The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [39]
Annie was trying to listen but she was unable to shake the image of herself dressed in a knock-off Lady Lightning outfit, sitting alone at a table at a mid-level comic book convention, drinking a diet soda and staring at her cell phone, which did not ring.
“Annie?” Daniel said. “I want to talk to you about the movie.”
Annie imagined herself in Japan, shilling caffeinated tapioca pearls, living in a closet-size apartment, dating a washed-up sumo wrestler.
“Annie?” Daniel said again.
Annie imagined herself doing dinner theater in a converted barn, playing Myra Marlowe in A Bad Year for Tomatoes, getting fat on carved roast beef and macaroni and cheese from the buffet during intermission.
“I want to help you, Annie,” Daniel continued, undeterred by Annie’s blank-faced analysis of her future. “And I think I can.”
Annie smoothed the crease in her jeans as if she was petting a catatonic dog. “You want to help me with what, Daniel?”
“I want to help you stop feeling so overwhelmed and I want to help get your career back on track.”
“Please don’t tell me to check myself into a mental health facility.”
“No, I’ve got a better idea,” Daniel assured her.
“It would have to be,” Annie responded.
Daniel rose from the sofa, placed his half-eaten Pop-Tart on the platter, and walked over to Annie, who already began to flinch. He knelt on the floor beside her. Annie felt the awkwardness of a marriage proposal forming in the air and she shook her head vigorously as if to disrupt the possibility. Then Daniel, no ring in hand, positioned his body into a crouch, like a catcher about to relay signs to the pitcher. His face was less than a foot from her own.
“The studio wants a draft of the screenplay in a month. I’ve rented a cabin out in Wyoming, nothing but empty space and wolves. I want you to come with me.”
“And do what? Watch you write my character out of the movie and eat antelope jerky?”
“No, so you can just relax. You can go hiking and get away from all this bullshit and calm down a little bit. And then, maybe, if things go well, we could give this relationship another try.”
“You want me to come to Wyoming and have sex with you?” Annie said.
“That’s correct,” Daniel said, smiling.
“And how will this help my career?”
“That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. I thought that if we worked together on the script, we could find a way to keep Lady Lightning in the movie, come up with an idea so good that the studio would have to go along with it.”
“They’d just hire another actress,” Annie said, leaning forward, their foreheads almost touching.
“Maybe not. You come with me, clear your head, weather all this bad publicity, and maybe they’ll remember that you’re a bankable star with a lot of talent.”
“All this if I just come to Wyoming and sleep with you?”
“That’s it,” Daniel said.
“I had sex with a reporter from Esquire,” Annie said.
“Okay,” Daniel answered, genuinely unfazed.
“Three days ago. You can read about it in the next issue.”
“I don’t care,” Daniel said. “It’s just further evidence that you need to get the hell out of here for a while.”
Wyoming, to Annie, was represented by a blank, bleak space in her imagination. It was a place she could hide. The worst that could happen would be that she would sleep with Daniel and then get eaten by a wolf. She could live with that.
After she agreed, Daniel placing the porkpie hat on Annie’s head as if rewarding her for a sound decision, the two of them sat on the floor of her living room while she had another glass of whiskey and Daniel ate another Pop-Tart. Wasn’t this how adults acted? Annie wondered, feeling slightly proud of herself. Daniel showed her his most recent tattoo, a typewriter surrounded by dollar signs. Annie told him to roll his sleeve back down and she tried to pretend that it had never happened. By the time he had left her house, with plans to meet again in the morning to leave for Wyoming, Annie felt improbably sober and, if not happy, at least