Walker takes a sip off his scotch and turns the TV to CNN with the volume off. He leans to his right and puts in a Creedence Clearwater Revival CD. Everything tonight has been like most other nights—shenanigans, drinks, drugs, music, CNN, one meltdown/fight—yet tonight, for me, it’s all beginning to feel a bit tired. If debauchery can turn monotonous, I sense we’re almost there. It’s hard to believe that I’ve only been doing this for a few months; Walker’s been at it for thirty years and is, astoundingly, still up for it.
He does another line and turns toward me. His cheeks are pulsing red. “What in the hell are you looking at?”
I exhale none too subtly, bracing myself. Some version of this happens almost every night about four lines in with little to no warning.
“Why are you breathing like that? Huh?” He barks this last word so loudly it’s begging for an answer.
“What do you need, Walker?”
“I need to know why you’re breathing like that.”
“Really?”
“I’m sorry, am I not speaking loud enough? Huh? Idiot? Speak!”
“I’m breathing like that because I know exactly what’s going to happen here.” No matter how many tirades come my way, they still send my body into autonomic mode, except I don’t know the right answer: fight or flee? It’s usually the first, halfheartedly, then the second, inevitably.
“You and your stupid little Flashdance shirt. You’re no Devaney, honey.”
“I don’t want to be Devaney.”
“Trust me, you could learn a lot from a girl like that.”
“So, we’re not writing tonight? If you don’t want to write, maybe you can just say so and then we can all go to bed.”
Walker turns to me, breathing heavily—so hard that I study the tray to see how much coke he’s had. A lot. But what is about to happen is born less out of any physical distress and more engineered by pure rage. Walker takes a plate from the cabinet next to him and without even so much as a pause hurls it, Frisbee style, just past my ear and into the opposite wall. It hits with a dramatic crash that makes us both jump. I’m frozen in my seat, stunned.
“I did not just try to hurt you, so don’t go telling the papers, you . . . you . . . moron.” Through everything over these past few months, I have seen Walker as little more than at turns a merry prankster and an obstinate child. Despite the substances and the guns, I’ve never felt unsafe. Until this moment. Leaving seems impossible. Staying seems worse. I make eye contact, hoping to soften whatever part of him is still sane, and wait.
“To the range!”
“I don’t know, Walker. Is this a good idea?” I am positive this is the worst idea in the world, but I feel like I’m walking on a minefield in stilts. I’m suddenly unsure about every move.
“Probably not. Here.” He hands me the dwindling tray of coke. I look at it as would someone at the all-you-can-eat buffet who has stuffed herself beyond reason. I almost can’t even face what’s in front of me, especially with Walker watching intently as I do one line, then another. There’s no fake-snorting these babies, and the kick is immediate and bracing. He puts his glass of scotch in front of me, and I mimic an affectation of his: dipping two fingers into it and snorting them as well.
“Let’s go.”
While the idea of Walker’s handling a gun right now is terrifying, leaving him alone seems worse. We head to the gun room and he chooses a Glock for himself, then hands me my .22. Out on the range he sets up a paper outline of a man like I’ve seen on television—the kind cops use for target practice—then stumbles back to where I’m standing at the perimeter of the range. Without a word, he draws his gun and lets fly fifteen, maybe twenty, shots. Boom . . . boom . . . boom . . . Paper Man is demolished. I sit down on the bench. Even though the klieg lights are on, Walker is in the shadows at the edge of the range. The next thing he does is executed so fluidly, so offhandedly, that at first I think it is Walker’s own hand held up to his right temple—that he might be scratching his head or thinking about something.
Then I realize it is not his hand at all.
The shape of the gun fully registers at the same time I hear the horrible click of nothing. There is not even time for me to overreact. It all happens so fast, I’m trying to figure out how to react at all. I stare mutely for five seconds.
“Jesus, Walker. What the fuck did you just do?”
“Just playing around, sweetheart.” The gun is now by his side, but suddenly nothing here feels normal, safe, or finished. Walker is almost limp, like a man in shock. Reflexively, I find myself trying to move us back into the house. I need to channel the other Walker—the one without an ungodly amount of cocaine in him. The one who might think that what just happened was crazy, too.
“Let’s go inside. Let me mix up some drinks. We’ll get a movie in.”
“What did you think I was trying to do?” he asks slowly, cautiously, seemingly curious to hear the answer himself.
“I don’t know. You might be trying to scare me? For some reason . . .” I am lost out here. I know nothing about guns, so I approach the one in his hand as if it’s still full of bullets—even if it’s just one. For the first time ever, I consider the notion that this gun could be turned on me.
“I’m trying to see how much you can handle, little girl. Things are about to get hairy out here. Are you going to leave?”
“No, Walker. I don’t want to leave.”
“Really? You want to stay out here with a coked-up, crazy son of a bitch with a gun? You’re even more stupid than I thought. Are you that desperate for relevance?”
Absolutely, I think to myself. “Maybe.”
“Do you think I don’t know how many bullets are in that gun?”
“No, I think you do. But what if you were wrong? What if you miscounted?”
“Then I’d be up shit creek.” He slumps down on the bench like a parachute falling to the ground. I never knew someone so coked up could look so exhausted. In a seeming non sequitur, he says, “Let me tell you something about Larry.”
“What?”
“Working for someone famous and fucking someone famous does not make you famous.”
“What does it make me?”
“A fortunate groupie. Ask Devaney.”
“Devaney never appears to feel that fortunate,” I counter, trying to start a conversation.
“Do you think she’d rather be making Goldie Hawn’s brunch reservation?”
“Probably not.”
“And would you rather be slinging drinks to the bridge-and-tunnel crowd?”
“Definitely not.”
“Do you think you’re the first one of my assistants Larry has fucked?”
“Not anymore.”
“Fucking my assistant is like climbing Mount Everest for Larry. You know . . . because it’s there.”
“Great,” I say.
“I just want you to remember that you’re not going to get very far without me.”
“I wasn’t planning on leaving, Walker.”
“I’ve heard that one before.”
“I’d rather be slinging drinks to you, actually,” I say, trying to regain some sense of control, trying to find some firm ground underfoot. “Let’s go in. I’ll make manhattans. We can watch Manhattan. Fuck the book tonight. We need a break.”
“That’s not a bad idea, sweetheart. Manhattans and Manhattan. I like it.” As we make our way back into the house, I’m trying to appear like I’m not rushing.
“I’ll put the guns back if you want,” I say evenly.
“Sure. Sure . . .” Walker hands me the Glock. I carry it and my .22 back to the gun room. My hands are shaking as I put them away. I take a minute to gather myself. I want to do something like they would on a detective show—unload the clip or put the safety on—but I might as well be handling an H-bomb. I don’t know how to do any of these things, so I just put the gun on the shelf and poke it back with my finger, as if I’m checking to make sure it’s dead.
�
�Alley!”
I head back out to the kitchen. Walker is seated on the circular couch, looking like a guest in his own home. Manhattan is just starting, and Walker does another two lines of coke. He hands me the tray, which is now almost empty, and I do one real line and one fake line. I’ve gotten good at that by now.
“The drinks . . .”
“Coming right up.” I head to the bar and throw a shot of Canadian Club down first, just to settle my nerves. I like using Canadian Club for my manhattans, and I’m glad to see an almost-full bottle. I pull out sweet vermouth and a jar of maraschino cherries from under the bar and start mixing.
I sit next to Walker and we sip our manhattans. He puts a pillow on my lap and lays his head down. I put my arm around his chest; he holds my hand. I’m relieved that we’re inside, safely ensconced on the couch. More important, he seems like some version of himself that I recognize. Still, as Woody Allen’s mythical version of Manhattan appears before me, my thoughts turn to Larry. On the downside, it took him a month to call me. On the upside, he did call, and he’s coming out at some point. I chalk his curious silence up to his preparation for his role, then I dissect every part of our brief conversation.
He was nice enough, I suppose, and I think that maybe this is what happens when you’re involved with someone famous. They’re beholden to projects and distance. Priorities are different. Perhaps this is just what grown-ups do. About a half hour into the movie, our drinks finished, I look down to find that Walker is sound asleep, and all I can think is How? How on earth, with that much cocaine in his system, is he snoring like an apneic old man? I, for one, am suddenly wide-awake.
CHAPTER 16
I wake to the sound of a gun going off. I’ve heard these noises other afternoons and easily slept through them. But not now. I throw my sweatpants on and stagger out to the front patio of the cabin, where I’m relieved to see Walker and Arlo in deep discussion at the edge of the range. Claudia is sitting at her desk on the phone, possibly on hold—she gives me a short nod—and much to my relief, she doesn’t seem the least bit alarmed.
Walker and Arlo have an array of firearms on the ground and two guns at the ready. Arlo is definitely one of the many types that come in and out of here, including (1) film stars and directors, (2) waitresses and bartenders, (3) lawyers, (4) Aspen socialites, (5) local artists. Arlo is in the latter category, and is also, not to put too fine a point on it, insane. He’s a graffiti artist, and I’ve been to his studio once with Walker. The place had so little ventilation that I left light-headed from the paint fumes after just ten minutes. This might be why Arlo is insane. It might also be the drugs. He shoots an astonishing amount of heroin—a drug I’ve never seen Walker touch—along with your more standard psychedelics, and basically spray-paints the shit out of anything placed in front of him. A few of Walker’s friends would, like Walker, surely perish without the help of a devoted female. Arlo’s wife, Gabriella, appears determined, against all odds, to ensure that he occasionally consumes food and does not pass out or vomit or OD or die anywhere compromising. When Arlo catches my eye, he waves me over. I look to Walker first for approval. He nods.
“Arlo, what’s up?”
“Check it out.” Arlo’s eyes are pure black. The pupil, the iris, everything.
“What’s this?”
“My new enterprise,” Walker says.
I look out onto the range and see four enormous pictures—Ronald Reagan, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix, and John Lennon. The life-size photos are all mounted on separate pieces of plywood and all have gunshots through them. Four others just like them are on the outskirts of the range. Those have the gunshots, plus red-paint splatters that look like blood, and Walker’s signature scrawled at the bottom.
“What are they for?”
“Collectors,” Arlo says. “I have some collectors interested.”
“In what?”
“My artwork,” Walker says, as if he’s been an artist his whole life. “Why the hell I didn’t think of this sooner, I don’t know. You artist bastards work an hour and you’re rich. What in the hell have I been doing?”
“I don’t know. Enriching the culture? Answering your true calling? Winning Pulitzer Prizes? Making real art?”
“Spare me the American Lit lecture, sweetheart. We have bills to pay. Here’s how it’s going to happen.”
“Who are these collectors?”
“An oilman from Texas wants these four. A Hollywood producer wants the other four. You believe that?”
“Not really.” It appears that something like five minutes of effort have been put into said artwork. Walker might as well be signing baseballs.
“Ten grand apiece.”
“Wow.”
“He has the gift,” says Arlo, who is clearly high on some substance I couldn’t even begin to imagine. I have this idea that Arlo shoots and snorts things he finds lying around his studio, just to see what will happen. Walker, however, seems stone-cold sober.
“The gift . . . ?”
“Have you ever listened to the radio in the car and you’ve never heard of the song that’s on, but you think it’s got a great beat? You’re enjoying it. Then you realize you turned on the Christian rock station?” This is Arlo’s bailiwick: acting all crazy but being sort of right.
“Sure.”
“You know how there’s ‘pretty’ and then there’s ‘porn-star pretty’? Something is slightly off—like she’s pretty, but one eye crosses or her nose has a bump on it?”
“Got it,” I say.
“This”—Arlo points to the paintings—“is porn-star pretty.”
“Arlo, stop talking like a crazy Rastafarian. You get one bong hit in these Jamaicans, they lose their fucking minds.”
“I’m Bahamian, man.”
Claudia pokes her head out of the cabin and yells over to Walker, “Don’t forget, Hans is coming over!”
“When?”
“Five. Then Lionel wants to talk edits.”
“Fuck. Come on, Arlo. We’ve got to finish.”
“Hans Bauer?” I ask.
“No. Hans Christian Andersen. Of course, Bauer. How many Hanses do you know?”
“And Lionel is calling again?”
“What are you, my traveling secretary? He is a book editor. Every once in a while he wants to talk about my book. Is this a problem?”
“Of course not.” Uh, definitely, I think. When Lionel had first called weeks ago, only a handful of pages were new—I figured, at the time, that I got away with it because I wasn’t doing that much to them. But the past two dozen–plus pages I’ve sent to Lionel are significantly rewritten. It’s not that I didn’t think Lionel would ever want to talk edits again. Every single thing I’ve done out here has just been reactive. But now I need to think. “I’m going back to the cabin. Nice seeing you, Arlo.”
“No way,” Walker says. “You need to help. And stop giving me that look.”
“What look?”
“That hurt sad-bunny look. Like I’m some sort of sellout. Do you have any bills to pay?”
“No.”
“Well, I do. Now shut up and help me.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Go get those out on the range.”
“No way am I going out to the range while you two have firearms in your hands.”
“For God’s sake, girl. This ain’t my first rodeo. Get out there and do what I tell you. I’m not going to shoot you, okay?”
“It’s not you I’m worried about.” Arlo is sitting on the bench with a gun in his hand and his eyes closed. He’s rocking back and forth and laughing quietly.
“Duly noted,” says Walker. “I’ve got it covered.”
“Would it help my case if I were to say something like ‘This isn’t my job’?”
“No. Your job is to do what I tell you, so don’t start with that.”
“I’m not going anywhere until Arlo is divested of anything that discharges a bullet.”
“I said I’v
e got it covered. Now go.”
“I’m waiting.”
“Christ. Arlo . . .” Arlo looks up. “Give me the gun, old boy. We’re wrapping up.”
Arlo hands him the gun and lies down on the bench.
“A real menace,” Walker whispers to me. “He can’t even tie his own shoe right now.”
We both head out to the range and start pulling the plywood pictures off their stands. I have John and Ronnie. Walker has Marilyn and Jimi.
“This is a slippery slope, Walker. What’s next? Your own cologne? A signature cigarette holder?” We both pause for a moment, realizing that last idea might not be so bad.
“Hell, Jerry Garcia is silk-screening fucking ties,” Walker says finally. “Unless you want to be on the next plane out of here, I’d shut up. You would like to eat, correct?”
“Why is Hans coming here?”
“He’s in town for some music thing. We have to talk some other business, too.”
“About what?”
“Other business that is none of your business. Now, what do you think?”
We have all four of the new “canvases” on the ground now. Walker gets the red paint and starts to splatter these, then signs the bottom with a silver marker.
“Maybe a little more red on this one,” I say, pointing to Hendrix. Walker takes the brush from the red-paint can. As he hunches over the images, I take in the curve of his back and the soft hairs on the back of his neck. I’m struck by a wave of tenderness that’s close to pity.
Then he says exactly what I’m thinking: “So, it’s come to this.” He stands up and we walk around the pieces, now dripping red and drying in the sun.
“Not bad.” I take his hand and squeeze it. “They’re kind of cool.”
“Is that bastard asleep?” Arlo is curled up on the bench and snoring away. “Claudia!” Walker yells. He squeezes back briefly, then drops my hand. “Come on. Let’s go get cleaned up.”
CHAPTER 17
Hans Bauer has the sheen of success. I find that with most of the rich people I meet out here—the actors, the politicians, the artists. They all glow in a certain way, and not from some inner confidence. It’s a literal glow—be it from the superior food they’re eating, the weekly massages, the premium skin and hair products. It’s like how a horse’s coat becomes shinier with a special diet. Indeed, it looks as if there’s a halo around Hans’s long, gray ponytail as he comes inside with his wife, Carol, and plants himself on the circular couch like he’s a roommate come back from vacation.
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