Gonzo Girl

by Cheryl Della Pietra

  “I just wanted to hear your voice. How are things?”

  “Good, good.”

  “You eating?”

  “A little snack. Yeah. Everything okay?” This is as close as she comes to her usual overconcern, but her tone is light—positive, even. Her voice is a singsong. It’s deeply off-putting.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Ginger ale.”

  “How are Dad and the guys?”

  “Great. They got a big contract. Your father is happy about it.”

  “What are you up to, Ma?”

  She lets out a soft snort as if to ask, What do you think I’m up to? Deconstructing Guernica? I know the answer: She’s cooking for a bunch of men who don’t appreciate her. She’s washing endless loads of laundry. She’s cleaning the bathroom—again. Going to church and bingo. Aunt Sal and the girls are coming over to play cards on Wednesday. “You sound different.”

  “Different? I got a little job. Two days a week at the church office.” Two days out of the house. It’s not different she sounds. It’s happy. “I’m good. Okay . . .” And just like that, for the first time ever, she’s ending the conversation. We say our I love yous and she practically hangs up on me.

  I head into the bathroom and put on eyeliner and red lipstick. I find a casual little black dress from a recent boutique trip with Walker, and the bright red pumps he bought me my first week here. Even though it’s two in the afternoon I look like I’m going to a cocktail party. I don’t quite know what to make of the conversation with my mother. Maybe J.D. got to her and she realizes what a great opportunity this might be for me. Maybe getting a job herself—her first one out of the house, ever—is helping her understand my desire for a career. Or, who knows, she just might be finding the freedom that comes with letting go—despite the unlikelihood that this life skill would suddenly manifest in her early fifties. Whatever’s going on, I called her because I was looking for some strength, some inspiration, for what I have to do right now. I smooth my dress and wipe a small lipstick smudge from the corner of my mouth and replay the call in my head—something’s still bothering me. I’m big enough to realize, finally, that maybe I was looking for someone to just be worried about me, and I don’t think it’s too crazy that I thought she was a lock.

  When I enter the house, Claudia is scrambling a peacock egg for Walker, who is sipping a large screwdriver as he reads the paper. A George Strait CD is playing.

  “Hey . . .”

  “I didn’t call you over here, did I?”

  Even Claudia looks shocked to see me as she furrows her brow over the frying pan. “Let me just finish this egg, Alley, then I can help you out.”

  “Has anyone seen my manuscript?” I ask casually.

  Walker continues to read the paper as if I’m not here. Claudia is concentrating hard on that egg, like she’s working a nuclear-fusion experiment. She throws two pieces of wheat bread down in the toaster and grabs a plate. No one says a word. I take a highball from the kitchen cabinet and fill it with ice. I pour two fingers of Chivas and sit at the end of the counter where I light a cigarette. I’m watching Claudia and Walker almost as if I were watching a play—the one where the divorced couple reconciles but you know from the way she fixes breakfast, the way he reads the paper, that it won’t last. Walker lights up a cigarette and turns on CNN. After Claudia places his breakfast in front of him, she turns to me and mouths, Let’s go.

  “Go where?” I say out loud. “Where the fuck is my manuscript?”

  “You are slightly out of line, miss,” Walker starts.

  “I’m out of line? Last I knew I didn’t steal anything from you. Why would you take it?”

  “You are supposed to be working for me out here. Not on your own business.”

  “I am working out here for you, Walker. What exactly am I not doing for you?” I say this last sentence as pointedly as I can.

  “I need you to focus.”

  “I am focusing. We’re getting pages done, right? Lionel’s happy, right?”

  “Very,” he says, a little pointedly himself.

  Claudia doesn’t leave but shuffles about the kitchen making herself busy, washing dishes, tidying up, cleaning cigarette filters—a uniquely gross process that involves soaking the lot of them in a bowl of detergent. I can tell she’s debating whether she should step in.

  “Just until you leave,” she says.

  “Shut up, Claudia,” Walker says.

  “I won’t work on it, I promise. I just want to have it in my possession. It’s mine.” Something like desperation is in my voice; the fact that something has been stolen from me seems very basic. In New York I had a copy on my Mac Classic, which was stolen, and I never put the file on a disk. It’s the only copy I’ve got.

  “We really need you to focus,” Claudia says, winking at me.

  “Didn’t I just say to shut up? Go away.”

  “Come on, Alley.” Claudia takes me by the hand.

  “She stays.”

  Claudia hesitates, but I drop her hand and sit back down where my scotch is. Claudia looks at us both. To her right, the rock. To her left, the hard place.

  “It’s okay,” Walker and I say to her in unison.

  After Claudia leaves, Walker starts in on his breakfast.

  “What is going on, Walker?”

  “I just need to know I have your undivided attention, sweetheart.”

  “Walker, I already feel like I’m in a gulag out here. I don’t do anything but wait for your call. I have no friends. I barely talk to my family.”

  “You made friends with Larry.”

  “I think we all know how that turned out.”

  “He’s coming out here next week, you know.”

  “He is?” I try to say this as impassively as possible.

  “So are you going to jump all over him?”

  “No. Is that what you want? For me to say I won’t jump all over Larry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Fine. But I’m not going to jump all over you either.”

  “Fine.”

  I don’t even know if it’s worth bringing up Devaney. I don’t sense that Walker’s undying fidelity is something either of them is wagering on. “I’m here to learn from you, Walker. I’m fully committed.”

  “Yeah, what do you think you can learn from me?”

  “What it takes to be great.”

  “And what makes you think I’m so great?”

  “The National Book Award, the Pulitzer. The seven books.”

  “Ancient history. Like me, sweetheart.” He seems to be on the verge of saying something but appears to not feel enough conviction to say it. “Anyway, what do you want from me? You’re here to help me. I’m not here to help you. Didn’t they teach you to write at that fancy-pants Ivy League school you went to?”

  “Excuse me?” I’ve let these comments slide a few times since I’ve been here, but not today, not now.

  “Bunch of spoiled brats. Didn’t they teach you rich kids anything?”

  “You know what, Walker? Big fucking deal. I went to an Ivy League school. You don’t know anything else about me. And I’m sure you think that because I went to an Ivy League school that my dad is some sort of CEO or oil mogul or some ex-parliamentarian from Rome or something. But guess what: He’s a plumber. A snake-your-crapper plumber. And Larry knows that, because he asked. And my mom cooks all day long in a housecoat with a tissue up her sleeve to wipe the sweat from frying meatballs and squash flowers. They’re off the fucking boat, Walker. They don’t even know who you are. My grandfather was a brickmaker in Italy. Not a bricklayer, but the guy who made the fucking bricks. I’m trying to think of something more mind-numbing than creating a brick from scratch, and I can’t. Maybe being out here snorting drugs and fucking around all day. You know why all of the drinks I mix for you taste so good? Because I’ve been slinging them on the side since I was old enough to mix one to pay for that fancy-pants Ivy League school, which I’ll be paying off for ten more
years unless you write this book. So . . . so fuck you.”

  Walker chuckles and smiles a bit to himself. “So fuck me,” he says, his smirk slowly giving way to a full grin. He takes a quick snort of coke and offers me the plate. I do one, too—it’s a glancing blow.

  “Trust me, I’m desperate enough without you stealing shit from me. I’m not going anywhere.”

  “You’ll get it back when we finish.”

  “Is that supposed to motivate you or me?”

  “Both of us. Go back to the cabin. I’ll call you later.”

  CHAPTER 20

  When I walk into the cabin, Claudia is dusting. I have never before seen the woman dust. I’ve seen her do other menial jobs under the guise of thoroughness. But I’m beginning to realize that Claudia focuses on mundane tasks—cleaning the fridge, balancing the checkbook—when she gets stressed, an all-too-common occurrence these days. Indeed, the more dysfunctional this place gets, the better it looks. I figure I’ll really worry when she starts bathing the peacocks.

  I know Claudia likes me; at this point I’d even say we’re friends. But her loyalty to Walker is so complete that I think even she is confused by the depths of it. I can tell she feels bad by the aggressive manner in which she’s polishing the hell out of her desk with an old, torn T-shirt. I feel sorry for Claudia most of the time—I don’t know enough about her or Walker to draw a blueprint of the house of cards they’ve built together—but I have no interest in making her feel worse. She can barely look me in the eye.

  “What’s going on, Claude?”

  “Filthy desk. How did this get so dusty?” She sits in the chair and puts her head in her hands.

  I light up two cigarettes and hand her one. “I don’t know. Is it maybe the fourteen packs of cigarettes we smoke every day? It’s not dust. It’s ashes.”

  Claudia lets out a long sigh. The now-charcoal-gray T-shirt is draped over her lap. “I’m sorry, Alley.”

  “Why? Did you give him my manuscript?”

  She doesn’t answer, only fingers a wood knot on the dark brown desk.

  “Do you know where it is?”

  “Yes, of course I do.”

  “Where is it then?”

  “It’s safe. I promise.”

  “Can’t you just tell me?”

  “If I tell you, you can’t go take it back. Then it’d be hell to pay for both of us.”

  “Fine.”

  “It’s in his bedroom. There’s a safe in the closet. I’m not telling you the combination. But that’s where it is. Trust me, it’s safe. It’s fireproof.”

  “It’s not fire I’m worried about, Claude.”

  “He’s nervous about this book. If he feels taking your manuscript will help, then that’s what we have to do.” She says this so offhandedly, I’m not sure if she knows she’s said it out loud. She shakes her head and stands up. “I need some help.”

  At first I think she means this in some macroexistential way. But when I follow her outside, she merely waves to flats upon flats of flowers in front of the cabin from yet another trip to Von Gundy’s—one Walker took with Devaney last week. A peacock strolls by with purpose, as if on his way to a pressing engagement.

  “Why don’t you get changed?”

  “I’m good. I don’t care if this gets dirty.”

  “It’s pretty sunny, though. You want to be covered up. Your shoulders . . .”

  “I’m good.”

  “We have pots over there.” She points to a storage area behind the peacock coop. “Come on.”

  We lug over eight pots and six bags of potting soil. Claudia takes some pieces of broken pot and places them loosely over the drainage hole in the bottom of the pots. She fills them about three-quarters of the way with soil, and then we start with the impatiens. Outside, the sun feels good and the air clean, and I realize that I haven’t had a lick of exercise since I’ve moved out here. I haven’t hiked or biked or gone for a run. I’ve gone from smoking half a pack a day to two packs at least—and I am ingesting drugs so casually now that it’s hard to tell if I have a problem; it just seems like a condition of employment. The drinking is what it is—constant, the mixing relentless. I would say the alcohol is like oxygen out here, but even that is more scarce at this altitude.

  “Do you want gloves?” Claudia asks.

  “Nah. It’s kind of nice to feel my hands in the dirt.”

  “You seem to know what you’re doing.”

  “My mother has a killer garden. Mostly vegetables—tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini—but I help her when I’m around.”

  “You should cover up. You’re getting red.”

  “I’m fine. I feel like a vampire most of the time now. I think I could use the rays. Vitamin D. Something . . .”

  “Don’t forget, we’re closer to the sun.”

  “I know.” What I want to say is I feel this every day now—that I’m already too close to something hot and bright and capable of burning me at will. We continue to pot the flowers without speaking, Claudia’s spade clicking against the ceramic. “When’s Devaney coming back?”

  Claudia eyes me. “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing,” I say, confused. “I mean, she’s at her mom’s, right?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Walker.”

  “Hmmm.” Claudia heads inside without a word. When she comes out, she has two Heinekens, a pack of Dunhill blues, a lighter, and an ashtray. She hands me a beer and a smoke; our hands are still covered in soil. I can tell Claudia is deciding—as she must do with everyone, I guess—what purpose Walker’s behavior serves and whether it’s okay for her to override his intentions.

  “I don’t think she is,” she says vaguely.

  “Is what?”

  “Coming back.”

  “Really? Is her mother that sick?”

  Claudia looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “I doubt anyone is sick.”

  “Oh. He didn’t tell me. What happened?”

  “What always happens. Walker picks people half his age because he thinks they’re somehow going to be easier to handle or influence or that they’re sexier or something. Then he hates them for being so dumb and inexperienced. Then he hates himself for uprooting their lives, so in order to not feel guilty, he treats them like shit until they run away. This goes for girlfriends and assistants, by the way. I give her credit, though.”

  “For what?”

  “I honestly thought she would last longer. But the shorter they stay, the more I respect them.”

  “Yeah, but what does that make you?” I take a draw off the beer. “You’ve been here forever.”

  “Me? I’m an idiot.”

  “And what does that make me?”

  “Jury’s out.”

  I’m not sure what to make of this news. Like her or not, Devaney has been my buffer thus far with Walker. She’s saved me from a whole host of duties that might start entering my job description in her absence. I wouldn’t necessarily call her a friend, but we had the forced bond of prisonmates, and it wasn’t entirely uncomforting.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” Claudia says.

  “What?”

  “I have to go see my son. He’s up at the house, and from what I understand, he’s pretty sick—mono or pneumonia. He’s resting up there and I have to coordinate his care a bit. But I want you to keep an eye on Walker. I have to tell him later, when we’re both there. I really want to leave tonight. He doesn’t do well when I leave.”

  “Well, he said Larry’s coming to town.” While I feel bad for Claudia’s son, the idea of being alone in the cabin with Larry gives way to multiple fantasies involving coffee and robes, long, hot baths, curling up by the stove while my feet get rubbed by a movie star, games of “hide the Oscar” in the bedroom. For the first time since I’ve been here, I feel the freedom of a teenager whose parents are about to go out of town for the weekend.

  “No, he’s not,” Claudia snaps.

  “Yes, he is. Walker told me las
t night.”

  “Well, he didn’t tell me.” This tone is uncharacteristic from Claudia. I’m trying to figure whom, exactly, she’s mad at.

  “I’m just the messenger, Claude,” I say, holding up my hands.

  She takes a long drag off her cigarette, blowing the smoke out of her nose. “Yeah, well, I guess I’m used to being the messenger for everybody else around here.” Then this: “I’m not sure about Larry sometimes.”

  “What do you mean?” I suppose she could mean he’s a bad influence on Walker or perhaps just not good for me. But there’s something else.

  “You going to be okay here?”

  “I can handle myself.”

  Claudia nods. I’m not new anymore; she believes me when I say this. “You better cover up, Alley. I can see it. You’re burning up.”

  CHAPTER 21

  When Claudia and I head over to the house around suppertime, Walker is watching a baseball game. A joint is smoldering away in the ashtray, and he’s nursing a bottle of Heineken and, of course, a glass of scotch and water.

  “Frick and Fuck,” he says when we come in. “What now?”

  I’ve never seen Claudia so nervous around Walker. “Cody’s really sick,” Claudia says matter-of-factly. “I have to head up to Crested Butte.”

  “When?”

  “Tonight, Walker.”

  “Turn around,” Walker says to me.

  “Excuse me? No. Why?”

  “Relax. I’m not about to goose you, sweetheart. You’re all red.” Claudia was right. My shoulders are cherry-colored from wearing that skimpy cocktail dress in the afternoon sun.

  “I told her to cover up,” Claudia says, trying to sound lighthearted.