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
