“I hope so,” Alexander said.
“What just happened?” Judith asked.
“I was doing a robot,” Max explained. “You’re supposed to laugh.”
No one had laughed. No one was smiling now.
“What’s a robot?” Ira said. He sounded scared.
“A robot?” Max said. “A robot?”
No one knew what a robot was.
“C’mon, a robot,” Max said. “Robots are the best.”
“What’s that?” Carol said sharply.
“Robots are the best,” Max repeated, less sure now.
Carol seemed genuinely taken aback.
“That’s what we waited for?” Alexander said. “Pathetic.”
“Did that kind of thing work the last place you were king?” Judith asked.
Douglas furrowed his brow. The Bull’s stare was oppressive. Even Carol looked disappointed in Max, profoundly so.
“I’m getting hungry,” Alexander said, staring intensely at Max.
Carol could see where this was headed.
“You just ate,” Carol growled. “No one’s hungry.”
Judith glared at Max and licked her lips. “Everyone’s hungry and you know it.”
Carol stood, imposing his figure over the group. “No. No one’s hungry. Now get up. Let’s go,” he said. The beasts stared at him, as if sizing him up anew — had he lost any strength? Was he vulnerable in any new way? After a moment, it seemed that no, no one could yet challenge his primacy. They all began to stand and prepared to go.
At that moment, a snowflake appeared. Then more — the snow fell in drunken spirals. Douglas’s admiration for Max had faded, and now he looked at Max in an ugly way. “Good thing you destroyed our homes, King.”
Alexander was happy to heap on the scorn. “Thanks, Your Heinous. I mean Your Highness.”
Judith, Alexander, and Ira walked off. Douglas soon followed, shaking his head. As he left the campground he paused, wanting to say something to Max, but unsure just what that something would be.
Carol waited for everyone to leave. He was on the other side of the fire, looking at his hands.
“Robots are the best, huh? I thought I—”
“That’s not what I meant,” Max said. “I didn’t mean they were better than you.”
“But you said they were the best. Who are they, anyway? Are they bigger than me? Stronger? I don’t know how that could be possible.”
“They’re not,” Max said. “You’re the biggest. By far.”
“Then why’d you say they were the best? That means you think they’re better. I mean, forget it. There’s no reason to talk about it. What’s said is said.”
Max was lost. He was so tired and confused he didn’t know what to say. He stared at the ground for a moment, and when he looked up, Carol was crouched down, his ear to the earth.
“I don’t like the sound of this,” he said. “It’s loud and it’s scrambled and it’s very angry.”
Carol turned to leave the campsite.
“Night, Max. I guess you have a lot to figure out tonight. Good luck.” With that, he disappeared into the woods.
Max heard a crackle of twigs breaking. He turned to see the Bull, gigantic and menacing, standing behind him. They stared at each other. Neither blinked. Then, without a sound, the Bull turned and walked away into the night.
Max was alone. The fire was dwindling, it was snowing lightly, he was on an island in the middle of the sea, and he was alone.
CHAPTER XXXV
All night Max stared into the fire, cold and rattled as the snow continued to fall. He found logs and added them, scooting closer to the flames, trying to stay warm.
Max had to put order to his thoughts, had to straighten out his quail. He started with what he knew, cataloguing what he had learned so far. He knew that Douglas liked having his arm praised as being the best, but he knew that Carol didn’t like hearing that kind of praise directed at someone other than himself, and he certainly didn’t like being told that robots were the best, because presumably, he considered himself the best. He knew that Katherine preferred to be alone with Max. He knew that Judith and Alexander and Ira did not like getting run over by boulders covered in lava and that the possibility of grave injury likely reminded Ira of the void, even the thought of which was to be averted at all costs.
He knew he wanted food. He was nearly delirious with hunger. His head felt light, his stomach jagged. And what he wanted, more than any other food, was soup. Soup would go down easy, would warm and soften everything within him. Any kind of soup would do, but cream of mushroom soup, which his mother made for him when he was feeling sick, would be best.
Maybe, he thought, he should go home. He wasn’t sure that sailing home was even possible, because the continent he’d come from seemed to have disappeared altogether a few hours after he’d left its shore, but he certainly could try. And if he didn’t make it there, there were surely other islands, with other animals or people he could lord over.
But even if he could make it home, he was sure his family had forgotten him. He’d been gone for days, and by now they would assume he was dead and gone, and they would likely be happy for it. Maybe the house had fallen in on itself from all the damage he’d done to it. Maybe his mother and sister had been crushed under the weight of the beams he’d weakened with all that water. No, no, he convinced himself. They were alive, but happy to be rid of an animal like him.
He thought again of going where he’d meant to go in the first place, to his dad’s apartment in the city. He could still do it. If he sailed south-southwest, he would have to get there eventually. And once he got there, he could live there, and he knew how happy his dad would be to have him.
The first problem would be the bed. His dad only had the one bed, and it wasn’t so big, so Max usually slept on the fold-out in the den, and the mattress was thin and the joints of the couch-bed creaked. The room was cold and the sounds of the street were loud and unpredictable. All night there were bursts from the never-sleeping city: sirens and arguments, cackling laughter, bottles shattering in Dumpsters, the hissing of trucks. And when his dad had company over, there were other sounds, too.
Her name was Pamela.
She was pretty in a loud way, with big green eyes and a wide glossy mouth. She worked at a restaurant or owned it or something and they had eaten there, the first time Max had ever sat at a table at a place like that, with a candle in the middle and the whole place amber-colored and dim. It was so boring he wanted to scream.
Pamela had ordered food for all of them, a succession of small dishes, greasy and mud-colored, and Max had ended up eating little but bread. Max’s dad had given him imploring looks, but Max knew he wouldn’t yell at him for not eating, not in front of Pamela.
Afterward she took them down to a basement full of bottles and finally Max was intrigued. He wanted to own that place. Not for the bottles, but for all the wooden shelves, the cubbies, the arched doorways and dark corners. It was like a castle, a dungeon, the labyrinth underneath an ancient kingdom. But for Pamela it was just a place to keep wine. She pulled two dark bottles from the wall and they went up the stairs.
After dinner the three of them took a taxi back to his dad’s building. At the front door, she had said goodbye to Max and Max’s dad, but then there had been some whispering, a quick giggle, and she’d walked off, around the corner, a bottle in each hand.
Max was put to bed, but couldn’t sleep. He lay awake, thinking about the labyrinth under the restaurant, how safe he felt there within its stone walls, its cool dark solidity, until he heard the door squeal open and the drop of two shoes. The sound of bottles clinking together, followed by a volley of shushes. Then footsteps shrinking down the hallway and the closing of his father’s door.