The Sandpiper

There is a lizard that likes to lie outside the stoop of our sober living house. My ersatz kid sister and I often find him lying flat on his potbelly on the pavement by the bushes. He greets us when we leave and when we come back as a loyal canine would.

He has a line of coral down his back and friendly eyes and likes to run towards our feet. He’s endeared himself to us.

It’s 90 degrees in the shade and the clouds are indigo and heavy with rain.

I’ve been watching a lot of Elizabeth Taylor movies lately.

A Place in the Sun. The Sandpiper. Suddenly, Last Summer.

I love the ones with her and Richard Burton. I’m sure Vincente Minnelli had to do very little but roll the camera and then watch as they looked at each other. That seismic chemistry, that hum. How the Vatican and the whole world tried to separate them but they came together anyway.

The Sandpiper is a mediocre motion picture, but it has merit anyway. Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor traipsing around Big Sur, Elizabeth a bohemian artist and Richard Burton a wayward pastor who lost his heart. The allegory of a bird with a bad wing finding its way home and all that.

And that hum, when they look at each other.