The Family Fang: A Novel (5 page)

Chapter Three

S
tanding next to a Whac-A-Mole game in an arcade in Los Angeles, Annie chewed on her fingernails and waited for the journalist from
Esquire
to arrive. He was fifteen minutes late and Annie began to hope that perhaps he wouldn’t show and she wouldn’t have to go through the awkwardness of revelation, of being interesting.

Annie slid a quarter into the game and picked up the mallet. As the plastic rodents peeked their heads out of their holes, Annie whacked them with such vigor that when they once again popped up, unfazed, she took it personally and smashed them even harder.

She was here, flashing lights and electronic blips and beeps, to promote the movie,
Sisters, Lovers,
which had premiered at Cannes and been uniformly hated. “Self-indulgent, faux-intellectual, soft-core Cinemax tripe masquerading as cinema” had been one of the nicer reviews. The movie was a bust and, though Annie had been singled out by several critics as the only honest performance in the film, there was to be little to no promotion in advance of its release. However, there were a few incidents regarding the making of the movie that had resulted in a little more fame than Annie had intended—the reason, she suspected, she was being interviewed at all.

“H
ere’s the thing,” her publicist said to Annie on the phone earlier that week. “You fucked up.”

“Okay,” Annie replied.

“I love you, Annie,” her publicist said, “but my job is to grow your career, to maintain the flow of information regarding you and your interests. And you kind of fucked me over for a little while.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Annie said.

“I know that. That’s one of the reasons that I love you, honey. But you fucked me. Let’s review, okay?”

“Please don’t,” Annie said.

“Real quick,” her publicist said. “Okay, first, you’re filming this abortion of a movie and you decide, out of the blue, to take off your top and walk around the set.”

“Well, okay, but—”

“Just out in the open, tits exposed, so that any Tom, Dick, or Harry, or all three of them, can take pictures of you with their cell phone cameras. So that every celebrity Web site can post those pictures.”

“I know.”

“No big deal, but I don’t hear about this until they show up on the Internet, until I’m on the phone with someone at
US Weekly
and I’m staring at your tits and reading stories about your instability on the set.”

“I’m sorry,” Annie said.

“So I put out that fire.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. So I put out that fire. No big deal, people see tits all the time. No big deal.”

“Right,” Annie said.

“But. But. Then I find out you’re a lesbian.”

“I’m not.”

“Doesn’t matter,” her publicist said. “That’s what I hear. And I’m the last to hear. I have to hear it from your girlfriend, not you.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Annie said. “She’s crazy.”

“And, best of all, she’s your costar on this abortion of a movie, further proving those rumors of on-set instability.”

“Oh, god.”

“Luckily, you have me, and I am very, very good at this job. But I’m not a miracle worker. You have to tell me these things before they get out to the public so that I can determine how to allow this information to shape your career.”

“I will, Sally, I promise.”

“Think of me as your best friend. You tell your best friend everything, right? It’s like, okay, who’s really your best friend?”

“Sally, honestly, it might be you,” Annie said.

“Oh, honey, that makes me want to cry. Nevertheless, you tell me what’s going on and I’ll take care of you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Now, you’re going to talk to this guy from
Esquire
and he’s going to write a nice article and he’s not going to make a big deal about your tits or your lesbian lover, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Be charming.”

“I can do that,” Annie said.

“Be sexy.”

“I can do that,” Annie said.

“Do everything just short of sleeping with this guy.”

“Got it.”

“Just repeat after me, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Sally, I will not fuck you over again.”

“Sally,” Annie repeated, “I will not fuck you over again.”

“Oh, I know that, honey,” her publicist said, and then the line went dead.

A
nnie imagined the center mole was her former costar, Minda Laughton, delicate features, crazy eyes, and a long, almost freakish neck. She brought the mallet down with such force that the machine creaked and stuttered, the mole retreating in clicks and whirrs into its hole. “Don’t even think about coming back,” Annie thought.

“So, you seem to be some kind of Whac-A-Mole pro,” said a man who had suddenly appeared by her side.

Annie turned quickly, the mallet raised in defense, and found a short, bespectacled man in a crisp, white button-up shirt and blue jeans. He was smiling, holding a tiny tape recorder, seemingly amused by Annie’s presence in this arcade, the magazine’s idea.

“I’m Eric,” he said. “From
Esquire
? You really showed those moles who’s boss,” he added.

Annie, for the fleeting second before she remembered Sally’s warning, almost told him to go fuck himself, showing up late, watching her in an unguarded moment. Then she composed herself, let her breathing regulate, and became not herself.

“Impressive, right?” she asked, smiling, wagging the mallet like some obscene instrument.

“Very much so. I’ve already got the opening paragraph of the article,” he replied. “Want to hear it?”

Annie could not think of a thing she would want less. “I’ll wait for the issue like everyone else,” she said.

“Fair enough,” he said, “but it’s really good.”

“Let’s get some more quarters,” Annie said, and began to walk away. Eric knelt down and tore the strip of tickets that had emanated from the game, an afterthought.

“Don’t forget these,” he said.

“Maybe I’ll win you a teddy bear,” Annie said, sliding the tickets into her purse.

“That would be the best article ever.”

O
n one of her first interviews for
The Powers That Be,
the blockbuster comic book adaptation where she played Lady Lightning, a reporter asked her if she had been a fan of comic books growing up. “I’ve never read a comic book in my life,” she responded. The reporter screwed up his face and then shook his head. “I’m going to write down that you loved comics as a girl. You were kind of a geek growing up. Is that okay?” he asked. Annie, stunned, simply nodded her assent, and the rest of the interview proceeded in that manner. He would ask questions that she would answer, and then she would listen to the reporter tell her what her response would actually be. It had been the worst interview of her entire career, but, fifty, sixty, seventy more interviews for the movie, the same questions, no one seeming to have actually seen the movie or ever heard of her, she longed for the simplicity and ease of that earlier interview.

F
or the next twenty minutes, Annie proceeded to kick the shit out of this
Esquire
guy on a game called
Fatal Flying Guillotine III
. Having never played the first two installments, Annie merely punched the buttons in whatever random patterns came to her and watched the almost miraculous way her character, a giant half-bear, half-man wearing a kilt, responded to the instructions with such ferocity that there was nothing for Eric to do but watch his character, a tiny Japanese woman dressed as a Las Vegas showgirl, get mauled to death. “You’re pretty awesome at this game,” he said. She continued to pound his character into the ground. “I think, actually, that you just really suck,” she answered, never once looking away from the screen, finding pleasure in the way her unfocused desires became crystalline and perfect in front of her eyes. “No,” he replied, jamming the buttons, gripping the joystick so tightly it disappeared in his hand, “I’m actually really good at this.” The Scottish bear lifted the showgirl into the air, spun around three times, and slammed her headfirst into the ground, creating a small hole in the earth. “Could have fooled me,” she said.

They plunked more quarters into the machine, and Eric chose a badass Bruce Lee–like character who was, at all times, on fire. Annie stuck with her bear-man. Just before the first round began, Eric asked, “Do you want to talk about
Sisters, Lovers
?” Annie froze, just long enough for Eric’s character to land three quick roundhouse kicks, singeing her bear’s fur. “I suppose we have to, don’t we?” she said. By the end of the first round, her character was laid out on the ground, smoldering.

“How about this,” he said. “If I win this match, you tell me about the nudity incident on the set.”

Annie watched the two combatants, bouncing on the balls of their feet, eager for contact, as the game counted down for the next round to begin. She considered the offer. Sally would prefer that she let it die, pretend it didn’t really happen, but Annie felt a slight satisfaction at the opportunity to tell her side of the story. And she was, without hesitation, falling in love with this bear-man. He would not let her down. “Okay,” she said.

Two rounds later, Eric’s character extinguished, beaten so badly that Annie would not have been surprised to find him permanently removed from the game, she smiled. “I guess I’m just going to have to miss out on that scoop,” Eric said. He shrugged and then smiled, the question erased from his list, and Annie was touched by the gesture, the easy way the day was unfolding.

“It was a difficult movie,” Annie said, taking care not to look at Eric, unsure of exactly why she felt the need to unburden herself. “It was an intensely difficult part to play and I knew it would be going into it, but I don’t think I realized just how draining it would be to inhabit that character day after day.”

“What do you think of the reviews so far?” he asked, the tape recorder still in his shirt pocket.

“I’m not the best person to judge,” she said. “I know that Freeman has a unique vision and that perhaps it’s difficult for other people to appreciate it.”

“Did you enjoy the movie?”

“That is not a word I would ever use to describe the experience of watching one of my own movies.”

“Okay,” Eric said. They stared at each other in silence. A promo for the game unraveled on the screen, some giant, white-haired devil laughing and then beckoning the viewer to join the action.

“I took off my top because I didn’t know if I could.”

“Mmm,” Eric said, nodding.

“I’d never done a nude scene and I wasn’t sure that I would be able to do it. So I did it in real life and then I realized I could do it in the movie. I just, you know, forgot that other people could see me.”

“That’s understandable. It must be difficult to shift back and forth between reality and fiction, especially with such an intense role. We can come back to that or leave it alone. For now, how about some Skee-Ball?”

Annie nodded. “Annie,” she told herself, “shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up.”

W
hen the pictures hit the Internet, fuzzy and low-resolution but without a doubt her, Annie’s parents sent her an e-mail that read:
It’s about time you started playing with the idea of celebrity and the female form as viewed object
. Her brother did not say or write a single word, seemed to disappear; perhaps that’s what happens when a sibling sees you naked. Her on-and-off boyfriend, currently off, called her and, when she answered the phone, said, “Is this a Fang thing? I mean, is it just inescapable that you’ll do weird shit?”

“Daniel,” she said, “you promised you wouldn’t call.”

“I promised I wouldn’t call unless it was an emergency. And this counts. You’re losing your mind.”

Daniel Cartwright had written two novels that felt like movies and then started writing screenplays that felt like TV shows. He wore a cowboy hat all the time now. He’d recently sold a script for a staggering million, something about two guys who build a robot that runs for president. It was called
President 2.0
and Annie was not sure, other than the fact that he was unhinged and handsome, why she had ended up with him, and why, after she had left him, she would end up with him again.

“I’m not losing my mind,” she replied. She wondered if it was possible to blow up the Internet.

“It sure looks like it from here,” he said.

“I’m making a movie,” she said, “a strange process that always requires some degree of weirdness.”

“I’m looking at your boobs right now,” he answered, and Annie, unable to think of a response, simply hung up the phone.