Gonzo Girl

by Cheryl Della Pietra

  He takes me over to a bench on the outskirts of the range and lights up two cigarettes, handing me one. We sit there for a long time, guns on the ground, chain-smoking. A breeze cuts through the tall grass and the trees, as darkness falls over the range. The air smells like smoke and juniper. Walker’s arm is around me as we stare toward the sky. My ears are still ringing, but less so now. I am relieved to hear the sweep of the wind.

  “I’m just about tapped out. You?”

  “Yeah,” I say, something like disappointment registering in my voice.

  Walker picks up my rifle and hands it to me; he picks up the .44 and takes my hand. “Let’s go eat. We have work to do.”

  Back at the house, Walker puts the guns away while I begin reassembling a nice supper for us. According to Claudia, this will be part of my job—to make things “nice,” give Walker a happy place in which to write. I take out one of the sizable porterhouses and pop it in the oven along with the creamed spinach. I rebuild the seafood tower as best I can and put two of the Caesar salads in a serving bowl. Walker comes into the kitchen, a bottle of red wine under his arm, and grabs a corkscrew. I pour us two glasses of water and put two wineglasses on the counter next to Walker’s typewriter. I notice a handful of index cards on the counter to the right of the typewriter, arranged neatly in two rows. On them are curiously self-helpish creeds, such as Do it now and Problems are opportunities in work clothes. While Walker doesn’t exactly strike me as the “artist’s way” kind of writer, I’m not about to make fun of the cards. The guy has a National Book Award and a Pulitzer. He must be doing something right.

  Even though I have only been here for two days, Walker and I settle into a comfortable rhythm as we putter about the kitchen. Walker sits to the left of his typewriter and I sit next to him, just as we were this afternoon when he was rubbing my shoulder and apologizing, which feels like it happened several days ago as opposed to only seven hours. I carve the porterhouse, place a half dozen slices on each of our plates, and spoon salad and creamed spinach on the side. Walker pours the wine and the two of us sit, watching a basketball game, largely in silence. Walker stops halfway through the meal and pours the other half of the cocaine from this afternoon on a tray. He cuts two lines, does them both, then passes the tray to me. I place the tray to the side, figuring I’ve earned a break, and finish my supper while Walker lights a cigarette. Every once in a while he yells at the TV.

  “Fucking Clyde Drexler. He has all the intensity of a fucking deer in the woods.”

  “What exactly does that mean?”

  “He just . . . lets it happen to him . . .” Walker trails off and reaches across me for the tray. He cuts two more lines and does them, then cuts another and passes the tray to me. This seems like a more pointed invitation, and I do the line, even though between the acid trip, the coke at the clothing store, and the alcohol I’ve consumed today—and continue to consume—it seems utterly redundant. Still, I’m exhausted both physically and psychically, so the by-now-expected pick-me-up, the moment it kicks in, is welcome. I clear the plates with manic vigor and wash them as Walker puts a piece of paper in the typewriter and starts hunting-and-pecking away.

  “I’m glad to see you’re keeping up your end of the bargain,” I say.

  “Meaning what?”

  I look down at the ridiculous tennis dress I’m still wearing. “You know, you said you’d write a page if I wore these silly clothes.”

  “You do look silly.” Walker leaves this hanging out there. He could have said it conspiratorially, as if it were all in good fun, but it comes out mean. It doesn’t take Betty Ford to figure out that once the coke comes out, the gloves come off. “All day you’ve been in that stupid outfit making a fool out of yourself.”

  I say nothing and take a sip of wine.

  “What are you writing?”

  The last word is barely out of my mouth before Walker jumps in. “What the fuck do you mean, ‘What are you writing?’ Great Fucking Expectations. What do you think?”

  I look at Walker evenly, searching for a clue. He’s not budging. “Maybe I should head back to the cabin for a bit?”

  “Leave? You can’t leave. I’m going to have an assistant who leaves every time things get a little rough? Maybe you’re not cut out for this, sweetheart.”

  “I am, Walker. What do you need?”

  “Hint hint: this is the job interview. Any moron can shoot a gun with me and snort my coke. So here’s a clue: I need you to stop asking me what I need. That’s what I need you to figure out.” He goes back to typing, and I figure that perhaps he has some inspiration. To lighten the mood, I head over to the wall of movies next to the TV, where a quick glance confirms that Walker’s taste runs from the classics (Scarface, The Godfather), to vintage porn (Caligula, Deep Throat), to that genre of eighties road movie built on the thinnest of premises (The Great American Traffic Jam, Cannonball Run II). I put in Dog Day Afternoon, do another line for solidarity—maybe one of the stupider things I’ve done tonight as an involuntary twitch settles into my right cheek and my palms start to sweat—and make my way to the fridge. I find an entire bag of limes and then head to the bar and grab a bottle of Cuervo and some triple sec. From the dish drain I take the pitcher I used for the Bloodies this afternoon and a hand juicer that Claudia uses for Walker’s orange juice. I cut the limes in half and start juicing them right into the pitcher, squeezing them with a cocaine-fueled aggression that would be hilarious to me were I sober and watching myself with some degree of remove.

  “Good call,” says Walker, though I’m not sure if he’s referring to the film or the pitcher of margaritas I’m mixing. “Call over to the cabin and see if Devaney wants to come over.”

  “Okay.” I go into the back room that serves as an office and dial the cabin. Claudia picks up. I can hear Walker typing away in the kitchen. “Hey, Claudia.”

  “Alley. You okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “For the record, when I said, ‘Stop saying no,’ I didn’t mean for you to never say no. Only about three people who’ve ever come out here could really keep up with Walker.”

  “I’m good,” I say, even though my facial twitch won’t let up and my palms are excreting stigmata-like buckets of sweat. “He’s typing.”

  “He is? Hot dog! Good.”

  “He wants to know if Devaney wants to come over. I’m mixing margaritas.”

  “Oh, great. Great. Yeah. Whatever he needs. I’ll send her over.”

  “She’s coming,” I say as I walk back into the kitchen. “Rocks or salt?”

  “Both.” I take three highball glasses and two plates from the cupboard. On one plate I pour a thin film of the triple sec; on the other I shake some coarse salt. I dip the rims of the glasses into the triple sec, then coat them with the salt. I take ice from a tray in the freezer and fill the glasses, then pour the margaritas, garnishing each with a wedge of lime. Devaney comes in looking spruced up in a white, eyelet top and a pink jersey miniskirt straight out of the Walker Reade collection. Even though she saw me before, this is the first time she registers the tennis dress.

  “How’s your serve?” she asks, grabbing a margarita.

  “Apparently not as good as yours,” I say, eyeing her up and down.

  “Well, I know how to play the game.”

  “At least I’m keeping it inside the lines.”

  “You don’t serve aces though, sweetie.”

  “Are we, like, done with this extended metaphor?”

  “With what?”

  “Girls,” says Walker. “Come on. I’m working over here.”

  “What’re you fixin’ to work on, baby?” Devaney slinks behind Walker and starts massaging his shoulders. The word girls rings out too true right now. No matter how professional I’m trying to be, it’s hard not to feel like one more coked-out, drunk “girl” tending bar in a tennis dress around here.

  “The book,” I say.

  “A letter,” Walker says.

  “What letter
?” I ask.

  “To Hans.”

  “Bauer?”

  “Yes. Be quiet.”

  Hans Bauer is the editor in chief of Beat. He and Walker have been friends for more than twenty years—friends . . . or associates . . . or mutually beneficial parasites. It is, as Claudia has already hinted, a complicated relationship. Devaney and I sip on our margaritas and pretend to watch the movie.

  About fifteen minutes later, Walker pulls the letter from the typewriter and hands it to me. “Okay, prospective assistant. Read it.” I start scanning the page. “Out loud, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Dear Hans: You are nothing but a sell-out corporate greedhead trying to take advantage of your writers. How am I supposed to survive on a measly $10 per word? If you want your ski lodge to remain standing and free from immolation, I would cough up double. I have mouths to feed.”

  “You want more money for the excerpt?” I ask. Beat is publishing chapter 1 of the book—the chapter that was read aloud the first day I was here—as the September cover story, a gesture by Hans that has taken on the gloss of a favor—or compensation for his having canceled Walker’s regular political column last year after almost two decades.

  “Gosh, you’re quick. Fax it.”

  I head over to the fax machine and see Hans Bauer on the programmed phone numbers. I press 2 and the pound sign, sending the sheet through. When the confirmation sheet prints, I place it with the others in a box next to the machine. Devaney goes and sits on Walker’s lap.

  “There. Your first editorial task. Well done.”

  “Now what?” I ask.

  “Now you get the hell out of here.” Devaney turns around, and Walker’s hand falls to her ass. “Good night.”

  “Good night.” I grab my drink and head over to the cabin. Claudia is still awake, scrutinizing a datebook, with a glass of red wine. A cigarette is burning in an ashtray.

  She nearly jumps when she sees me. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “Are there pages?”

  “Not exactly.”

  She visibly deflates, and a cringe crosses her face. “A letter then.”

  “Yeah. To Hans.”

  Claudia lets out a long sigh. “Please tell me he didn’t ask for more money?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Please tell me you didn’t fax it?”

  “Hmmm. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to. Why?”

  Claudia’s head drops.

  “I’m sorry, Claudia. I’ve been here two days. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do and not do. Walker asked me to.”

  “We need to save Walker from himself right now. It’s the fourth letter he’s sent this week to Hans. No reply.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I know. It’s okay. Look, I’m heading off to bed. You should get some rest, too. You’ve had quite a day.”

  “Yeah, okay. Claudia . . . ?”

  “Yes?”

  “What exactly is my job description here? I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.”

  “You’re doing it. Atmosphere. Fun. Inspiration. The clothes, the drinks, the guns. Just make it fun. But pace yourself. The pages will come.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes, and hands on the typewriter by two a.m. No matter what.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Get some sleep.”

  Claudia heads off to bed and I sit in the living room, wondering what tomorrow will bring—if Walker wants me to stay or go. I consider what it took for me to accomplish what I did, which wasn’t much—the sheer quantity of liquor and drugs, not to mention the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, keeping me up now despite my exhaustion. I go into my bedroom and take out my own manuscript—the novel I’ve been working on since college—and stay up for another hour, editing and rewriting, but mostly taking myself back to baseline. I am lulled by the scratch of pencil on paper, the comfort of my own thoughts. I know I’m pinning too much on this book, but I sense I’m holding in my hands the one thing I can cling to out here—if I’m asked to stay.

  I nod off somewhere around two in the morning. About an hour or so later, I hear the cabin door open, and something is shoved under my bedroom door. When I wake up at 9:00 a.m., a screaming hangover locked on my brain, I see that it’s not one page, but two, for Walker’s novel. At the top of the first page, in Walker’s signature scrawl, is A promise is a promise. On the second page at the top Walker has written, Go get your stuff tomorrow and get back out here. Hurry.

  CHAPTER 6

  Lionel Gray is a New York City book editor as such a creature might appear in a movie. He wears an ascot and wing tips with no visible irony. His graying hair is slicked back just so. His office boasts a mahogany desk. Leatherbound compilations of the complete works of Shakespeare line the wall—as if he makes his way through act 2 of As You Like It over his ‘21’ burger, ordered in. Pictures of two children are on his desk, a boy and a girl, who might be twins. They look like they have been raised by a team of well-paid staff, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they are currently ensconced in some outrageously expensive boarding school—even though they appear to be about ten years old. It’s just that contrived.

  As I sink into the red-leather chair opposite Lionel’s desk, I keep waiting for tea service from a willowy assistant—or whatever else it is that happens in a movie about a book editor. Instead I get Lionel Gray’s steady, withering stare. Lionel has been Walker’s editor for decades, and he’s seen many versions of me before in recent years—the one who is going to be different from all the others.

  “Mr. Gray.”

  “You’re Alley.”

  “Right.”

  I’m trying hard not to feel self-conscious in this cheap suit—trying hard to sell it. But Lionel is the kind of person with an eye for bad stitching and poly blends. He could probably sniff his way to the exact rack at Strawberry where I bought this brown pantsuit for $30. I’m completely broke; it’s as simple as that. My only other new clothes are the ones I got in Aspen, and the pink tracksuit isn’t exactly screaming reliable.

  “Not totally what I expected,” he says.

  “Is that a good thing?” My voice comes out casual and old and chummy.

  “We’ve had quite a parade of assistants out at Walker’s.”

  “I’ve heard, from Claudia.”

  He pulls my résumé from out of a folder, as if looking at it for the first time. “Hmmm. Playboy college fiction-contest winner? Beat internship I knew. Harper’s internship. Penn grad. Okay, you’re smart. But Walker needs more than smart. Sometimes those cocktail waitresses get more out of him.”

  “Well, it’s funny. Rose hooked me up with Walker mostly because she knew I was also a bartender.” Rose is Hans Bauer’s longtime assistant at Beat. I was one of the few interns who didn’t treat her like the help, and she rewarded me with the lead for this position when it came across her desk.

  “Well, that’s a start. Here are the facts, between you and me: Walker’s blown through most of his advance, but his books still sell. Shit, that one two years ago was a compilation of old crap, and it sold almost a million copies. People buy what Walker puts out. It’s that simple. But Walker spends. He took almost a million-dollar advance for two books. Deadlines have come and gone on just this first one. We need pages.”

  “I understand that, Mr. Gray. I think I can deliver this.”

  “Well, everyone thinks they can . . . at first.” This line probably comes out more ominously than intended, but I don’t flinch. “We both know you’re too young to really be qualified as his editor. So you leave that up to me. I need pages I can work with. Just get him to write. That’s it. Whatever you get out of him should be faxed to me as soon as humanly possible. Understood?”

  “I get it.”

  “Those two pages you sent were very good. So you must be doing something right. Plus, they were actually legible.” He laughs a little at this. “Don’t tell me Walker is finally getting comp
uter savvy?”

  “Actually, that was me.”

  Lionel is evidently used to receiving Walker’s pages straight out of the typewriter, complete with Walker’s handwritten edits in a scrawl normally reserved for prescription writers. But after Walker slipped the two pages under my door, I typed them into the Mac Classic, which I had moved into my room at the cabin, and . . . well . . . I guess one could say that I tweaked a few things myself. Nothing big, but there had just been so many missed opportunities, it had seemed senseless to let them pass. I knew enough to know that Walker’s prose, at its best, has a certain volume, and on those pages, the volume was way too low. After I made my edits, I printed the two pages out fresh and faxed them to Lionel. Only later, after a good night’s sleep, did I question the wisdom of this move.

  “Just keep them coming.”

  “I’m on it.”

  “I’m sure you are.” He rests his hand on his chin. His wedding band looks huge. “So here’s the deal. Eight assistants have come and gone in a year and a half, and I have a mere fifty pages to show for it. I’ve paid good money for these eight assistants, but no more. It’s too hard to tell who’s just out for the party. So this job is now one hundred percent incentivized. I need the rest of this manuscript in decent shape in six months. You deliver, you get twenty-five thousand dollars. You don’t, you get a pretty interesting line on your résumé. This isn’t negotiable. So, are we clear?”

  “Got it.”

  Lionel leans back in his chair and puts his hands behind his head. “You’ll have to give me that Playboy piece. You working on something bigger?”

  “Yes, sir. Nearly finished.” My novel is based on the Playboy piece—my Ivy League tell-all. I’ve been working on it for almost two years. I can’t even imagine what it could become in Lionel Gray’s hands. I don’t want it to appear as if I’m angling for my own business, but I figure if I don’t do it now, I might not have the chance again; I’m front and center with Lionel Gray.

  “It’ll be ready about the time I turn in Walker’s manuscript,” I blurt out.