LITMIR.BIZ

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Waxx. This is deception by omission, and it is not admirable behavior.

      Considering that I had no intention of either approaching the critic or speaking to him, I saw no harm in this small deception, no need to concern Penny or to have to listen to her admonition to “Let it go.”

      Only once before had I deceived her by omission. That previous instance involved an issue more serious than this one. At the start of our courtship, and now for ten years, I had carefully avoided revealing to her the key fact about myself, the most formative experience of my life, for it seemed to be a weight she should not have to carry.

      Because Milo and I arrived before Waxx, I was not at risk of running a variation of my garage-door stunt, accidentally driving through the restaurant, killing the critic at his lunch, and thus being wrongly suspected of premeditated murder.

      Having conspired with me earlier on the phone, Hamal pointed to a table at the midpoint of the restaurant. “He will be seated there, by the window. He always reads a book while he dines. You will know him. He is a strange man.”

      Earlier, on the Internet, I sought out the only known photograph of Shearman Waxx, which proved to be of no use. The image was as blurry as all those snapshots of Big Foot striding through woods and meadows.

      When Hamal left us alone, Milo said, “What strange man?”

      “Just a guy. A customer. Hamal thinks he’s strange.”

      “Why?”

      “He’s got a third eye in his forehead.”

      Milo scoffed: “Nobody has an eye in his forehead.”

      “This guy does. And four nostrils in his nose.”

      “Yeah?” He was as gimlet-eyed as a homicide detective. “What kind of pet does he have—a flying furnal?”

      “Two of them,” I said. “He’s taught them stunt flying.”

      While we studied our menus and enjoyed our lemony iced tea, in no hurry to order food, Milo and I discussed our favorite cookies, Saturday-morning cartoon shows, and whether extraterrestrials are more likely to visit Earth to enlighten us or to eat us. We talked about dogs in general, Lassie in particular, and anomalies of current flow in electromagnetic fields.

      With the last subject, my half of the conversation consisted of so many grunts and snorts that I might have been the aforementioned Sasquatch.

      Promptly at 12:30, a stumpy man carrying an attaché case entered the restaurant. Hamal escorted him to the previously specified window table.

      To be fair, the guy appeared less stumpy than solid. Although perhaps half as wide as he was tall, Waxx was not overweight. He seemed to have the density of a lead brick.

      His neck looked thick enough to support the stone head of an Aztec-temple god. His face was so at odds with the rest of the man that it might have been grafted to him by a clever surgeon: a wide smooth brow, bold and noble features, a strong chin—a face suitable for a coin from the Roman Empire.

      He was about forty, certainly not 140, as the online encyclopedia claimed. His leonine hair had turned prematurely white.

      In charcoal-gray slacks, an ash-gray hound’s-tooth sport coat with leather elbow patches, a white shirt, and a red bow tie, he seemed to be part college professor and part professional wrestler, as though two men of those occupations had shared a teleportation chamber and—à la the movie The Fly—had discovered their atoms intermingled at the end of their trip.

      From his attaché case, he withdrew a hardcover book and what appeared to be a stainless-steel torture device. He opened the book and fitted it into the jaws of this contraption, which held the volume open and at a slant for comfortable hands-free reading.

      Evidently, the critic was a man of reliable habits. A waiter came to his table with a glass of white wine that he hadn’t ordered.

      Waxx nodded, seemed to utter a word or two, but did not glance up at his server, who at once departed.

      He put on half-lens, horn-rimmed reading glasses and, after a sip of wine, turned his attention to the steel-entrapped book.

      Because I did not want to be caught staring, I continued my conversation with Milo. I focused mostly on my son and glanced only occasionally toward the critic.

      Before long, my spy mission began to seem absurd. Shearman Waxx might be a somewhat odd-looking package, but after the mystery of his appearance had been solved, nothing about him was compelling.

      I did not intend to approach him or speak to him. Penny, Olivia Cosima, and even Hud Jacklight had been right to say that responding to an unfair review was generally a bad idea.

      As the tables between ours and Waxx’s filled with customers, my view of him became obstructed. By the time we finished our main course and ordered dessert, I lost interest in him.

      After I paid the bill and tipped the waiter, as we were rising from the table to leave, Milo said, “I gotta pee, Dad.”

      The restrooms were at our end of the premises, off a short hall, and as we crossed the room, I glanced toward Waxx. I couldn’t see his table clearly through the throng, but his chair stood empty. He must have finished lunch and left.

      The sparkling-clean men’s room featured one stall wide enough for a wheelchair, two urinals, and two sinks. Redolent of astringent pine-scented disinfectant, the air burned in my nostrils.

      Someone occupied the stall, but Milo wasn’t tall enough to use one of the urinals unassisted. After he unzipped his pants, fumbled in his fly, and produced himself, I clamped my hands around his waist and lifted him above the porcelain bowl.

      “Ready,” he said.

      “Aim,” I said.

      “Fire,” he said, and loosed a stream.

      When Milo was more than half drained, the toilet flushed and the stall door opened.

      I glanced sideways, saw Shearman Waxx not six feet from me, and as if my throat were the pinched neck of a balloon, I let out a thin “Eeee” in surprise.

      In the restaurant, his table had been at such a distance from ours that I had not been able to see the color of his eyes. They were maroon.

      Although I have thought about that moment often in the days since, I still do not know whether, startled, I turned toward the critic or whether Milo, held aloft in my hands, twisted around to see what had made me gasp. I suspect it was a little of both.

      The boy’s stream arced to the tile floor.

      For a man as solid as a concrete battlement, Waxx proved to be agile. He danced adroitly backward, out of the splash zone, and his gray Hush Puppies remained entirely dry.

      “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I chanted, and turned Milo toward the urinal.

      Without a word, Waxx stepped over the puddle, went to one of the sinks, and began to wash his hands.

      “He’s a little guy,” I said. “I have to lift him up.”

      Although Waxx did not respond, I imagined I could feel his gaze boring into my back as he watched me in the mirror above the sinks.

      I knew that the more I apologized, the more it might seem that I had intended to use Milo like a squirt gun, but I couldn’t shut up.

      “Nothing like that ever happened before. If he’d nailed you, I would have paid the dry-cleaning bill.”

      Waxx pulled paper towels from the dispenser.

      As he finished peeing, Milo giggled.

      “He’s a good kid,” I assured Waxx. “He saved a dog from being euthanized.”

      The only sound was the rustle of paper as the critic dried his hands.

      Although Milo could read at a college level, he was nonetheless a six-year-old boy. Six-year-old boys find nothing funnier

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