Gonzo Girl

by Cheryl Della Pietra

  “Really? We’re going to Don Johnson’s house? How do we get into Don Johnson’s house?” In my mind I’m envisioning massive gates, security, Tubbs, something.

  “Well, we’re not going to head in for a cup of tea, sweetheart. Stay loose.” Walker guns the Caprice, a terrifying act on this mountain back road.

  Larry lets out a manly battle cry, and I wonder if movie stars always feel like they have to act like they’re in a movie.

  When we reach Don Johnson’s sprawling ranch, Larry and Walker get down to business.

  “Is he home?” Larry asks Walker.

  “Of course he’s home. Where would that has-been have to be?”

  Larry and Walker set about arranging the Roman candles along the perimeter of the property. Walker takes about a dozen coffee cans out of the trunk.

  “What are those for?”

  “Shut up and mix us a drink.”

  “It’s the middle of the afternoon. What on earth is he going to see of these fireworks?”

  “It’s not about the seeing,” Larry says in his best “spiritual guru” voice. “It’s the hearing.”

  “You are a terrible actor,” I say, ribbing him.

  “Um, fuck you.” Larry laughs. “I’m in AA, baby.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Academy Award. Choke on that.”

  “You’re such a geek.” We’re all high.

  “Make us up a picnic, sweetheart. Over there somewhere.” Walker points down a hill at the edge of the property. “Go on.”

  I grab the ever-present blanket out of the backseat, along with the picnic basket, and head down the hill while Walker and Larry start laying out a cache of firecrackers. From a distance, I watch Walker remount the bullhorn/tape player onto the back of the car and pop a cassette into it. At the bottom of the hill I spread out the blanket and pour three glasses of champagne and three glasses of muscat. No reason not to double-fist with this crowd. I start taking out the contents of the picnic basket and notice Larry and Walker doubled over with laughter. Really high.

  Finally, with great theatrical flourish, Walker presses play on the recorder. Jan Hammer’s “Miami Vice Theme” begins blaring. Walker and Larry work quickly, like a team of highly trained yet harmless terrorists, lighting all the Roman candles and then all the firecrackers. They place the coffee cans over the firecrackers so that when each round goes off, it sounds like a series of jet planes exploding. Walker and Larry run down the hill, laughing like six-year-olds, to where I’m sitting, and we wait, double-toasting with our glasses as the entire arsenal goes off. Then, just as Henley appeared out of the shadows, there is Johnson, in a red velour bathrobe—Crockett on his day off.

  “Reade! Walker?” he yells. “Where the fuck are you, you crazy bastard?”

  Walker relights the joint and passes it around as we pick at the food. He and Larry giggle as Don Johnson makes his way down toward the fence.

  “Big fun, right?” Larry says to me, winking.

  “Right,” I say, smirking.

  “Walker, what the hell are you doing?” Don Johnson is not happy but still looks good in that robe and brown suede slippers. His face, as advertised, is covered by his signature five-o’clock shadow. He might, in fact, still use the Miami Device. As with most of the celebrities I’ll meet, he appears shorter and older in person. Walker heads up to the side of the fence to talk to him.

  Suddenly Larry and I are alone, and Larry apparently sees it as an opportunity to “reveal” himself to me. He talks about his Midwestern upbringing as if he grew up on a farm and rose at the crack of dawn to milk cows. Like he chewed on straw while staring at sunsets, contemplating the simpler things in life. I know from my gossip magazines that he is, in fact, from a suburb of Detroit, which, I suppose, is technically the Midwest but not exactly, say, a clapboard farmhouse in Kansas. I tell him that I come from a family of Italian plumbers, which he loves, as if there were some everyman nobility in my being kin to people who snake drains for a living. I know he just signed on for some $10 million role, so I don’t know why he’s wasting his time trying to convince me he’s normal. He’s just not. He’s astoundingly rich, just like most of the people who come out here. I don’t know why he thinks I mind that.

  “So, Devaney still out here?” Larry asks.

  “Yeah, she’s out with some girlfriends right now. Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know, I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes. I didn’t know if you and Walker . . .”

  “There is no ‘me and Walker.’ Step away.” This invitation might be ill-advised given Walker’s and Claudia’s admonishments, or maybe it’s just uncharacteristically forward on my part. But the pot is making me not care. Now that Larry Lucas is real, in the flesh, talking about sunsets, kind of pursuing me, it seems silly to not at least nudge back a little. What I’ve said is the truth: Walker has a girlfriend—and it’s not me.

  “Do you mean that like ‘Go away’? Or ‘Go ahead, step on the toes’? Or ‘There are no toes to step on’?”

  “Christ, you’re high. Don’t overthink it. There are no toes to step on.”

  “So you’re telling me to go for it?”

  “Do we have to discuss it so much? And I’m not exactly sure I like the use of the phrase ‘go for it’ in reference to me.”

  “Right, let it happen. Let it come to you, right?”

  “Oh my God. Just shut up.”

  It occurs to me that while Larry can score any piece of tail he wants in Hollywood, he might still have the soul of the awkward theater geek he undoubtedly was in high school. He can get any piece of tail—he just might not know exactly how to get it. This will become a familiar pattern out here at Walker’s: Celebrity arrives. Celebrity does too many drugs. Celebrity’s outsize ego crumbles to reveal a vestigial social awkwardness and deep-seated neuroses.

  “How did you and Walker meet, by the way?” I ask.

  “I optioned the film rights to Liar’s Dice a couple of years ago. It’s stuck in development hell, but I hope to make it soon. I called to ask him some questions and he invited me out. When Walker Reade calls, you don’t say no.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Walker and Don Johnson are sharing a joke, then Walker turns and yells down the hill, “Christ, Alley, get the man a drink.”

  I bring up two glasses—one muscat, one champagne—and hand them to Don Johnson.

  “Thank you,” he says, making eye contact, scoring huge points. Most everyone I’ve met out here so far has seen me as little more than Walker’s appendage du jour. They neither know, nor do they care, that I scored 1480 on my SATs. They grant me all of the personal regard one might afford an armchair. I’m loving Crockett right now.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I make my way back to the blanket where Larry sits. “You look nice. Coming down that hill, the light behind you . . .”

  “Yeah, like a tampon commercial for the American West.”

  “You’re not one for ‘moments,’ are you?”

  “I am if you need someone to kill them.”

  Larry takes a grape and puts it in my mouth. His finger lingers on my chin. “You’re going to do something amazing. I know it.”

  “I wish I was as certain. What are you working on now?”

  “I get to be a superhero.” He lowers his voice and cocks his head to the side, one eyebrow raised, and intones in a mock stage whisper, as if he’s already spent hours practicing it in front of a mirror, “I’m Captain Avenger!”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Well, in all seriousness, I’m trying to make it . . . dimensional, you know? It’s easy to just get lost in the suit.”

  “Are there nipples?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On the suit—are there nipples?”

  “No . . . But there definitely . . . should be.” His face contorts in wonder, as if he were a caveman discovering fire. “Of course. He’s a man after all.”

  “It’s just a joke
, Larry.”

  “It’s an excellent point.”

  Walker is making his way down the hill now as Don Johnson heads inside.

  “Hey,” Larry says to me, “let’s have fun tonight.”

  I’m not sure exactly what that sentence means. It could mean “let’s play a board game” or “let’s have sex” or “let’s do a ton of drugs and shoot guns.” Right now I don’t much care. Larry Lucas is kinda into me. Whatever it means, I’m there.

  “Don’t worry about that,” I say. “We don’t have much choice.”

  When we return to the house, Devaney is there, having spent the afternoon eating brunch with her girlfriends from the restaurant.

  “Walker, baby, I’m pooped. Let’s go have a nap or something before tonight.” She’s rubbing up against him and smells like a mimosa.

  “That’s not a half-bad idea,” Larry says. “Recharge the ol’ battery. Who else is coming over?”

  “Lesser, Arlo, and Paul.” Lesser, as I now know, is one of Walker’s many lawyers. Arlo is a local Bahamian graffiti artist/heroin addict. And Paul is a young, gay film director.

  “Awesome,” says Larry. “Let’s regroup here around eight, have a little bite, do the pyramids. Sounds like a plan.”

  Devaney is practically dragging Walker back to the bedroom. Apparently, when Larry stays out here, he gets the assistant’s bedroom at the cabin if no one else is there. If there is an assistant, he takes the couch at the cabin.

  As we walk over, Larry takes my hand. “Whaddya say? A spoon?”

  “Let’s just get this all out in the open. I’m not sleeping with you. The spoon is fine.”

  “You’re such a badass.”

  “That’s generous.”

  Claudia is out. Larry and I, both tired from the midafternoon pot and alcohol, crash in my bed. Larry scoots behind me and nuzzles my neck. The unexpected third dimension of Larry is the way he smells. He smells exactly how he does in my fantasy—like lemon Pledge and the Pacific Ocean. Like he just came out of a dryer full of Bounce. It feels good to have his arms around me, his chest against my back. For perhaps the first time since I’ve been here, I feel like I can relax for a minute. Or maybe it’s more like deflating—I can almost feel myself getting smaller under his touch. When I turn toward Larry, he’s already breathing steadily, the noise as comforting as a pendulum swing. Anything predictable out here is welcome, and that’s what Larry’s sleeping face pulls from me right now: relief. It only takes me a few seconds to join him in a deep, dreamless slumber.

  CHAPTER 12

  The circular couch in Walker’s living room often resembles some kind of freaky game show or a weird, mashed-up dream involving random celebrities. Who will be in Seat #1 tonight? One of the best criminal-defense attorneys in the country or Sean Penn? Ed Bradley or the waitress from the local tavern? A former leader of the yippie movement? The national news anchor with relatability issues? A governor who once dared the national media to uncover his adultery? A musician famous for once setting the entire floor of a Detroit hotel ablaze with a can of Sterno and a Bic lighter?

  Tonight’s crew encircling the round table includes Lesser, a stereotype of a Jewish lawyer—if all Jewish lawyers billed $10 million a year and did fistfuls of drugs; Arlo the artist, decked out in head-to-toe hemp, including some twenty woven bracelets he’s clearly using to cover up his track marks; Paul, who directed Larry in his first nonteen film and resembles a young Robert Redford, if Robert Redford liked to bottom; Devaney, clad in a bikini top and jean shorts, looking as if she’s come directly from the Central Casting White Trash Convention; Larry, trying too hard in Mardi Gras beads but still looking fine; and me. Walker is in his normal spot at the counter behind us. We’ve dropped the pyramids and are enjoying the limbo between the taking of the acid and the kicking in—all sitting there, watching American Gigolo on the TV, waiting for something to happen to us. We just don’t know exactly what that’s going to be.

  “No matter what Richard Gere does,” says Paul, “he will just forever be known as the guy who maybe did or maybe did not have a gerbil stuck up his ass. It’s sad.”

  Arlo looks at me and simply says, “This is deep, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I mean, no matter if he wins an Oscar,” continues Paul, “or donates everything he owns to Tibet, or Christ, he could levitate, fly, cure Crohn’s disease. He’s still going to be known as the guy—maybe—with the gerbil.”

  “Truly deep,” Arlo says, not kidding at all.

  “Larry, you are going to do the thing that’s never been done,” Paul says.

  “What’s that? Fuck himself so he can see what it’s like to fuck himself?” says Lesser. It’s kind of awesome that everyone here gives Larry endless shit about his insufferable Method acting.

  “Make an indie superhero movie.”

  “The budget is almost seventy-five million dollars,” says Lesser.

  “How do you know that?” Paul asks.

  “I’m a defense lawyer. I care about money.”

  “I know that more than anyone,” Walker says, lighting a cigarette. “Alley, some drinks.”

  “Dirty martini, honey,” Lesser says.

  “Gin and tonic,” says Paul.

  “Two,” says Larry, getting up. “Let me help.”

  “I got it,” I say, shimmying awkwardly over the back of this ridiculous fucking couch—a move that I have yet to execute while retaining even a modicum of dignity.

  “Arlo?”

  “Okay,” he says, fixing his eyes on me intently, punctuating each word with overly dramatic hand gestures. “A Red Stripe . . . on ice . . . with lemon . . . and a straw.”

  “Uh, we have Coors.”

  “I know. Why must I be the only black man in Aspen?!”

  “Dev?”

  “Red wine.” I don’t love taking drink orders from Devaney, but she is Walker’s girl, and this is the type of situation where that means something to her. When other people are here, Walker is typically on his best behavior. She can, for a few hours, relax.

  I’m mixing and opening and pouring when I’m suddenly awash in a profoundly comforting, all-consuming warmth, like I’m sitting on Aretha Franklin’s lap while swaddled in a plush, rabbit-fur duvet. Then, one by one, I can tell the others are feeling it, too—or some version of it. Even though it’s the same type of acid Walker and I took on the day of the tennis dress and the potted fern, different things are happening to me today. Visual things. I hand out the drinks as quickly as I can, flop-fall back over the couch, and sit next to Larry, taking a deep breath. The warmth begins to give way to hallucinations, and I’m trying to roll with them. Nothing too scary, but Arlo is right: this is deep. Suddenly, yet not entirely unexpectedly, a giant spinner appears in the middle of the circular coffee table. In my mind I ask a question and spin the spinner. I can’t tell if the spinner is real, but it seems to be working, so I don’t question it too much. When the real-but-not-real spinner stops spinning—sometimes it takes a really long time—the person it lands on has to answer the question. This goes down three or four times with each question landing randomly on different people, whom I then pepper with spine-chillingly important queries: What’s really inside your eyeball? Do you like chunk-light or white tuna salad? If you had the opportunity to kiss a bird on the mouth, would you? Then I ask, “What in the hell am I doing here?” and spin the black needle. Round it goes, past Devaney, past Lesser, past Arlo, past Paul, before settling grandiosely, with one final, thunderous tick, on Larry, who’s sitting directly to my right, and whose pupils are huge and black. He looks like a deer but still smells fantastic. Almost like Fantastik.

  “Larry,” I say, moving closer, “what in the hell am I doing here?”

  Larry just starts laughing. We are all tripping hard. Arlo is humming Marley from the other side of the couch, his eyes closed. Paul and Lesser are laughing so hard they aren’t making any noise. Every once in a while one of them will erupt in a snort and wipe tears away
.

  “Like, how do you mean, Alley? Do you know how many different ways you can take a question like that?” Larry asks. “Like I’m thinking there are more ways to take that question than to not take that question.”

  “What? Just answer the question.”

  “Maybe the answer is right in front of you.”

  “Christ. Talk about there being a kabillion ways to take something. Fuck.”

  “Kiss me, Alley.”

  “No way. You kiss me.”

  “Um, kiss me.”

  “You kiss me.”

  “Is our first kiss turning into a fight? This is interesting, man.”

  “I know. Why don’t we kiss each other?”

  “Someone is still going to be kissing someone else. It always happens that way. One person is always way more into it, you know.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t kiss then. All of the inequality, the injustice, in kissing. This could be horrible.”

  “I know. . . . Let’s just close our eyes and fall headfirst into each other.”

  “You mean, like, accidentally kiss.”

  “Right . . . no, you know, driver to this car. Just two lips that happen to touch.”

  “You mean four lips.”

  “Well, two sets of lips.”

  “I don’t want to hurt my head.”

  “We won’t. We could put a pillow or a napkin or something on our foreheads, then just fall.”

  “If we have a pillow, then we won’t be able to reach each other. A napkin won’t provide enough protection.”

  “How about a shirt? A T-shirt?”

  “A thin T-shirt. Maybe. Do you have a thin T-shirt?”

  “No. Walker, do you have a thin T-shirt?”

  Walker is putting lipstick on Devaney—and not only on her lips. “What? What the fuck. Check the bedroom.”

  Larry practically rolls over the back of the couch and zigzags across the floor toward the hallway. He disappears, presumably going into the bedroom, and comes out—he could have been gone a minute or an hour, I can’t tell—with a white T-shirt. All I know is the T-shirt looks really, really white. He jumps back over the couch like it’s a hurdle and lands just short of the coffee table. Disaster narrowly averted. He throws the shirt in my direction.