Gonzo Girl

by Cheryl Della Pietra

  “Why didn’t you cover up?” asks Walker.

  “I don’t know. We’re only a mile and a half above sea level, not six inches from the sun.”

  “I have to leave to go see Cody,” says Claudia, staying on message. No doubt she’s seen this before—the evasive recast of the situation.

  “At least head down to the pig before you go.” Most people would ask about Claudia’s son, but Walker is staying on message, too.

  “There’s a problem with the pig.”

  “Christ, Claudia. I just need you to take care of it. Did it ever occur to you that I might be having company this weekend?”

  “Actually, no. Because you didn’t tell me.”

  “Come here,” he says to me.

  “Why?”

  “Fuck. Why is everyone always questioning me? I am not paying either of you to ask questions. I am paying for help!”

  “You are not paying either of us, period,” Claudia says quietly.

  I am expecting an eruption of volcanic proportions from Walker, but he simply stares Claudia down. And it occurs to me for the first time how much Walker needs her. She obviously doesn’t want to piss him off, but I see that he doesn’t want to upset her either, and I briefly wonder how long it’s been since Claudia has cashed a paycheck.

  “Just leave, Claudia. Everybody leaves. Are you next?” He looks right at me, motioning me to come closer.

  I blanch. “No.” I stay right where I am.

  “Just get over here. I’m trying to help.” He reaches up in the cabinet to his right—the one that houses CDs, pills, and a few awards, and pulls out a bottle of pure aloe. I’m always caught off guard by the mundane moment at Walker’s. Just when I think it’s all adrenal glands, ATF raids, lysergic acid, and speedballs, he’ll pull out a simple bottle of aspirin, and the effect is always unintentionally hilarious. “Turn around.”

  “Was that a Grammy in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “My banjo playing.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really. It’s for spoken word, you fool. You should know this.”

  I turn my back to Walker and he starts rubbing the aloe over my shoulders. His hands are warm and soft on my neck. The aloe, bracing. If I knew Walker only by his touch, his smell, his lips, I would imagine him to be a much nicer person. One could say that Walker is a nice person—a nice person with a rage disorder, a coke addiction, an alcohol problem, abandonment issues, and clinical insecurities. It’s almost too much to tease out. All I know is that the hairs on my neck are standing on end, and it’s not because of the aloe. Perhaps Walker senses the effect he’s having on me again, but I’m fully aware of Claudia’s presence.

  “I told you,” says Claudia. “There’s a problem. Jimmy’s caught your paranoia. He’s not coming to the pig. He says you have to do it old-school.”

  “Old-school? I’m not heading over there,” Walker says, as something like actual panic crosses his face. Walker’s hands stop kneading my neck, and the aloe suddenly feels sticky and cold on my skin. I’m not sure I like where this is headed.

  “Shall I send one of the peacocks?” scoffs Claudia.

  “Maybe we can send Alley,” Walker says finally.

  “I don’t know,” Claudia says.

  While I appreciate that Walker wants to indoctrinate me, to show me that I belong here, drug runs are illegal. People get killed during drug runs, like, all the time. I’m not entirely sure this is the kind of street cred I’m looking for.

  “Hello? I’m here. Don’t I get some say in this?”

  They both ignore me.

  “Goddamnit, you can’t just go, Claudia.” Walker slams his fist on the table.

  Claudia rolls her eyes. “You’ll survive a few days, Walker. I’ll be back on Sunday. Alley can do it. It’s just one envelope.”

  “It’s two, actually.” Claudia’s eyebrows go up. “I just said, Larry’s coming into town.”

  “And how are we paying Jim? Gift certificate? Peacock eggs?”

  “The back.”

  I briefly imagine my manuscript floating in a sea of hundred-dollar bills in Walker’s safe. Claudia goes to the back bedroom and returns a few minutes later with an envelope.

  “Here.” She gives it to me, then Walker grabs my face in both hands and turns me toward him.

  “Listen . . . very . . . closely,” Walker says, looking at me as if we’re speaking two different languages.

  I am being told to do this, not asked. “Okay. What?”

  “I’m going to give you directions to a mailbox. Put this in it. There should be two envelopes in the box. Take them out. Put them in the glove compartment and come directly back here unless you feel like you’re being followed. Don’t speed, don’t drive ridiculously slow, and obey all traffic laws. If you’re stopped by the police, act like an idiot.”

  “What if I feel like I’m being followed?”

  “You won’t be,” Walker says.

  “Then go to the tavern,” Claudia says. “And call here.”

  “And then what, you moron?” Walker says. “You’re not going to be followed.”

  “So I’m doing this?”

  He scribbles directions on the back of a cardboard coaster, apparently seeing this question as rhetorical.

  “See you all on Sunday,” Claudia says, and hightails it out of there.

  Walker simply hands me the keys to the car. He can’t even look at me. I get into the Caprice and pull the seat forward as far as it can go. I briefly wonder if a joke is being played on me. I mean, if you’re trying to look unassuming, this is hands down not the vehicle to be driving. Plus, everyone in a ten-mile radius knows it’s Walker’s car. I might get pulled over simply for being in this thing, much less having an ounce in the glove box. I turn the key and the engine thrums to life. It occurs to me that it’s been years since I’ve even driven a car. I went right from a city college—where I didn’t have a car anyway—to living in New York City. I put the Caprice in reverse and slowly back down the driveway. I stop at the bottom and unlock the gate. I can see now that the blinds are pulled down in the kitchen, and I think I see them flutter slightly. I back out of the gate, stop the car, then lock the gate again.

  Even though Walker gave me a coaster with an address, I don’t need it. I remember Jim’s from when I first got here and we were stopped by the cops, even though it seems years ago. I drive about a mile up the mountain and simply can’t help myself. I pull over at a scenic marker, open the envelope, and count $1,000 in cash. Ten hundred-dollar bills.

  “Fuck,” I say. It dawns on me, suddenly and not so subtly, that I am doing a drug run. I repeat it to myself a few times, but quietly—as if a DEA agent might be under the passenger seat next to the minibar Walker has fashioned there. I try to convince myself that this is just part of my job description and somehow divorced from the fact that I’m actually doing a drug run, but that doesn’t stick. I could have said no. I could have drawn the line. I still could, though I have no idea what holy hell that would reap. But this has the feeling of decision time, and I check myself in the rearview. I look at myself for a while, like they do in the movies. I process the dark circles under my eyes, like a badge of honor, my red lipstick bleeding off my upper lip, where a few drops of sweat have formed. Then I do what that movie character would probably do: I look at the back of the coaster, just to double-check I know where I’m going, take a deep breath, and slowly, but not too slowly, step on the gas.

  CHAPTER 22

  When Walker calls the next afternoon to tell me Larry is here and to come over, I’m already showered and dressed. I had heard his car come up the drive but didn’t want to seem too eager. With the many balancing acts I’ve had to perform here—with Walker, Claudia, Larry, Devaney, whoever else shows up—my strategy has been to let everything come to me. To sit back, be patient, and watch it all play out. But nothing I do is not thought through. I decide on a black jersey wrap-top, jeans, and boo
ts so I can purposely appear as if I haven’t tried too hard. I deliberately wait fifteen minutes before making my way across the driveway. But when I’m just a few feet from Walker’s door, I hear something I hadn’t anticipated: a woman’s voice. I try to place it, finally settling on a horror movie I’d seen in college—She’s Not Sleeping—in which the murderer commits her foul acts, unbeknownst to her, in a twilight sleep. The star of that movie: September McAvoy.

  I take a deep breath as I enter the breezeway, not sure what’s coming my way. When I turn into the kitchen, all eyes are on me—Larry’s eyes apologetic, Walker’s eyes steeled, September’s eyes cheerfully screaming, Let’s be best buddies!

  But it’s just so easy to hate September McAvoy. First of all, she’s named after a month—but not April or May, or even June, which I could probably stomach. My guess is her real name is something plain, like Karen or Lisa. Or maybe it really is September, the product of some sort of unbearable hippie union. Maybe she was born in September. It doesn’t matter. She’s impossibly skinny and her teeth are impossibly white, and her long, blond hair glows like a Thoroughbred’s mane, and she’s super-duper fucking nice.

  Then there are all the things about September McAvoy that I learn to loathe within the first hour of meeting her.

  One, the second you walk into Walker’s kitchen, she touches your arm as she greets you, so you feel slightly chummy. But you’d also like to hit her hard in the face. So there’s that.

  Two, she swears a lot for no good reason in an apparent attempt to make you think she’s somehow street, even though her DNA has been more carefully cultivated than that of most Kentucky Derby racehorses. She’s the offspring of a famous-actress mother and an equally famous-director father and is wearing boots that cost as much as your tax return. She fancies herself a “broad,” saying things like “That fucking fella was, like, so fucking unbelievably crazy,” while punctuating the air with her cigarette, even though she’s in her early twenties.

  Three, she has an affinity for highbrow/lowbrow drinks like Dubonnet on ice and Pabst Blue Ribbon. She asks me for both of these at the same time.

  Four, she crinkles her nose a lot as some sort of signifier that she “understands,” and when she smiles, she often puts her tongue between her teeth. She frequently performs these two actions in tandem—the nose-crinkle/tongue-teeth thing, an idiosyncrasy she carries to the big screen, is the primary reason why she’s often referred to as America’s Sweetheart.

  Five, she smiles when she talks about everything, so she looks like some kind of hot ventriloquist, even when she’s downloading with Walker and Larry about the cyclone in Bangladesh.

  Six, she shines like a fucking birthday candle.

  And seven, while I notice pretty much every move September McAvoy makes, the worst one is the simple placement of her hand on Larry’s leg.

  I’m willing to admit that I’m not objective when it comes to September McAvoy. Walker and Larry, for their parts, are sitting there acting as if everything were completely normal, so I figure the “mature” thing to do is to pretend as if everything were completely normal as well—and to drink entirely too much straight tequila.

  “So, Walker,” September coos. “I hear you have some guns.” She might actually just be a dipshit.

  “You know how to shoot, honey?”

  “Just movies, baby. Just movies.” Nose crinkle. Drink of PBR.

  Larry is looking around the room as if he were in the principal’s office. I am perched, perhaps like the principal, at the end of the counter, smoking as passive-aggressively as I can. I down another shot of straight Cuervo, completely forgoing the limes and salt.

  “You got any weed, Walker?” Larry asks.

  Walker rummages around in a drawer and produces an almost-empty baggie with nothing but shake. He hands Larry the bag and a pipe, then takes out one of the envelopes I successfully retrieved from Jim’s last night. He cuts a few lines, does two of them, and passes the tray to September. After September does a line, she says, “So, Alessandra. You’re helping Walker write his book?”

  “Something like that.”

  Walker shoots me a look that conveys something along the lines of Make some compelling chitchat, and he does another line, then passes me the tray.

  “How’s the movie coming?” I ask her, snorting up two lines—real snorts, because clearly I’m not already enough on edge.

  “Film,” she says.

  “I’m sorry, what did I say?” I pour another shot of tequila and start cutting limes from the fruit bowl.

  “Movie. You called it a movie.”

  “Sorry, the dif?”

  “Seriousness,” she says.

  “And what are you in the film? A cat?”

  “Yes. Well, like Catwoman.”

  “Sounds serious. What does one do to prepare for a role as a cat?”

  “Stop eating.” She laughs. “Wardrobe really makes you stop eating!”

  “I believe you.” I overlaugh back. She looks about ninety-five pounds soaking wet, and I can tell by the way she does the line of coke that this has been her breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the past month.

  “What the fuck are you doing in the film, Larry?”

  “Uh, well, you know. I . . . the last time I was here . . . I told you . . .”

  “You told me a lot of things the last time you were here, so forgive me for not knowing which stuff is true and which stuff is bullshit.”

  “Oh, jeez,” Walker says.

  “I think I’d like to see some of those guns,” September says.

  “To the range!” Walker bellows, though when he says it this time, it’s as if he were saying it in a vacuum. This foursome is feeling tired already, fueled by my rage, Larry’s fear, September’s stupidity, and Walker’s jealousy. Plus, I’ve managed, in a short time, to become seriously drunk. Still, we all dutifully follow Walker back to the gun room like schoolchildren forced into some lame field trip. Walker retrieves a bunch of guns and hands each of us one. As September and Larry make their way out to the range, I fix Walker with a death stare.

  “You probably don’t want a firearm in my hands right now,” I say.

  He wipes a drop of tequila from my chest. “What’s that?”

  “Fuck off.” I swat his hand away.

  When we get to the range, September continues to act like an idiot. She has that easy, breezy way some girls have of being stupid to make men feel close to her. I’m disappointed to see that it’s working on Walker, with her various incarnations of “How do you hold this crazy thing?” I decide to sit on the bench far away from them before someone ends up with ammo in his or her head. My mother always said that Italians can’t drink tequila or gin, and I realize now that she’s right. I feel like I could crush some living thing with my bare hands. I’m Mussolini in ’42.

  Larry makes his way over to where I am, even though every syllable of my body language is screaming at him to not come a step closer.

  He holds up his hands. “Truce?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Can I at least sit?”

  “At your peril.” We watch Walker and September go through their own dance. All sorts of lines are being blurred—no doubt September is trying to impress Larry, and Walker is trying to impress me. “What is she, your month of the month?”

  Larry chuckles. “That’s pretty good.”

  “Can you tell me why on earth you would bring her out here? Don’t you have anything at all to say?”

  “Don’t look at me. Walker insisted. He got her on the phone himself.”

  “I mean, don’t you have anything to say to me?”

  “Alley, come on. Now you’re showing your age. This is Rome out here. When in Rome, you know . . . Nothing out here is meant to last.”

  “Why do people keep saying this? Half my family is from Rome. And no one I know treats people this way.”

  “Why do you think I come out here?”

  “I don’t know. Free drugs. Idiot pran
ks. Sex with jailbait.”

  “It’s all fantasy out here. There’s no work or competition or worries. We just let it all hang out.”

  “Like I said, free drugs, idiot pranks, and sex with jailbait.”

  “Maybe you’re right. But don’t be mad at me. It’s not like I made promises I couldn’t keep.”

  Maybe Larry’s right that I’m showing my age—that only twenty-two-year-olds see sex with someone as a promise. “I’m not sure who I should be mad at. It’s so hard to tell out here sometimes.”

  Larry lets out a long sigh. “I have to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  “This is awkward. The sleeping arrangements. I tried to get a room in town but there’s some convention. It was impossible.” He crinkles his nose now, too.

  “Sleep in my room with the cat, I don’t care. I’ll take Claudia’s bed. Just remember to change her litter box.”

  “Thanks, Alley. And, look. For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not worth much.”

  “Wait a minute,” I hear September say to Walker. “Are Aspen trees named after Aspen? That’s the first time I ever really thought of that.”

  “Good luck with that,” I say to Larry. I get up and head over to the cabin, and I can feel Walker’s eyes on me, even as he’s holding a firearm behind one of the hottest women in Hollywood.

  CHAPTER 23

  I wake up early the next morning and sit out on the porch with a cup of coffee and a worn copy of Emma that was in Claudia’s room. Without my manuscript, my free time feels wasted, unformed. Without Claudia here I am feeling, for the first time, lonely and unmoored. What’s worse is the closed door of my bedroom—I just don’t want to be here when everyone wakes up. I don’t want to have to play “single dorm friend” in the sex-and-drug haze Larry and September will inevitably be in. I head across the driveway, over to the bench by the range, where I put my feet up and drink in the cool Colorado morning. I’m wearing the pink tracksuit that has become my “comfy clothes” out here, and I’ve brought a notebook in which I start to jot thoughts about Walker’s manuscript. I’m wondering how he intends to end the book, but I have ideas of my own. I start to sketch an outline.