City of Myths Read online

  “It’s time I paid Mr. Hartman another visit,” she muttered to herself.

  Leo leaned over. “What’s that, dear?”

  “This movie makes me want to go to Rome for another visit.”

  Maybe it doesn’t take a thief to catch a thief. Perhaps it only needs a clever trap.

  CHAPTER 4

  Darryl Zanuck had called Marcus right after Fox launched The Robe, still euphoric from how his first CinemaScope movie had already grossed a record-breaking $35,000. Then he’d sobered up and told Marcus to take notes “because this is costing me five bucks for every ten seconds.”

  As Negulesco had predicted, Zanuck wanted photos of Rome. “Tons and tons. Every part of the city, every time of day; scenic panoramas, fountains, piazzas, parks, Roman ruins, as well as any old-time building you see with atmosphere. Give me local color, too. Outdoor markets, pretty girls, Italian lovers, handsome slickers—but not any of those greaseball types. Make sure they’re good-looking, like Rossano Brazzi. Beefcake for the gals and cheesecake for the guys.”

  Marcus assured him he knew exactly what he wanted. “Anything else?”

  The pause that followed set Zanuck back nearly five bucks. “I need you to find an apartment.”

  “Any specific area or size?”

  “It’s gotta be in a classy area, preferably not too far from Cinecittà. But I want a penthouse, y’understand? I can’t stand to hear people walking around above me.”

  “How many bedrooms?”

  A three-dollar pause. “Two bedrooms, two bathrooms.”

  “That might be tricky. Most places have a shared bathroom down the hallway.”

  “When money is no object, trust me, doors always open.”

  “Sure,” Marcus said. “When do you think you’ll go into production?”

  “What?”

  “Isn’t this for The Egyptian?”

  “How the hell did you figure that out?”

  Marcus didn’t want to get Jean Negulesco into trouble for blabbing outside school. “I pal around with Kathryn Massey. She gives me the inside scoop from time to time. And with your Robe success, I put two and two together.”

  Zanuck grunted. “Start shopping around for possibilities.”

  “Certainly.” Marcus let two dollars’ worth of trans-Atlantic static fill Zanuck’s ear. “And then do I get to come home, free from the blacklist and the graylist?”

  Another grunt came down the line, but it was more of a begrudging Yeah, okay.

  Marcus was midway through his thanks when Zanuck hung up.

  The next day a telegram advised Marcus that a wire transfer for three hundred dollars awaited him at the American Express office near the Spanish Steps. Three hundred bucks bought a hell of a lot of linguini. He could easily afford better accommodations than Signora Scatena’s modest pensione, but how long was this money supposed to last? A week? A month? Until Christmas?

  With this much uncertainty and very little left in his Hollywood bank account, Marcus elected to stay put. His closet was perfect for a darkroom, and nobody made stuffed zucchini flowers like the signora.

  He spent the next couple of weeks capturing the damp San Callisto catacombs on the Appian Way, the countless columns of the Vatican City, and every breathtaking vista and charming nook tucked into secluded squares in between. Each day he’d venture out with ten rolls filling his Florentine leather courier bag. If Zanuck wanted magnificent shots of Rome, Marcus would make sure his publicity department got a proverbial embarrassment of riches.

  But for all his zigzagging, he saw few signs that anybody had a penthouse for rent. The few that he found turned out to be converted attics—a far cry from the lavish penthouse where Zanuck was planning to stash his “protégée.”

  But no matter where he was—strolling the gardens of the Villa Borghese or sampling every café that dotted Trastevere—he avoided Piazza Colonna. That is, until one warm Thursday afternoon late in September when, after he’d visited every fountain, outlook, and temple worth photographing, Marcus had once again felt the magnetic pull of those ornately carved doors.

  He told himself he’d walk past once and once only. And he’d give the doors a quick glance to see if the priests had reattached that broken angel.

  The street wasn’t as busy as it had been the day he and Negulesco had wandered by. Most of the cafés had survived the lunch rush and were now catering to tourists looking to revive their spirits with a plate of cannoli.

  The angel was back in place, but fragments of wood had splintered away, allowing gobs of dried glue to dribble onto an eight-stringed lyre directly below.

  A deep longing to see Oliver overcame him.

  One more time. I need a final goodbye—no, I deserve one.

  He lifted the hinged brass doorknocker and banged it, hard as he could, three times. When that drew no response, he cupped his hands around his mouth.

  “C’è qualcuno dentro?” Is anybody inside?

  He knocked again. “Voglio parlare con qualcuno.” I want to speak with someone.

  The doors remained closed.

  “You must shout more loud to get the attention.”

  The guy Marcus had encountered the last time was dressed in the same dark blue suit, but now he wore an altogether different expression. More bemused, less furious.

  “Excuse me?” Marcus said.

  “You must make the noise with all your muscles.”

  He was more handsome when he wasn’t scowling. He possessed the full face of a man who enjoyed his fettuccine Alfredo, but was saved by a well-defined jawline and a Kirk Douglas cleft in his chin.

  “You mean with my shoe?” The guy pulled his brows together until Marcus fingered the broken angel. “I was watching when you did this.”

  “I was very angry.”

  “Two people can make more noise than one,” Marcus said.

  The guy stared at the door, the angel, then back at Marcus. He leaped the four steps that separated them. “If we are together, we can make two times more sound. If you hit the—what is this called in English?”

  “Doorknocker.”

  “Si! You bang-bang-bang with the doorknocker, and I—” he pulled off a polished black leather shoe “—bang-bang-bang with this. Together we will be very loud!”

  “Try not to break an angel,” Marcus said. “It might be bad luck.”

  The man’s face lit up. Marcus had never encountered such vibrant hazel eyes flecked with moss green. “Ha! No breaked angels today. My name is Domenico.”

  “Marcus.”

  They shook hands.

  Marcus lifted the heavy brass handle and started beating a slow, regular rhythm. Domenico grappled his shoe like a hammer and struck it against the wood in time with Marcus. After a dozen blows, he called out, “FACCI ENTRARE!” LET US IN! “Faster!” he told Marcus, and accelerated the pace.

  “FACCI ENTRARE! FACCI ENTRARE! FACCI ENTRARE!”

  They’d been going at it for a few minutes when the left-side door squeaked open and a horse-faced monk with a shaved head squinted through the crack. He whispered at them, too hoarse and low for Marcus to catch, but the GO-AWAY! tone needed no translation.

  Marcus shoved his foot into the gap. He pushed past the startled monk and stepped inside a stone foyer dense with dank, stale air. A single naked bulb lit the space; its woeful light barely reached the corners.

  “Questo è un oltraggio,” the monk protested. “Dovete andare immediatamente!”

  “Speak English,” Domenico said. “This gentleman is from America.”

  The monk sneered at Marcus and then turned back to his fellow Roman. “You are not welcome here. This is sacred ground. You must go!” He reached for the iron door handle but Domenico brushed his hand away.

  “I am here to see Jacopo Galano and I will not leave until I have. My American friend is here to see—” He looked at Marcus expectantly.

  “Oliver Trenton,” Marcus said, crossing his arms.

  The monk strained to achieve
an ingratiating smile. “When our students enter this seminary, they change their names. Whoever they were out there—” he poked a bony finger over Marcus’s shoulder “—it makes no difference in here.”

  Marcus asked, “How many Americans have you accepted in the past five years?”

  Comprehension filtered through the monk’s dark eyes. “Ah! L’americano! Si.”

  “Where is he?” Marcus’s eyes had grown used to the murky light. He spotted a narrow staircase made of the same cold, gray stone curving upwards to the left. He dashed to the foot of the stairwell. “OLIVER! OLIVER TRENTON!” The heavy stillness of the place swallowed his voice.

  “Silencio! Your friend is no longer here.” The monk fluttered a patronizing eye toward Domenico. “And your friend is also not here.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “The seminary closed at the start of summer. All students and graduates have been moved to other monasteries.”

  “But you must have a record of where each man was sent,” Marcus said.

  “The decisions come from a department within the Vatican. We receive the orders and we obey them.”

  Domenico wore a hangdog expression that Marcus wouldn’t have suspected possible a few minutes ago. “We are too late.”

  “So that’s it?” Marcus asked.

  “They could be any place in Italy.”

  “Any place in the world where God’s work is needed.” The sliver of light hitting the gray stone floor widened as the heavy door squeaked fully open. “Your friends are in God’s care now.”

  Marcus shielded his eyes from the bright afternoon light as Domenico drew in a lungful of fresh air. He let it out slowly as he pointed to the four-story column standing in the middle of the square. “Do you know the name?”

  Marcus shook his head.

  “In Italian we call it La Colonna di Marco Aurelio.”

  “The Column of Marcus Aurelius?”

  Domenico rubbed his palms together. “And on the other side of the square, past la colonna, do you see Café Aurelio? They serve the best zabaglione in the city. I will buy you one and you will see for yourself how delizioso it is. And we will wash it down with a macchiato—no!” He snapped his fingers and grinned. “A caffè americano! Come!”

  Marcus knew when he was in the presence of a fellow queer. He felt a sense, almost a vibration, and this guy oozed it from every pore. He followed Domenico to the café and sat down next to him in a pair of matching red-and-white chairs. Keeping his eyes on the Marcus Aurelius column, he cleared his throat. “So, this Jacopo guy you wanted to see. Is he your brother?”

  “He is my lover.”

  The Catholic Church dominated every aspect of Italian life, shaping its rhythms, guiding its habits. Its teachings on homosexuality being what they were, Marcus had noticed a stealthy furtiveness to the local queers. The exchange of intense looks was still there, lingering a heartbeat longer than was polite, but it was rarely taken further than a discreet smile and backward glance. However, this guy didn’t hesitate to state the facts, plain as day.

  Domenico smiled. “But you guessed that, no?”

  “I did.”

  “And Oliver, he is your boyfriend?”

  “Was.”

  “Hmmmm. I suppose we should use the past tense now.”

  Their waiter arrived with zabaglione served in an oversized martini glass. Domenico lifted his metal spoon. “This was Jacopo’s favorite dessert. In his honor, and in the honor of Oliver, we bid farewell!” He tapped the glass three times.

  Marcus sat up. “Why did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “The way you hit the glass three times.”

  Domenico’s eyes widened. “You know the word amore, yes? A! Mo! Re!” He pinged the glass stem three times again. “We did it when we were alone.”

  “Oliver and I had something similar.” He thought about the cufflink he’d lost at the Trevi Fountain.

  Domenico laid his spoon next to his coffee cup and fixed Marcus with a penetrating look. “You americanos. You take it most serious.”

  “We do?”

  “Life. Money. Food. Time.” He laid his hand on Marcus’s wrist, wrapped his fingers around it, and gently squeezed. “Love.”

  Admit it, Marcus told himself. His hand feels nice. He said, “I don’t know about that,” and immediately regretted it when Domenico withdrew his hand.

  “When was the last time you saw your lover?”

  Marcus could feel his face flush. “Three years, give or take.”

  Domenico almost choked on his coffee. “Years?”

  “I know. I must learn to let go.”

  An awkward silence followed until Domenico said, “I have made you feel uncomfortable. Please accept my apologies.”

  Marcus tasted his first mouthful of zabaglione. “This is custard!”

  “Yes, but zabaglione sounds better, no?”

  Marcus wished the guy would return his hand to his wrist but the moment had passed. “So tell me, Domenico,” he said, “what do you do for a living?”

  “I work in the movies. I am the man with the big mouth who orders extras to line up over here and spread out over there.”

  “I have a sister who does that same job.”

  “In Hollywood?”

  “Columbia Studios.”

  “Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford!”

  The zabaglione was velvety smooth and not too sweet. “Have you worked at Cinecittà?” Marcus asked.

  “I have.”

  “I was working there this summer.”

  Domenico slowly pulled his spoon from between his full lips. “Three Coins in the Fountain.”

  “How did you know that?”

  “I noticed you around. Always with your eye pressed to your camera. Always so intent on your job.”

  Marcus blushed like a virgin at the senior prom. He’d forgotten how it felt to have been noticed from afar, and experiencing it again gave him a warm, floaty sensation.

  CHAPTER 5

  Gwendolyn held up the organdy gown printed with snapdragons. “What do you think?”

  Judy Lewis nodded. “Mom adores everything you’ve made for her. But you must know that, the way she gushes.”

  Gwendolyn threaded a mahogany hanger through the gown’s shoulders. Gushes?

  When Loretta had seen the gown for week one, her mouth said “yes” but her eyes said, “Perhaps this’ll be okay, after all.”

  Week two’s gown—a full-skirted tea dress in dark apricot—had brought a smile tinged with hesitation.

  Gwendolyn’s third gown was a tight sheath in puce wool. It didn’t flurry around her like the previous two, but it displayed Loretta’s hard-won figure in all the right places. It had earned an enthusiastic nod, but no gush.

  “You’ve got a good eye for what works on her.” Judy held a stray organdy off-cut in front of her mouth like an Arabian veil. “Do I look like Mata Hari?”

  With the bottom half of your face hidden, you look like your father.

  The true paternity of Loretta Young’s “adopted” daughter had been the topic of conversation around poolside canasta at the Garden, but the discussion always ended with “But of course I’m certainly not going to be the one to tell the poor girl that her father is Clark Gable.”

  “Scheherazade,” Gwendolyn said.

  “Even better!”

  Judy twisted the organdy through her fingers. It was a nervous habit she succumbed to whenever she hung around the costuming department waiting for her mother.

  Gwendolyn started collecting loose threads. “No college for you?”

  “I don’t think it’s necessary for what I—” She caught herself with a sharp inhale.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Promise you won’t tell her?”

  “If you can’t tell your mother what you want to do with your life, perhaps you ought to rethink your plan.”

  “I have to pick the right opportunity.” She discarded the materi
al. “We’re always fighting, or making up, or maintaining a tentative truce until the next argument.”

  Gwendolyn rested a hip against the worktable. “My friend Kathryn and her mother are like that.”

  Judy snuck a peek at the far end of the room where a clutch of seamstresses hunched over Egyptian slave girl costumes. “You know what it’s like, then.”

  Gwendolyn bent forward, creating a more intimate space. “In a second-hand sort of way.”

  “I want to be an—actress.” She pushed the word out like it was hooker or murderess.

  “I’m guessing from your tone that your mother won’t approve.”

  “Not for a second.”

  Gwendolyn rested her chin in her palm, the way she often did whenever Kathryn came to her, wailing about Francine. “She seems to have done pretty well out of the acting game.”

  Judy frowned. “She’ll see me as competition.”

  “I doubt that,” Gwendolyn said. “She’s got this TV show now, and it’s rating its patootie off.” Loretta’s gambit to spend a sizable chunk of the budget on her entrance had proven to be astute. Each week the show pulled in more and more viewers keen to see what she wore. “And besides, you’re eighteen. You’re hardly likely to be going up for the same roles.”

  “Actresses don’t think that way. Every pair of legs in a tight skirt is viewed as competition.”

  A studio messenger rushed into the room, “Gwendolyn Brick?” He deposited a note in front of her without saying a word and left as briskly as he had arrived.

  Free for lunch? Please say yes. Meet me in the commissary? 12.30? Don’t be late. I hate sitting there all by myself. MM xoxoxo

  Gwendolyn grabbed her purse. “If your mother shows up while I’m gone, tell her the dress is nearly done but if she wants to try it on, she should watch for pins. And if you want my opinion, she might not be overjoyed about the idea of you giving acting a go, but I doubt it’ll be for the reasons you think.”