The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [104]
Buster also stood, and the two of them moved slowly throughout the living room, starting out with their backs to each other and moving outward. Annie touched the stereo, listened for the hiss of a recording device, and then unplugged the machine. Suddenly, she thought better of this decision and turned it back on and played, at a high volume in order to drown out their voices, the first record she could produce, Rock for Light by Bad Brains. The sound was frenetic and intense and it made Annie’s heart beat three times faster than it should, which felt necessary for the task at hand.
Buster clicked the lamp on and off, as if the change in brightness might help focus his vision, and then hefted a paperweight that seemed incongruous to the décor, a pewter gavel. He lightly tapped it against his open palm. He shook it, expecting a rattle, and then opened the drawer of the desk and placed the object inside, shutting it in the dark.
“Mirrors,” Annie said, but there were none to be found in the living room. They both quickly turned to the entryway of the house, where there was a tall mirror that allowed the Fangs to check their appearance right before heading out of the door. Buster nodded toward Annie and placed his index finger against his lips to quiet her. He walked to the linen closet, produced a paisley sheet, and, holding it like a net used to capture a wild animal, he padded over to the mirror. He was as close as he could get to the mirror without being caught in its reflection, and he looked over at Annie, who nodded her approval. He expertly draped the sheet over the mirror, pulling the edges free so that it cascaded down the length of the glass. “Well done,” Annie said, and Buster smiled.
They spent the next half hour cleverly obscuring every mirror in the house. When the task was finished, their actions unobserved by any outsider, they unscrewed the cordless phone, unsure of what they were looking for, having some confidence, thanks to spy movies, that they would recognize a bug if they saw it. Finding nothing suspicious, or accepting the suspicious nature of all the elements that made up the hardwiring of a phone, Buster screwed the thing closed, wondering if he had damaged something in its internals, if the phone would ever ring again and if he would care one way or the other.
“I can’t believe I’m letting this happen,” Annie suddenly shouted, grinding her teeth, her hands balled up so tightly her knuckles were fish-belly white. “This is what they want us to do. This is what they love.” She was on the edge of hysteria, about to cry, and she placed her hand on Buster’s arm for balance.
“Is this going to work, Buster?” she asked him.
“It’s the only thing I can think of,” he answered. “I guess, if it’s the only thing you can think of, it doesn’t matter if you think it’s going to work or not. What else can you do but try it?”
“I want you to say that it will work,” Annie said. Buster was not used to being in this situation, the source of certainty. “It will work because it has to,” he said, and he watched as Annie’s form sagged slightly and then stiffened, became strong again. He stood beside his sister, who seemed lost in a trance. The music that spit out of the speakers was loud enough to make the tips of each carpet fiber vibrate with the force of the bass.
He imagined that his mother and father were the orphans in his novel, hidden at the edge of civilization, waiting for the inevitable footsteps of someone who would soon wrap them in their nets and cart them off to another, stranger place. He then imagined, shocked by the understanding that it might be true, that Annie and Buster were not tracking down their parents, but that their parents, who, in his mind, controlled even the rising and setting of the sun, were simply pulling their children