The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [56]
“Where have you been?” he said. “The car wouldn’t start,” she replied. “I had to get someone to jump-start it.” He asked her for twenty-five dollars. “What?” she said. “I need twenty-five dollars to give to this girl over there,” he told her, growing impatient. Annie looked at the girl, who kept staring at Annie with a puzzled look on her face. “Buster,” Annie said, “are you doing something really stupid here?” Buster told her it was a long story and tried to explain, but then the girl was standing beside him, pointing at Annie. “I know you,” the girl said, smiling. “You’re really famous.” Annie nodded, uninterested in pretending to be someone else, and asked the girl, “Why are you asking my brother for twenty-five dollars?” The girl replied, “He doesn’t have to pay me anything if you’ll let me take a picture with you.” Buster said, “That sounds like a pretty good deal, Annie.” Annie nodded, too confused from having arrived late, and the girl handed Buster her cell phone. Buster snapped the photo and the girl took the phone back and looked at the picture with some satisfaction. It would probably end up on the Internet. “So now you’ll give Suzanne a message for me?” Buster asked. “I’ll do you one better,” the girl said to Buster. “I’ll bring Suzanne out here.”
Buster explained the situation in more detail to Annie, the car still running for fear that it wouldn’t start again if shut off. “Please, Buster,” Annie said, squeezing his arm as hard as she could, “do not go crazy here. This is why we’re together, remember? We’re here to keep each other from going crazy.” Buster began to consider his circumstances, standing in front of a college, about to tell a student that he was in love with her. The more he thought about the story, which was indeed very accomplished for a nineteen-year-old, the more he tried to convince himself that it wasn’t so good that he had to fall in love with the author. Perhaps he didn’t have to profess his love every time someone came around and made him feel less unhappy than he had been previously. Perhaps he could just walk away from this and save himself the further complication of his life. “There she is,” Annie said, and Buster turned to see Suzanne, utterly confused, walking toward them.
Suzanne was short and heavyset, her eyes tiny and clouded behind a pair of wire-framed glasses. She had long, strawberry-blond hair that she had pulled into a ponytail. Her pale skin was crowded with a crazy pattern of freckles and her thick fingers were covered with dozens of cheap rings. Her big toe was poking out of her busted-up sneakers. Buster was amazed to realize that he did not recognize her from the class, that she had gone undetected even in that tiny room. “What did you want?” she asked, almost angry to be disturbed. Buster fumbled for her story and then held it up like it was a passport, an official document that would gain him some degree of access. “I read your story,” he said. She looked startled by this fact, and Buster noticed that she instantly began to blush. “Did Professor Kizza give that to you?” she