by Pat Conroy
“Molto bene, Arturo,” I answered. “Have Signor Hess and Signora Ansley checked into the hotel?”
“They arrived this morning separately,” Arturo said. “Signor Hess left this note for you. He is the famous producer from Hollywood, no?”
“Was it hard to tell?” I asked.
“Mr. Hess is larger than life.”
“Been that way since he was a kid,” I said.
“The woman is bellissima,” Arturo said.
“She was born that way,” I said. “I was an eyewitness.”
I opened Mike’s note to me and recognized his almost illegible handwriting, which reminded me of untied shoes.
“Hey, deer-fuck,” he began sweetly, “we’ll meet for drinks on the terrace at six. Nice joint. Don’t beat off on the sheets. Ciao and all that shit. Mike.”
High school is a kind of starting gate, I thought as I waited for my friends’ arrival above the traffic of the Grand Canal. I had always considered the friends of my childhood special, but it had surprised me to see one of them become world-famous by the time he was thirty. In the darkness of the Breeze Theater, Mike Hess had fallen in love with movies and the world surrounding them. He would watch a movie with the same fastidious passion that an art historian brought to the study of a Titian. His powers of attention and memorization were extraordinary and he could name every actor who appeared in All About Eve as well as the fictional characters they portrayed. Snow White was the first movie he ever saw and he could take you on a journey from the opening credits to Snow White riding off into the rosy future with her prince, barely missing a single detail. Even his personality had been flamboyant and pixilated, so Mike always seemed destined to make movies.
But I was even more curious to see Ledare Ansley. Mike and I stayed close for a while after college, but I had rarely seen Ledare since our senior year at the University of South Carolina. Though we had dated off and on throughout high school, we’d never seemed to know each other very well. Her beauty had made her unapproachable, apart. She was one of those girls who pass through your life leaving secret wreckage, but no visible wake. You remember her, but for all the wrong reasons. She had written me my first love poem, which she presented to me on my birthday, but she wrote it in code and never felt confident enough to provide me with its key. In high school, for my entire junior year, I walked around school carrying a page of handwritten gibberish, an untranslatable love note I could neither decipher nor enjoy. I thought of that poem now, in Venice, where all images are forgeries stolen from water.
A hand touched my shoulder and I knew that touch.
“Hello, stranger,” Ledare Ansley said. “Buy me this hotel and I might blow you a kiss when I go off to bed.”
“Hey, Ledare,” I said, rising, “I knew you were born to have this place.”
“Heaven couldn’t be this lovely,” Ledare said. We embraced. “How are you, Jack? Everybody’s worried about you.”
“I’m doing fine,” I said. “Leaving South Carolina in the dust has had its rewards.”
“I’ve been in New York for the past five years,” she said. “You don’t need to sell me on why you left.”
“I didn’t intend to,” I said. “How’re your kids?”
“They’re fine, I guess,” she said and I knew I had struck a sore point. “Both of them live with their father. Capers has convinced them that he needs them when he runs for governor.”
“If Capers becomes governor, it means democracy doesn’t work.”
She laughed and said, “He said to say hello to you. He still thinks very highly of you.”
“Since we’re passing messages, please tell Capers that I often think of him too. Anytime I ponder viruses or the spores of poisoned mushrooms, I think of him. When my thoughts turn to hemorrhoids or diarrhea cultures …”
“I get the point,” she said.
“I knew you would,” I said. “You were always a quick study.”
“Au contraire,” Ledare said, “I was the slowest of all. Remember, I married the charming son of a bitch.”
“A slight misdirection. A wrong turn in the road,” I said.
“More like modern warfare,” she said. “First I blew up the city, tortured all my friends, set the fields afire, salted the earth, then blew up all the bridges that might’ve gotten me back where I started.”
“Didn’t work out, huh?” I said, enjoying her.
“You could always read between the lines,” she said.
“Uh-oh,” I said, looking toward the hotel lobby. “Something oddball this way comes.”
Mike Hess moved toward us with his rapid, confident stride. His energy level was high and he always seemed agitated, like a Pepsi bottle shaken before it was opened. Every eye on the terrace locked on to him as Mike approached our table. His grooming was immaculate; his manner efficient and no-nonsense.
Mike grabbed me in a bear hug the moment I stood up and kissed me on both cheeks, more Hollywood than Italy. He kissed Ledare on the lips.
“Hollywood broads still can’t hold a candle to you, Ledare. I still get a hard-on when I think of you in your cheerleader uniform.”
“You’ve always known a way to a girl’s heart, Mike,” said Ledare as we all sat.
“I didn’t recognize you without your gold chains,” I said to Mike.
“Biggest mistake I ever made,” Mike said, laughing at himself. “Wearing those goddamn chains to our tenth reunion. But, hell, everyone wanted to see me play movie producer. My love of my classmates won the day. I gave the public what it wanted. Open silk shirt. Chains glittering in the old chest hair. Who did I take to that?”
“Tiffany Blake,” Ledare said. “She was your wife.”
“Great woman,” Mike said. “Had to dropkick her right out of my life after my son, Creighton, was born. She had a bad habit of fucking people not married to her.”
“You’ve had that reputation yourself,” Ledare observed.
“Hey, careful,” Mike said, gesturing toward me. “The last time I saw Jack here, he referred to me as a shallow fuck.”
“How rude and ungallant of me,” I said, smiling. Then added, “Michael, you shallow fuck.”
Mike stood up dramatically and pretended he had been shot in the stomach. He staggered backward, wheeled around, and slumped over the railing above the Grand Canal, feigning death. His performance was real enough to attract the attention of two puzzled waiters, who inquired after Mike’s health.
“Get up, Mike,” said Ledare. “Try to pretend you know how to act in a good hotel.”
“It’s a gut shot, amigos. No use to call the medicos,” Mike said. “Tell Mama I died while saying kaddish for Papa.”
Mike snapped suddenly to attention and came back to his seat. He bowed to an elderly Italian woman who certainly had not enjoyed his performance and gave him a look of frosty annoyance. Her contempt seemed to bother Mike.
“There, in a nutshell. See that face,” Mike said. “That’s why foreign movies suck. There’s no life force. No brio here.”
“No brio,” I said. “In Italy?”
“No life force?” said Ledare. “Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren, these people invented life force.”
“Been to a foreign movie lately?” Mike said, ignoring her. “All they do is go in and out of doors. For two endless hours. No one dies. No one gets his ass shot off. No one fucks or laughs. They just go in and out of doors or eat endless dinners. In one door and out the other. Oh, here comes the soup course. They cut their chicken up for a half-hour of screen time. That woman’s face. That’s all you need to know about why European movies stink.”
Ledare nodded her head and said, “She criticized your acting. She didn’t fall for your juvenile death scene from High Noon.”
“Hey,” Mike said, “I did the same routine not long ago in the Polo Lounge. Same one. In front of my peers in the industry. And I got a standing ovation from some of the coldest-hearted bastards that ever lived. I speak gospel here.”
�
��You think what works at the Polo Lounge,” I said, “will work at the Gritti Palace?”
“Hey, I grew up with you in South Carolina,” Mike said, taking my wrist. “There’s a palmetto on my birth certificate.”
“Admit it, Mike,” I said. “Your native land’s now Rodeo Drive. That’s the real you. Everything else in your life’s just affectation.”
“Don’t you just love it,” Mike said, laughing appreciatively. “I could buy and sell this nobody fifty times and still get Grandpa a new set of horseshoes and this guy still gives me shit. You gotta love the guy.”
A new waiter came over, shook hands with me, and we exchanged pleasantries in Italian. Then, in English, I ordered a dry Tanqueray martini straight up with a twist. Mike wrinkled his nose.
“Martini. That’s like a June Allyson movie. I’m in danger of dying of a Perrier and lime overdose. Only put stuff in the engine that’s unleaded. Got to get you two out to L.A. You’d be papaya-breathed in a month.”
“I’ll translate the Italian,” I said to Ledare, “if you explain what Mike’s talking about.”
“He doesn’t drink anymore,” she said.
“I’ve got a personal trainer, the whole nine yards,” Mike said. “The cat used to be a cornerback for the Rams, and if you don’t think he takes my ass to the well …”
“Read any Tolstoy lately, Mike?” I asked as the waiter brought him his drink.
“I like it. I really like it. People shake in their Tinkerbell shoes when I walk into an L.A. meeting and Jack sits here shoveling shit down my throat. Hell, man, I read screenplays nonstop from A.M. to P.M. Non-fucking-stop. If they don’t get my attention by the first or second page, the script is airborne, flying the friendly skies out the fucking window … time’s a precious metal to me, man.”
“Translation, please,” I asked, looking at Ledare.
“He reads a lot of movie scripts. Doesn’t like a lot of them. Busy man,” Ledare said.
“Here’s to friendship.” I lifted my glass to both of them.
The three of us touched glasses.
“There’s something about the friends you made as a kid that can never be duplicated,” Mike said, and there was a slight catch in his voice.
“Speak for yourself,” Ledare answered. “I’ve made a lot of friends I like better since then.”
“Get sentimental and Ledare sends a spear through your heart. She hasn’t changed much, has she, Jack?”
“I’m the one who can tell you, Mike. You don’t have to ask Jack. Always go to the source,” Ledare said before I could answer.
“Why’d you want to meet in Venice?” I asked Mike when I saw that Ledare had hurt him. “You said you had a project.”
“Project! I got an idea so fucking ballistic that I could fully arm a nuclear submarine.”
“He means he’s got a good idea,” Ledare explained.
“I won’t allow you to dampen my natural enthusiasm, Ledare. So you might as well quit trying. I speak the lingo of my community, just like Jack down here. You want octopus in this burg, you gotta go with the word calamari.”
“What’s the project, Mike?” I asked again.
“Hey, not so fast. This meeting isn’t being timed. Let’s just sit here and sop up each other’s eyes, as the poet said.”
“How’s Leah, Jack?” Ledare asked.
“Yeah. The mystery kid. The one you Lindberghed out of South Carolina.”
“I didn’t kidnap her, Mike. She was my kid and I decided we’d move to Italy.”
“Hey, I’m sensitive to your sensitivities. That’s just the talk around the old gang.”
“The old gang,” I said softly. “I want to run for cover every time I think about the old gang.”
“We had some ups and downs, but we had some great times, too.”
“Jack’s thinking of the casualties,” Ledare said.
“Casualties. I like it. Makes great box office.”
“Beautifully phrased,” Ledare said. “You add something exotic to Venice. You really do.”
“Ledare, I hope this doesn’t set our relationship back when I say, from the bottom of my heart, please go fuck yourself. Now maybe you understand why I didn’t get around to reading your screenplay.”
“You read it,” she said coolly. “Because you were in it.”
Mike said, “You weren’t exactly fair. It hurt me.”
“Music to my ears,” she said, motioning to the waiter for another drink.
“This is making me nervous,” I interrupted. “And it’s making me sorry I agreed to come up here for this meeting. I don’t enjoy it when people start fighting old wars that they can’t win. Especially when I should be getting VA benefits from fighting in the same wars.”
“Relax, Jack,” Mike said, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I was warned that you might cut and run anytime. But you need to hear me out. I’ve thought about doing this for a long time. Worked it out in my head. Tried to position myself in the industry so when the time was ripe I’d be ready to break the melons and spit out the seeds. Everything’s in place. I’ve got a film that’s going to be released in the fall that I’m trying to get into the Venice Film Festival. It’ll make me some dough as in dough a deer a female deer, and it’s a little on the artsy-fartsy side too. Quit nailing my ass in your work, pumpkin, and maybe I can produce one of your screenplays on the silver screen one day,” he said, looking at Ledare suddenly.
“Her Southern heart went pitter-patter at the approach of her Beauregard,” Ledare said with chill nonchalance as she studied the silhouette of the church across the canal. “I don’t care if you make one of my films or not, Mike. That’s why you love me.”
“I want you two to write a mini-series about the South for me. Based on our town and our families. From the beginning when my grandfather arrived in Waterford to the present time.”
“Mini-series,” I said unpleasantly. “What an ugly phrase.”
“Think of it as many dollars. It’ll eradicate any aesthetic problem you might have about writing for television.”
Ledare said, “My problem’s working with you, Mike. That’s what I told you when you first mentioned this to me and it’s the same problem I’ve got now.”
“You didn’t have a problem accepting a free ticket to Venice, did you?”
“None whatsoever,” Ledare said. “I wanted to see Jack again and have him take me to all the secret places of Venice.”
“Can you drink the water in this burg, Jack?” Mike asked, lowering his voice. “I mean, from the tap or should I brush my teeth with Perrier? I went to Mexico last year and thought Montezuma had crawled up my ass to take a nap.”
“It’s Venice, not Tijuana. Water’s fine.”
Mike seemed happy that one more troublesome aspect of travel had evaporated with my assurance. “What do you think about my concept for the Southern series? Fire away.”
“Count me out,” Ledare said.
“Wait a minute, sweetgums. Mike here’s left out the most important part.”
He took a pen and wrote a number down on a piece of paper and held it up for both Ledare and me to see. A gondolier moved below them, going home for the day, navigating his beautiful boat for himself, not for tourists.
“That’s how much money I plan to spend for writers on this series. Let’s face it. That’s more money than Jack’s ever made flipping burgers, and I include paperback and intergalactic sales. Jack sure as hell doesn’t make that kind of bread writing about lamb kidneys and pizza bianca.”
“Thanks for holding my profession in such high regard, Mike,” I said irritably.
Ledare studied the figure that Mike had written on the piece of paper, then said, “So this is why everyone in California’s so shallow.”
“Maybe so,” Mike said, his voice rising slightly to meet the challenge of her irony, “but it sure sharpens your aptitude for higher mathematics.”
I shook my head as I watched the boat traffic move by them. �
��I came to Italy to get away from all that.”
“Hey, I’m not asking you to write the personal stuff. Nothing about you going to the deep freeze. Nothing about Shyla and the bridge shit. I’m talking about the general history. The big picture. My grandparents. Yours, Jack. Capers’ granddad was one of the biggest politicians of his time. I mean, there’s a story there. We come from shit, but our families have this burning desire to make it better for their children and grandchildren, and son of a bitch, they pull it off. Look. It’s got everything. Two world wars. The civil rights movement. The sixties. Vietnam. Right up to now.”
“How long is this mini-series supposed to be?” Ledare asked.
“Hey, a lot of telescoping. Lot of voice-over. We hit the high points and cover the century. I think it’s a hell of an exciting idea and if you two don’t a lot of writers want to be part of this project.”
“Hire them,” I suggested.
“None of them were there,” Mike said and for the first time I saw the remnants of the old Michael, the boy I grew up with and loved. “Not like we were. They didn’t live through what we lived through. I keep waiting for Ledare to write about what we saw in South Carolina as kids, but everything she writes takes place in a tanning salon for feminists in Manhattan.”
“Let’s not fight,” I said.
Mike answered, “Fight, shit. Man, in South Carolina we don’t even know how to fight. In L.A. you know you’ve been in a good fight when your dick falls into the toilet when you take a morning piss.”
“I don’t want to work with you, Mike,” I said. “I came here because I was curious and wanted to see what it would be like for all of us to be together again. I get less nostalgic about the past than you do. But I’m nostalgic about us and our innocence and what we went through together and how it might have turned out if we’d been luckier.”
“Then write it like you wish it’d turned out,” Mike said, leaning toward me. “You want to write it nicer. Great. Make it nice. It’ll be paradise to work with me. I’m a sweetheart to work with. Here’s some numbers I want you to call. Collect. They’ll know you’ll be Ma Belling them.”
“Numbers?” I asked.