Dean Koontz - Relentless

As I followed her through the connecting door between the kitchen and the garage, I said, “Is that a slighting remark about my experiences with fireworks?”

“How many times have you burned off your eyebrows?”

“Once. The other three times, I just singed them.” Regarding me over the roof of the car, she raised her eyebrows. Their pristine condition mocked me.

“You singed them so well,” she said, “the smell of burning hair blanketed the entire neighborhood.”

“Anyway, the last time was more than five years ago.”

“So you’re overdue for a repeat performance,” she said, and got into the car.

Settling behind the steering wheel, I protested: “On the contrary.

As any behavioral psychologist will tell you, if you can go five years without repeating the same mistake, you’ll never make it again.”

“I wish I had a behavioral psychologist here right now.”

“You think he’d contradict me, but he wouldn’t. They call it the five-year rule.”

As I started the engine, Penny used the remote control to raise the garage door. “Wait until it’s all the way up before you drive through it.”

“I never drove forward through a garage door,” I reminded her. “I reversed through it once, which is a whole different thing.”

“Maybe. But considering it happened less than five years ago, I’m not taking any chances.”

“You know, for someone whose parents call themselves Clotilda and Grimbald, you’re remarkably funny.”

“I would have to be, wouldn’t I? Don’t run down the mailbox.”

“I will if I want.”

We were having a fine time. The evening ahead was full of promise: good food, wine, laughter, and love.

Soon, however, Fate would bring me to a cliff. Although I would see the precipice before me, I would nevertheless step into thin air, taking not merely a pratfall but a plunge.

In Newport Beach, on Balboa Peninsula, in a building near one of the town’s two piers, Roxie’s Bistro has low lighting, medium-Deco decor, and high culinary standards.

Most restaurants these days are as noisy as a drum-and-cymbal factory invaded by two hundred chimpanzees intent on committing percussion. Those establishments eschew sound-suppressing designs and materials under the pretense that cacophony gives the patrons a sense of being in a hip, happening place.

In truth, such restaurants seek and attract a type of customer whose very existence, in such numbers, proves our civilization is dying: boisterous and free-spending egotists taught since infancy that self-esteem matters more than knowledge, that manners and etiquette are merely tools of oppression. They like the sound of their own braying, and they seem to be convinced that the louder they are, the more desperately every onlooker wants to be in their clique.

Roxie’s Bistro offered, instead, quiet intimacy. The murmur of conversation sometimes rose, though never became distracting. Combined with the soft silvery clink of flatware and an occasional surge of laughter, these voices made a pleasing music from the news of the day, gossip, and stories of times past.

Penny and I talked about publishing, politics, pickles, art, Milo, dogs in general, Lassie in particular, fleas, Flaubert, Florida, alliteration, ice dancing, Scrooge McDuck, the role of dark matter in the universe, and tofu, among other things.

In the golden glow of recessed lighting and in the flicker of candles in faceted amber-glass cups, radiant Penny looked like a beautiful queen, and I probably resembled Rumpelstiltskin scheming to take her next-born child. At least my ugly feet were hidden in socks and shoes.

After we finished our entrées but before we ordered dessert, Penny went to the lavatory.

Seeing me alone at the table, Hamal Sarkissian stopped by to keep me company.

Roxie Sarkissian had established the restaurant fifteen years earlier and was the award-winning chef. Although charming, she seldom ventured out from the kitchen.

Hamal, her husband, was the ideal frontman. He liked people, had an irresistible smile, and was diplomatic enough to soothe and win over the most unreasonable customer.

Standing by the table, he regarded me not with his trademark smile but instead with grave concern. “Is everything okay, Cubby?”

“Fabulous dinner,” I assured him. “Perfect. As always.”

Still solemn, he said, “Are you going on tour for the new book?”

“No. I needed a break this time.”

“Don’t worry about him, what he says.”

Perplexed, I asked, “Worry about who, what?”

“He’s a strange man, the critic.”

“Oh. So…you saw the Shearman Waxx review, huh?”

“Two paragraphs. Then I spit on his column and turned the page.”

“It doesn’t faze me. I’ve already let it go.”

“He’s a strange man. He always makes his reservation in the name Edmund Wilson.”

Surprised, surveying the room, I said, “He comes here?”

“Seldom dinner. More often lunch.”

“How about that.”

“He’s always alone, pays cash.”

“You’re sure it’s him? Nobody seems to know what he looks like.”

“Twice he was short of cash,” Hamal said. “He used a credit card. Shearman Waxx. He’s a very strange man.”

“Well, rest assured, if he had a reservation for tonight and I were to run into him, there wouldn’t be a scene. Criticism doesn’t bother me.”

“In fact, he has a twelve-thirty lunch reservation tomorrow,” said Hamal.

“Criticism comes with the territory.”

“He’s a damned strange man.”

“A review is only one person’s opinion.”

Hamal said, “He creeps me out a little.”

“I’ve already let it go. You know what it’s like. The restaurant gets a bad review— c’est la vie . You just keep on keepin’ on.”

“We’ve never had a bad review,” Hamal said.

Embarrassed by the assumption I had made, I said, “Why would you? This place is perfection.”

“Do you get many bad reviews?”

“I don’t keep track. Maybe ten percent aren’t good. Maybe twelve percent. My third book—that was like fourteen percent. I don’t dwell on the negative. Ninety percent good reviews is gratifying.”

“Eighty-six percent,” said Hamal.

“That was only for my third book. Some critics didn’t think the dwarf was necessary.”

“I like dwarfs. I have a cousin in Armenia, he’s a dwarf.”

“Even if you use a dwarf as your hero, you have to call him a ‘little person.’ The word dwarf just incenses some critics.”

“This critic of yours, he always reminds me of my cousin.”

“You mean Shearman Waxx is a dwarf?”

“No. He’s about five feet eight. But he’s stumpy.”

The front door opened, a party of four entered, and Hamal went to greet them.

A moment later, Penny returned from the lavatory. Settling in her chair, she said, “I’m going to finish this delightful wine before deciding on dessert.”

“That reminds me—Hud wants to buy our wine this evening. He says send him the receipt.”

“That would be wasting a perfectly good stamp.”

“He might pay for half the bottle. He sent us champagne that time.”

“It wasn’t champagne. It was sparkling cider. Anyway, why would he suddenly want to buy our wine?”

“To celebrate the Waxx review.”

“The man is criminally obtuse.”

“He’s not that bad. Just clueless.”

“I don’t like how he’s always pushing to be my agent, too.”

“He negotiates killer deals,” I said.

“But he doesn’t know squat about children’s books.”

“He has to know something. He was a child at one time.”