Porto Vergogna had never had un liceo—a high school—and so Pasquale had boated to La Spezia for secondary school. This was where he’d met Orenzio, who became his first real friend. They were tossed together by default: the shy son of the old hotelier and the short, jug-eared wharf boy. Pasquale had even stayed sometimes with Orenzio’s family during the winter weeks, when the passage was difficult. The winter before Pasquale left for Florence, he and Orenzio had invented a game that they played over glasses of Swiss beer. They would sit across from each other at the docks in La Spezia and fire offenses back and forth until they either ran out of words or started repeating themselves, at which point the loser would have to drain the pint before him. Now, as he hoisted the American’s bags, Orenzio leaned over to Pasquale and played a dry version of the game. “What did she say, nut-smeller?”
“She loves my eyes,” Pasquale said, missing his cue.
“Come on, ass-handler,” Orenzio said. “She said nothing like this.”
“No, she did. She is in love with my eyes.”
“You are a liar, Pasqo, and an admirer of boys’ noodles.”
“It is true.”
“That you love boys’ noodles?”
“No. She said that about my eyes.”
“You are a fellater of goats. The woman is a cinema star.”
“I think so, too,” Pasquale said.
“No, stupid, she really is a performer of the cinema. She is with the American company working on the film in Rome.”
“What film?”
“Cleopatra. Don’t you read the newspapers, shit-smoker?”
Pasquale looked back at the American actress, who was climbing the steps to the village. “But she’s too fair-skinned to play Cleopatra.”
“The whore and husband-thief Elizabeth Taylor is Cleopatra,” Orenzio said. “This is another player in the film. Do you really not read the newspapers, bung-slopper?”
“Which role is she?”
“How should I know? There must be many roles.”
“What’s her name?” Pasquale asked.
Orenzio handed over the typed instructions he’d been given. The paper included the woman’s name, said that she should be taken to the hotel in Porto Vergogna, and that the bill should be sent to the man who had arranged her trip, Michael Deane, at the Grand Hotel in Rome. The single sheet of paper said that this Michael Deane was a “special production assistant” for “20th Century Fox Pictures.” And the woman’s name— “Dee . . . Moray,” Pasquale read aloud. It wasn’t familiar, but there were so many American movie stars—Rock Hudsons, Marilyn Monroes, John Waynes—and just when he thought he knew them all, some new one became famous, almost as if there were a factory in America manufacturing these huge movie-screen faces. Pasquale looked back up to where she was already making her way up the steps of the cliff seam and into the waiting village. “Dee Moray,” he said again.
Orenzio looked over his shoulder at the paper. “Dee Moray,” Orenzio said. There was something intriguing in the name and neither man could stop saying it. “Dee Moray,” Orenzio said again.
“She is sick,” Orenzio said to Pasquale.
“With what?”
“How would I know this? The man just said she was sick.”
“Is it serious?”
“I don’t know this, either.” And then, as if winding down, as if even he were losing interest in their old game, Orenzio added another insult, uno che mangia culo—“one who eats ass.”
Pasquale watched as Dee Moray moved toward his hotel, taking small steps along the stone pathway. “She can’t be too sick,” he said. “She’s beautiful.”
“But not like Sophia Loren,” Orenzio said. “Or the Marilyn Monroe.” It had been their other pastime the winter before, going to the cinema and rating the women they saw.
“No, I think she has a more intelligent beauty . . . like Anouk Aimée.”
“She is so skinny,” Orenzio said. “And she’s no Claudia Cardinale.”
“No,” Pasquale had to agree. Claudia Cardinale was perfection. “I think it is not so common, though, her face.”
The point had become too fine for Orenzio. “I could bring a three-legged dog into this town, Pasqo, and you would fall in love with it.”
That’s when Pasquale became worried. “Orenzio, did she intend to come here?”
Orenzio smacked the page in Pasquale’s hand. “This American, Deane, who drove her to La Spezia? I explained to him that no one comes here. I asked if he meant Portofino or Portovenere. He asked what Porto Vergogna was like, and I said there was nothing here but a hotel. He asked if the town was quiet. I said to him only death is quieter, and he said, ‘Then that is the place.’ ”