"Everything's shut down till this storm blows over," he said. He bit into his sandwich and didn't look up from his plate.
"That'd made sense, wouldn't it?" I said.
He raised his eyes.
"I think it's going to stay shut down," he said. "There're only a couple of scenes left to shoot. I think Mikey wants to do them back in California."
"I see."
Now it was Alafair who was watching Elrod's face. His eyes focused on his sandwich.
"You leaving, Elrod?" she asked.
"In a couple of days maybe," he answered. "But I'm sure I'll be back this way. I'd really like to have y'all come visit, too."
She continued to stare at him, her face round and empty.
"You could bring Tripod," he said. "I've got a four-acre place up Topanga Canyon. It's right up from the ocean."
"You said you were going to be here all summer," she said.
"I guess it just hasn't worked out that way. I wish it had," he said. Then he looked at me. "Dave, maybe I'm saying the wrong thing here, but y'all come out to L.A., I'll get Alafair cast in five minutes. That's a fact."
"We'll talk it over," Bootsie said, and smiled across the table at him.
"I could be in the movies where you live?" Alafair said.
"You bet," Elrod said, then saw the expression on my face. "I mean, if that's what you and your family wanted."
"Dave?" She looked up at me.
"Let's see what happens," I said, and brushed at her bangs with my fingers. Elrod was about to say something else, but I interrupted him. "Where's Balboni?"
"He doesn't seem to get the message. He keeps hanging around his trailer with his greaseballs. I think he'll still be sitting there when the set's torn down," Elrod said.
"His trailer might get blown in the lake," I said.
"I think he has more than one reason for being out there," Elrod said.
I waited for him to finish, but he didn't. A few minutes later we went out on the gallery. The cypress planks of the steps and floor were dark with rain that had blown back under the eaves. Across the bayou the marsh looked smudged and indistinct in the gray air. Down at the dock Batist was deliberately sinking his pirogue in the shallows so it wouldn't be whipped into a piling by the wind.
"What were you trying to tell me about Balboni?" I said.
"He picks up young girls in town and tells them he's going to put them in a movie. I've heard he's had two or three in there in the last couple of days."
"That sounds like Julie."
"How's that?"
"When we were kids he never knew who he was unless he was taking his equipment out of his pants."
He stared at the rain.
"Maybe there's something I ought to tell you, Dave, not that maybe you don't already know it," he said. "When people like us, I'm talking about actors and such, come into a community, everybody gets excited and thinks somehow we're going to change their lives. I'm talking about romantic expectations, glamorous relationships with celebrities, that kind of stuff. Then one day we're gone and they're left with some problems they didn't have before. What I'm saying is they become ashamed when they realize how little they always thought of themselves. It's like turning on the lights inside the theater when the matinee is over."
"Our problems are our own, El. Don't give yourself too much credit."