Beautiful Ruins (31 page)

She walked briskly, her umbrella pointed forward into the stinging mist. As she walked, she imagined all the things she should have said to Ron (
Yes,
Alvis
IS the love of my life
). She replayed his cutting words (
You use people . . . treat them like they’re nothing
). She’d used similar words, on her first date with Alvis, to describe the film business. She’d returned to Seattle to find it a different city, buzzing with promise. It had seemed so small to her before, but maybe she had been shrunk by all that happened in Italy, returning beaten to a city that basked in the glow of the World’s Fair; even her old theater chums enjoyed a new playhouse on the fairgrounds. Dee stayed away from the fair, and from the theater, the way she avoided seeing
Cleopatra
when it came out (reading and reveling, a little shamefully, in its bad reviews); she moved in with her sister to “lick her wounds,” as Darlene aptly described it. Dee assumed she’d give the baby up for adoption, but Darlene talked her into keeping it. Dee told her family that the baby’s father was an Italian innkeeper, and it was that lie that gave her the idea to name the baby after Pasquale. When Pat was three months old, Debra went back to work at Frederick and Nelson, in the Men’s Grill, and she was filling a customer’s ginger ale when she looked up one day to see a familiar man, tall, thin, and handsome, a slight stoop to his shoulders, a burst of gray at his temples. It took a minute to recognize him—Alvis Bender, Pasquale’s friend. “Dee Moray,” he said.

“Your mustache is gone,” she said, and then, “It’s Debra now. Debra Moore.”

“I’m sorry, Debra,” Alvis said, and sat down at the counter. He told her that his father was looking at buying a car dealership in Seattle and he’d sent Alvis out west to scout it.

It was strange bumping into Alvis in Seattle. Italy now seemed like a kind of interrupted dream for her; to see someone from that time was like déjà vu, like encountering a fictional character on the street. But he was charming and easy to talk to, and she found it a relief to be with someone who knew her whole story. She realized that lying to everyone about what had happened had been like holding her breath for the last year.

They had dinner, drinks. Alvis was funny and she felt comfortable immediately with him. His father’s car dealerships were thriving, and that was nice, too, being with a man who could clearly take care of himself. He kissed her cheek at the door to her apartment.

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 Kennedy administration, integration, actually belongs to Bobby anyway—and would you look at this woman!”

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!
”

Debra blushed at his boozy agitation; she knew it was mostly rum talking, but like so many of Alvis’s drunken rants, it made some kind of sense.

“Your parents don’t get to tell your story. Your sisters don’t. When he’s old enough, even Pat doesn’t get to tell your story. I’m your husband and I don’t even get to tell it. So I don’t care how lovesick this director is, he doesn’t tell it. Even fucking Richard Burton doesn’t get to tell
your
story!” Debra looked around nervously, a little stunned; they never mentioned that name—even when they were talking about whether they should eventually tell Pat the truth. “No one gets to tell you what your life means! Do you understand me?”

She kissed him hard, grateful but also trying to shut him up, and when she pulled away, another mai tai was waiting for them both.
The love of her life?
If Alvis was right and this was
her
story? Sure. Why not.

D
ee stood shivering outside her open car door, staring up at the dark Space Needle, while Alvis slid into the Corvair. “Let’s see what the problem is.” Of course, the car started right away. He looked up at her and shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. Are you sure you turned the key all the way?”

She put a finger to her lip and did her Marilyn voice: “Gosh, Mister Mechanic, no one told me you had to
turn
the key.”

“Why’n’t you climb in the back with me, ma’am, and I’ll show you another feature of this fine car.”

She leaned over and kissed him—his hand found the buttoned front of her dress and he flicked a button and slid a hand in, across her belly and down her hip, his thumb pushing under the waistband of her pantyhose. She pulled away and reached down to take his hand. “My, you’re a fast mechanic.”

He climbed out of the car and gave her a long kiss, one hand behind her neck, the other at her waist.

“Come on, ten minutes in the backseat? The kids are all doing it.”

“What about the babysitter?”

“Why not? I’m game,” he said. “Think we can talk
her
into it?”

She’d known the joke was coming and still it made her laugh. She almost always knew what was coming with Alvis, and still she laughed.

“She’s gonna want four bucks an hour for that,” Debra said.

Still holding her, Alvis sighed deeply. “Baby, when you’re funny, it is the sexiest thing.” He closed his eyes, leaned his head back, and smiled as broadly as his thin face would allow. “Sometimes I wish we weren’t married so I could ask you again.”

“Ask anytime you want.”

“And risk you saying no?” He kissed her and then stepped away, swept his arm, and bowed. “Your chariot.” She curtsied and climbed into the cold Corvair. He pushed the door closed and stayed there, looking down into the car. She flicked the wipers and a slick of wet goo washed over the edge of the car and nearly hit Alvis.