Beautiful Ruins (57)

She told him that his mother was undergoing another round of chemo. God—then he wasn’t too late. Pat covered his mouth. A few of them were taking turns helping out, Lydia said: first her sisters—Pat’s wretched aunts Diane and Darlene—and now Lydia, in from Seattle for a few days. Her voice sounded so clear and intelligent; no wonder he had fallen in love with her. She was crystalline. “Where are you, Pat?”

“You won’t believe it,” Pat said. He was in London, of all places. He’d been talked into doing a UK tour by this kid, but he had some trouble, the kid had ripped him off and . . . Pat could sense the quiet from her end.

“No . . . Lydia,” he said, and he laughed—he could imagine how the call must seem from her point of view. How many such calls had she taken from him? And his mom—how many times had she bailed him out? “It’s different this time—” But then he stopped. Different? How? This time . . . what? He looked around the phone booth.

What could he say that he hadn’t said, what higher ground could he possibly scramble to? This time, if I promise to never get high-drunk-cheat-steal, can I please come home? He’d probably said that, too, or would, in a week, or a month, or whenever this thing came back, and it would come back—the need to matter, to be big, to get higher. To get high. And why shouldn’t it come back? What else was there? Failures and unknowns. Then Pat laughed. He laughed because he saw this phone call was just another shit show in a long line of them, like the rest of his shit show life, like the shit show intervention of Lydia and his mom, which he’d hated so much because they didn’t really mean it; they didn’t understand that the whole fucking thing was meaningless unless you were truly prepared to cut the person loose.

This time . . . On the other end of the phone, Lydia misread the laugh. “Oh Pat.” She spoke in little more than a whisper. “What are you on?”

He tried to answer, Nothing, but there was no air to form words. And that’s when Pat heard his mother come into the room behind Lydia, her voice faint and pained, “Who is it, dear?” and Pat realized that in Idaho, it was three in the morning.

At three in the morning, he’d called his dying mother to ask her to bail him out of trouble again. Even at the end of her life, she had to suffer this middle-aged shit show of a son, and Pat thought, Do it, Lydia, just do it, please! “Do it,” he whispered as a tall red bus rumbled past his phone booth, and he held his breath so no more words could escape.

And she did it. Lydia took a deep breath. “It’s no one, Dee,” she said, and she hung up the phone.





11

Dee of Troy



April 1962



Rome and Porto Vergogna, Italy





Richard Burton was the worst driver Pasquale had ever seen. He squinted in the direction of the road with one eye and held the wheel lightly between two fingers, elbow cocked. With the other hand he pinched a cigarette out the open window, a cigarette he seemed to have no interest in smoking. From the passenger seat, Pasquale stared at the burning stick in the man’s hand, wondering if he should reach over and grab it before the ash got to Richard Burton’s fingers. The Alfa’s tires chirped and squealed as he cornered his way out of the Roman Centro, some pedestrians yelling and waving their fists as he forced them back onto curbs. “Sorry,” he said, or “So sorry,” or “Bugger off.”

Pasquale hadn’t known that Richard Burton was Richard Burton until the woman from the Spanish Steps introduced them. “Pasquale Tursi. This is Richard Burton.” Moments before, she had led him away from the steps, still clutching the envelope from Michael Deane, down a couple of streets, up a staircase, through a restaurant and out the back door, until, finally, they’d come across this man in sunglasses, worsted slacks, a sports coat over a sweater and red scarf, leaning against the light blue Alfa in a narrow alley where there were no other cars. Richard Burton had removed his sunglasses and given a wry smile. He was about Pasquale’s height, with thick sideburns, tousled brown hair, and a cleft chin. He had the sharpest features Pasquale had ever seen, as if his face had been sculpted in separate pieces and then assembled on-site. He had faint pockmarks on his cheeks and a pair of unblinking, wide-set blue eyes. Most of all, he had the biggest head Pasquale had ever encountered. He’d never seen Richard Burton’s movies and knew his name only from the two women on the train the day before, but one look and there could be no doubt: this man was a cinema star.

At the woman’s urging, Pasquale explained the whole thing in halting English: Dee Moray coming to his village, waiting there for a mysterious man who didn’t come; the doctor’s visit and Pasquale’s trip to Rome, his mistakenly being sent off with the extras, waiting for Michael Deane and then the bracing meeting with the man, which began with him punching Deane in the chest, quickly led to Deane admitting that Dee was in fact pregnant and not dying, and ended with the envelope of cash that Deane offered as a payoff, an envelope Pasquale still held in his hand.

“God,” Richard Burton finally said, “what a heartless mercenary Deane is. I guess they’re getting serious about finishing this bloody picture, sending this shit to handle the budgets and the gossip and the rot. Well, he’s bollixed it all up. The poor girl. Listen, Pat,” and he put a hand on Pasquale’s arm, “take me to her, will you, old sport, so I can at least display a whiff of chivalry amid this fuck-all mess?”