LITMIR.BIZ

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I asked.

      “No. I want to blow up something.”

      “I’m having Scotch. Blow up what?”

      “Not just a tree stump, that’s for sure.”

      “We don’t have any stumps. Just trees.”

      “Like a hotel. Something at least twenty stories.”

      “Is that satisfying—blowing up a hotel?”

      “You’re so relaxed afterward,” she said.

      “Then let’s do it.”

      “We blew up a church once. That was just sad.”

      “I’m angry and scared. I don’t need sad on top of that.”

      I sat on a stool, my back to the breakfast bar, and watched her pace as I sipped the Scotch. The whiskey was just a prop; what calmed and fortified me was watching Penny.

      “Blowing things up,” she said, “relieves stress better than cookies.”

      “Plus it’s less fattening,” I noted, “and doesn’t lead to diabetes.”

      “I’m thinking maybe we’ve made a mistake not involving Milo in all that.”

      “I’m sure he’d enjoy blowing up buildings. What kid wouldn’t? But what about the effect on his personality development?”

      “I turned out okay, didn’t I?” she asked.

      “So far, you’re the nicest abnormal person I know. But if the cookies stop working for you…”

      Grimbald, her father, was a demolitions expert. In Las Vegas alone, he had brought down four old hotels to clear the land for bigger and glitzier enterprises. From the time Penny—then Brunhild—was five years old until she married me, he had taken her with him to watch his controlled blasts implode enormous structures.

      On a DVD that her folks produced for us, we have TV-news footage of young Penny at numerous events, clapping her hands in delight, giggling, and mugging for the camera as, behind her, huge hotels and office buildings and apartment towers and sports stadiums collapsed into ruins. She looked adorable.

      Grimbald and Clotilda titled the DVD Memories, and for the soundtrack they used Streisand singing “The Way We Were” as well as an old Perry Como tune, “Magic Moments.” They got teary-eyed when they played it every Christmas.

      “I’ve learned something about myself tonight,” Penny said.

      “Oh, good. Then it’s all been worthwhile.”

      “I didn’t know I could get this pissed off.”

      Penny dropped her half-eaten cookie in the kitchen sink.

      “Uh-oh,” I said.

      With a spatula, she shoved the cookie into the drain. She turned on the cold water, and then she thumbed the garbage-disposal button.

      In an instant, whirling steel obliterated the cookie, but she did not at once push the button again. She stared at the drain as the water spilled down through the churning blades.

      I began to suspect that in the theater of her mind, she was feeding pieces of Shearman Waxx to the disposal.

      After a minute, I raised my voice to be heard above the motor, the whistling blades, and the running water: “You’re beginning to freak me out.”

      Shutting off the disposal and the water, she said, “I’m freaking myself out.” She turned away from the sink. “How could he see in the dark?”

      “Maybe night-vision goggles, the infrared spectrum.”

      “Sure, everybody has a pair of those lying around. So how could he take control of our alarm system?”

      “Babe, remember when we got a car with a satellite-navigation system? The first day, I kept responding to the woman who was giving me directions because I thought she was talking to me live from orbit?”

      “Okay, I’m asking the wrong guy. But you’re the only guy I’ve got to ask.”

      As I started to reply, Penny put a finger to her lips, warning me to be silent.

      Cocking my head, listening to the house, I wondered what she had heard.

      She came to me, took my glass of Scotch, and put it on the counter.

      Raising my eyebrows, I silently mouthed the question What?

      She grabbed my hand, led me into the food pantry, closed the door behind us, and said sotto voce, “What if he can hear us?”

      “How could he hear us?”

      “Maybe he bugged the house.”

      “How could he have done that?”

      “I don’t know. How did he take control of our alarm system?”

      “Let’s not get totally paranoid,” I said.

      “Too late. Cubby, who is this guy?”

      The standard online encyclopedia answer that had been adequate only a day earlier—award-winning critic, author of three college textbooks, enema—no longer seemed complete.

      “After his weird walk-through yesterday,” Penny said, “I told you it was over, he’d made his point. But it wasn’t over. It still isn’t.”

      “Maybe it is,” I said with less conviction than a guy cowering in the rubble of a city only half destroyed by Godzilla.

      “What does he want from us? What do you think?”

      “I don’t know. I can’t figure how his head works.”

      Her eyes were no less lovely for being haunted. “He wants to destroy us, Cubby.”

      “He can’t destroy us.”

      “Why can’t he?” she asked.

      “Our careers depend on talent and hard work—not just on a critic’s opinions.”

      “Careers? I’m not talking about careers. You’re in denial.”

      For some reason—maybe to avoid her gaze—I plucked a can of beets off a pantry shelf. Then I didn’t know what to do with it.

      “In the mood for beets?” she asked. When I returned the can to the shelf without comment, she said, “Cubby, he’s going to kill us.”

      “I didn’t do anything to him. Neither did Milo. You haven’t even seen him yet.”

      “He has some reason. I don’t much care what it is. I just know what he’s going to do.”

      I found myself looking at a can of corn, but I didn’t pick it up. “Let’s be real. If he wanted to kill us, he could have done it tonight.”

      “He’s sadistic. He wants to torment us, terrify us, totally dominate us—and then kill us.”

      I was surprised by the words that came from me: “I’m not a magnet for monsters.”

      “Cubby? What does that mean?”

      I know Penny so well that her tone of voice told me precisely what expression now shaped her face: furrowed brow, eyes squinted in calculation, nose lifted as if to catch a scent, lips still parted in expectation after she had spoken—the quizzical look of an acutely perceptive woman who recognizes a moment of revelation hidden in the folds of a conversation.

      “What does that mean?” she repeated.

      Rather than lie to her, I said, “I think I should apologize.”

      “Are you talking to me or the corn?”

      I dared to look at her, which was not easy considering what I said as I met her eyes: “I mean—apologize

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