“I’ll take a drink,” said Frank. “But I won’t stay long. Just for dinner. You won’t believe who’s waiting for me back in Rome.”
“I will make your drink and then you will tell me about your famous friends,” Sandro said, dancing his way into the house, Mr. Moon at his heels. “Only one thing you say wrong: you are staying the night with us, no excuses. I don’t care if it’s Marlon Brando himself who waits for you.”
“What’s the big idea?” Frank asked Jack, with barely restrained agitation, when Sandro was out of earshot. “This isn’t exactly the scene you described. You make me drive all the way here for a bad case of sunburn?”
“Ask him one fact he read in that newspaper,” Jack said, defiantly. “I promise he can’t tell you. He’s been sitting there all day looking over the top of the page waiting for me to keel over. Hoping I’ll keel over.”
“He was reading when I walked in,” said Frank, moving closer to him. “He didn’t even notice me until I spoke.” He pressed his left palm behind Jack’s neck and his right against his forehead, the way his mother used to do. He felt an equal heat on both palms, but he couldn’t tell if it came from the burn or a fever. He still had that bump on his right temple from Testa del Lupo.
“I’m burning alive, aren’t I?” said Jack, his eyes wet and bloodshot. “He’s putting something in my broth. It tastes like chalk. What he did before didn’t take so now he’s trying something else. Don’t drink what he’s bringing you, Frank. Spill it and I’ll replace it myself.”
“You’ll forgive me if this all sounds crazy.”
“Then watch, at least watch, how he keeps me in his sight at all times. I’m too weak to walk far. His cousin took the car. Drive me back to Rome with you tonight, after he goes to sleep. Take me to a real hospital. If I could find his pills I’d drug him myself. Do you have any of Tenn’s on you?”
“Jack,” said Frank. He narrowed his eyes.
“You don’t believe me!”
“Is that your glass hiding over there behind the tree?”
“So what if it is? You want me to get the DTs on top of everything?”
Jack’s raving had to have a rational explanation, and possibly it was that very bad sunburn did not mix well with whiskey.
“It’s the only thing that calms me down,” he said. He shambled over to the chair Sandro had been sitting in. “Watch how he watches me,” he said again, breathing hard, as panicked as a man with a gun to his head, and then, as Sandro walked out with a tray of drinks, he rubbed his eyes of his tears and sat up straight.
“I brought something for each of us,” Sandro said. “Campari and soda for Frankie, a Dubonnet for me, and some mineral water for the patient.”
Frank reached for Jack’s water glass. “You don’t mind?” he asked Sandro. “I’m very parched from the drive.”
Unbothered, Sandro said, “Of course!” He turned to Jack, and with a tender, “I will get you another, amore,” he went back into the house.
“Not every drink is poisoned,” said Jack, grouchily, when he saw Frank’s face. “He won’t try anything now that you’re here. You’re my shield.”
“You’ll keep getting stronger, then,” said Frank. “And then you can drive off on your own.”
“I’m not playing a game,” Jack said.
After Sandro returned with Jack’s water, which went untouched, the three of them sat at the table and bathed in the cooling mercy of the sunset. The light through the leaves mottled their faces; for a moment, Sandro would glow, only to be thrown the next moment into a sinister shadow that covered half of his face. The table was round and made of wrought iron, painted white, with four wide armchairs of gaudily elaborate design. The fourth chair sat off to the side, turned toward the west, flecked with rust, and inconsolably empty of Tenn. Frank had yet to develop an armor against the sudden ache for him that overtook him at moments like this, when his absence felt less like a habit than an affliction.
When Jack slumped, Sandro offered a pillow. When he rolled down and buttoned his shirtsleeves, he offered a blanket. When he didn’t touch the cheese and salumi Sandro had brought out, he suggested a cup of broth. This struck Frank as the appropriate level of concern, neither too little nor too much, and yet, each time, Jack flared his eyes at him as if to say, “Now do you believe me?”
The story of Anja’s escape from Portofino, and her impromptu audition with Martin Hovland, didn’t surprise them in the least. From the beginning, they said, they’d expected Anja to attach herself to Tenn, and to use Frank to get closer to him.
“She’s a parasite,” said Jack. “A bounder. She’ll devour the both of you and then move on to the next man who can get her one step closer to the Great White Way.”
“She’s just a kid,” Frank said, defensively. “And I’m mad for her. She’s smarter than all of us put together.”
“I adore her!” said Sandro.
“She has no interest in the theater,” Frank went on. “It’s film that captivates her. Tenn can get her only so far in that department.”
“Which is why she’s already moved on to this director fellow,” said Jack. “That took her how long, two days? She’s got you under her spell, but, believe me, I met a hundred girls like her in the States, back when I was a high-muck-a-muck. Rubbing their ginches up on my leg as if that could swing me their way. If you ask me, all women are bounders, when you really think about it. They have to be for their own survival. Without a man, how far can they get?”
“Your life with Tennessee has much glamour,” Sandro said. “Jack and me, we prefer the quiet of the country.” He nuzzled Mr. Moon. “I learn that I make better talk with animals than with people.”
“What’d you get rid of Lucky for, then?” Jack sniped.
“Lucky stays at my mother’s with Marika,” Sandro explained to Frank. “They keep her company better than us. Three times a day Marika comes here in the car, makes us a meal, and we—I—take Lucky for a walk on the beach. I want Lucky to stay all the time but he is not a quiet dog. All night he barks at the birds. We can’t have that. Jack needs to rest. When he is done resting, I will bring Lucky back, and then together we will chase him on the sand.”
“That makes sense to me,” said Frank. “Doesn’t that sound reasonable, Jack?”
Jack looked at his watch. “Marika’s late.”
“You’re hungry?” Sandro said, hopefully.
“No.”
“I gave her the night free,” Sandro said. “I bought some fish to grill, and we have plenty of fruit and vegetables.” To Frank he said, shaking his head, “For the patient, I’m sorry to say, this week it’s broth and water only.”
“No wonder I’m so weak!” said Jack. Suddenly he lunged forward, grabbed Frank’s drink, and took a big swig before Sandro wrenched it away from him. “I can’t take it anymore! I’m a prisoner! First he banishes the dog; now the cook!”
This time it was Sandro who made eyes with Frank, except his glowed with supplication. “You must tell him to listen to me,” he said, clasping his hands together as if about to pray. “I am at the end of my rope. He is improved—since Thursday he is very much improved—but still I worry day and night.”
“What happened Thursday?”
Jack sat back in his chair, licking the Campari that had splashed across his lips. Then his entire body erupted in a fit of shivers. “I’m fucking freezing,” he said, and stood. “I’m going in.” On the way, he snatched the tumbler from its hiding spot under the tree and threw it against the stone wall that separated Villino Brunella from its neighbor to the east.
“I’ll go in, too,” Frank said to Sandro.
“No,” he said. “Please stay here. Enjoy the breeze. I will put him to bed.” He assured Frank there was nothing more he could do tonight, that this was how it had been between them, more or less, not just since Thursday but since the letter
about his book from the New York editor.
“Is he really going to be OK?”
“Yes,” said Sandro, and then, instead of following Jack inside, he stayed with Frank in the garden. He looked, suddenly, very tired. “Yesterday I bring the navy doctor to confirm what I knew already. Heatstroke. Heatstroke is grave, but it is not impossible to cure if you do what you are supposed to do, if you let me give you an ice bath, if you drink the water I pour for you all day, if you sit still when I wave the fan on you. He does none of these things. He is out of the worst danger now, but he is too much a pighead to believe it. He keeps the stroke going just to spite me!”
“You’re sure it’s just heatstroke?” said Frank. “That bump on his head”—he tapped his right temple—“That has nothing to do with it? It hasn’t gone down even a little bit since last week.”
Sandro dismissed this. “I see many bumps like that. Some, they last a year. Sooner or later, they go down. No. The fault is my own. I wanted to go for a sail, to take Jack on my father’s boat. To show off, maybe. To prove to him something—what, I don’t know. To be romantic. I wanted so badly for him to have a little joy. Because of his book. Because he is a man in pain. This was Thursday. You remember how it was on Thursday? The sun here was terrible. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine degrees, no clouds, some wind, but then, all of a sudden there is no wind at all, and we are very far out. I should know better. I should not take the risk. I am used to the boat in the middle of the water, but he is not. The reflection makes like a torch on the skin. I got us back fast as I could, but it was not fast enough. For him, I am never fast enough at anything, you see. When we arrived at the dock, he collapsed and nearly fell back in the water headfirst. I was very afraid. He was confused, babbling like a crazy person. I stuck my fingers on his tongue to keep him from swallowing it. The tears fell from my face onto his. He was dehydrated. After I stabilized him with help from some people on the beach—it took hours, Frankie; I carried him to a café for the shade—I told him it was my tears and my hand in his mouth that saved him, and he said, ‘Next time let me die.’ To hear such a thing from the man you love! It is like a knife in the neck.”
“Now he thinks you’re trying to kill him,” said Frank, matter-of-factly. “And I almost believed him!” Then, he couldn’t help it, he laughed. The laugh echoed across the garden, through the windows of the house where Jack was banging around, over the cypress trees.
Sandro was not laughing. “I know,” he said. “I heard his crazy talk when you called.” He gave Frank a sheepish look. “I’m sorry.”
“You mean you both set me up to come here?” Frank asked. “Why not just invite me? Why these tricks?” He stood. His keys were still in his pocket. “What kind of people are you?”
“I did not know about the telegram,” said Sandro, his hands above him in surrender. “I promise you. I went to swim, and when I am swimming Jack sends it to you in secret. I admit, when I heard him on the telephone with you, I thought, he is smart to call Frank. Frank is the man to call when there is an emergency. I should have called you right back to tell you there was no emergency. But I did not. That is why I am sorry. I was at the end of my rope. And now that you are here, you can talk to him the way I asked you to do in Portofino. You can build him up, tell him how it is for Tennessee Williams when the editors don’t accept his great plays, when there are more boos from the audience than clapping. This will inspire him. He will not feel so alone. He doesn’t believe me when I try to comfort him. He calls me a simpleton. He says I don’t know a book from a blueberry.”
“He’s cruel to you.”
“He’s a man in pain,” Sandro said again. “In the head, in the body, all pain. He feels too much. He was not always this way. I wish to turn back the clock to take you to Firenze so you can meet him the night I met him. The weeks and months after. This is what I’m afraid of, Frankie: if you don’t help him, I will lose that man forever.”
“It sounds like he wants to be lost.”
Sandro rubbed his face. “That is what I think, too,” he said. He had not shaved that day, or maybe the day before, either; on his chin was a patch of gray stubble. Again he looked at Frank with those wide supplicating eyes. “But he should not get what he wants. Not if it brings harm to him. That is why we keep our friends and lovers, is it not? To protect us from ourselves?”
* * *
• • •
JACK SLEPT MOST OF the next day, Sunday, while Frank and Sandro took turns checking his breathing. Frank soon discovered that there was not much else to do in Marina di Cecina but doze and read and chase Mr. Moon and haggle for the best fish and walk back and forth to the ocean and watch your friend’s chest rise and fall, the whole time waiting for the phone to ring and Visconti to change your life.
Jack took shallow breaths. He frequently jolted awake into a stupor. More than once, he called for his mother. Despite the heat, there was no sweat on his face or the sheets. They kept the blinds drawn to keep the awful light away. At Sandro’s direction, Frank forced him to drink large glasses of water in small sips. He wouldn’t drink anything Sandro put before him. In one of the glasses, Sandro had dissolved what he called a mild sedative, saying, “What he needs most of all is to sleep.” Frank didn’t question him.
Villino Brunella may have been the housekeepers’ quarters, but it still came with a private beach. The rocky and gray-black sand was volcanic, according to Marika, the remains of the eruption of the Cala Rossa ten million years ago. Marika had come in the early afternoon, eyed Sandro warmly as she stocked the cabinets with groceries, rearranged the flowers Frank had brought with a few cut stems from the garden, and swept up the shards of glass from the patio. “Dov’è Lucky?” Frank asked her, from the doorway.
“I’ll bring him tonight when Signor Burns is awake,” she said, brightly, in Italian. “The little mostro cheers him up.”
“He’ll have a friend,” Frank said, meaning Mr. Moon, who hadn’t left Sandro’s side since they’d arrived.
“He needs one of those,” said Marika. “He is very lonely.”
“The dog?”
She thought a moment. Her hands, bony beyond her age, gripped the top of the broom handle. “All of them,” she said, and went back to sweeping.
When Frank checked on Jack later that afternoon, he was surprised to find him sitting at his desk. He was writing what appeared to be a letter but might have been a manuscript. “You’re up!” Frank said, cheered by the familiar sight of a man at a desk hunched over his pages.
“So to speak,” Jack said. He was writing with slow deliberation, crossing out words here and there, as Frank waited for him to come up for air. “Listen,” he said, setting his pen down. He turned to face Frank, still keeping his head and shoulders bent forward like a gargoyle. “I sure am grateful to you for coming down here and looking after me. It’s a damned decent gesture on your part. First-class.”
“What can I say?” said Frank, inching closer for a peek at the pages, hoping, for all their sakes, that they were the first of a new manuscript. “I’m a sucker for a damsel in distress.”
Jack laughed, a sound so rare that Frank couldn’t be sure he wasn’t just clearing his throat. “I got a little schizo there for a while. But my head’s on straight again now.” He pressed the base of his left palm under his chin and the base of his right against his temple, and pretended to screw his head back into place. Instead of reassuring Frank, this burst of playfulness gave him pause. “You’ll stay another day, though, to get the all-clear?”
“I don’t think I’m necessary,” said Frank. The room was dark and humid and fusty. “You want some air? I’ll keep the light at a minimum.”
“I can handle it,” Jack said, but when the breeze did rush in, cool and clean, with the fading sun, he shivered and reached for one of the many blankets on his bed. “Salty,” he said, lapping up the air. Then he sank back into the chair, nearly missing the
edge of it. “Christ, I’m so fucking thirsty.”
There was a glass of cloudy water on his bedside table. All day Jack had slept without taking the pill Sandro had crushed into it. Frank nearly handed it to him anyway, and then said, “A fly got in here. Let me get you a fresh one.”
“You might as well bring in the entire pitcher,” said Jack, picking up the pen again. “And tell him to leave me be for a while, will you?”
Frank found Sandro on the beach dozing in a chair, shirtless, a pack of cigarettes and a magazine and Mr. Moon at his feet. The news of Jack’s progress brought relief to his face. Since he’d already gotten plenty of sleep without it, Frank asked, should he still give him the drink with the sedative? Sandro thought a moment. In his opinion, he said, a man still woozy and shivering could use one more night, at least, but probably two, of deep restoration. By Wednesday, for sure, he insisted, he’ll be good as new. Until then, to rush was not smart.
Frank returned to Jack’s room to find him back in bed wrapped like a mummy in the blankets, fast asleep, breathing deeply. The pages and the pen were gone from the desk. He set the cloudy glass and a pitcher of fresh water on the nightstand, shut the window most of the way, and closed the door firmly behind him.
Sandro showed up soon after with Mr. Moon, and later the two of them ate a light dinner on the patio: more grilled fish, a plate of Marika’s finger-rolled busiate, bread from the bakery at the end of the block. Their attention was fixed on the house, alert to any movement from Jack. The haze of clouds made for not so much a sunset but an intermittently perceptible dimming—no blaze of color in the dying of this particular day, no glory wrought from its inevitable crash. This was, for the vacationers in Marina di Cecina, for the man expecting good news from Rome that could have come at any moment but did not, a day hardly worth its price.
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