a young woman’s illness, and bribed her to get an abortion—all in the first chapter—may not be the best way to introduce you to readers.

And even if the lawyers would let us use this anecdote, it’s terribly incomplete. So much is left hanging. What happened to the young actress? Did she get the abortion? Did she have Burton’s baby? Did she go on acting? Is she someone famous? (That would be cool.) Did you try to make it up to her somehow? Track her down? Get her some great film role? Did you at least learn a lesson or have some regret? Do you see where I’m going?