Gonzo Girl

by Cheryl Della Pietra

  “Leave this simmering for three hours and make sure it doesn’t stick. Put it in the fridge after that. This’ll be amazing tomorrow.”

  “Will do. Good luck.”

  When I get to Walker’s, it’s as if all the energy has been sucked right out of the room. I take my usual place at the end of the counter and light a cigarette. I am expecting the rage switch to turn on at any moment. Something—or someone—is going to fly across the room. The manuscript that I gave him yesterday is sitting on the counter next to the typewriter, and he hands it to me without looking my way. I’m not sure what I expected to come out of his mouth, but it’s not this:

  “Will you look at this?” When the TV is on, tuned to CNN with the sound off, as it is almost all the time, Walker will busy himself with running political commentary. He narrates the events himself. Caspar Weinberger’s face comes on, along with an inset of Oliver North. This can only mean one thing: the “Iran-Contra” diatribe.

  “Oh, my God, will this shitball of deception never stop gathering moss?”

  “It’s been a lot of years,” I say.

  “And for what? All of this money and time that’s only going to lead to one thing.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “A pardon party. It’s a disgrace. The only person I feel sorry for in this whole mess is the girl. She’s going to get chewed up and spit out.”

  “Fawn Hall?”

  “Yes, that one.”

  “Chewed up, spit out, or shredded,” I say.

  “That’s pretty funny.”

  “Why do you feel sorry for her? She was an accessory to a crime.”

  “Because she’s only guilty of being loyal. It’s extremely dangerous to be a good girl for a bad man. You’ll find that out soon enough.”

  I laugh. “I don’t know. It might work out for her. Everyone knows who she is.”

  “Trust me. He’s going to end up a senator and she’s going to end up in rehab. You’ll see. Do you even know what this whole thing is about?”

  “Of course I do.” I’m not going to lie: I’m intimidated as hell talking to Walker about this stuff. I sound amateurish, like I’m reciting from an infographic in USA Today. I’m the first to admit that when it comes to politics, I’m guilty of listening to everything I’m told and believing it. Walker’s political incisiveness, on the other hand, is like a stain that won’t come off—it colors everything, including his writing, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

  “Proceed,” he says.

  “You know . . . selling arms to Iran . . . money to the Contras. Blah blah. The Sandinistas . . . bad. Et cetera.”

  “Yeah, I figured.”

  “I’m sorry. I have a hard time getting into this stuff.”

  “That’s what they’re all counting on. That you simply won’t care enough to be outraged. You want to know what this is really about?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s about seeing how much they can get away with not telling you. This is just a test. Thieves start out by taking candy bars, just to see if they can. Then, when they realize how easy it is, they move to cars and jewels and banks. This is a mere trifle compared with what’s coming your way. And the bitch of it is, your generation won’t ever see it coming. You’ll just sit there with your video games and your Mac Classics or whatever while the bastards rob the store blind. And you don’t even know you own the damn store. It’s pitiful. Fucking pathetic. The beginning of the end of a goddamn failed empire.”

  “Okay.” I finger the manuscript, and all at once I’m reminded of what should be happening right now. I should be getting fired. But I’m not being fired. Or at least this is one hell of a tangential way of going about it. Perhaps his “edits with Lionel” are simply pep talks? Regardless, the pause in Walker’s rant is the opening I need to resume the job of pretending that everything is normal. Which I do. By nagging. “Are we going to work tonight or are you just going to tell me how pitiful I am?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “C’mon, Walker.”

  “You got someplace to be?”

  “No. But what are you waiting for?”

  As if to annoy me on purpose, he taps one letter at a time, slowly, with both index fingers.

  “Have you seriously been a writer for thirty years and you still hunt-and-peck?”

  “Shut up.”

  “I can teach you how to type. Things would go faster.”

  “I repeat, do you have someplace to be?”

  “No, I’m just tired.”

  He hands me the tray of coke. “Here. Wake up.”

  I look down at the tray with pure ambivalence. I do one real line that barely registers and then fake-snort the other one, moving it around on the tray, and hand the tray back to him.

  “Did you just pretend to snort a line of coke?”

  “No,” I say reflexively, slightly panicked. I’m surprised by how straightforward his question is, and I’m pretty sure he’s surprised by the straightforwardness of my lie. We stare at each other for a beat, then two, then he does two more lines and the scotch snort.

  “Now, where were we?” he asks.

  “Well, um . . . This is the scene we talked about at the tavern last night. Christ, it’s so straightforward. Just start it. One or two lousy pages. I could write this in fifteen minutes.”

  “You’re starting to annoy me. Would you rather be ordering up Hans Bauer’s pool boy?”

  “Sorry, Walker. No.”

  “Do something, damnit.”

  I get up and shuffle over to the library of films and choose Mamma Roma, starring Anna Magnani. “Italy’s national treasure?”

  “Sure. Here.” He hands me the tray again and trains his aviators on me as I do both lines for real.

  “Italian movie. We need grappa.”

  “Yeah, I need a drink.”

  As I head to the bar, I finally begin to feel the coke a little bit.

  “Where’s Devaney?” I ask, suddenly realizing I haven’t seen her in a few days.

  “Her mother”—peck, peck—“took ill.” Peck, peck. He’s typing intently, but one letter at a time. “She’s back in, I don’t know, Iowa or wherever she’s from, for a few days.” Peck, peck.

  “Isn’t she from Tennessee?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I go to the fridge and take out four lemons and a tray of ice. “You don’t know where your girlfriend is from?”

  Walker lets out a big sigh. “I’m her meal ticket, sweetheart, not the IRS.”

  “She’s from Tennessee. Come on, Walker, she’s always fixin’ to go to the bathroom and stuff. Where did you get Iowa?”

  “When did you get to be so annoying?”

  “She didn’t tell me she was leaving. That’s all.”

  “Well, she’s not buried under the porch, if that’s what you’re getting at.” Peck, peck. “She left this morning. You were sleeping. Please just mix my drink and shut up. I’m working.”

  I juice all of the lemons into a bowl, then fill a cocktail shaker with ice. I mix in four shots of grappa, two shots of lemon juice, and some simple syrup, then throw the top on and shake. I fill two highballs with more ice and strain the cocktail into the glasses. I take a paring knife and make two long twists with the lemon peel for garnish. I press play on the VCR and put Walker’s drink down next to him, rubbing his back a little as he types.

  “Thank you, sweetheart.” Walker does another line and hands me the tray; I do another line as well. He takes a sip of the drink and says nothing but starts drumming on the kitchen counter. Then the drip of the typewriter keys turns into a steady rain . . . then a downpour. My freshman year of college was the last time I used a typewriter, the saving grace of which was an autocorrect tape that would fix typos with the press of a key. By the next year I was all about the computer lab and floppy disks. But Walker, when he’s on, makes me long for the satisfying thwack of typewriter keys, telegraphing progress.

  “Oh, God. Is that her?” Anna
Magnani has made her first appearance on-screen, and I’m slightly offended that Walker thinks I resemble this earthy, somewhat ugly paesana.

  “That’s her.”

  “She’s ugly.” It’s just true.

  “ ‘A woman who cannot be ugly is not beautiful.’ ”

  “Where the hell did you get that one?”

  “Karl Kraus . . . Or was it Picasso?”

  “Yes, well, sometimes ugly is just ugly.”

  I watch the film a bit more and begin to see what Walker’s getting at. Certain Italian women are all angles—I’m one of them. It’s mostly a matter of catching the nose just right, the jawline. The lighting has to be good, and certain makeup doesn’t hurt. Wearing black seems to help—the less going on the better.

  “Plus she’s a hooker,” I say. “Is this really your impression of me?”

  Walker chortles, a bit too strongly. “Not that part.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “Honey, you’re more frigid than an ice-cream cone in the Yukon. Is this really a big secret?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Can you just stop acting like you’re offended at everything? You’re wound a little tight, sweetie. Do I have to call the Channel Seven news team?”

  “I’m just trying to be professional,” I say, though the second it comes out of my mouth it’s laughable. I’m sitting at Walker’s kitchen counter wearing a low-cut, purple jersey minidress and heels with a grappa cocktail and a tray of coke. It’s not exactly the steno pool.

  “Yeah, right. Okay, how do Italians make love?”

  “Weird question. While rolling around in sauce? While losing a war? I don’t know.”

  “Come here.”

  I’m at the opposite end of the counter from Walker and don’t budge.

  “For Chrissake. I’m not going to do anything you don’t want me to do.” The last part of this sentence makes my neck hairs stand on end, and I’m realizing that grappa and coke is not the best combination if I’m trying to maintain a professional distance from Walker. Not only that, I am noticing things about Walker that I hadn’t before. I’m taking note of his forearms, his hands. Or, again, maybe it’s just the grappa. The liquor is pulling me down and the coke is pushing me through the roof—the combination yielding a wide-eyed clarity and the desire to do something crazy. What is about to happen seems inevitable.

  With my pulse doing a cha-cha, my conscience doing backflips, I slowly walk over to where Walker sits on his stool, pretending to look over his shoulder at the half-typed page that sits in the Selectric while a cigarette burns in an ashtray next to the typewriter. I am trying to merely take stock of this situation rather than be in it—it’s just easier for me to do it this way. On the counter behind him is a fruit bowl that also holds a bulb of garlic, which he places in front of me.

  “I’m not eating that.”

  “That’s right,” he says. “You’re not.”

  He removes a clove and peels it. Taking the knife I used for our lemon garnish, he cuts the clove in half. And that’s when I remember our conversation from the tavern when I first arrived. I haven’t cut my hair since I’ve been out here, so my dark curls fall over my chest. Walker brushes my hair away from both sides of my dress, and he traces lightly with his fingertip over my neckline. His touch releases something in me, something I have been careful to keep locked up here. I’m focused, curious about what’s going to happen next. Walker pulls the fabric of my dress aside to expose my right breast. I breathe heavier now as he rubs half of the garlic clove on my nipple, then encloses his mouth around it, his tongue licking softly. I pull him close; I want him to stay there.

  There is always the unexpected with men the moment you become physical—their skin feels softer, they smell better than you think they will, their touch is gentler. Walker’s right: I am wound tight from a lifetime of watchfulness and ambition. I think way too much. But I’m also capable of being in a moment, and right now I’m in this one. Walker’s lips on my breast send my mind blank, and for a minute I just let it be what it is. All thoughts of Devaney, Larry, my book, my career ambitions, what’s appropriate, what’s not—they’re effectively barricaded. I can almost see them screaming from behind a fence: Don’t you dare do it! Here are the reasons why! Then Walker becomes more persistent—so persistent that the unexpected, the seemingly impossible, happens. From nothing more than Walker’s mouth on my breast, I come. There is no maybe about it. I am in the throes of an all-out leg-buckling, wave-riding orgasm with no end in sight—clutching at Walker to keep from collapsing—when there is a knock at my mental door. And all at once, the barricade comes crashing down. My head, which had slumped forward on Walker’s shoulder, pops up.

  “I’ve gotta go,” I say abruptly, barely spitting the words out before I’m running back to the cabin in the middle of the night. Normally Walker makes me take the .22 and watches as I head across, mostly, I think, for dramatic effect. I have yet to see a coyote hunkered by the door, desperate for a bite of free-range editorial assistant. But this time, if there were, it would be moot—I’d outrun it. I bash through the door of the cabin, and Claudia, who had been snoozing on the couch, sits bolt upright. We both scream, and I quickly smooth the front of my dress.

  “Alley?”

  “Claudia. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be up . . . or out here . . . or . . .”

  Claudia tilts her head to one side, now fully awake. Her look suggests that this is not the first time she’s been woken in the middle of the night by a crazed assistant. “Calm down. Sit.”

  I’m breathing heavily as I take a seat at the desk. “I’m okay.”

  “Did he hit on you?”

  “Yes. Kind of. Yes. I guess. Yes.”

  “Calm down.” I’m on the verge of mania as Claudia lights two cigarettes and hands me one. “Did you want him to be hitting on you?”

  I’m surprised that Claudia doesn’t know the answer to this question, but no doubt she’s seen this before: the formerly ambivalent woman suddenly succumbing to Walker’s charms. I lie, “No. I don’t think so. No.”

  “You’re sure.”

  I lie again, “Sure.”

  “It’s funny. Everybody at some point, at some time, falls in love with Walker.” She says this more to herself than to me. “So just tell him to cut it out. He’ll listen. Trust me. After the sexual-harassment suit, he’s not going to touch you unless you want him to. He’s many things, but he’s not like that. Any pages?”

  I am amazed that Claudia cares about pages at a time like this. “Half of one. We were just starting. I mixed a grappa cocktail. It was a bad idea.”

  “Calm down, Alley. Seriously, he’ll forget about it tomorrow. Get some sleep.” She gets up to go to bed herself.

  “Okay . . . Claudia . . .”

  “Yes?” She takes a long, slow draw on her cigarette.

  “I just don’t want to be that girl, you know? I want it clear to everyone that I’m not just going to be passed around out here.”

  “Trust me, you’re not cut out to be that girl. Get some rest.”

  Claudia heads back to her bedroom and I sit on the couch to finish my cigarette. I would like to get some rest but know that with all of the coke in me, sleep is not an option. As I fidget on the couch, my hand goes to my chest. I’m still damp between my legs. If I close my eyes, I can still feel Walker’s lips. Claudia says I’m not that girl, but I’m starting to become afraid of the one I really am. The one who’s bumping into all the boundaries just to see what’s there. The one who is ignoring the small chips in her dignity, morals, and otherwise good sense.

  With sleep out of the question, I go back into my bedroom to work on my manuscript, which has remained an anchor of sorts the whole time I’ve been out here. No matter what has happened, it’s what I’ve found solace in, something so unmistakably tied to all of my hopes for the future. The physical reminder of why I’m here—why I refuse to go home despite an environment that has tur
ned increasingly insane. I had left it, as I always do, on my makeshift desk next to the Mac Classic. But after staring blankly at the spot for several seconds, it dawns on me: it isn’t there. I rifle around my desk briefly—there are the two Walker manuscripts, exactly where I left them, plus a few other notebooks strewn about. Everything else looks untouched. I go out to the living room thinking that I might have left it out there or in the kitchen, but there’s nothing. Just the hum of the refrigerator, the glow of the potbellied stove. I don’t want to consider the unthinkable, but suddenly it becomes clear where it is—not exactly where it is, but what has happened to it. I don’t wake Claudia. I don’t want to face the truth. I just want to go to bed. I sink onto the mattress and curl up like a possum. Now I’m tired—dead tired. What happened tonight was perhaps the one thing that would have pointed me home—awakened me to the fact that it’s time to get out of here. Since I fled to the cabin, that thought has spread like a virus, become obvious even: It’s time to go. But suddenly, like a sentencing, it dawns on me: now I can’t.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Mom?”

  “Alessandra?”

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  I’m sitting alone at Claudia’s desk; she’s over at Walker’s getting his day started. It’s midafternoon, and I’m fresh out of the shower. We have no hair dryer, so my thick, black mane is still tied up in a towel, and I’m in a plush, white terry-cloth robe from the Four Seasons Chicago. I stole it from Walker’s one night after a foray into the hot tub—it was hanging on a hook along with plush robes from several other four-star establishments, an amenity he routinely steals, or at least used to steal when he was still traveling. I smooth my hand over the empty desk calendar and wait for my mother’s usual script to kick in.

  The few times I’ve spoken with her since I’ve been out here, she has been aggressively concerned, peppering me with questions about sleeping arrangements and the exact origin of my meals, which I’m forced to lie about. If my mother knew I was eating frozen Marie Callender’s lasagna out of a microwave twice a week, she would be on the first plane out here with a Tupperware full of braciole. But she sounds relaxed today—slower, less desperate—like she’s eating something. From the sound of her aggressive masticating, perhaps a handful of peanuts. I’m waiting for the histrionics, the Why haven’t you called? and the I’m worried sick over here. But instead she swallows hard, waiting for me to talk.