Beautiful Ruins

The next day, Alvis came by the lunch counter again, and said that he needed to admit something: it was no accident that he’d found her. She’d told him about herself in those last days in Italy—they had taken a boat together to La Spezia and he’d accompanied her on the train to the Rome airport—and that she figured she’d go back to Seattle. To do what? Alvis had asked. She’d shrugged and said that she used to work at a big Seattle department store, thought maybe she’d go back. So when his father mentioned that he was looking at a Seattle Chevy dealership, Alvis jumped at the chance to find her.

He’d tried other department stores—the Bon Marché and Rhodes of Seattle—before someone at the perfume counter at Frederick and Nelson said there was a tall, blond girl named Debra who used to be an actress.

“So, you came all the way to Seattle . . . just to find me?”

“We are looking at a dealership here. But, yes, I was hoping to see you.” He looked around the lunch counter. “Do you remember, in Italy, you said you liked my book and I said I was having trouble finishing it? Do you remember what you said—‘Maybe it’s finished. Maybe that’s all there is’ ?”

“Oh, I wasn’t saying—”

“No, no,” he interrupted her. “It’s okay. I hadn’t written anything new in five years anyway. I just kept rewriting the same chapter. But you saying that, it was like giving me permission to admit that it’s all I had to say—that one chapter—and to go on with my life.” He smiled. “I didn’t go back to Italy this year. I think I’m done with all that. I’m ready to do something else.”

Something in the way he said those words—ready to do something else—struck her as intimately familiar; she had said the same thing to herself. “What are you going to do?”

“Well,” he said, “that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. What I would really like to do, more than anything, is . . . go hear some jazz.”

She smiled. “Jazz?”

Yes, he said. The concierge at his hotel had mentioned a club on Cherry Street, at the foot of the hill?

“The Penthouse,” she said.

He tapped his nose charades-style. “That’s the place.”

She laughed. “Are you asking me out, Mr. Bender?”

He gave that sly half-smile. “That depends, Miss Moore, on your answer.”

She took a deep, assessing look at him—question-mark posture, thin features, modish swoop of graying brown hair—and thought: Sure, why not.

There you go, Ron: there’s the love of her life.

Now, a block from Trader Vic’s, she saw Alvis’s Biscayne, parked with one tire partly on the curb. Had he been drinking at work? She looked inside the car, but except for a barely smoked cigarette in the ashtray, there was no evidence that this had been one of his binge days.

She walked into Trader Vic’s, into a burst of warm air and bamboo, tiki and totem, dugout canoe hung from the ceiling. She looked around the thatch-matted room for him, but the tables were packed with chattering couples and big round chairs and she couldn’t see him anywhere. After a minute, the manager, Harry Wong, was at her arm with a mai tai. “I think you need to catch up.” He pointed her to a table in the back and there she saw Alvis, a big wicker chair-back surrounding his head like a Renaissance halo. He was doing what Alvis did best: drinking and talking, lecturing some poor waiter who was doing everything he could to edge away. But Alvis had landed one of his big hands on the waiter’s arm and the poor kid was stuck.

She took the drink from Harry Wong. “Thanks for keeping him upright for me, Harry.” She tilted the glass, and the sweet liqueur and rum hit her throat, and Debra surprised herself by drinking half of it. She stared at the drink through eyes that had become bleary with tears. One day, when she was in high school, someone had slipped a note into her locker that read “You whore.” All that day she’d been pissed off until she got home that night and saw her mother, at which point she inexplicably broke into tears. It was how she felt now, the sight of Alvis—even Drunk Dr. Alvis, his lecturing alter ego—enough to break her up. She carefully dabbed her eyes, put the glass to her lips, and finished it. Then she gave the dead soldier to Harry. “Harry, could you bring us some water and maybe some food for Mr. Bender?”

Harry nodded.

She walked through the chattering crowd, catching eyes throughout the room, and picked up her husband’s lecture, Bobby-can-beat-LBJ, right at its apex: “. . . and I’d argue that the only significant accomplishment of the Ke

Alvis was beaming at her, his rummy eyes seeming to melt at the corners. His arm freed, the waiter made his escape, nodding his thanks to Debra for her timely arrival. Alvis stood like a parasol opening. He pulled out her chair, ever the gentleman. “Every time I see you, I lose my breath.”

She sat. “I guess I forgot that we were going out tonight.”

“We always go out on Fridays.”

“It’s Thursday, Alvis.”

“You are so tied to routine.”

Harry brought them each a tall glass of water and a plate of egg rolls. Alvis sipped his water. “That is the worst martini I’ve ever had, Harry.”

“Lady’s orders, Alvis.”

Debra freed the cigarette from Alvis’s hand and replaced it with an egg roll, which Alvis pretended to smoke. “Smooth,” he said. Debra took a long draw of his cigarette.

As he ate the egg roll, Alvis said, through his nose, “And how are things in the the-uh-tuh, dah-ling?”

“Ron’s driving me crazy.”

“Ah. The frisky director. Shall I dust your ass for fingerprints?”

His joke masked the slightest insecurity, a pretense of faux jealousy. She was glad for both—his twinge of jealousy and the way he joked it away. That’s what she should have told Ron, that her husband was a man who had outgrown such petty insecure games. She told Alvis about Ron constantly interrupting her, pushing her to play Maggie like some kind of caricature—breathy and stupid, like a Marilyn impersonation. “I should never have done this,” she said, and she planted the cigarette purposefully in the ashtray, bending the butt like a knee joint.

“Aw, come on.” He lit another smoke. “You had to take this play, Debra. Who knows how many opportunities you get in life to do this?” He wasn’t talking just about her, of course, but himself, too—Alvis the failed writer, wasting his life selling Chevys, forever doomed to be the smartest guy on the lot.

“He said awful things.” Debra didn’t tell Alvis how Ron copped a feel (she could handle that herself) or that he’d called Alvis an old drunk. But she did tell him the other awful thing he said—You use people. You play with their lives and then treat them like they’re nothing—and as soon as she said the words, Debra began crying.

“Baby, baby.” He moved his chair and put his arm around her. “You’ll worry me if you start acting like this jackass is worth crying over.”

“I’m not crying over him.” Debra wiped her eyes. “But what if he’s right?”

“Jesus, Dee.” Alvis waved Harry Wong back over. “Harry. Do you see this sad knockout at my table?”

Harry Wong smiled and said that he did.

“Do you feel used by her?”

“Anytime she wants,” Harry said.

“That’s why you always get a second opinion,” Alvis said. “Now, Dr. Wong, is there anything you can prescribe for such delusions? And make them doubles, please.”

When Harry was gone, Alvis turned to her. “Listen to me, Mrs. Bender: Jackass Theater Director does not get to tell you who you are. Do you understand?”

She looked up in his calm, whiskey-brown eyes and nodded.

“All we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character—what we believe—none of it is real; it’s all part of the story we tell. But here’s the thing: it’s our goddamned story!”