CHAPTER 18

 

 

Marcus and Domenico wandered through the deserted theater foyer and onto the sidewalk. They stopped in front of a poster featuring a girl with her arms outstretched in alarm over the title “Destinazione . . . Terra!”

“It was stupido, no?” Domenico asked.

Marcus grinned to himself. It was the dumbest movie he’d seen in forever. The plot was illogical, the acting was overripe, the dialogue was wooden, and the special effects were anything but special. It Came from Outer Space represented the nadir of American cinema—but he loved it with an unprecedented level of patriotic fervor. Being six thousand miles from the nearest cheeseburger, large fries, and strawberry thick shake made Marcus yearn for anything American.

“It was very stupido,” he agreed.

“We could have watched the new Roberto Rossellini instead. Why didn’t we see that?”

Because Italian movies are so gritty and earnest. I was desperate for some all-American nonsense.

Marcus turned away from the poster.

“You miss them, don’t you, my Marcus Aurelius?” Domenico asked.

“Who?”

“Signore Bogart, Signorina Bacall, Signorina Gardner.”

The day before Joe Mankiewicz left for the States, he had taken Marcus to a bistro for lunch and told him of Zanuck’s decision to film The Egyptian in Los Angeles so he no longer required the penthouse in Melody’s building.

“I’m sure Zanuck was looking forward to banging that girl all summer, but the budget worked out better if they shot in LA so he was forced to zip it up.” Mank sprinkled crushed chili peppers on his quattro formaggi pizza, “On the plus side, Zanuck was very happy with your production shots. You should also know that he’s less than happy with the Carmen Jones screenplay and needs someone to punch it up. They start filming in June.”

It was exactly the sort of opportunity Marcus had been hoping for to relaunch him onto the Hollywood scene. “Who’s directing?” he asked Mank.

“Preminger.”

“We worked together on The Moon is Blue, and I was instrumental in helping them blunt the power of the Breen Office.” In truth, “instrumental” overstated Marcus’s role, but Hollywood was a town that thrived on dramatics. “Maybe you could suggest to Zanuck that I would be the right guy for Carmen Jones.”

Mank pulled a string of mozzarella out of his teeth. “You’re better off aiming for The Virgin Queen. Bette Davis is doing Elizabeth I again and she’ll be pulling out all the stops. It’s a big-budget costume picture, so Zanuck’s throwing buckets of dough at it. Henry Koster is directing because he made such a success of The Robe, but a reliable source told me the script is a disaster.”

Marcus reminded Mank that he’d been gone a while, so he doubted anyone would hand him a prestige picture. Mank nodded as he chewed. “There’s always a pile of projects going on, so don’t worry.”

They were encouraging words, but you were only as good as the last favor you did for someone.

Marcus and Domenico walked away from the cinema. “Sure I miss them. We’ve lived in the same hotel at one time or another. Being together again was like Old Home Week.”

“What is ‘Old Home Week’?”

“It’s what you call a reunion with people you haven’t seen in a while.”

Domenico was always keen to improve his English and pounced on unfamiliar English phrases. Marcus gave him a full explanation, as he had also done with Rossano Brazzi, who had proved to be a diligent student. Fox had hinted that they were planning to bring him to the States and promote him as the next big thing in European lovers, so Brazzi was keen to master English as best he could.

But months and months of having to halt a conversation and explain what taking a rain check meant, or who Will Rogers was, had left Marcus wishing he could have a regular conversation with regular Americans. He’d got his fill being around Mank, Bogie, Bacall, and Ava, but their departure had opened a need in Marcus that even someone as thoughtful as Domenico couldn’t fill.

They arrived at the corner of a busy intersection where a newsstand butted up against an ancient bank building.

Domenico pulled Marcus toward it. “Look!” he exclaimed, “they are still selling your Epoca.”

In early February, Epoca had splashed Marcus’s photos of Melody in front of the Triton Fountain in Piazza Barberini across a four-page spread and saved the best one for the cover. Everyone had talked about the photo of Melody holding her shoes aloft as she romped around the knee-deep water, her sunglasses skewed off her face.

A month later, Epoca featured an article proclaiming Lo Scattino Americano as the most skilled street photographer in Rome. “Perhaps it takes an outsider to capture post-war life,” the article said, “in the city fast becoming the new European epicenter of film, fashion, and café society.”

Domenico bid him arrivederci and told him that last-minute reshoots on the new Fellini movie, La Strada, were likely to go late into the night. It suited Marcus—he wanted to include a letter to the girls with the Epoca he bought at the newsstand. But when he returned home, Signora Scatena flung open her front door, a registered letter fluttering in her hand.

Inside his room, Marcus tore open the envelope. The one-page letter was from MGM Italia’s attorney informing him that his Metropolitana check was ready.

The banks closed at four, so he had an hour to deposit it in his Italian account. Marcus made it to the lawyer’s office by three thirty. The razor-sharp corners of the expensive parchment envelope pressed against his chest from his inside breast pocket as he hurried along the street.

The American Express office stood on a corner overlooking the triangular piazza spread out at the base of the Spanish Steps. A display in the window caught his eye, drawing him like a kid to a candy store.

A row of ten-inch gold palm trees stretched across the front. Behind them towered a backdrop, fifteen inches tall and painted in vivid mistletoe green. Near the top of the Hollywood hills, white letters the size of Marcus’s thumb spelled out HOLLYWOODLAND, ignoring how the “LAND” part of the sign had been pulled down years ago.

A reasonably accurate facsimile of a movie palace marquee hung suspended above:

 

Los Angeles – la città dei miti

Los Angeles – the city of myths

 

The sight of this romanticized version of LA pricked Marcus’s heart with tiny shards. Individually, they weren’t barbed enough to draw blood, but collectively they held the power to thrust him through the doors and book the first Pan Am flight heading west.

He peered through the window. A line of desks ran along the right-hand side, each with a different sign:

Mail Collection

American Express Travelers Cheques

International Travel Arrangements – Air, Sea

European Travel Arrangements – Train, Bus, Ferry

His eyes flew back to American Express Travelers Cheques.

Italian banknotes were enormous, so smuggling ten thousand dollars’ worth would be difficult. But what about travelers cheques?

He drummed his fingernails against the glass. If the highest denomination is a hundred bucks, surely a stack of a hundred cheques couldn’t be thicker than a comic book? Would it raise eyebrows if I went in and ordered ten grand worth? What if I came in twice a week? And what if I rotated between the three American Express offices?

“I hate the sight of you!”

Marcus squared back his shoulders, then pivoted on his heel.

Emilio Conti was dressed in the same yellow suit he’d worn the day he accosted Gina Lollobrigida in front of Ristocaffé Colosseo. But today, it hung off him like a potato sack. One of the lapels was bent back at an awkward angle, a button hung by a limp thread, and either he’d forgotten to put on his cufflinks or they had fallen off.

The guy bunched his fingers into a fist tight enough to blanch the knuckles. “Why do you make my life a misery? Why don’t you go back where you came from, Signore Scattino Americano?”

“I’m not responsible for that Epoca article,” Marcus said.

“You loved it.” Emilio treaded a semicircle around Marcus as he lifted his arms like a Pentecostal preacher. “Let us praise Lo Scattino Americano!” His voice bounced off the stone walls. “The most skilled in all Rome!”

“Emilio, don’t do this. I’m only here because I’m stuck in Rome for the time being.”

“You are an American. You can walk in there—” he pointed toward the American Express office “—and make a ticket on the Cristoforo Colombo or the Pan Am. Hello America! I have returned!”

“That was the view of one guy—”

“The top journalist for the top magazine in all of Italy.”

“Trust me, Emilio, as soon as I can, I will walk into that office behind me and I will book a one-way ticket.”

“Oh, yes! It is okay for you! You can leave. You can be whoever you want. Whatever you want. And you leave people like me stuck here.” He waved his hands around wildly, nearly hitting a young woman pushing a stroller. “With these dusty ruins. All this history. All these families and their expectations.”

So he resents how I can leave any time I want.

“Emilio,” Marcus said, keeping his voice low and even, “if you want to go to America, just pack your bags and leave.”

The guy’s face curdled into a snarl. “It is not easy.”

“Sure it is. There are so many Italians in America that you’ll feel right at home.”

Marcus attempted a friendly poke to Emilio’s shoulder but he shoved Marcus’s hand away. “I am not free. I can never be free!”

“I don’t think that’s true.”

“YOU KNOW NOTHING!”

The guy began swinging wildly, struggling to land blows wherever he could. Marcus fended them off until he saw that Emilio was determined to cold-cock him. Marcus had to put a stop to this—the bank closed in less than fifteen minutes.

Marcus deposited his camera on the ground, then socked Emilio with a right hook that sent him staggering against the American Express window. It was the first time Marcus had ever slugged someone like that. The movies didn’t show how punching someone hurt like holy hell.

* * *

If he hadn’t run the last two blocks, he might not have made it to the bank in time.

For someone who had never even cheated on his income tax, the prospect of smuggling a large amount of money out of a foreign country made Marcus feel like he was in a Humphrey Bogart movie. He wished Kathryn or Gwendolyn were with him to play his femme fatale.

Was his American Express Travelers Cheques idea inspired? Or crazy? Was there a limit to how many they would sell him? Was anybody keeping track?

He turned the corner into the Piazza di Spagna to peek through the American Express window again but caught sight of a yellow smudge sprawled at the base of the Spanish Steps. Emilio Conti sat with his face planted in the palms of his hands. For a moment, Marcus wondered if he was crying.

Marcus crossed the piazza and sank to his haunches. “Let me buy you a drink. Maybe we can—”

Emilio let out a raw moan as he pushed Marcus onto the cobblestones and lurched to his feet. He pulled something from his jacket pocket but it escaped his grasp and crashed onto the ground, splintering into a thousand fragments. The smell of Scotch whiskey filled Marcus’s nose as Emilio staggered past shocked onlookers. Marcus now felt like he really was in a Bogart picture, so he surrendered to an urge and followed this miserable little jerk.

Emilio reached the expansive Piazza del Popolo, skirted around the northern border of the gardens of the Villa Borghese, and lumbered deeper into the northern part of the city where Marcus had never ventured.

The main thoroughfares led to local streets, which gave way to a lattice of back alleys where cobblestones deteriorated into sparse gravel and the looks from passers-by grew wary.

Emilio abruptly stopped to brush the dirt from his suit and smooth down his hair. He reached for the brass handle attached to a door painted asphalt black. It squeaked in protest as it swung open; the shadows swallowed him whole.

Marcus wondered if he should get while the getting was good. He wasn’t sure he could escape this maze of backstreets.

Bogie would keep going.

On the other side of the door lay a short corridor, its walls covered in peeling flocked velvet of dark pomegranate. The corridor opened into a large, semicircular room. The bar stood on the left, fanning out with stools crowding its lip. Waist-high cocktail tables lined the outer wall, each of them standing in a narrow pool of light cast by dim shaded lights dangling from a ceiling Marcus couldn’t make out. Only a fraction of the tables were occupied; all the other patrons sat at the bar.

Emilio took a seat next to a man with bright red curly hair and motioned the bartender for another round of whatever-he’s-having. The redhead asked Emilio a question and received a curt headshake in response. After a pause, Emilio let his shoulders sag and then gave them a well-maybe shrug, which made the redhead smile. He reached up and ran his fingers through Emilio’s disheveled hair.

It was the sort of thing Domenico liked to do after they made love and fell back into each other’s arms, panting and sweaty.

Marcus took in the rest of the bar more closely now that his eyes had started to adjust. In the city of the Vatican, where two thousand years of Catholic dogma condemned everything that certain types of men liked to do in the privacy of their pensiones, Marcus found himself standing in a queer bar.

Emilio closed his eyes and surrendered himself to the soothing sensation of his boyfriend’s fingernails dragging across his scalp. A wistful smile emerged on what had been an angry, resentful face.

Marcus turned to leave, but Melody’s warning came back to him. Never trust a Conti.

He removed his camera lens cover. The light in this joint was murky but Emilio’s face was bathed in the light from the lamp directly above him.

Very, very slowly, Marcus pressed the shutter release button.