Read Online The Family Fang: A Novel by Kevin Wilson - Free Book Online

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