Читать книгу One D.O.A., One On The Way - Mary Robison - Страница 8

[1]

NOW I’VE STEPPED ON A a rusty fucking nail. Not my first, either. Three nails at three different locations have pierced the soles of three unrelated shoes. And this happens to everybody who wanders out. I have to keep a First-Aid kit in my van for this type of thing. “Kit” is inadequate, and too short a word.

There’s a little window period with Tetanus, of about twenty-four hours. Or so I was told by Mrs. G., a woman with a camper truck, who drove the neighborhoods, passing out vaccines.

[2]

I have this friend, Lucien, not a friend so much as he’s my intern, who’s been going around with me for months, every weekday, for a good part of the day.

Although, there is little left to our job.

Ah, but you carry on here as if nothing could ever really be over.

[3]

There was work once before the work went out of town. You could do a lot of location scouting here. Everyone wanted you to. They hurled money at you, the production people with so much money, who wanted to film here because of the tax incentives, or the nine months of shooting weather, or the easy attitude toward permits, or because the place can mimic any other place that a film crew, then, wouldn’t have to go.

I still get work, oh sure, and the New Orleans film industry isn’t 100 percent in the shitter. I get commercials, or they’re not quite commercials. These one- or two-day shoots. They’re more like change-of-address ads. The businesses want to announce they still exist. They’ve relocated maybe, but they’re back up, open.

[4]

So Lucien, my intern all this time, day-after-day for months, turns and says to me, “My name’s Paul.”

[5]

I’m not from here and I’ll probably never get used to things, but I doubt if I’ll ever leave. A rest might be an idea. There’s too much eating. There’s altogether too much sex, dancing, carousing, reveling. All of it goes on for far too long. There’s powdered sugar dust on everything. There are twinkle lights burning every day of the year. Funerals, Jell-O shots, fishing, swearing, barbecues, back-door gigs, vats and vats of jambalaya. There are too many houses and sidewalks disappearing under weeds and vines and in yards that look impenetrable, too many neon signs, too much on-the-stoop drinking, corruption, and Technicolor clothes, too much crawfish shucking, and Catholic everything, too much stale beer, too many heroin junkies shooting up on the balconies, too many big homes, and trees snapped off, too many steel billboards bent to the ground, too much andouille sausage, too many second lines, too much money, and debauch, and cars parked all crooked.

“Do you never tire?” I cry from the car window.

[6]

My husband is from here. So is his twin. They’re a couple of rummies with money to burn. I’ve been married eight years to my husband. He wasn’t my first; I wasn’t his, what of it?

[7]

Ease and Comfort

 Holstered guns are worn under your clothing, close to the skin. The holster’s waterproof padding will protect your gun from body moisture and perspiration.

 The side of a holster that faces out is broader so your gun won’t imprint an outline through your clothes.

 A rigid-walled holster will allow you to put your gun away easily, with one hand. Flexible models can collapse after you draw, requiring both hands and more time to reholster.

[8]

Here they are now, the twins Rags & Gasoline, lounging on their parents’ veranda in the shade of a blue jacaranda tree.

They are dressed exactly alike again today, and that is one of the many ways they entertain themselves. I’ve been standing at a little distance, watching, and I wouldn’t bet a dime on my guessing which is which.

Now a man in white linen appears on the veranda with a tray. It has coffee in mugs, honey and biscuits, a bottle of English whiskey.

“Whose turn is it to be my husband?” I ask, stepping up. To the man serving the breakfast tray, I say, “Not you. Or, not necessarily. Only if you want.”

[9]

I found out a little while ago that my husband has Hep-C. It’s symptomless! And yet, he has an active strain. He could be lying! He isn’t, though.

“It’s all right,” he says now, with a hand patting my back. “I feel good. Be just fine. It’s really all right.”

I say, “Well, goddamn you.”

“Underway,” says he.

[10]

It’s not great, the deal Adam has with his parents. It takes care of some bits of business, in that they pay for everything. They provide nurses, and a dietician. They paid to get him onto a transplant list. But he has to live here, with them, all the time.

I think sometimes: “He’s only forty-two and he’s this sick!”

Or, I think: “He’s forty-two and he’s had to run home to his parents!”

While I’m left kind of standing at the corner. And where, above me, it would seem, there’s a very red light.

[11]

Saunders is the other twin, utterly identical. That’s a good thing about him. Also to his credit are his wife and his little girl.

The bad things include an array of incidents, arrests, brawls, screaming, wretched Western Union transactions, also, all the clubs, bars, saloons, hotels, private homes, city parks, businesses, establishments, and streets he’s been asked to leave.

[12]

Thirty Months After Katrina

 N.O.P.D.’s crime lab was destroyed and has not been replaced.

 There is 1 fingerprint examiner.

 More than 2,000 evidence tests are backlogged.

 The department still has no headquarters, and officers operate out of F.E.M.A. trailers, even the brass.

 The trailers are not air-conditioned. In hot months, officers do reports and paperwork in their cars.

 There’s no place for storing evidence. It too is kept in trailers, unprotected.

 There’s no place for interviewing witnesses and victims, no place for interrogating suspects.

 N.O.P.D.’s guns were destroyed during the storm. Police officers often have to provide their own guns and ammo.

[13]

I just can’t manage the switch. It’s undoable. Two days of correcting myself after every Lucien thought with “You mean Paul. Paul. It’s Paul. Who’s actually Lucien. Think of him as Paul.”

[14]

“You look different,” he says now.

I try this: “No. I don’t.”

He asks, “Aren’t you ordinarily wearing a hat?”

“No, I’m never wearing a hat. Not one single time. I don’t even own any.”

“Well, something’s weird then, because I remember you in different hats. Especially the two I liked best,” says he.

I say, “I’m about to smash you in the shoulder blades.”

“Vividly, I remember,” he says. “There were two that I favored over all your other headgear.”

“Lucien,” I say, without reluctance or regret.

[15]

Drowsily, the husband lifts up in bed. He reaches and searches the end table for the T.V. remote.

“It’s right here,” I say, showing him I have it.

There are noises through the open windows from a cypress forest behind the house. Spiky shadows knife the walls in here, and there’s a sweet odor from some fruit tree or other. We have only a snapping, inconsistent light from the television screen and its Mr. Moto movie.

He eases out of the sheets, and sits on the side of the bed. In the dim, his bare chest shines and his boxer shorts blink the whitest white.

Neither of us used to sleep through ’til morning. We would take naps together, at this time of the evening. We would wake up and play around, put on music, drink, go back to sleep, awaken.

We’d have whiskey in tea, and sweet potato muffins.

“Hit channel thirty,” he tells me now.

Outside the room are powdery-white hallways, arched doors, a carved staircase. It would seem an enormous, lovely house where you could sit in an alcove on a bench and read, but it isn’t.

I turn down the T.V. volume and switch around in my seat. “O.K., this is thirty. What are we tuning in?”

“Like you’re staying,” he says.

There is work waiting for me, true. Work that’ll keep me busy tonight, some of tomorrow. Work, though, that I would rather not go and do.

Longing and resentment. Some of both in the way my husband is stamping out his cigarette.

[16]

I’ve motored out on the Great River Road toward Bayou Lafourche below Napoleonville. Here, I will see what I can see.

You have to get up on the levee for a view of anything. Down by the river, there’s a pearly dawn over the blazing water, and an egret acting drunk on the banks. Otherwise, not a lot going on.

Here are a couple guys, however, waltzing along.

“Do you know anything about the riverboat schedules?” I ask.

“No,” from these two, who are trying to act nonchalant, and as if they don’t live their lives in various abandoned vehicles.

[17]

Some Things, You Finish With and They’re Over

 Yesterday, for the last time in my life, I cleaned a broiler pan.

 I’m never again wearing anything bought at Lowe’s.

 I’m done drinking boilermakers.

 Spinning until dizzy on barstools is a thing of the past.

 No more pawning my luggage.

[18]

“Completion bonds,” I’m telling Lucien. We’re somewhere, parked in my location-scouting van. I’m giving a lesson.

He says, “Does this have partly to do with a deaf couple and Tom Cruise?”

“Nothing to do with them.”

“Go on then,” says Lucien.

“Completion bonds are something a film company acquires in advance. Then, if a production doesn’t finish filming on time, the money people don’t get fucked by the over-budget expenses. I guess the bonding people get fucked instead, but they must expect that to happen from time to time. It’s just insurance, O.K.? You see what I mean?”

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 said, “We all do.”

“Although, he really does drink—Adam less so—all day. Every, every day.”

“Nothing I can call untrue,” Petal said.

“But that’s still not it, is it,” I said. “Then, I don’t know what. Are the two of them very different in bed?”

“I’ve never had reason to ask them,” Petal said.

I said, “Picture me with the bar of soap later, washing out my mouth.”

“Things are just different,” she said, “when you have a child.”

[27]

Those days, my job was very pleasant, a pleasant kind of going around, snapping pictures of various landscapes, wandering through buildings, and over parks, observatories, school grounds, scouting the neighborhoods, learning all the dope, sitting in on things. The agency shouldn’t have paid me. I could have done all that for free. They should have asked how my day went. Perhaps, very carefully recorded my answer. Then they should have said, “Super. Great. Thanks a big bunch. Stop by again tomorrow and we can have another chat.”

[28]

The Way You Look Tonight

 Thigh Holsters are good when you want to Open Carry. A holster on the thigh puts your gun under your hand. Most have pop buckles for instant access.

 In Louisiana, you do not need a permit to Open Carry.

 In Louisiana, you may Open Carry at any time in your vehicle.

 You must be 21 to purchase a gun in Louisiana. However, a gun that was a gift is legal.

 In Louisiana, the minimum age for Open Carrying is 17.