Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

card?
    Honestly, after the day she’s had, if Daryl had texted anything other than kfc and unrated hookbook , she might just have told these two guys the game was up—they’d missed today’s charity wagon. But she thinks again about Fate and the deal she made. Who knows? Maybe one of these guys . . . right. She unlocks the door and asks their names again. Sloppy sideburns = Shane. Popping eyes = Pasquale.
    “Why don’t you both come on back to the conference room,” she says.
    In the office, they sit beneath posters for Michael’s classic movies ( Mind Blow ; The Love Burglar ). No time for pleasantries; it’s the first pitch meeting in history in which no water is proffered. “Mr. Tursi, would you like to go first?”
    He looks around, confused. “Mr. Deane . . . is not here?” His accent is heavy, as if he’s chewing on each word.
    “I’m afraid he’s not here today. Are you an old friend of his?”
    “I meet him . . .” He stares at the ceiling. “Eh, nel sessantadue .”
    “Nineteen sixty-two,” says the young guy. When Claire looks curiously at him, Shane shrugs. “I spent a year studying in Italy.”
    Claire imagines Michael and this old guy, back in the day, tooling around Rome in a convertible, screwing Italian actresses, drinking grappa. Now Pasquale Tursi looks disoriented. “He say . . . you . . . ever need anything. ”
    “Sure,” Claire says. “I promise I’ll tell Michael all about your pitch. Why don’t you just start at the beginning?”
    Pasquale squints as if he doesn’t understand. “My English . . . is long time . . .”
    “The beginning,” Shane tells Pasquale. “L’inizio.”
    “There’s this guy . . .” Claire urges.
    “A woman,” Pasquale Tursi says. “She come to my village, Porto Vergogna . . . in . . .” He looks over at Shane for help.
    “Nineteen sixty-two?” Shane says again.
    “Yes. She is . . . beautiful. And I am build . . . eh . . . a beach, yes? And tennis?” He rubs his brow, the story already getting away from him. “She is . . . in the cinema ?”
    “An actress?” Shane Wheeler asks.
    “Yes.” Pasquale Tursi nods and stares off into space.
    Claire checks her watch and does her best to jumpstart his pitch: “So . . . an actress comes to this town and she falls for this guy who’s building a beach?”
    Pasquale looks back at Claire. “No. For me . . . maybe, yes. E— l’attimo, yes?” He looks at Shane for help. “ L’attimo che dura per sempre. ”
    “The moment that lasts forever,” Shane says quietly.
    “Yes,” Pasquale says, and nods. “Forever.”
    Claire feels pinched by those words in such close proximity, moment and forever . Not exactly KFC and Hookbook. She suddenly feels angry—at her silly ambition and romanticism, at her taste in men, at the loopy Scientologists, at her father for watching that stupid movie and then leaving, at herself for coming back to the office—at herself because she keeps hoping for better. And Michael: Goddamn Michael and his goddamn job and his goddamn business cards and his goddamn old buzzard friends and the goddamn favors he owes the goddamn people he screwed back when he screwed everything that screwed.
    Pasquale Tursi sighs. “She was sick.”
    Claire flushes with impatience: “With what? Lupus? Psoriasis? Cancer?”
    At the word cancer , Pasquale looks up suddenly and mutters in Italian, “Sì . Ma non è così semplice—”
    And that’s when the kid Shane interrupts. “Uh, Ms. Silver? I don’t think this guy’s pitching.” And he says to the man, in slow Italian, “Questo è realmente accaduto? Non in un film?”
    Pasquale nods. “Sì. Sono qui per trovarla.”
    “Yeah, this really happened,” Shane tells Claire. He turns back to Pasquale. “Non l’ha più vista da allora?” Pasquale shakes his head no, and Shane turns back to Claire again. “He hasn’t seen this actress in almost fifty years. He came to find her.”
    “Come si