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them out—is that what you’re telling me? Is that really what you’re telling me?”
“Dogs,” Milo said, “have been very protective of their human companions for thousands of years.”
Lassie growled in agreement.
After a long period of thoughtful silence, with Penny still behind the wheel of the Hummer, I said, “Milo?”
“Yeah, Dad.”
“The saltshakers.”
“What saltshakers?”
“The ones you gave us in the cellar of the Landulf house.”
“Oh, those aren’t saltshakers anymore.”
Penny said, “I’m not sure I’m prepared for this right now. We killed two men this morning, we’ve got Waxx chained to the floor in back, we’ve got a teleporting dog, so it’s like, you know, enough is enough for one day.”
Quite reasonably, I explained my position to her: “To avoid any unpleasant surprises, I’d just like to know if the saltshakers will send me to Mars or turn me into a wolf, or throw me into a parallel dimension where dinosaurs still rule the earth. I’m not asking the hour of my death or whether I’m going to spend the rest of my life in a people-of-the-red-arms prison, I don’t want information that would make living unbearable. I just want to know what the saltshakers will do.”
Penny Boom said, “Let it go.”
“It’s defensive knowledge. It’s like, what if you were walking around with a butane lighter in your pocket, and you didn’t know what it was, you thought maybe it was a breath freshener, so you stuck it in your mouth to get a squirt of mint, and you clicked it, and you set your tongue on fire.”
“Let it go.”
“Milo,” I said.
“Yeah, Dad.”
“Will the saltshaker send me to Mars?”
“It’s not a saltshaker anymore.”
“Whatever it is, will it send me to Mars?”
“No, that’s not possible.”
“Will it turn me into a wolf?”
“That’s kind of a silly question.”
“But will it turn me into a wolf?”
“Of course not.”
“Will it throw me into a parallel dimension where dinosaurs still rule the earth?”
“I don’t mean to be rude, Dad, but that’s stupid. Won’t happen even with the pepper shakers.”
“You’ve got pepper shakers, too?”
“Let it go,” said Penny.
“Let’s stay with the saltshakers, Spooky.”
“That’s all we’ve got,” he said, “except they aren’t saltshakers anymore, like I keep saying.”
“What are they supposed to do?”
“You mean when they were saltshakers or now?”
“Now. What will they do now?”
“This thing that’s like nothing anyone would think could happen. You have to experience it to understand.”
Penny said, “Cubby, if you don’t let it go, I’m going to start screaming.”
“You won’t start screaming,” I said.
“Yes, I will, and I’ll want to stop, I really will want to stop, but I won’t be able to stop, I’ll scream insane things like ‘butane breath freshener,’ all day, all night, and then what are you going to do with me, are you going to take me back to Titus Springs and ask Frank the hardware guy’s geeky nephew to lock me in his basement?”
Suddenly it seemed to me that I had been hectoring Milo and Penny much as Hud Jacklight often hectored me.
Mortified, I said, “You’re right.”
She regarded me with suspicion.
“No,” I said, “you are, you’re right. Sometimes it’s best to just let it go. We’ve been through a lot today, and it’s not over yet. We still have to deal with Waxx, and that’s enough. Dealing with Waxx is all by itself too much.”
In the backseat, Lassie yawned loudly, and Milo said, “Dad, it’s just that if I tried to explain the science, it would sound like gobbledygook to you.”
“I’ve let it go, Milo.”
“If it makes you feel better, Dad, I can guarantee you the saltshaker won’t set your tongue on fire.”
“That’s good to know, son.”
“It won’t freshen your breath, either.”
As we were entering the Los Angeles area, the day wanted to move on toward Japan, and I let it go.
A short while later, the twilight wanted to follow the day, and I let it go.
Letting go of things greatly relaxed me. I felt that at last I was making progress and that one day I would be the same Cubby that I had always been, would hold fast to my best qualities, but would have become a Cubby who could let things go.
We were now drawing very close to the moment when one of the three of us would be shot dead, whereafter life would never be the same.
The Shearman Waxx house looked exactly like it did on Google Earth: cream-colored walls, terra-cotta window surrounds, a handsome Spanish Mediterranean residence set behind forty-foot magnolias that canopied the front yard. At night, romantic landscape lighting made the place magical.
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