It was terrible! He almost spat it out onto the ground. But he had paid for it, so he made himself chew and swallow. The crust was thick and sticky, the gravy thin and greasy, the meat gristly. The coins he had spent for it would have been put to better use being dropped with a wish into one of the park fountains. He could stand to eat only half, but that was food enough to see him through until he went home to meet with his math tutor. There was bread in his own kitchen, or he might stop in at Grammie’s house first, where the icebox and cookie jar were always full.
Lazily, feet stretched out before him, checked cap pulled down low on his forehead, he watched people on the paths enjoying the fine day. City sounds were muffled here, so it was the cries of children and the barking of dogs that filled the air, against a soft, steady background sound of splashing water from the nearby fountain. Three men walked by him, deep in conversation.
Watching them, Max had the idea to ask if businesses might need a messenger to carry important papers and packages between the New Town and the old city, the harbor, the courts, the mayor’s office, the hospital. Or he might get himself a little cart and sell his own meat pies; Grammie was sure to have a recipe. Or sandwich rolls filled with cheese and tomatoes, those would be popular here in the park. Or … oranges and bananas from a tray or … and he had drifted off to sleep. When your dreams have disturbed you, alone in an empty house, even a bad lunch can make you drowsy. But it was only a little light snooze, and Max was pulled gently out of it when he sensed that he was being stared at. Slowly, warily, he sat up.
The staring eyes were big and round and brown as boots. They did not blink. Their face was unsmiling and topped by wispy light brown hair. The body looked almost too small for its head, being so short in the limbs and so narrow at the shoulders. A child, Max realized. A very young child. “Hello,” he said, and smiled.
The child wore a loose red cotton blouse, short white pants, and high white shoes made of soft leather. He stood directly in front of Max, staring.
“What’s your name?” asked Max.
There was no response.
Max looked around. No adult hovered nearby keeping a careful eye on its child. No mother, no nanny, grandmother, or nursemaid, no sister or brother, not even a large family dog. In every direction there were children in sight and adults around them, but they were all at a distance.
“Where’s your mommy?” he asked.
There was no response, no change in the child’s serious, staring expression.
What did you do with a child, alone and too young to talk? Max asked, “You want to come sit up here with me?” and patted the bench beside him.
The child lifted his arms, which Max took to mean yes. He bent over to pick him up and set him on the bench beside him, where he sat quite happily, hands clasped in his lap, legs sticking straight out. Max wondered if he’d have to stay where he was, with the child, until the parent or guardian realized he was missing and came looking.
“What’s your name?” he asked again, but the child was busily considering the view from this new height and paid no attention to Max.
“My name is Max,” Max said. He tapped his chest with his forefinger. “Max. Can you say that?”
The child smiled, showing four little white teeth emerging from his upper gums and four from his lower. “Maah,” he echoed, putting his own hand on his own chest.
“No, I’m Max. Who are you?”
“Momma,” the child told him.
Max laughed. “You can’t be Momma.”
“Dadda,” the child suggested cheerfully.
A different approach was needed, obviously. Max asked, “Where’s Momma?”
“Maah,” the little boy answered, and then, satisfied with their conversation, turned his attention back to the park spread out before them, studying it and apparently thinking.
Should he take the child to the police? Max wondered. He knew that was the logical and the natural thing to do—but the police would ask him questions, and he didn’t want to answer any questions. This was developing into a problem, this child. He didn’t think he should just put a child into his bicycle basket and wheel it across the park to Grammie’s library; but she did know that policeman, Officer Torson, so if no better choice came along, in the end he could do that.
But what if he started crying, frightened at the strangeness of a bicycle and the strangeness of Max? Could Max ride all that distance with a howling child and not be noticed?
The child turned away from Max, twisted over onto his stomach, and slid backward to the ground. He looked up at Max, extended a very small hand to him, and said, “Eye.” Or maybe it was “I.” Or could it have been “Aye.”
Obviously, he wanted Max to go with him, and Max didn’t see that he had any choice. “I need my bicycle,” he said, moving toward the tree trunk against which the bicycle leaned.
“Eye!” (Or “I!” or “Aye!”) the little boy cried, impatient and cross—if a child that young could be impatient and cross—and he ran off, luckily not at much speed. Letting the bicycle fall, Max caught up in three steps.
“Wait, just for a minute,” he said. “Wait.”
“Eye! Eye!”
“But I have to bring my bicycle. How about—do you want to ride? Zoom, zoom,” he offered with a broad, swift swing of his arm.
That interested the child.
“In the basket?” Max offered. Also, that way he couldn’t bolt off again. He was beginning to see how the little boy had managed to get separated from his grown-up. “Basket?” he offered again, holding out his hand to the child. “Bicycle?”
Luckily, the child liked the idea and took Max’s hand. “Maah,” he said contentedly, and pulled Max back to where the bicycle lay. Max stood the bicycle up and let the child spin the foot pedal around and around for a while, then jam his short arms through the spokes of the wheel. At last he raised his arms and gave an order. “Uppie! Uppie!” Max lifted him up into the basket, folding the remarkably flexible legs to fit the basket’s shape.
Excited now, with everything being so new again, the child pointed, shouting, “Eye! Eye!” (Or “I! I!” or “Aye! Aye!”) Max didn’t dare mount and ride, so he held the handlebars and wheeled the bicycle along the path in front of the fountain.
Twisting around in the basket, the child reached out to push at Max’s right hand. “You want to steer it yourself?” Max asked, and he had to laugh. “You’re facing the wrong way, just in the first place. And you’re much too short.” He jabbed his chin at the child when he spoke those last words: much jab, too jab, short jab.
The little boy giggled and tried to jam his small fist into Max’s mouth.
Max wheeled the bicycle down the pathway, approaching a group of women who had small children running all around them. There he angled the bicycle so the child could see the group. “Momma?” he asked.
“Maah,” the child answered, and pointed away, across the park to the road, reminding Max, “Eye.” Then his mouth stretched out flat and wrinkled ominously. “Eye!” he cried, more loudly.
Max thought he could come back to these groups later, to ask if there had been anyone missing a child, but for now he wanted to keep the child quiet, which meant doing as he was told. He didn’t want anyone noticing him, wondering about him, looking for explanations. He hadn’t yet figured out what lies he could safely tell; he just knew what truths he had to keep hidden. So he kept moving.
They went all around the park, along the paths, among the trees, around both fountains, and nobody claimed the child. When Max turned reluctantly back, away from the road, to approach the closest group of women and ask them what they knew, the child grew restless and impatient first; then his mouth opened wide as his lips quivered and his round brown eyes filled with tears. He began to wail. “All right,” Max said. “We’re going, don’t cry. Please, don’t?”
“Eye,” the child sniffled. He twisted around in the basket and pointed.
Max obeyed the pointing finger, moving carefu
lly through the carriages going along the roadway as he crossed Barthold Boulevard, lifting bicycle and child over the tram tracks. Now the child twisted his head around to look at the little shops lining the street.
Max looked, too, but saw no sign of a frantic mother. He saw fruit, books, and hats. He saw four men in suits seated around a table under a wide green-and-yellow-striped umbrella, with plates of food and a waiter bending over to fill their glasses with water. He saw a sign with a chocolate ice cream cone that looked so real he thought he could eat it, after his disappointing lunch. People who painted signs had to be good at it, he thought, and then he wondered if he might earn his living painting signs for stores or restaurants, bakeries, or even ships’ chandlers and ironmongers, blacksmiths, goldsmiths, silversmiths; all kinds of businesses needed signs to identify their products. Max admired a large painted wooden shoe hung out over the cobbler’s doorway. He would ask Joachim if—
“Eye! Eye!” the child cried, trying to crawl up out of the bicycle basket.
Max grabbed for the little shoulders. “No!” He pushed at the child to keep him in the basket. “Stay there, please, don’t—” and at the same time he turned to see what the child was pointing at. As soon as he saw it, he understood.
“Ice cream?” he asked. “You want ice cream?”
“I,” the child answered, relieved that this large and friendly person had finally grasped his perfectly simple and entirely obvious desire.
Max lifted him out of the basket and set him on his feet, gripping one small wrist tightly while he leaned his bicycle up against the brick wall beside the shop entrance. Maybe, once he had given him some ice cream, the child would point the way home. Or maybe he would have to ask where the nearest police station was so he could take the child there and a parent could be found. Or he could go find Grammie and admit that he’d acted impulsively … But she wouldn’t want him to have ignored the child, would she? Now he wondered, alarmed, if by putting the child in his basket and riding off, he might be accused of kidnapping. He should have stopped to think. Or at least he should have slowed down and thought. The child seemed perfectly content now, pulling Max into the little shop; but the parent must be frantic.
Should he have just waited where he was, on the bench, with the child safely beside him? It was too late to worry about that. He had made his choice, done what he’d done.
The shop bell jangled behind them, and Max breathed in deeply. He wasn’t sure what to say.
The young woman who looked at them from behind the counter had light brown hair held neatly away from her face by a white kerchief, pale brown eyes, and olive skin, and she was as plain—and as appealing—as a mole, or a field mouse, or any other soft little brown thing. The child ran up to the glass-fronted display case, and Max removed his gray-and-white-checked cap, ready to explain, but the young woman rushed out from behind the counter before he could open his mouth.
“Angel!” she cried, crouching down beside the child. “There you are!” meaning here. “Where have you been?”
“Is this your—” Max started to ask.
She didn’t even look at him. It was as if she hadn’t heard him. “Your mother is fit to be tied!” She poked the child gently in his stomach. “Momma was just in here, Angel, and she said that you—” and then she did look up at Max, her serious little face hopeful. “Can you go find her? She’s a tall woman wearing a red hat with two peacock feathers. It’s only been a few minutes since she was here. She’s running around like a chicken with her head cut off. Well, of course. She went left, down the boulevard. I’ll keep Angel here. He knows me, don’t you, Angel? Tell her Gabrielle has him. Do you want some ice cream?”
“I?” the child asked.
“Yes, ice cream. I know, chocolate,” answered the young woman, turning back to the child, her face lit by a smile as gentle as early-morning sunlight. The smile did not leave her face as she turned to Max again. “Could you? Please?”
Without a word, Max exited the shop and looked off to the left.
At the end of the block, just past a crossroad, he saw a red hat entering a door under a blue-and-white-striped awning, and he jammed his cap onto his head and took off at a run. He dodged through men and women on the sidewalk, bicycles and a delivery wagon in the street, mumbling, “Sorry, excuse me,” ignoring the protests, “Where’s the fire, mister?”
She was just coming out of the hotel when he ran up to her and saw immediately that she was a mother looking for her lost child. Tendrils of escaped hair stuck to her temples, her eyes were watery, and the two peacock feathers on her hat tilted so wildly that only a bright silver Z kept them attached.
Max had almost no breath to speak with. He gasped, “It’s all. Right. He’s.”
She looked at him, uncomprehending.
He gasped out, “Angel. With Gabrielle.”
Her eyes closed and she sighed in relief. “Thank heavens,” and she was rushing off, unable to run in the high-heeled shoes she wore but trying all the same, back the way Max had just come. He jogged beside her, but she didn’t notice him at all. He followed her into the ice cream shop, where the child was now seated on top of the wooden counter with both hands wrapped around a chocolate ice cream cone, laughing at the young woman.
“Angel!” cried the mother.
“Momma!” cried the child, and then, “Maah,” he added, and held out his cone. “I.” Everything now explained, Angel returned to the ice cream.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” the mother said, and bent down to kiss the child on his cheek, letting her hand curve around the small neck. “Ever ever ever.”
“Momma,” the child said, and pushed her away.
Keeping a hand on his head, she turned to the young woman. “I don’t know how I can thank you, Gabrielle.”
“Don’t thank me, thank him,” the young woman said. She straightened the white kerchief on her head, smoothed her apron, and smiled at Max. Max smiled back at her. This Gabrielle was the kind of person you would want to keep nearby so you could get to know her better, the kind of person you would want to want you for a friend. That was somehow obvious. “He just brought Angel in out of the blue. Or, rather, off the street.”
Then the woman did turn, and did see Max—or, rather, she saw a tallish youngish man, poor by the look of his jacket and boots, turning his gray-and-white-checked cap around in his hands. She thought he looked like a hero. The expression in his eyes—odd, those eyes, almost the color of the tarnish on old silver—was alert and attentive. When he spoke, his voice was an unremarkable, normal voice. “Is Angel short for Angelo?”
“It’s short for Humphrey,” she answered with a laugh. “My husband calls him Angel because he’s so un-angelic. He’s a runner-offer.”
Max nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I did notice that.”
“It’s the second time this week,” she said. “But the other time was out into our own garden. I’m not a bad mother.”
“You are a lovely mother,” the young woman, Gabrielle, said earnestly. “You adore him. He is a happy and lively little boy. I’ll make you a coffee—sit down, please—and a pastry?”
The woman set her purse on one of the four small tables and began to take off her gloves. “Look at my hands,” she observed. “They’re shaking. You naughty boy, you come right here until Momma feels calmer.” She picked up Angel-Humphrey, dripping ice cream cone and all, and sat him on her lap. She looked up at Max. “Thank you. I don’t know how to—won’t you join me?”
“Well …” He hesitated. He had to continue looking for employment, and he had to be back at home by three to meet his tutor.
“Please, you have to,” the mother told him. “How else can I gather my wits to thank you properly. Please? Gabrielle has the lightest touch with pastry in the entire city. Gabrielle, bring us two of the almond croissants, and coffee for— What’s your name?” she asked, turning back to Max, who was hovering beside the table, making up his mind. Angel-Humphrey paid no attention to any
thing but his ice cream. “Do sit,” she insisted. “Give me a chance to calm down; I was so frightened. I mean, when I think how excited we were when he started walking. Those first steps?” She laughed again and straightened her hat. She wore rings on both hands, and when she gestured, jewels flashed and glittered in the sunlight coming through the shop window. Her hands moved now, back from her hat down to her son’s narrow shoulder, which she gently rubbed. “Unless you’d rather have ice cream?”
“No thank you, ma’am,” Max said. “There’s chocolate on your shoulder,” he told her.
“Double fudge, it’s the only flavor he’ll eat. But who are you?”
“Max,” said Max. He didn’t want to reveal his last name, and at that moment Gabrielle put two cups of coffee and two croissants down on the table, so he didn’t have to. The mother did not introduce herself—you didn’t introduce yourself to poor people, even if they had just returned your wandering child. She picked up a fork and knife to eat her pastry with, because you didn’t eat with your fingers unless you were on a picnic. She had an awkward time of it with Angel-Humphrey on her lap, but she managed. Meanwhile, Max was berating himself for not telling her his name was Bartholomew or Lorenzo; now he’d missed his chance, and he should have thought faster.
He picked up his croissant—elegant table manners weren’t expected of workmen, or students, or poor people, he knew—and took a bite. He let the taste spread around his mouth and forgot to be cross with himself. “This is really good,” he said, first to his hostess and then, turning, to Gabrielle, who had retreated behind her wooden counter. “This is really good.”
Gabrielle smiled her gentle smile. She was used to this reaction.
The mother leaned across the table to say to Max, in a low and private voice, “Really, she could be the pastry chef in a five-star restaurant. The Silver Spoon, you might not have heard of it, or Zardo’s. But apprenticeships cost money, especially at places like that. Which is,” she said, smiling, “good luck for us common folk, isn’t it?”
Mister Max: The Book of Lost Things: Mister Max 1 Page 7
