The Family Fang - Kevin Wilson [98]
“It’s real,” Buster said. “This is all very real.”
“That sounds like something your father would say, right before something really bad happened,” Mr. Buxton replied. Buster heard the line go dead, the conversation morphing into a single, steady tone.
“This is very, very strange, Buster,” Suzanne told him as she stared at the painting of the boy and the tiger. “It’s really great.”
Buster felt the sickening certainty that Annie would push him down a flight of stairs if she knew that he was showing Suzanne their mother’s painting, that he had told an outsider about their plan to bring their parents back from the wilderness. She was already slightly cool on the idea of Buster spending so much time with Suzanne, still relying on the old Fang tendencies to distrust anyone who wasn’t family. “Is her writing that good?” Annie had asked him when he returned home after another meeting with Suzanne.
“I think so,” Buster said. “I think she wants it to be, and I think I can show her how to make it good. It’s not just about that. I like her. She likes me. It’s an uncommon situation for me to be in.”
“Fair enough,” Annie said. “That’s nothing I want to stand in the way of.” Then, as if it weren’t the entire focus of her conversation, as if it were merely an afterthought, she had said to Buster, “Just don’t tell her about the paintings, okay? That’s just for us.” Buster nodded his assent.
And then, having talked about writing, his and hers, hashing out ideas, rewording lines until they were perfect, the two of them had reached a lull in the conversation. The drive-in had emptied around them without their knowledge, the entire parking lot dark. The floorboards of the car were littered with food wrappers and balled-up pages from failed attempts at storytelling. Buster was so unnerved by the quiet, the thought that Suzanne might take it as a cue to leave, that he decided he would show her the painting, tell her about his great plan for finding his parents, just to keep her in the car. If it seemed desperate, he did not care. If Annie would freak out later, he did not care. What he wanted was Suzanne beside him for ten more minutes. And then, as he opened the middle compartment to retrieve the painting, Suzanne pressed her body against his, forced her tongue into his mouth, probing the place where his missing tooth had once been. Her tongue rubbed that open spot of gum, and it made his ears burn, his tongue fuzzy.
“I want to do this,” she said, quickly slipping out of her uniform, her limbs seemingly double-jointed to have disrobed so quickly in such a cramped space, “if you want to do it.” Buster was not used to this experience, physical desire that was actually fulfilled. In his entire life, he had kissed five women. One of them had been his sister. This was, Buster understood, a terrible percentage. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d had sex and still have enough fingers left over to make complicated shadow puppets. He wisely remained silent, forced himself not to reveal anything that would tip Suzanne off that having sex with him might be incredibly underwhelming, and simply nodded. He removed her glasses, placed them on the dashboard, and followed her into the backseat of the car, shedding his pants on the way, somehow, unintentionally, keeping his shoes on. Yes, he decided, her legs wrapped tightly around his torso, forcing him to exhale so rapidly that it sounded like he just emerged from a burning building, he wanted this.
Now, Buster’s car still parked in the empty lot, his mouth aching from pressing his tongue against nearly every spot on Suzanne’s body, Buster wondered why he was still showing her the painting. Was it anything other than his own need to tell another