The Family Fang: A Novel (6 page)

Later that day, at a dinner for the principal actors at Freeman’s rented mansion, Annie showed up to find one of her naked photos plastered all over the house. Freeman walked into the hallway to greet her, taking nonchalant bites of a novelty-size candy bar that oozed caramel.

“What’s this about?” she asked, tearing down one of the photos, balling it up in her hand.

“You’re famous now,” he said, “thanks to me.”

She knocked the candy bar out of his hand and walked out of the house.

“We’ll look back at this and laugh,” he yelled.

She fumbled for the keys to her car, dropping them three times, starting to cry, when she saw Minda running down the walkway toward her. Though they were the two stars of the movie, they had almost no scenes together and Annie rarely saw her costar on set. To see Minda coming at her so quickly, her face contorted, her hands out, shouting for her to wait a second, Annie felt the sudden urge to run away from her, but found she could not move. Within seconds, Minda was holding her arm, panting for breath, nearly crying.

“It’s awful, isn’t it?” she wheezed.

Annie just nodded; she had her keys in her hand and wanted to unlock the car door, but Minda would not let go of her arm.

“Just awful,” she continued, her voice returning to normal. “I told Freeman to stop it, but you know how he is. He writes these amazing roles for us, but I think he genuinely hates women.”

Annie, again, nodded. She wondered if, years from now, she would be unable to move her neck at all as a result of the repetitive, silent way that she had avoided the need for speech.

“Do you want to go somewhere?” Minda asked her.

Annie, reaching inside of herself, produced her voice and said, “Yeah, sure.”

They ended up in a tiny bar, the patrons either unaccustomed to beautiful women wearing ridiculously expensive T-shirts or completely oblivious to them, and sat undisturbed at a corner table and sipped whiskey and ginger ale.

“What are you going to do?” Minda asked, still holding Annie’s arm, as if Annie might run away if she let go, which, Annie thought, might be true. Still, it was nice to have someone interested in her and not telling her she was losing her mind.

“I don’t know,” Annie said. “Finish the movie, I guess, and get the hell out of here. Take a break from acting.”

“Don’t do that,” Minda said, genuinely alarmed.

“What? Why?” Annie asked.

“You’re so good at it,” Minda said. “I mean, you’re incredible.”

“Well, I, well, I guess, well,” Annie would have gone on like this for hours but Minda took over.

“I love acting but I’m not very good at it yet. I’m operating on some fucked-up idea of what I’m supposed to be doing, but you know what to do instinctually. It’s incredible to watch you.”

“But we haven’t done any scenes together.”

“I watch you,” Minda said, smiling. “I watch from a safe distance.”

“Oh,” Annie said.

“That doesn’t freak you out, does it?” she asked. Annie shook her head.

“It’s fine; lots of people watch me.”

“But I watch very closely,” Minda said, squeezing Annie’s arm so tightly that her fingers began to tingle.

It finally dawned on Annie, Minda Laughton was hitting on her. It dawned on Annie, Minda Laughton had been in seven movies and, in four of them, she had kissed another woman. It dawned on Annie, Minda Laughton was pretty damn gorgeous, wide-open eyes and a graceful neck and a face so unmarked and smooth that it did not seem surgical but rather a kind of magic spell.

Minda leaned across the table and kissed Annie, who did not resist. When she sat back down, Minda chewed on her lip and then said, “I made out with Freeman a few weeks ago.”

“Well, that was a terrible idea,” Annie said.

Minda laughed and then continued, “I just didn’t want you to hear about it from somebody else and think that I was just trying to make out with everybody in the movie.”

“Just me and Freeman.”

“And the continuity girl.”

“Really?”

“She was telling me about her uncle who tried to kiss her and I had a similar story and then we just started kissing. I don’t think she remembers. She was pretty drunk.”

“You were not?”

“I was not,” Minda said.

“So just me, Freeman, and the continuity girl?”

“That’s it. And I’ll stick with you from here on out if you’d like.”

“Well, let’s not get crazy here,” Annie said, feeling her feet grip the edge of something that felt important.

“Why not?” Minda said, and Annie, slightly drunk, could not think of a single reason.

A
nnie rolled the first of her Skee-Balls, polished hardwood, like a weapon in her hands, down the lane, bumping over the ball-hop, and into the fifty-point ring. “Beginner’s luck,” she said. Eric smiled and, on the adjoining machine, waited as the nine balls rolled into position. “Another bet,” he said, “since you did so well on the first one?” Annie rolled another ball down the lane, fifty points. “And yet you still got me to answer your question,” she said.

“I’m good at my job,” he said.

“What’s the question this time?” she asked, already prepared for the answer.

“Minda Laughton,” Eric replied.

“Fine,” Annie thought, “why not?”

“Fine,” Annie said, “why not?”

Eric picked up his first Skee-Ball and rolled it expertly down the lane, a short hop, and into the fifty-point ring. A split second later, the second ball hopped into the fifty-point ring, then a third, fourth, and fifth. Annie stared at Eric, who was trying not to smile. All nine Skee-Balls ended up in the fifty-point ring, the machine flashing and sirens blaring, tickets spitting out of the dispenser and piling at Eric’s feet.

“So, you’re a Skee-Ball hustler,” Annie said, miffed.

“I’m in a league,” he said.

“You’re in a Skee-Ball league?”

“Yes.”

“We can still tie, you know,” Annie said, “then I don’t have to answer the question.”

“Fair enough,” Eric responded. “Just seven more to go.”

Annie felt the heft of the Skee-Ball in her hand, swung her arm back with great force, and then felt a sudden and total resistance to the motion. She felt her index and middle fingers jam spectacularly, and she jerked her hand back as if electrocuted. Then she heard the sound of a child crying. She looked down and saw a little girl, perhaps six years old, lying flat out on the ground, holding her head, Annie’s Skee-Ball rolling to a stop against another machine.

“Holy shit,” Eric said, his voice hushed.

“What?” Annie said. “What happened?”

“Well,” Eric said, running over to the girl, Annie following, “you hit this little kid in the head with your Skee-Ball. Or your fist. Maybe both.”

“Holy shit,” Annie said, her voice breaking as she spoke.

The child was on her knees now, rubbing her head, hiccupping from the force of her crying.

“It’s okay,” Eric said. “Easy now.”

Annie ran over to Eric’s Skee-Ball machine and tore off the strip of tickets he had won. She hurried back to the little girl, as if she was an unstable element that might explode.

“Take these,” Annie said, and the girl began to quiet.

“And these,” Annie then said, handing her the nearly full cup of quarters.

“And this,” Annie finally said, handing the girl twenty dollars.

The girl, eyes red-rimmed, nose runny, smiled and then walked away. Annie saw a small bump already forming on the back of her head and wondered what would happen when the girl’s parents saw it and came looking for answers.

“Let’s get out of here,” she told Eric.

“I won that round,” Eric said.

“Fair enough. Jesus, let’s just go.”

“That was something.”

“You’re not going to put that in the article, are you?”

“I don’t see how I could leave it out; you just knocked out a little girl.”

Annie, exasperated and terrified of retribution, began to walk quickly out of the arcade, the sun temporarily blinding her. She would answer his questions, go home, pack up her belongings, and move to Mexico. She would star in
telenovelas
and drink herself into a stupor. She would let it get worse before it got better.

L
ess than a week after making out with Minda in the bar and, later, in Minda’s hotel room, Annie walked to the makeup trailer and, as her stylist fixed her face, noticed the cover of the latest issue of
’Razzi Magazine
. “Co-Stars in Love,” read the headline, and there were two photos, one of Minda and one of Annie, doctored to look like they were shoulder to shoulder in a single picture. The stylist noticed Annie’s look of horror. “That’s you,” she said, pointing to the magazine. “I know,” Annie said. “And that’s Minda,” the stylist continued. “Yes,” Annie said, “I know.” There was a pause of perhaps ten seconds while Annie considered the ramifications of the cover. “It says you’re a couple,” the stylist said, and Annie grabbed that magazine and busted the door of the trailer open.

When she found Minda, Annie read her a few lines from the article. “A close friend of the couple says that they are genuinely in love and have never been happier,” Annie recited. Minda smiled. “It’s sweet,” she said.

“It’s not true,” Annie said.

“Well, kind of,” Minda replied, still smiling.

“Well, not really,” Annie said.

“Apples and oranges.”

“What?”

“Apples and oranges.”

“That doesn’t—”

“Well, I think it’s sweet.”

“And who is this
close friend
?” Annie said. “I don’t have any close friends.”

“It’s me,” Minda said, her smile less a smile and more like paralysis.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.”

“I told my publicist and she told some magazines and so now it’s official.”

Annie felt like she was traveling downhill in a machine whose wheels had, at that exact moment, come off, sparks shooting past her face, nothing to do but wait until things had come to a complete stop and she could get out and run away.

O
nce they found a restaurant far enough away from the arcade and were seated, Annie placed her hand flat on the table, palm down. Her index and middle fingers were swelling at a rapid pace and she was finding it difficult to bend them. While Eric ate a hamburger that looked like something a person who had never seen a hamburger would create if challenged to do so, Annie told him about Minda, the misunderstanding that had transpired, the closeness that inevitably occurs when two people are putting their creative selves into a singular project. She didn’t tell him about the arguments and the stalking and the occasional moments when she would relent and sleep with Minda, the times that she thought she should just smother her with a pillow and rid the world of one more insane person. Unlike Minda, she kept some things to herself.

“Well,” Eric said, his plate a pool of ketchup and mustard and mushrooms and fried onions and all the other things his hamburger had been unable to contain (Annie thought, “I could make a salad out of what fell out of your burger”), “what I really wanted to talk about, what I find most interesting about you, is your family.”

Annie felt a bubble of air travel into her brain, a searing pain that flashed and was gone. Her family. Could she perhaps just keep talking about her tits and her lesbian stalker?

“For instance,” he continued, “you don’t go by your real last name.”

“My agent thought it would typecast me, nothing but horror films. It sounds made up anyways, don’t you think?” she asked.

“A little. Is it?”

“I don’t think so. It’s Eastern European; it might have been shortened at some point. My father said that we were descendants of the first genuine wolf-man to cross the Atlantic and come to America. He had killed so many people in Poland or Belarus or wherever that he had to hitch a ride on a steamer to America to avoid being arrested and killed. And then he came here and, every full moon, killed a bunch of Americans. Later, he told us that his ancestor had probably created the whole story himself as an elaborate hoax and had changed his name to help sell it. That was less exciting for a kid to hear.”

“That’s what I want to talk about,” Eric said, his face bright, his left eye twitching. “You were ‘Child A’ in all those art pieces that your parents created. You were, for all intents and purposes, the star.”

“Oh, Buster was the star, for sure. He had it much worse than me.”

She thought of Buster, tied to a lamppost, stuck in a bear trap, making out with a St. Bernard, the numerous ways he’d been left in some bizarre situation and made to fend for himself.

“Still, you were placed in circumstances where you were doing some form of acting, some guerrilla-style, improvisational acting, so do you think that if you hadn’t been a member of the Fangs, you would be an actress?”