Relentless Read online

  “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.”

  “It’s just that he made so many m
istakes. And his syntax is so bad. I could really eviscerate him.”

  “Dear, the man can’t be eviscerated because he has no viscera. He’s a walking colon. If you cut him open, you only end up covered in crap.”

  By the time I returned to the kitchen, Milo and Lassie were no longer there, and Penny had finished eating. She stood at the sink, rinsing her plate before putting it in the dishwasher.

  Now that they were cold and glistening with milky liquid butter, my pancakes looked as unappetizing as the deflated air bladders of a flying furnal. No longer hungry, I decided to skip breakfast.

  Turning from the sink, drying her hands on a towel, Penny said, “So you read the review?”

  “But he didn’t read my book. Maybe he skimmed it. He’s got so much wrong.”

  “What did Olivia think?”

  “She says he’s a walking colon.”

  “You shouldn’t have let him into your head, Cubby. But now that he’s in there, flush him out.”

  “I will.”

  She put her arms around me. “You’re a sweet, talented man, and I love you.”

  Holding her tight, I said, “Don’t look at my feet.”

  “What’s wrong with your feet?”

  “Everything. I should never go barefoot. Let’s have dinner at Roxie’s, celebrate publication day.”

  “That’s my boy. You went off the track for a bit, but now you’re on it again.”

  “Maybe I am.”

  “Let it go. Remember what Gilbert said.”

  She was an admirer of the late G. K. Chesterton, the English writer, and she made me an admirer of his, as well.

  “‘Nothing,’” she quoted, “‘can do a man harm unless he fears it.’ There’s no reason to fear a weasel like Shearman Waxx.”

  “If I had shaved, brushed my teeth, and didn’t have sour-coffee breath, I’d kiss you so hard.”

  Pinching my lower lip between her thumb and forefinger, and pulling it into a pout, she said, “I’ll be around when you’ve cleaned up your act.”

  In the first-floor hallway, heading toward the stairs, I passed the open door of my study and saw Milo and Lassie sitting side by side in my office chair, boosted by a sofa pillow. This was a Norman Rockwell moment for the twenty-first century: a boy and his dog surfing the Internet.

  Stepping behind the chair, I saw on the monitor an aerial view of a seaside house with an orange barrel-tile roof.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  Milo said, “Google Earth. I googled the guy, where he lives.”

  “What guy?”

  “The Waxx guy.”

  When I was six years old, my technological prowess amounted to helping my buddy Ned Lufferman build a tin-can rocket powered by firecrackers that he stole from his big brother’s Fourth of July stash. Ned lost the little finger on his left hand, and I was rushed to the hospital with a second-degree burn on the nose. There was also some concern that my eyebrows would not grow back, but they did.

  Milo clicked the mouse, and a street view of the Waxx property replaced the aerial shot.

  With cream-colored walls and terra-cotta window surrounds, the Spanish Mediterranean residence was both handsome and romantic. Twin forty-foot magnolias canopied the front yard, and red bougainvillea all but concealed the flanking property walls.

  “I thought he was in New York,” I said.

  “No,” said Milo. “Laguna Beach.”

  Barring heavy traffic, Laguna lay only twenty minutes away.

  In this e-mail age, Waxx could live as far from his publisher as I lived from mine, yet meet his weekly deadlines. His presence in the vicinity was a surprise, though surely nothing but a coincidence.

  Nevertheless, I was pricked by either intuition or imagination, and through me bled a cold premonition that the critic’s proximity to me might be more significant than it seemed.

  “Did you read the review?” I asked Milo.

  “No. Mom told you—let it go. She’s smart about this stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Most stuff.”

  “So if you didn’t read the review, why did you google him?”

  “It was Lassie’s idea.”

  The dog turned her head to look back and up at me.

  “Shearman Waxx is an enema,” Milo informed me.

  As I gently rubbed my thumbs behind Lassie’s ears, I said, “While that may be true, it’s not a nice thing to say.”

  “Wasn’t me who said it.”

  Milo’s small hands moved cat-quick from mouse to keyboard to mouse. He bailed from the current website and went to an online encyclopedia, to the biographical entry on Shearman Waxx.

  Leaning over my son, I read aloud the first sentence on the screen: “‘Shearman Thorndike Waxx, award-winning critic and author of three enormously successful college textbooks on creative writing, is something of an enema.’”

  Milo said, “See?”

  “It’s an error,” I explained. “They meant to write enigma.”

  “Enigma? I know what that is.”

  “A mystery, something obscure and puzzling.”

  “Yeah. Like Grandma Clotilda.”

  I continued reading: “‘Waxx declines honorary doctorates and other awards requiring his attendance at any pubic event.’”

  “What’s a pubic event?” Milo asked.

  “The word should be public.” Scanning the screen, I said, “According to this, there’s only one known photograph of Waxx.”

  “He’s really, really old,” said Milo.

  “He is? How old?”

  “He was born in 1868.”

  “They probably mean 1968.”

  “Do real-book ’cyclopedias make so many mistakes?”

  “No.”

  “Could we buy a real-book ’cyclopedia?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “So when will we get Waxx?” Milo asked.

  “What do you mean—get him?”

  “Vengeance,” Milo said, and Lassie growled softly. “When will we make him sorry he messed with you, Dad?”

  Dismayed that Milo could read my anger so clearly and that it inspired him to talk of vengeance, I moved from behind his chair to his side, and with the mouse I clicked out of the encyclopedia.

  “Revenge isn’t a good thing, Milo.” I switched off the computer. “Besides, Mr. Waxx was only doing what he’s paid to do.”

  “What is he paid to do?”

  “Read a book and tell his audience whether he liked it or not.”

  “Can’t his audience read?”

  “Yes, but they’re busy, and they have so many books to choose from, so they trust his judgment.”

  “Why do they trust his judgment?”

  “I have no idea.”

  The phone on my desk rang. The third line.

  When I answered, Hud Jacklight, my literary agent, said, “The Waxx review. Great thing. You’ve arrived, Cubster.”

  “What do you mean—I’ve arrived? Hud, he gutted me.”

  Milo rolled his eyes and whispered to Lassie, “It’s the Honker.”

  Because he doesn’t understand children, Hud thinks they love it when he pinches their noses—their ears, their chins—while making a loud honking noise.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Hud assured me. “It’s a Waxx review. You’ve arrived. He takes you seriously. That’s big.”

  Breaking her characteristic silence, Lassie issued a low growl while staring at the phone in my hand.

  “Hud,” I said, “apparently he didn’t even read the book.”

  “Irrelevant. It’s coverage. Coverage sells. You’re a Waxx author now. That matters. A Waxx author. That’s huge.”

  Although Hud pretends to read each of my novels, I know that he has never read any of them. He praises them without mentioning a plot point or a character.

  Sometimes he selects a manuscript page at random and raves about the writing in a sentence or a paragraph. He reads it aloud over the telephone, as if my prose will sound fresh and l
impid and magical to me by virtue of being delivered in his insistent cadences, but his voice is less that of a Shakespearean actor than that of a livestock auctioneer. By emphasizing the wrong words, he often reveals that he has no understanding of the context of the passage with which he has chosen to hector me.

  “A Waxx author. Proud of you, Cubman. Celebrate tonight. You earned it.”

  “This is nothing to celebrate, Hud.”

  “Get a good wine. On me. Keep the receipt. I’ll reimburse.”

  “Even Lassie thinks this review requires vengeance rather than celebration.”

  “A hundred-dollar bottle. Or eighty. There’s good stuff at sixty. Wait. You said vengeance?”

  “Milo said it and Lassie agreed. I explained it was a bad idea.”

  “Don’t respond to Waxx.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Don’t respond, Cubman.”

  “I won’t. I said I won’t.”

  “Bad move. Very bad move.”

  “I’m already over it.”

  Milo had switched on the computer and returned to Google Earth, to the aerial photograph of the critic’s house.

  Leaning forward in the office chair, Lassie sniffed as though, even through an electronic medium, she could detect Waxx’s infernal scent.

  “Think positive,” Hud Jacklight encouraged me. “You’re a Waxx author now. You’re literary.”

  “I’m so impressed with myself.”

  “Great exposure. A Waxx author forever.”

  “Forever?”

  “From now on. He’ll review every book. You caught his eye. He’s committed to you.”

  “Forever is a long time.”

  “Other writers would kill for this. To be recognized. At the highest level.”

  “I wouldn’t kill for it,” I assured him.

  “Because you’ve already got it. What a day. A Waxx author. My client. This is so good. Better than Metamucil.”

  The fiber-supplement reference was not a joke. Hud Jacklight had no sense of humor.

  Humorless, without scruples, not much of a reader, Hud had been the most successful literary agent in the country for two decades. This said less about Hud than it did about the publishing industry.

  “A Waxx author,” Hud gushed again. “Incredible. Fabulous. Son. Of. A. Gun.”

  “It’s November,” I said in a perky voice, “but, gee, it feels like spring.”