Beautiful Ruins (44)

He looked past her, along the line of people, into an ornate ballroom, big gold pillars in the corners.

“What is this line?” he asked.

“This is the only way,” she answered. “You can try to get in at the studio or wherever they’re filming that day, but I think the lines all go to the same place. No, the best way is to do what you did, just come here.”

Pasquale said, “I am trying to find this man.” He showed her the piece of paper with Deane’s name on it.

She glanced at the paper, and then showed him her own piece of paper, which had the name of a different man on it. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “All of the lines lead to the same place eventually.”

More people fell in line behind Pasquale. The line led to a small table, where a man and a woman were seated with several stapled sheets of paper in front of them. Perhaps the man was Michael Deane. The man and the woman asked each person in line a question or two and then either sent them back the way they’d come, or to stand in the corner or out another door that seemed to lead outside.

When it was the beautiful girl’s turn, they took her paper, asked her age and where she was from, and whether she spoke any English. She said nineteen, Terni, and yes she spoke “English molto good.” They asked her to say something.

“Baby, baby,” she said in something like English. “I love you, baby. You are my baby.” She was sent to stand in the corner. Pasquale noticed that all the attractive young girls were sent to this same corner. The other people were sent out the door. When it was his turn, he showed the piece of paper with Michael Deane’s name to the man at the small table, who handed it back.

“Are you Michael Deane?” Pasquale asked.

“Identification?” the man said in Italian.

Pasquale handed over his ID card. “I’m looking for this man, Michael Deane.”

The man glanced up, then flipped through the pages, and finally wrote Pasquale’s name on one of the last pages, which was filled with dozens of names like his, written in the man’s handwriting.

“Any experience?” the man asked.

“What?”

“Acting experience.”

“No, I am not an actor. I am trying to find Michael Deane.”

“Speak English?”

“Yes,” Pasquale said in English.

“Say something.”

“Hello,” he said in English. “How are you?”

The man looked intrigued. “Say something funny,” he said.

Pasquale stood a moment and then said, in English, “I ask if she love him and she say yes. I ask if . . . he is in love, too. She say yes, the man love himself.”

The man didn’t smile but he said, “Okay,” and handed Pasquale’s ID card back, along with a card that had a number on it. The number was 5410. He pointed to the exit that most everyone else had been taking, except the beautiful girls. “Bus number four.”

“No, I am try to find—”

But the man had moved on to the next person in line.

Pasquale followed the snaking line out to a row of buses. He got on the fourth bus, which was nearly full of men between the ages of twenty and forty. After a few more minutes, he saw the lovely women loaded onto a smaller bus. When some more men had gotten on his bus, its door squeaked closed and the engine rumbled to life and the bus started off. They were driven through the city to an area in the centro that Pasquale didn’t recognize, where the bus stopped. Slowly, the men climbed off the bus. Pasquale could think of nothing to do but follow them.

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.