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 limpid 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.”
Before Penny and I left for Roxie’s Bistro that evening, I had received calls from my publisher, my audio publisher, my film agent, and three friends, regarding the Waxx review. All of them said in various ways the same thing that Penny had advised: Let it go.
When Vivian Norby, Milo’s baby-sitter, arrived, she said as she stepped into the foyer, “Saw the review, Cubby. He’s an ignorant egg-sucker. Don’t pay him any mind.”
“I’ve already let it go,” I assured her.
“If you want me to sit down with him and have a talk, I will.”
That was an intriguing concept. “What would you say to him?”
“Same thing I say to every kid too big for his britches. I’d lay out the rules of polite society and make it clear that I know how to enforce them.”
Vivian was fiftyish, solid but not fat, steely-eyed but warm-hearted, as confident as a grizzly bear but feminine. Her husband, a former marine and homicide detective—now deceased—had never won an arm-wrestling contest with her.
As usual, she wore pink: pink sneakers with yellow laces, a pink skirt, and a pink-and-cream sweater. Her dangling earrings featured silver kittens climbing silver chains.
“I’m sure you could make him properly contrite,” I said.
“You just give me his address.”
“I would—except I’m not dwelling on what he said. I’ve already let it go.”
“If you change your mind, just call.”
After closing the door behind her, she took my arm as if this were her house and she were welcoming a guest, and she escorted me out of the foyer, into the living room, almost lifting me onto my toes as we went. Shoulders back, formidable bosom raised, Vivian moved