Relentless (2 page)

Anyway, after the thirtieth interview, I rose from my office chair and, reeling in self-disgust, made my way to the kitchen. My intention was to eat such an unhealthy breakfast that my guilt over the cholesterol content would distract me from the embarrassment of all the self-promotion.

Dependable Penny had delayed her breakfast so she could eat with me and hear all of the incredibly witty things I wished I had said in those thirty interviews. In contrast to my tousled hair, unshaven face, and badly rumpled pajamas, she wore a crisp white blouse and lemon-yellow slacks, and as usual her skin
glowed
as though it were translucent and she were lit from inside.

As I entered the room, she was serving blueberry pancakes, and I said, “You look scrumptious. I could pour maple syrup on you and eat you alive.”

“Cannibalism,” Milo warned me, “is a crime.”

“It’s not a worldwide crime,” I told him. “Some places it’s a culinary preference.”

“It’s a crime,” he insisted.

Between his fifth and sixth birthdays, Milo had decided on a career in law enforcement. He said that too many people were lawless and that the world was run by thugs. He was going to grow up and do something about it.

Lots of kids want to be policemen. Milo intended to become the director of the FBI
and
the secretary of defense, so that he would be empowered to dispense justice to evildoers both at home and abroad.

Here on the brink of World War Waxx, Milo perched on a dinette chair, elevated by a thick foam pillow because he was diminutive for his age. Blue block letters on his white T-shirt spelled COURAGE.

Later, the word on his chest would seem like an omen.

Having finished his breakfast long ago, my bright-eyed son was
nursing a glass of chocolate milk and reading a comic book. He could read at college level, though his interests were not those of either a six-year-old or a frat boy.

“What trash is this?” I asked, picking up the comic.

“Dostoyevsky,” he said.

Frowning at the cover illustration, I wondered, “How can they condense
Crime and Punishment
into a comic book?”

Penny said, “It comes as a boxed set of thirty-six double-thick issues. He’s on number seven.”

Returning the comic to Milo, I said, “Maybe the question should be—
why
would they condense
Crime and Punishment
into a comic book?”

“Raskolnikov,” Milo solemnly informed me, tapping a page of the illustrated classic with one finger, “is a totally confused guy.”

“That makes two of us,” I said.

I sat at the table, picked up a squeeze bottle of liquid butter, and hosed my pancakes.

“Trying to bury the shame of self-promotion under cholesterol guilt?” Penny asked.

“Exactly.”

From across the dinette, Lassie watched me butter the flapjacks. She is not permitted to sit
at
the table with us; however, because she refuses to live entirely at dog level, she is allowed a chair at a four-foot remove, where she can observe and feel part of the family at mealtimes.

For such a cute dog, she is often surprisingly hard to read. She has a poker face. She was not drooling. She rarely did. She was less obsessed with food than were most dogs.

Instead, she cocked her head and studied me as if she were an anthropologist and I were a member of a primitive tribe engaged in an inscrutable ritual.

Maybe she was amazed that I proved capable of operating as complex a device as squeeze-bottle butter with a flip-up nozzle. I have a reputation for incompetence with tools and machines.

For instance, I am no longer permitted to change a punctured tire. In the event of a flat, I am required to call the automobile club and get out of their way when they arrive.

I will not explain why this is the case, because it’s not a particularly interesting story. Besides, when I got to the part about the monkey dressed in a band uniform, you would think I was making up the whole thing, even though my insurance agent could confirm the truth of every detail.

God gave me a talent for storytelling. He didn’t think I would also need to have the skill to repair a jet engine or build a nuclear reactor from scratch. Who am I to second-guess God? Although … it would be nice to be able to use a hammer or a screwdriver at least once without a subsequent trip to the hospital emergency room.

Anyway, just as I raised the first bite of butter-drenched pancakes to my mouth, the telephone rang.

“Third line,” Penny said.

The third is my direct business line, given only to my editors, publishers, agents, and attorneys.

I put down the still-laden fork, got up, and snared the wall phone on the fourth ring, before the call went to voice mail.

Olivia Cosima, my editor, said, “Cubby, you’re a trouper. I hear from publicity, the radio interviews were brilliant.”

“If brilliant means I made a fool of myself slightly less often than I expected to, then they were brilliant.”

“Every writer now and then makes a fool of himself, dear. What’s unique about you is—you’ve never made a total
ass
of yourself.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Listen, sweetheart, I just e-mailed you three major reviews that appeared this morning. Read the one by Shearman Waxx first.”

I held my breath. Waxx was the senior critic for the nation’s premier newspaper. He was feared, therefore revered. He had not reviewed any of my previous novels.

Because I didn’t subscribe to that newspaper, I had never read Waxx. Nevertheless, I knew he was the most influential book critic in the country.

“And?” I asked.

Olivia said, “Why don’t you read it first, and then we’ll talk.”

“Uh-oh.”

“He favors boring minimalism, Cubby. The qualities he dislikes in your work are the very things readers hunger for. So it’s really a selling review.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Call me after you’ve read it. And the other two, which are both wonderful. They more than compensate for Waxx.”

When I turned away from the telephone, Penny was sitting at the table, holding her knife and fork not as if they were dining utensils but as if they were weapons. Having heard my side of the conversation with my editor, she had sensed a threat to her family, and she was as armored for the fight as the Brunhild whom she had once been.

“What?” she asked.

“Shearman Waxx reviewed my book.”

“Is that all?”

“He didn’t like it.”

“Who gives a flying”—she glanced at Milo before finishing her question with a nonsense word instead of a vulgarity—“furnal.”

“What’s a flying furnal?” Milo asked.

“A kind of squirrel,” I said, fully aware that my gifted son’s intellectual genius lay in fields other than biology.

Penny said, “I thought the book was terrific, and I’m the most honest critic you’re ever going to have.”

“Yeah, but a couple hundred thousand people read his reviews.”

“Nobody reads his reviews but geeky aficionados of snarkiness.”

“You mean it has wings?” Milo asked.

I frowned at him. “Does what have wings?”

“The flying furnal.”

“No. It has air bladders.”

“Do yourself a favor,” Penny advised. “Don’t read the review.”

“If I don’t read it, I won’t know what he said.”

“Precisely.”

“What do you mean—air bladders?” Milo asked.

I said, “Inflatable sacs under its skin.”

“Has any review, good or bad, ever changed the way you write?” Penny asked.

“Of course not. I’ve got a spine.”

“So there’s nothing to be gained from reading this one.”

Milo said, “It doesn’t fly. What it must do—it must just float.”

“It can fly,” I insisted.

“But air bladders, no wings—it’s a squirrel blimp,” Milo said.

“Blimps fly,” I said. “They have an engine and a big propeller behind the passenger gondola.”

Milo saw the weakness of my contention: “Squirrels don’t have engines.”

“No, but once it inflates its bladders, the furnal kicks its hind feet very fast, like a swimmer, and propels itself forward.”

Lassie remained poker-faced, but I knew that she had not been convinced by my lecture on the biology of the flying furnal.

Milo wasn’t buying it either. “Mom, he’s doing it again. Dad’s lying.”

“He’s not lying,” Penny assured him. “He’s exercising the strong and limber imagination of a fine novelist.”

“Yeah? What’s the difference from lying?”

As if curious about her mistress’s reply, Lassie leaned forward in her chair and cocked her head toward Penny.

“Lies hurt people,” Penny explained. “Imagination makes life more fun.”

“Like right now,” I said, “I’m imagining Shearman Waxx being attacked and killed by a flying furnal with rabies.”

“Let it go,” Penny advised.

“I told Olivia I’d call her back after I read the review.”

“Don’t read it,” Penny warned.

“I promised Olivia I’d call her.”

Mouth full of pancake, Penny shook her head ruefully.

“I’m a big boy,” I said. “This kind of thing doesn’t get to me. I have to read it. But don’t worry—I’ll laugh it off.”

I returned to my study and switched on the computer.

Rather than scroll through Olivia’s e-mail on the screen, I printed out her opening comment and the three reviews.

First, I read the one from
USA Today
, and then the one from the
Washington Post
. They were raves, and they fortified me.

With professional detachment, I read Shearman Waxx’s review.

The syphilitic swine.

   In New York, my editor, Olivia Cosima, had delayed going to lunch until I called her.

Slumped in my office chair, bare feet propped on my desk, I said, “Olivia, this Waxx guy doesn’t understand my book is in part a comic novel.”

“No, dear, he doesn’t. And you should be grateful for that, because if he realized it was funny, he would have said that it failed as a comic novel.”

“He thinks a solid metaphor is ‘ponderous prose.’”

“He’s a product of the modern university, Cubby. Figures of speech are considered oppressive.”

“Oppressive? Who do they oppress?”

“Those who don’t understand them.”

“What—I’m supposed to write to please the ignorant?”

“He wouldn’t put it that way, dear.”

Staring at my bare feet, I decided that my toes were ugly. Whatever inspired Penny to marry me, it hadn’t been my feet.

“But, Olivia, this review is full of errors—character details, plot points. I counted eleven. He calls my female lead Joyce when her name is Judith.”

“That was one we all missed, dear.”

“Missed?”

“The publicity letter that accompanied each reviewer’s advance-reading copy mistakenly referred to her as Joyce.”

“I proofread that letter. I approved it.”

“Yes, dear. So did I. Probably six of us proofed and okayed it, and we all missed the Joyce thing. It happens.”

I felt stupid. Humiliated. Unprofessional.

Then my mind cleared: “Wait, wait. He’s reviewing the book, not the publicity letter that went with it. In the book, it’s Judith.”

“Do you know the British writer J. G. Ballard?”

“Yes, of course. He’s wonderful.”

“He reviewed books for—I think it was
The Times
of London. Years after he stopped reviewing, he said he’d had a policy of giving only good reviews to books he didn’t have time to read. Would that everyone were so fair.”

After a silence for reflection on her words, I said, “Are you saying Shearman Waxx might not have read
One O’Clock Jump?”

“Sometimes you’re so naïve, I want to pinch your cute pink cheeks,” Olivia said. “Dear, I’m sure he skimmed parts of it, and perhaps an assistant read the whole thing.”

“But that’s … that’s … dishonest.”

“You’ve had an easy ascent, Cubby, your first book a major bestseller. You don’t realize that the literary community has a few charming little islands, but they’re floating in a huge cesspool.”

My insteps were as ugly as my toes. Swinging my feet off the desk, hiding them under my chair, I said, “His syntax isn’t good.”

Olivia said, “Yes, I often take a red pencil to his reviews.”

“Have you ever sent one to him—corrected?”

“I am not insane, dear.”

“I meant anonymously.”

“I like my face as it’s currently arranged.”

“How can he be considered the premier critic in the country?”

“He’s respected in the literary community.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s vicious, dear. People fear him.”

“Fear isn’t respect.”

“In our community, it’s close enough.”

“Olivia, what should I do?”

“Do? Do nothing. You’ve always received ninety percent good reviews, and you will this time. The book is strong. It will sell.”

“But this rankles. The injustice.”

“Injustice is hyperbole, Cubby. It’s not as if you’ve been packed off to a gulag.”

“Well, it’s frustrating.”

After a silence, she said, “You aren’t thinking of responding to him, are you? That would be a terrible mistake, Cubby.”

“I know.”

“You would only look like a defensive whiner.”