“You look amazing,” he says.
“I feel fucking amazing.”
“Here.” He hands me a stick of peppermint chewing gum. “You’re going to hurt your jaw.” I am aware that I am grinding my teeth—a vague sort of awareness, like being aware of global warming but unable to do a thing about it—but I don’t feel a thing. It takes me about five minutes to unwrap the stick of gum as I lock in on the folds of the wrapper and the noise it makes through my fingers. I roll the gum up and pop it in my mouth.
I look at Walker quizzically, as if the meaning of the universe has just been opened to me, as if I’ve just discovered antimatter. “God . . . damnit, peppermint is so good. Why have I never noticed this before?”
Walker chuckles as his jaw works the filter of his cigarette—the affectation, I realize later, built expressly for this purpose. The woman at the checkout is all business, and she works around me, using the handheld scanner to ring out the flats. She doesn’t even notice Walker, though when they finally make eye contact, I can tell she recognizes him as the crazy man who comes here often with drugged-out girls in bright dresses, but she clearly doesn’t know who he is. I sit up on the flatbed as she continues to scan. She is beautiful and detached, with caramel skin that glows. I have no idea what she’s doing working checkout here. It seems to me she should be a swimsuit model or the multi-culti candidate in some beauty pageant. She looks so lonely. She only speaks once to announce the total: $1,123 and change. Walker again takes out his wad of hundreds and peels off twelve bills.
“Keep the change, sweetie. And lighten up, already.”
Her expression barely changes. “Thank you, sir.”
We head back into town and pull into Poppies restaurant—a local fine-dining institution. Walker grabs a gun from beneath the blanket in the backseat, along with a backpack, and hauls out a large potted plant that we got at Von Gundy’s and puts it on the ground.
“Holy shit. What in the hell is that?”
“A backpack.”
“No. The other.”
“A fern.”
“No . . . the other.”
He considers the gun for a moment. “A telephone . . . What the hell does it look like?”
“A gun.”
“A Taser gun, actually.”
“I thought we were going to dinner.”
“We are.” He says this like it’s the most obvious thing in the world that we’d be bringing a weapon to a quiet candlelit dinner. I’m already teetering mentally—the acid making me feel exposed and jumpy—but I’m trying to remain casual, together. Or at least some approximation of what casual and together might be, were I not whacked out of my skull. There is the added layer of my wanting to impress Walker. I want him to know that I can handle whatever he throws at me. I’m hoping this is the peak of the trip.
“Why do you need a Taser gun?”
“You just never know.”
“You usually only bring a gun to a gunfight.”
“See, that’s where you city folk have it wrong. Shut up. Stop worrying. And get the fern.”
It’s seven, and a fair number of tables are full. For a split second when we walk in, the restaurant goes completely silent as everyone processes Walker’s presence—then the opposite occurs, with everyone speaking a little louder than normal. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. Walker and I are still flying high as we approach the host, who greets Walker warmly.
“Ron. How’s it going?”
“Just fine, Walker. What can we do for you tonight, sir? Can I check any of that for you?” Ron gestures toward the gun, backpack, and potted plant with no evident sign of alarm, which instantly puts me at ease. Maybe this is what they do in the Great American West—they bring weapons into fine-dining establishments because they can. Check them, even. Because they can. Just in case. Walker palms Ron a hundred-dollar bill and asks for a table.
“Of course. Right this way.” We are led to a large six-top in the back of the room. Walker takes the plant from me and puts it in front of us.
“What is this for, again?”
“Hiding, you moron.” By now every patron is staring at us.
“I know you are trying to hide, but this is really drawing more attention to us, don’t you think?” I will later on try to make the same argument to Walker about his aviator glasses and Tilley hat—the signature trademarks that he thinks lend him anonymity but, in fact, broadcast his presence like a sixty-foot neon sign.
“Nonsense.” He smiles broadly at me. He hasn’t stopped smiling for an hour. I open the menu, and the words start shifting around. A third of the menu appears to be in French, a third in English, and a third in some language I can’t begin to comprehend. Urdu? Esperanto? Regardless, my eyes can’t seem to focus on two distinct words that would convey a foodstuff, and my heart begins to palpitate wildly.
“You have to order,” I say, fingering a leaf of the fern, trying to calm myself.
“No problem.” Walker signals to one of the waiters. “Garçon!”
A small man with wire-rimmed glasses comes over. He’s wearing a black vest with a red tie. “Are you ready to order, Mr. Reade?”
“I like your tie,” I say to the waiter. “It’s awfully dark in here, Walker.”
He ignores me and starts ordering. “Yes, uh, let’s have five of the porterhouse steaks . . .”
The waiter looks puzzled. “Each steak is for two people.”
“Right. I guess you’re new here. So, five of the porterhouse steaks. Very rare, please. Then we’ll have three orders of the double-cut pork chop. Two of the fettuccine dishes. Two grilled salmons. Four Caesar salads. Two iceberg wedges. One clams casino. One clams oreganata. The raw-bar tower. A side of creamed spinach. A side of potatoes Anna. A side of french-fried potatoes. And, for dessert, a key lime pie.”
The waiter is writing furiously. “. . . a piece of key lime pie.”
“No, the whole pie. Actually, three whole pies.”
“The walls, Walker,” I mutter, trying hard to sound as blasé as possible about how the whole restaurant suddenly seems to be breathing. Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe my breath has gotten really loud. I’m holding on tight to the menu. Although I have that sinking feeling that people who are having a heart attack probably have—that something is new and not right inside their own body—I have suddenly lost the ability to convey what, exactly, is happening to me. So instead I just sit, mutely clutching the menu, trying to appear normal.
“Something to drink?”
“Two shots of Wild Turkey, and a bottle of the Lafite.”
“The Lafite?”
“Of course, the Lafite. Get on that, son.”
“Right away, Mr. Reade.”
The waiter scurries back to the kitchen, and we are soon awash in service. The movement is comforting. Someone is decanting wine. Someone else is pouring water. The two shots of Wild Turkey appear, as if by magic. Walker nods toward me, and we down the Turkey in one gulp.
“I don’t know if I’m being normal, Walker. Do you know what I mean?”
“Of course I do. We’re not. Trust me, we’re not. Let the Turkey settle in.”
“Are all of these people staring at us because we’re tripping—not acting normal—or because you’re Walker Reade?”
“Both.”
“Either way, it’s starting to freak me out.”
“Stay cool, sweetheart. You’re okay. You’ll get used to it. Just ride it. Don’t let it ride you.”
When our order begins to arrive, it’s like a UN food drop—if UN food drops were delivered to acid-trippers with little to no appetite. The appetizers come, which we barely touch. Then the salads, which also remain untouched. Then the steaks and chops and pasta. It seems as if all of the food is here for some reason—to look at or play with or think about, as if we are in some fancy-food museum. I’m not quite sure what to do with it, but eating it never crosses my mind. We just keep lighting up cigarette after cigarette and drinking the wine. Then I make
the grave error of gazing too long at the pasta.
“The fettuccine. Walker . . .”
Walker looks over and starts laughing. He’s chomping on his cigarette filter. It keeps going up and down. Up and down.
“It’s not terribly funny. This shouldn’t be happening.”
“Why not?”
“Are you seeing this?” My stomach lurches. “Are you getting this? Please say you’re getting this.”
“Calm down. Calm down. But, yeah . . . Sure . . . Of course . . .”
The fettuccine is making its way across the table from the far end, seemingly multiplying on its way toward us. It wouldn’t make sense that Walker would be seeing the exact same thing. But whatever he’s seeing is apparently pretty strange, too.
“Hmm,” he chuckles. “I think it’s time to go. Garçon!”
Three waiters appear. “We need all this to go . . . ASAP!” Walker grabs the bottle of wine. “And the check.”
I spy the bill as Walker removes the last of the cash and a credit card from his wallet. The $3,000 in cash we’d started the day with is all gone. With the wine and a 30 percent tip, the whole thing comes to about $1,500. The waiters accompany us to the car, where, among the flowers, they attempt to fit the eleven bags of food and three pies. I am carrying the fern.
“We should have done this at a less expensive restaurant.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. You just spent on this meal what I live on in a month.”
“That’s no way to live, sweetheart. You’re going to learn that out here if nothing else.”
Once we are outside, away from the darkness of the restaurant, I suddenly, shockingly, immediately feel better. Great, actually. My heart stops palpitating. My stomach ceases lurching. We go for a drive, fast on the highway, and it’s exactly what I need: the wind through my hair, my head thrown back, and my eyes closed. Walker’s hand gently smooths my hair, and I smile.
CHAPTER 5
The grounds at Walker’s property comprise his house and the cabin, a large garden area with a peacock coop next to it, and a vast expanse of land behind the main house that serves as both an oasis of privacy and a de facto shooting range. The peacock coop houses four actual peacocks, who spend most of their time roaming the grounds like a cocky group of land surveyors. As for the shooting range, I know Walker’s collection of firearms numbers in the hundreds. The compound is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and a large locked gate at the end of the driveway. Walker has a devoted following that ranges from Ed Bradley to the drugged-out kook who was recently arrested here, loitering at the edges of the property. The pilgrims travel from far and wide to catch a glimpse of Walker, leaving manuscripts (which go unread), bongs (which are completely redundant), and booze (which is only consumed if unopened) in their wake. They deposit these offerings at a makeshift shrine outside the gate composed of a menagerie of several carved, wooden animals—coyotes, owls, a panther, a llama—a scrap-metal windmill, an inappropriately sexy Gorgon, and one large brass pig. As we pull up to the gate, Walker gets out of the car and quickly, almost furtively, walks behind the pig. He glances over both shoulders, kneels behind the sow, and unlatches what appears to be a small trap door in its ass. He pulls out a large, yellow envelope and goes to open the gate.
As Walker slides back into the car, I see Claudia and Devaney sipping red wine out on the front porch, admiring the sunset. They’re sitting at opposite ends of the single long table that takes up most of the space—Claudia poring over a checkbook and Devaney reading The Firm. As Claudia eyes the car coming up the driveway, her face is a crossroads of emotion. Her smile is wide, but her eyes scream worry. There is no mistaking the look on Devaney’s face. She’s pissed.
“Well, what have we here?” Claudia says, walking up to where we’ve parked.
“We brought dinner. And flowers. Some clothes.” I can see Claudia mentally tallying the respective tabs. With one quick look into my eyes she knows we’re tripping.
“You two having fun?” Claudia starts taking the bags of food out of the car. Devaney is pretending to read as she drains the last of her wine.
“Devaney, get the hell over here and help Claudia,” Walker says. “You, too,” he says to me. The three of us snap to attention. Claudia hands the bags to Devaney and begins hauling the plants and flowers over to the garden area. Through the clarity of my trip I see Claudia in a different way—the selflessness she wears like a halo, the love for Walker in every move she makes, even as she’s stepping in peacock crap.
“Hey!” Walker is snapping his fingers in front of my face. He shoves the bags of clothes into my hands. “Everyone inside!”
Inside, however, as I rediscover, is the last place I want to be. We’re still tripping pretty hard, and once we enter the kitchen, the whole room-breathing thing starts happening again. I have the distinct sensation of being an air molecule trapped inside a set of asthmatic lungs, and I’m having a hard time getting comfortable. As we unpack the bags, Devaney opens one of the porterhouses and the potatoes and grabs a fork and knife from the dish drain. She looks both hot and menacing with the steak knife poised above the porterhouse—like a porn star in a horror movie—but she’s seriously freaking me out.
“You guys are doing the pyramids without me?”
I would love to know how exactly Devaney is aware that we’re tripping, but I suppose it’s made obvious by the way Walker and I pace nervously around the kitchen, our pupils dilated to Keanian proportions. Walker’s still carrying the bottle of red wine from Poppies, and he offers it to Devaney like a penance. She eyes the bottle and a grin breaks over her face.
“The Lafite.” She takes a wineglass from the cupboard and pours it to the rim. “You’re forgiven. Now get out of here. This one looks like a caged animal,” she says, pointing at me. I do not, at this point, know Devaney’s exact age, but she and I are probably only a few years apart—still, she talks and acts like she’s at least a decade older. I’ll find out later that she’s been living on her own since she was sixteen.
Walker takes my hand and leads me down a hallway opposite his bedroom. At the end of the hall is a room with a hot tub, a TV, and a minifridge. Another full, stocked bar is to the right of the hot tub. To the left is another door—at first I think it’s a wine room of sorts, but when Walker flicks on the lights, we are completely surrounded by guns. He takes down a rifle and hands it to me.
“Holy shit.”
“This is a .22, a lady’s gun. So act like a lady when you use it.” I nod, having no idea what this means. Am I supposed to curtsy? Not pick stuff out of my teeth? I hold the gun gingerly, as if it’s going to explode all on its own. Not only have I never handled a gun, I’ve never even seen one up close.
“For Christ’s sake. It’s not going to grab your tit.”
I grip it more firmly, completely convinced it’ll go off at any second, as Walker takes a huge gun off the wall.
“And this is a .44. A man’s gun.”
“It’s all a little phallic, isn’t it?”
“A lot. Follow me.”
We head through the sliding glass doors of the hot-tub room outside to Walker’s shooting range. A variety of targets are set up—life-size figures of Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe among them—and stick-on exploding targets with bull’s-eyes on them. Walker sets a target on a large piece of mounted plywood and walks back about twenty yards. He motions me over to where he stands—I’m both spacing out on how the wind looks through the trees and stroking the cool handle of the rifle like it’s a baby anaconda I’m trying to soothe.
“Come here.”
I don’t have to tell him I’ve never held a gun. It’s obvious. He stands behind me and we aim the rifle at the target. Since I’ve never held a firearm, I have no idea what’s going to happen. I am also still tripping, so any ideas I have are probably wrong. I decide to just trust Walker. I can feel his breath in my ear; he smells like expensive red wine; his body is solid and still around me, tampin
g down my fear. He puts my index finger over the trigger and we pull, the gun kicking back slightly. We miss the target. I only hear the ziiing of the ammo going through the air. That wasn’t so terrible.
“Shit. Fuck it . . . you won’t miss with this.” Walker pulls the Magnum out and wraps his arms around us. He’s holding me close, telling me where to look. He’s warm against me, making the gun feel even cooler. The .22 made me feel like a pioneer woman shooting squab for supper. The Magnum gives me a penis—a really big penis.
“Pull it.”
I do. Three things happen simultaneously: The .44 kicks back, throwing me to the ground. The exploding target explodes. And I realize I’m almost totally deaf. Walker is laughing like a madman.
“Oh my God,” I say, staring at the sky, unable to move. “Can you hear anything?”
“What?” It sounds like Walker is a half mile away.
“Fuck.” My ears are hot and ringing. I’m sure this is permanent.
“What?”
“Jesus, Walker.” I can now only hear these words inside my own head; I could be whispering them.
“You hit it! You’re a pretty good shot!” Walker screams.
I can barely make out what Walker is saying. I look over and see the plywood smoking. “I can’t fucking hear anything.”
“What do you need to hear?” Thankfully, when he says this—with the conviction that only a man on drugs can muster—it sounds slightly louder. “Come on, get up.”
He grabs both of my hands in his and lifts me up. Our faces are about an inch apart, and with the sun coming down, the steam of our breath mingles together, even though it’s on the verge of summertime. Walker looks directly into my eyes; his are sparkling in the setting sun.
“You’re a real cowboy, too, you know?”
I’m fairly jaded for twenty-two. I don’t remember the last time I felt “thrilled.” But hearing these words from Walker—from his mouth—sends a hot, little spark through me.
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