“Jeez. Sorry. How’s Walker?”
“He’s fine, I guess. Just as you said he would be. Didn’t you read about it in the paper?” I reach for a cigarette on Claudia’s desk.
“I did. That was some crazy shit, right?”
“Right. Crazy,” I say as impassively as I can. There is a long pause that I refuse to fill with chitchat. If Larry called to talk to me, then he can do the talking.
“I’m actually calling to see how you’re doing.”
“Me? Awesome. I’m really awesome.” I bite my bottom lip. My head is throbbing beneath the butterfly. “That was, like, totally my idea of a fun Saturday night.”
“I’m sorry, Alley.”
“I know, Larry. You’re a sorry son of a bitch. How ironic you’re playing a superhero.”
“I would be pretty mad, too, if I were you.” He says this like he’s my therapist—like he’s a dispassionate third party.
“Don’t think that you’re welcome out here anymore, by the way. You don’t go taking drugs from Walker Reade and expect to be invited back to the party.”
“Seriously, Alley. I was trying to help him. What if the cops had come and the drugs were still there? You think I can’t get cocaine in LA?”
“Whatever. Look, just don’t call over here again. Gotta go.” I slam down the phone, and a minute later it rings again. “What about ‘gotta go’ don’t you understand?”
“Christ. Please don’t go.” It’s Walker. “Come over. Let’s relax. Hot tub. Drinks. Whatever movie you want. Please.” It’s Good Walker. Fun Walker. Slightly Drunk Walker.
I look down at Claudia’s desk calendar, which is empty save for a dentist appointment. I finger the word dentist and wait on the line.
“I need one of those margaritas you make.”
“Fine,” I say finally, feeling like a drink myself. “But just for one movie.”
“Fine.”
When I walk into the house, Walker is uncharacteristically bustling about the kitchen. The microwave is glowing, and something is rotating inside it. The whole room smells like burnt enchiladas. Walker has two plates out with silverware and cloth napkins, and the blender is set up. He’s already juiced a bunch of limes, and the tequila and triple sec are arranged neatly on the counter. Two candles are burning, and Walker has a stack of movies by my plate—old comedies he knows I’m fond of: Caddyshack, Airplane!, National Lampoon’s Vacation.
The microwave beeps, and Walker takes out a tray with an oven mitt. He looks nervous. As he slides the Mexican food onto our plates, I go to the freezer for ice and start mixing the margaritas.
“Are you nuking for me? You shouldn’t have.”
“I suppose it’s the least I can do. I don’t know how to do much else.” Really nervous.
“You don’t have to be so nice. I’m not suing you.”
“Well, maybe I just feel like being nice.”
“Okay.”
“And I was thinking, if you’re leaving, we should have some sort of exit interview.”
“Right,” I say, knowing he’s fishing. “For HR purposes, of course.”
“Right, HR.” He chuckles. “Goddamn HR.”
“And what if I’m staying?”
“Either way, we’re gonna need a drink.”
I start blending the ice and tequila, the limes and triple sec. I reach for the glasses to salt them, and I realize Walker is right beside me. He’s so close I can feel the body heat from his arm, even though we’re not touching. He’s so close that I can feel how sorry he is.
“You taking notes? Because it’s my secret recipe. I’m not writing it down.”
“You mix a hell of a drink, sweetheart.”
“Coming from you, I’ll take that as a compliment.” I salt the glass rims and pour the margaritas from the blender. “Let’s eat.”
“Do you want to watch something?” Walker motions to the stack of movies by my plate.
“Not really. Not if we’re having an interview.”
He motions for me to sit, and we start eating. The enchiladas are about a thousand degrees, entirely overnuked. I put a fork in mine, and an alarming cloud of steam rises to the ceiling. That’s the thing about Walker: the man can ingest buckets of drugs and write Pulitzer Prize–winning books, but he can’t microwave an enchilada.
“Are you trying to kill me again?” I ask, laughing.
“I followed the fucking directions. Oh, hell . . .”
“It’ll cool down.”
The phone rings, and Walker picks up. It’s Claudia.
“She’s over here. . . . Just leave it in the breezeway. . . . It’s fine.” Apparently the pig’s ass is open for business again. He hangs up the phone and then stares at me for a long time. At first I think he might try to kiss me—but his demeanor changes from soft to steeled on a dime. “I just want you to know that there are about a million people who would trade places with you right now. They’d kill for this job.”
“I’m sorry, is this an interview? An apology?”
“It’s a fact. Do you know why they’d kill for this job?”
“I don’t know, the promise of a nervous disorder . . . lung cancer . . . a traumatic brain injury?”
“Because out there, I still mean something. Maybe not here. Maybe not to you. You think I’m a joke. You think I’m a sorry, washed-up son of a bitch who needs help from you, a child. But trust me, my name in your life will get you places. You’ll see.”
I stare blankly at Walker, unsure of what to say.
“Wipe that look off your face. What did you expect here? Violins? Rose petals?”
“I don’t know. I was under the impression that you were sorry and were going to apologize.”
“I just did.”
“I was expecting more.”
“You aren’t going to get it.”
I hear Claudia come into the breezeway, and just as quickly the door closing. “You want to go get that?”
“You go get it. You’re my assistant.”
“Maybe I’m not.”
“Well, then maybe you should leave. Did it ever occur to you that your approval and your opinion don’t matter one goddamn bit out here? I made my name doing exactly what I’m doing.”
“Or undoing. Seriously, Walker. It’s like . . . I dunno . . .” I trail off before deciding that the truth will set me free. “It’s like a . . . slow-motion suicide out here.”
“Beg your pardon?” I half expect the dishes to start flying, but surprisingly, Walker just shakes his head. He’s quiet for a minute, then reaches into the cabinet, pulls down a binder, and slides it across the counter to me. I open it and start thumbing through and realize it’s the manuscript with my rewrites. A copy. I gulp down half of my margarita.
“What was your plan, little girl?”
“I didn’t really have one. This place isn’t exactly conducive to planning.”
“Why do you think Claudia lives with my assistant? So you can paint your toes together? Talk about boys? She’s not much more than a spy. I know what toothpaste you use. I know your brothers’ names. Christ, I got your manuscript. You think she couldn’t get my own?”
“How long have you known?”
“Since the first call to Lionel. Come on . . .”
“So why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because it’s . . . actually not all that awful.” Walker says this more with surprise than admiration, but given the multitude of worst-case scenarios I’ve played out in my head these many months, it’s as close to a compliment as I can possibly imagine in this moment. “I appreciate your naive enthusiasm, but at this point I am not much more than a cash cow for Lionel Gray and his enterprise. It doesn’t have to be good, or even pretty good, anymore. It just has to get out there.”
“I’m not sure what I’m even doing is all that great.”
“Yeah, well, you work hard. That’s what most writing is. Working hard for wild mediocrity. That’s the bitch of it. Isn’t it?”
“I guess so.” I d
on’t want this to be true. And a part of me refuses to have it be true about Walker.
“There’s no free lunch, sweetheart. Comes with the territory. This is what this is. Now, please. Go get the envelope.”
I head into the breezeway and pick up the yellow envelope on the floor. I might as well be putting the needle right into the junkie’s arm.
“Thank you.” Walker opens it. “I’m not going to beg you to stay. Maybe you keep this up, I don’t want you to stay. Maybe I’ll fire you. So watch yourself. You think you’re indispensable, but trust me, you’re not.”
“It’s not my editing that makes me indispensable.” I don’t exactly know what I’m trying to say when this comes out of my mouth, but it’s met with enough silence to suggest that I might have, in fact, said something.
“What do you think?” Walker motions to the food.
“We can probably dig in now. It only looks about six hundred degrees.” I pick the enchilada apart with my fork, but so much steam is still inside it, it’s like a mini fog machine.
“Christ. Do you want to put one of those movies in now?”
“Sure.” When I pick up Caddyshack and put it in the VCR, it’s something of a relief. For months, our constant nighttime companions have been CNN, movies, vintage porn—our company and comfort, the background hum to our daily bacchanal. Saved from ourselves by the sublime idiocy of the movie, we drink and eat through the first half in almost total silence. Then, for dessert, Walker grabs the yellow envelope and fishes out the plastic bag inside. He does two lines but does not offer me any and motions to the couch. We climb over the back, then sit side by side before Walker puts his head in my lap and grabs an afghan for himself. His body makes a perfect fetal arc out of necessity. I have my hand on his chest, his hand draped over mine. We’ve sat like this a few times, Walker and me, in a pose best described as Mother and Sick Child. We watch the second half of the movie like this—there might as well be tomato soup and grilled cheese in front of us—and when it’s over, we stay there. It wouldn’t feel unnatural right now to shuffle down the hall and follow Walker into bed. Indeed, our intimacy is like that of a long-married couple, with its routines and slights, its complexity and codependence, even though I’ve been here less than five months.
Instead, Walker looks up at me from my lap and simply says, “Sleep on it.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Walker gets up and grabs my rifle from behind the counter and hands it to me. “Get home safe.”
“I will.”
“I’ll have my eye on you.”
“I know.”
We walk out to the threshold of the breezeway. The sky is holding a million stars, and the moon is holding court. When I face Walker, I lean in, eyes closed, almost as a reflex. The kiss comes like a sigh, with no urgency or desperation. Only tenderness. When I touch Walker’s face, when my lips feel his, there is nothing but softness.
CHAPTER 26
The next morning at the cabin, Claudia puts on a pot of coffee and slides onto the table a blue Bic lighter, two unopened cigarette packs, and a large, clean glass ashtray straight out of The Big Sleep. “We need to talk.”
“Looks like we’re going to be here for a while. Should I eat first? Call a lawyer?” Cigarettes and coffee might be breakfast for Claudia, but I occasionally need real food.
“Well, definitely eat. I’ll be back in a minute.”
I pour myself a bowl of Raisin Bran and open both packs of cigarettes. Claudia comes back into the room with a brown paper bag and tosses it on the table. I can’t see what’s inside it, but it lands with a heavy thud.
“We’ll get to that in a minute.” She lights up a cigarette and crosses her legs. Claudia is decked out in her signature wardrobe: faded jeans, which she calls dungarees, and a loose-fitting top. Today her hair is in two braids, making her look like a hippie Heidi or a weathered Pippi Longstocking. I light up a cigarette for myself, which is Claudia’s cue to begin.
“I need to know your plans.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“Right this second?”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why does everyone need to know what I’m doing right this second?”
“If you’re leaving, we need to get another assistant.”
“Just like that? Just hand the vat of aspirin to someone else?”
“We have to keep things moving. You know we’re in trouble.”
I take a long drag off the cigarette. Claudia’s demeanor betrays the weight of the eight assistants who have come and gone with this book. Real worry passes over her face like a shadow.
“Okay. If you are asking me to answer you this second, I’m leaving.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know, I feel like I’m being pushed.”
“Sorry, but there isn’t a week here to spare while you get overly dramatic about a little cut.” This is the first time Claudia has taken a tone with me. If familiarity breeds contempt, I am now officially familiar.
“Oh, really.”
“Really.”
“This isn’t a good enough reason to leave?” I point to my eye.
“Around here? No. That’s like a baptism.” The coffeemaker starts sputtering, and Claudia gets up and pours two mugs full. She takes hers black but tosses the half-and-half on the table for me. “Do you know that Walker shot at me once? Shot at me! He wasn’t trying to miss either. He grazed my leg.”
“I’m sorry. Is that supposed to make me feel better about staying? Is this what I have to look forward to? Hoping for a superficial flesh wound?”
“Maybe.”
“You told me when I got here that he would never really hurt me. That you never felt unsafe.”
“That’s still true. I repeat: you have a little cut over your eye.”
It’s amazing to me that these millimeters matter for Claudia—that there is a difference, in her mind, between a graze on her leg and a bullet hole through her thigh. She seems to view these near misses as precise and intentional rather than a product of dumb, drunken luck.
“With all due respect, Claudia, I think you’re missing the big picture here. I’d start worrying about all of these guns if I were you.”
“Please, Alley. Nothing is going to happen.”
“It’s not necessarily us I’m worried about.”
Claudia inhales on her cigarette and lets out a short, sharp breath. She wraps her arms around herself so she looks either like a defiant child or like an old woman who’s been left out in the cold. It’s obviously not the first time this idea has crossed her mind, but Claudia has not survived this long out here by obsessing on what-ifs. What’s in front of her is a mound of debt and an unfinished book.
“You’re safe here,” she says finally.
“Relatively speaking, I suppose you’re right. It just doesn’t feel that way.”
“Don’t you see: Walker only does stuff like this to the people he trusts—the people he thinks won’t leave him. The people he likes. It’s like the kid who gives shit to his parents because he knows they’ll always love him.”
“You think he’d really respect me if I stayed?”
“Trust me. He won’t respect you if you go. He’ll think you’re chickenshit.” Claudia punctuates this sentiment with a hard flick of her ash.
Claudia and I both hold our cigarettes the same way, with one arm folded over our midsection, supporting the elbow of the arm holding the cigarette. If we were both prettier, we’d look like models at a cocktail party, but in the confines of our spartan kitchen—the beige curtains yellowing on the inside, the cheap oak table and chairs—we’re more like dormmates on a reluctant camping trip.
“Do you know that since you’ve been out here—almost five months—you’ve gotten one hundred and forty pages out of Walker? That’s more than anyone has in the past two years . . . combined. Eight assistants.”
“Yeah, I keep hearing about these eight assistants. What the hell happened to
them? Are they buried under the range? Why did they leave?”
“Let’s see: the first couldn’t hang, second got engaged, third went a little crazy, fourth fell in love, fifth got another job, sixth was only out here to work on a tell-all, seventh was a whiner, and eighth was an idiot.”
“Sounds like I’m in good company.”
“You’re at least getting pages.”
“So what? They’re not any good. He puts a piece of paper in the typewriter, starts pecking away. It’s gibberish. I might as well be blindfolding him and turning him around three times with the state he’s in when he tries to write.”
“They’re good enough. That’s what Lionel says. And he’d tell me.”
“Good enough—after I rewrite. I mean, now that I know that you know, let’s cut the crap. Walker told me he knows about my edits. So you know I’m rewriting . . . a lot. But I’m still only rewriting to, like, a B-. I’m not even making it very good. He’s shot, Claude.”
“You rewrite to a B-. Lionel makes it an A. All good.”
Claudia grinds the last of her cigarette into the ashtray. All of her smoking idiosyncrasies are violent: She inhales like it’s her dying breath. She exhales like she’s trying to exorcise something. She ashes like she’s mad. And when the cigarette is done, she folds it in two and crushes it like a spider she’s trying to kill.
“And look. If it weren’t you rewriting him to a B-, it would be someone else along the line. That’s how these things work, kiddo. A lot of mouths get fed by the Walker Reade brand—book publishers, agents, magazine editors, movie studios, audiobook producers. Christ, the man single-handedly keeps Tilley Hats and the Woody Creek Tavern in business. So what if the past ten years it’s been a steady decline? What the hell do you expect? I mean, he’s not living it anymore. There’s no road trip anymore. He’s holed up here being high and paranoid. Let’s just say it. Do you really think he planned on living this long?”
“I honestly don’t know how he has.”
“So let’s take this to its logical conclusion. You leave, and what are you going to do back East? Take some shitty job to make enough money to move back to the city and do what? Sling more drinks? Grind away at some magazine? Stay at your parents’? Help clean the house? Plumb?” This last word comes out of Claudia’s mouth slathered in contempt.
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