Lucien nods a few times while drawing on a cigarette. Now he holds it as though his hand is very, very tired.
“After Katrina,” I say, “no one was willing to write completion bonds. Your thing’s about to drip ashes there, amigo. Nobody would, and that’s one of the biggest reasons the film companies took a hike.”
“Ma’am?” says Lucien, and I’ll want to speak to him about that later on.
“Just let me get through this,” I say.
He settles back on the passenger seat, his smoking hand now dangled out the window. He watches me dully, as if he’ll soon be going to sleep.
I say, “Even a more serious problem, is what went with the production companies on their way out of town. The crew base. We have a diminished and devalued crew base. Where you need a depth of three or four individuals in each and every skill. We’re down to one individual for some skills, and, for most skills, no individuals.”
“That’s sad,” Lucien says.
“Yep,” I say, turning the engine.
He says, “You know what I think we should do? Like, immediately? Or, never mind. I’m not even going to suggest anything.”
“You’re welcome to.”
“No. Maybe you just better ignore me,” he says, as if that would not have occurred to me to do.
[19]
Hell, it’s a lucky day if I’m photographing real estate. Things will never get back. I’m out of business, and I ought to fucking move.
What I do now, day in and day out, is all hypothetical. I’ve become a “what-if” location scout.
[20]
In a City That Is Only Seven Miles Long
Alcoholic beverages are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Alcohol is the leading cause of death for Louisiana youth.
Drinking in the street is acceptable and legal, although not from a glass or a bottle.
Bars and clubs provide plastic go-cup containers.
Most have walk-up windows for refills.
More undergraduates die from alcohol-related causes than the number who receive advanced degrees.
[21]
The twins’ mother will say to me, at various times, she’ll say, “Don’t count on it,” or “Don’t be too sure.” She can respond this way on any subject. Whatever happens, whatever information I receive from anyone, the mother-in-law is there beside me, saying, “If you can put any faith in that,” or, “You’d like to think so,” or, “So I’m sure they would have you believe.”
“Don’t you wish,” she has said to me, and “Don’t tell me you fell for that one.” She’ll ask me, “Are you thinking clearly? When are you going to stop kidding yourself?” and say, “It amazes me you’re so easily persuaded. You bought that one outright. Dream on. Dream away. You couldn’t be in your right mind. Have you lost all sense of proportion?”
[22]
“The way it works is,” I’m telling Lucien, “they send us a script or script treatment. We peruse it and come up with whatever location ideas we can. Then our fees are based on their budget and on what type of production they’re doing. They either pay us a day rate, or they can get a package deal that includes Prep days, Shooting days, and Strike days when we clean up the property. You have that? There are three classifications. A small still shoot with ten crew. A medium commercial with forty. Or a feature film with over a hundred.”
He says, “Check. Got it. Small, medium, big. Now, I keep meaning to ask you and then I always forget. How do they decide about the amount we’re getting paid?”
“Well,” I say, “it’s interesting. First, they are set rates. The rates for the package deal and the day rate. Set. I mean, in cement. And the day rate, at first blush, is going to seem high, because it’s three grand a day, or however much. But some companies will go ahead and agree to that, knowing they’re going to work you nineteen- or twenty-hour days, one day after another. When there’s nothing, at that point, you can do.”
“Three grand as in three thousand?”
“But where you still end up feeling—”
“Like they’re fully exploited,” Lucien says. “Taking every advantage of.”
“Well, you’re not wrong,” I say.
[23]
The twins’ family business is one of prevailing and owning. They keep offices where they never go to do nothing. That is how they hold on to all the leftover wealth that was left to them, by utilizing skills I wasn’t ever meant to understand.
[24]
“Your parents have money,” I say and pause.
Adam’s waiting for me to continue. “They do,” he says. “With you so far.”
I say, “I’m getting there, give me a second. This has to be said in order.”
“Albeit, at a crawl,” says Saunders.
“Can’t we do this out of his earshot?” I ask.
“Just,” Adam says, “go.”
“Everybody in contact with your parents, tries to endear her or himself.”
“Way to pronoun,” Saunders says.
I say, “If I may. My point being—”
“That’s all right,” says Adam. “I got your point. You cleared a lot of things up for me.”
“It’s just that if I were sweet and pleasant around your parents, they’d file that behavior in a category, and then they’d assign it a motive.”
“Yes, she’s quite right. They’d know it was a trick and that something was horribly wrong,” Saunders says.
[25]
I tried not working and staying “home” at Adam’s parents’ house for the first few weeks of our marriage.
I would spend mornings and afternoons in their library, and keep reading as long as I could, then dine with them usually, but then get out of the way, put on a nightshirt, take a stack of books up to bed with me at 7 or 8 P.M.
They could keep to themselves, that way. They could keep their privacy, keep one another’s counsel, keep private their long whispery talks about being rich, being them, being other things that I’m not.
[26]
I confided in my new sister-in-law back then, Saunders’ wife, Petal. I said at the beginning of the month I’d go back to work and move Adam into an apartment. “So we can have our own place, because I do want to stay married to him,” I said.
“It’s your life, your vagina,” said Petal.
“You mean I’m somehow wasting myself on him? How could you think that? You’re married to his twin.”
“Umm, it’s just different,” she said.
“Let me guess. You two are younger.”
“Cold,” she said. “I’m older, and Saunders and Adam were born the same night.”
“Of course, of course. Then the difference is that Saunders—I mean, I like him.”
She