The Family Fang: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page A

agreed that Moby-Dick sounded like a book that they had no desire to read. “Sorry, Buster,” Joseph said. “ David Copperfield is the winner and still champion of the world.” David walked off and came back with a packet of air-activated hand-warmers. “I like these when it gets cold,” he said, handing them to Buster.
    Back in the car, Buster having nearly maxed out his credit card on a black wool coat, tin cloth pants, Red Wing boots, and a Nebraska Cornhuskers baseball cap, they drove toward their next-to-last stop, the liquor store. “What was your last article about?” David asked Buster, who replied, “I had to report on the world’s largest gang-bang.”
    Kenny carefully flipped on his turn signal and slowly pulled onto the side of the road. He placed the car in park and then turned around in his seat. “What, now?” he asked.
    “You guys ever heard of Hester Bangs?” Buster asked. All four of the men nodded emphatically. “I was there when she broke the record for the biggest gang-bang. She had sex with six hundred and fifty guys in one day.”
    “You didn’t,” Joseph began, his face bright red from embarrassment, “I mean, you didn’t have sex with her, did you?”
    “Oh, god, no,” Buster answered. Buster remembered the two-hour argument on the phone with his editor when he refused to take part in the actual orgy. “It’s called Gonzo Journalism,” said his editor, “I’m looking it up on the Internet right now.”
    “So,” Kenny said, “you basically watched this woman fuck six hundred and fifty guys?”
    “Yeah,” answered Buster.
    “And you got paid to do that?” continued Kenny.
    “Yeah,” Buster again answered.
    “Well,” Arden said, “that sounds like just about the greatest thing I’ve ever heard of.”
    “It wasn’t that great, actually,” said Buster.
    “What, now?” Kenny asked.
    “I mean, yeah, it sounds great, I guess, but I pretty much sat around while a bunch of hairy, out-of-shape guys with their dicks hanging down waited in a line to fuck this woman who looked pretty bored about the whole thing. I interviewed some of the guys and several of them told me that they had told their wives that they were going golfing or to see a movie that day. One guy bragged about how his girlfriend had threatened to break up with him if he went through with it and, as he told me this, he got really sad and said, ‘And she was a pretty awesome girl.’ After every time a guy pulled out of Hester, she would look over at some guy who was sitting at a desk with three different clocks and tons of permission forms and an adding machine, and she would ask how many guys were left to fuck.”
    Arden said, “That sounds like just about the worst thing I’ve ever heard of.”
    “And,” Buster continued, finding that he could not stop talking about it now that he had started, “there was this table with food laid out for all the people on set and these naked guys would be standing over the table, constructing these sad little sandwiches and eating handfuls of M&Ms.”
    “Jesus Christ,” said David, shaking his head.
    “And then you had to write about it, which I bet sucked,” Joseph said.
    “Yeah,” Buster said, pleased that Joseph understood the strangeness of writing about things you despise, “and so I wrote this bizarre article about how Hester Bangs wasn’t an actress, wasn’t even a porn star, that she was more like a professional athlete. She was like a marathoner, and that, as disturbing as it was to witness, I had so much admiration for her ability to do it.”
    Kenny nodded in agreement. “That sounds like a good article.”
    “Well,” Buster finished, “three weeks after it comes out, some other porn star breaks the record by more than two hundred guys.”
    Everyone in the car laughed so loudly that they almost didn’t hear the policeman tapping on the window.
    As soon as he saw the cop, Buster had the overwhelming feeling that he needed to hide his