The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [38]
“What?” Annie asked.
“Yeah, you never changed your pass code for the front gate. I’ve been here for about fifteen minutes.”
“Why didn’t you just knock on the door?”
“I didn’t want to freak you out,” Daniel said.
“That’s nice,” Annie said, walking to the front door, her whiskey in dire need of a refill.
In the kitchen, Annie dumped eight Pop-Tarts on a platter and brought the breakfast pastries into the living room, where Daniel, his trademark Stetson now replaced by a porkpie hat, was waiting for her. Daniel lived on Pop-Tarts and sparkling water; Annie had never seen him consume anything else. Daniel, if she were blind and deaf, would be the sickly sweet smell of artificial strawberries and singed dough. He patted the cushion adjacent to him on the sofa but Annie smiled and took a seat on the rocking chair directly across from him, the coffee table an adequate barrier for their conversation. Annie rocked and rocked, an irritating squeak accompanying her actions. She felt like a tiny, narcoleptic dog should be in her lap.
“You said that you needed to talk to me,” Annie said.
“I do,” Daniel answered, Pop-Tart crumbs already covering the floor at his feet.
“About what?”
“Your career and what you’re doing to it and what you’re doing to yourself. I know you’re not a lesbian,” Daniel said.
“Is that all you wanted to say?” Annie said.
“What happened to your hand?” he asked.
“I punched my publicist in the face,” Annie answered, holding her injured but unshaking hand out in front of her. She was impressed by the steadiness of her nerves.
“Yeah, I heard she let you go.”
“We let each other go. We decided at the exact same time. Is this what you came to talk about?” she said.
“Paramount offered me the chance to write the third Powers That Be movie.”
“Oh . . . congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“I didn’t know they had decided to make a third one,” Annie said, struggling to keep her facial features from betraying her confusion.
“Well, that’s why I wanted to talk to you.” Daniel took off his porkpie hat and twirled it in his hands. “This hat belonged to Buster Keaton,” he said.
“You hate silent movies.”
“I do,” Daniel said. “But I’ve got so much money now that I’ve run out of things to buy.”
“Daniel—”
“Okay, okay. When I agreed to write the third installment of PTB, they only had one request.”
“Which was?” Annie asked.
“They wanted me to write your character out of the film. They don’t want you to be a part of the franchise anymore.”
Standing at what seemed to be rock bottom, staring up at the unreachable world above sea level, Annie felt the ground beneath her feet give way yet again.
“They don’t want me in the movie?” Annie asked.
“They do not.”
“Did they give a reason?”
“They did.”
“Did it have to do with the naked Internet photos and my rumored mental instability?”
“It did.”
“Oh shit.”
“I’m sorry, Annie. I thought you should know.”
Annie, despite the voice screaming at her not to do it, began to tear up. She could not believe that she was crying about the lost opportunity to once again wear a ridiculous superhero costume and stand in front of a green screen for hours and say lines like “It appears lightning can strike twice.” It seemed ridiculous to her, even as she was crying, but it did not stop her from sobbing, the chair uncontrollably rocking, in front of her ex-boyfriend.
“It sucks, I know,” Daniel said.
“Does it suck?” Annie said. “Do you know?”
“I have a feeling that it sucks.”
Annie stood up, walked into the kitchen, and returned with the bottle of George Dickel. She took a hard slug from the bottle, felt a kind of resolve seep into her bones, a noir-like, hard-boiled toughness. Alcohol, she suddenly understood, would solve this problem. It would create other, more pressing problems, but for now, steadily rising into inebriation, she felt like she could handle the situation at hand. She could deal with shit.
“The third movie in the trilogy is never any good,” she said. “Return of the Jedi, Godfather Part III, The Bad News Bears Go to Japan.”
“Well,” Daniel said, “I’m going to write