This was when I understood the deep responsibility behind my ability to divine desire. It’s one thing to know what people truly want. It’s another to CREATE that want in them. To BUILD that desire.
I pretended to sigh. “Look. This got out of hand. All he wants is for you to get the abortion and stay quiet about it. So you tell me how we can do that.”
She flinched. “What do you mean? ‘All he wants’ ?”
I didn’t blink. “He feels really bad. Obviously. He couldn’t even ask you himself. That’s why he left today. He feels awful about how this all turned out.”
She looked more hurt than when she’d thought she actually had cancer. “Wait. You don’t mean—”
Her eyes closed slowly. It had never occurred to her that Dick might have known all along what I was doing. And frankly it hadn’t occurred to me until that moment either. But in a way it was true.
I acted like I’d assumed she’d known I was acting on his behalf. It was a rush play. I had just a day before Dick got back from France. I had to appear to be defending him. I said he cared deeply for her. That what he was offering didn’t change that. I said she shouldn’t blame him. That his feelings for her were genuine. But he and Liz were under tremendous pressure with this picture—
She interrupted me. She was putting it together. It had been Liz’s doctor who diagnosed her. She covered her mouth. “Liz knows about this, too?”
I sighed and reached out for her hand. But she recoiled like my hand was a snake.
I told her there were no reshoots in France. I said Dick had left a ticket to Switzerland in her name at the La Spezia train station.
She looked like she might vomit. I gave her my business card. She took it. I told her that back in the States we’d go over the slate of upcoming Fox films. She could pick any part she wanted. The next morning I drove her to the train station. She got out with her bags. Her arms slack at her side. She stood and stared at the station and the green hills behind it. And then she began walking. I watched her disappear inside. And I was never surer of anything. She’d go to Switzerland. Then she’d show up in my office in two months. Six at the most. A year. But she’d come to collect. They all do.
But it never happened. She never went to Switzerland. Never came to see me.
That morning Burton arrived back from France to see D— but found me waiting for him instead.
Dick was mad as hell. We went to the train station in La Spezia but the agent said she had only come inside and dropped off her luggage. Then she’d turned around and started walking back toward the hills. Dick and I drove back to Portovenere but she wasn’t there. Dick even made me get a boat to go back to the little fishing town where I’d hid her for a while. But she wasn’t there either. She had disappeared.
We were about to leave the fishing village when the strangest thing happened. This old witch came down from the hills. Cursing and yelling. Our driver translated: “Murderer!” and “I curse you to death.”
I looked over at Burton. That old witch really gave it to him. Years later I’d think about that witch’s curse as I watched poor Dick Burton drink himself under.
In the boat that day he was visibly spooked. It was the perfect time for my come-to-Jesus talk with him.
“Come on, Dick. What were you going to do? Have a kid with her? Marry that girl?”
“Fuck off, Deane.” I could hear it in his voice. He knew I was right.
“This picture needs you. Liz needs you.”
He just stared at the sea.
Of course I was right. Liz was the one. They were in love like that. I knew. He knew. And I made it all possible.
I HAD done exactly what he wanted me to do. Even if he hadn’t known it yet. This was what people like me did for people like him.
From now on this would be my place in the world. To divine desire and do the things that other people wanted done. The things they didn’t even know they wanted yet. The things they could never do themselves. The things they could never admit to themselves.
Dick stared straight ahead in the boat. Did he and I stay friends? Yep. Go to each other’s weddings? You bet we did. Did the Deane bow his head at the great actor’s funeral? Sure I did. And neither of us ever spoke again about what happened in Italy that spring. Not about the girl. Not about the village. Not about the witch’s curse.
That was that.
Back in Rome Dick and Liz rekindled. Got married. Made movies. Won awards. You know the story. One of the great romances in the world. A romance I built.