Beautiful Ruins (77)

In the street, a truck veered around him and he was jolted out of his thoughts long enough to look back over his shoulder, up at the brothel he had just left. There, in the second-story window, stood Maria—at least that’s what he would tell himself—leaning against the glass, watching him, her robe open a little, her fingers stroking the place between her breasts where he had once pressed his face and sobbed. She stared at him a second longer, and then she backed away from the window and was gone.

After that burst of prolific writing, Alvis Bender never made much more progress on his novel when he came to Italy. Instead, he’d cat around Rome or Milan or Venice for a week or two, drinking and chasing women, then come and spend a few days in the quiet of Porto Vergogna. He’d rework that first chapter, rewrite it, reorder things, take a word or two out, put a new sentence in—but nothing came of his book. And yet it always restored him in some way, reading and gently reworking his one good chapter, and seeing his old friend Carlo Tursi, his wife, Antonia, and their sea-eyed son, Pasquale. But now—to find both Carlo and Antonia dead like this, to find Pasquale a full-grown man . . . Alvis wasn’t sure what to think. He had heard of couples dying in short order like this, the grief just too much for the survivor to bear. But it was hard to get his mind around: a year earlier, Carlo and Antonia had both seemed healthy. And now they were gone?

“When did this happen?” he asked Pasquale.

“My father died last spring, my mother three nights ago,” Pasquale said. “Her funeral mass is tomorrow.”

Alvis kept searching Pasquale’s face. He’d been away at school the last few springs when Alvis had come. He couldn’t believe this was little Pasquale, grown into this . . . this man. Even in his grief, Pasquale had the same strange calm about him that he’d had as a boy, those blue eyes steady in their easy assessment of the world. They sat on the patio in the cool morning, Alvis Bender’s portable typewriter and suitcase at his feet where Pasquale had once sat. “I’m so sorry, Pasquale,” he said. “I can go find a hotel up the coast if you want to be alone.”

Pasquale looked up at him. Even though Alvis’s Italian was usually pretty clear, the words were taking a moment to register for Pasquale, almost as if they had to be translated. “No. I would like you to stay.” He poured them each another glass of wine, and slid Alvis’s glass to him.

“Grazie,” Alvis said.

They drank their glasses of wine quietly, Pasquale staring at the table.

“It’s fairly common, couples passing one after the other that way,” said Alvis, whose knowledge sometimes seemed to Pasquale suspiciously broad. “To die of . . .” He tried to think of the Italian word for grief. “Dolore.”

“No.” Pasquale looked up slowly again. “My aunt killed her.”

Alvis wasn’t certain he’d heard right. “Your aunt?”

“Yes.”

“Why would she do that, Pasquale?” Alvis asked.

Pasquale rubbed his face. “She wanted me to go marry the American actress.”

Alvis thought Pasquale might be insane with grief. “What actress?”

Pasquale sleepily handed over the photo of Dee Moray. Alvis took his reading glasses from his pocket, stared at the photo, then looked up. He said flatly, “Your mother wanted you to marry Elizabeth Taylor?”

“No. The other one,” Pasquale said, switching to English, as if such things could only be believed in that language. “She come to the hotel, three days. She make a mistake to come here.” He shrugged.

In the eight years Alvis Bender had been coming to Porto Vergogna, he’d seen only three other guests at the hotel, certainly no Americans, and certainly no beautiful actresses, no friends of Elizabeth Taylor. “She’s beautiful,” Alvis said. “Pasquale, where is your Aunt Valeria now?”

“I don’t know. She ran into the hills.” Pasquale filled their wineglasses again. He looked up at his old family friend, at his sharp features and thin mustache, fanning himself with his fedora. “Alvis,” Pasquale said, “is it okay if we do not talk?”

“Of course, Pasquale,” Alvis said. They quietly drank their wine. And in the quiet, the waves lapped at the cliffs below and a light, salty mist rose in the air, as both men stared out at the sea.

“She read your book,” Pasquale said after a while.

Alvis cocked his head, wondering if he’d heard right. “What did you say?”

“Dee. The American.” He pointed to the blond woman in the photo. “She read your book. She said it was sad, but also very good. She liked it very much.”

“Really?” Alvis asked in English. Then, “Well, I’ll be damned.” Again, it was quiet except for the sea on the rocks, like someone shuffling cards. “I don’t suppose she said . . . anything else?” Alvis Bender asked after a time, once again in Italian.

Pasquale said he wasn’t sure what Alvis meant.

“Concerning my chapter,” he said. “Did the actress say anything else?”

Pasquale said he couldn’t think of anything if she had.

Alvis finished his wine and said he was going up to his room, Pasquale asking if Alvis wouldn’t mind staying in a second-floor room. The actress had stayed on the third floor, he said, and he hadn’t gotten around to cleaning it. Pasquale felt funny lying, but he simply wasn’t ready for someone else in that room yet, even Alvis.