Max was too surprised to say anything.
His father declared that his little mother-in-law had quite taken the wind out of his sails.
To her silent daughter, Grammie said, “Don’t look so surprised,” and to her son-in-law, but laughing, she remarked, “Your sails are never in danger of being without wind.” She asked Max, “You aren’t really surprised, are you?”
“I am,” Max admitted. “I never thought. It never crossed my mind. But it’s a good idea, a really good idea for both of you. As long as I can still have my lessons,” he added, in case she wondered, and then, as if to show her how dumbfounded he was by their announcement, he made what was perhaps the silliest remark of his life so far. “What will Sunny think?”
“Who’s Sunny?” William Starling wondered.
“But why now, Mum?” Mary Starling asked. “I mean, why so quickly?”
“We see no point in waiting.”
“But a shipboard wedding deprives us of the chance to give you a gala celebration. We could hold it at the theater, you could get married onstage, perhaps at the grand reopening?” William Starling suggested.
“An even better reason to do it now,” Joachim said.
Grammie told Max, “We’ll live in Joachim’s house, with Sunny.”
“Why have I never heard of any Sunny?” William Starling asked.
“If we didn’t still have Max, I’d feel you were abandoning me,” Mary Starling said to her mother, “but he’ll make a wonderful big brother and I’m happy for you both, Mum. You and Joachim, I mean. He’s a lucky man, isn’t he, William?”
“The luckiest in the world except for me,” William Starling answered. “But who is Sunny?”
Max was so busy taking in this turn of events that he almost missed his own cue. But he didn’t miss it. He heard it just in time and spoke the line he’d been rehearsing to himself. “Actually,” he said, “Sunny is the dog who was my first job,” then added—with a mental apology to his part-time assistant for the self-contradiction—“my first case, I mean. I’ll explain later,” he promised. Then, knowing what would be a sure and certain distraction, he asked his mother, “What are you going to wear as daughter of the bride?” and, without waiting for her answer, he told his father, “You’ll have to give the toast. Are you ready for that?”
—
After dinner that same day, after the wedding, Max declined Colly’s invitation to join in the nightly poker game held in the sick bay. They were not many days out of Queensbridge now, and he was no nearer to solving his parental problem than he had been when they left Andesia. Sometimes he thought it might be insoluble. As he passed close to the Captain’s table, on his way out to the quiet darkness of the promenade deck, his father called him over. “You know our boy?” he asked the ten other people at the table, and then, without giving them a chance to answer, he said, “When I was King in Andesia, we gave quite a performance, Max and I. Didn’t we, Max?”
Max smiled, but he wished he could tell the whole story, and he wished even more that his father—who, after all, knew better, knew that whole story—would just admit that it had been someone else’s play, in which someone else, maybe Max or maybe Balcor, had the leading role. He couldn’t say so, but he wished, as he went on his way without saying anything.
Outside—the boat having moved back into the northern hemisphere, where it was fall, not spring—the air had a chilly edge to it. But it wasn’t cold enough to drive Max back inside. He stood at the railing and looked out into the night. Stars shone sharp in a black sky. The water gleamed black and depthless, a vast, empty stage.
And anger stepped out onto that stage. This was not a dramatic, operatic anger, dressed out in flames, however. Nor was it an icy anger, carved from slow-moving glaciers. It was just ordinary, everyday anger, wearing trousers and a sweater, hatless, and the actor hadn’t even bothered to learn his lines, because—at bottom, at the heart of him—Max loved his parents. He even loved them just the way they were. But he could see no way to be Max Starling, son of William and Mary Starling of the Starling Theatrical Company, and be at the same time Mister Max, the painting Solutioneer. Or was it the solutioneering painter?
Before the boat landed at the Queensbridge docks, he needed a plan. He knew he didn’t want to change back into the old Max Starling, and he knew also that he couldn’t expect his parents to change. He even understood why his parents didn’t want to give anything up, not the theater, not the spying, and not their family, either. But what about Max?
That was the problem in a nutshell: What about Max.
Dark waves slapped against the high metal sides of the ship and dark thoughts slapped up against Max where he stood at the railing and wondered: Where was the Solutioneer when he really needed him?
Which of course made him laugh.
Before it made him think.
—
When they were finally alone, just the two of them seated close together at a small table in the brightly lit saloon, William Starling took his wife’s hand in both of his. The band had put away its instruments and the only sound was the dull thrumming of the ship’s great engines, the occasional clink of a glass being washed and put away. “What has gotten into your mother, getting herself married like that?” he asked.
“Max likes Joachim, and Mum has plenty of good sense, so I think she’ll be happy.”
“And what about Max?” William asked.
“He said he’s too old to be jealous.”
“I’m not worried about the baby, what I mean is—I think he’s up to something, but what can a boy get up to?”
“I agree. Ever since we left Andesia, or maybe it began when we got on the boat? He’s had this expression in his eyes…”
William Starling put two fingers up against his temples. He was thinking that Max’s eyes reminded him of the shadowy areas in the wings, where players waited to make their entrances. He said to his wife, “He doesn’t have my eyes. Or yours, either, for that matter.”
She told him, “He has our eyes, really, as if the colors got all mixed together. Don’t you think? His eyes always make me think of the lake, under a darkening sky, all the possibilities of the night. Or maybe when the darkness is just starting to fade, all the possibilities of the day. Our son has hidden depths,” she laughed, and for some reason an idea popped into her head. “Have you noticed how all of them, even Hamish, speak to him? You don’t think Max organized it all on his own, do you?”
“How would he do that? He’s just a boy.”
—
The next morning, Max came to the breakfast table as the hero of Adorable Arabella, with Frank Worthy’s candid face, plain speech, and subtle understanding of human nature. “I shouldn’t tease you like this,” he said to his parents.
“No, you shouldn’t,” his father agreed, so quickly and with the kind of glance at his wife that told Max they had been talking about him. This would work in his favor, he decided. If someone thinks they already know what you’re up to, they won’t bother to think any more about it. So, “You guessed,” he said, and he didn’t hide Frank Worthy’s admiring disappointment that they had uncovered his secret.
“We were wondering,” his mother said.
“Although we don’t know why,” his father said.
“King Teodor sent Ari with an embassy because I asked him to,” Max said. He wasn’t about to let on that he knew their secret. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes, or even Inspector Doddle, to figure out how much their adventuring life as the King’s spies meant to his parents. “I told him about the trouble you were in, and asked for help, and he agreed. Because you’re citizens of his country, he said.”
“You asked?” his mother said. “You simply asked? How did you get to him? Even in Summer, his privacy is guarded.”
Max laughed. “It wasn’t easy,” he admitted, truthfully. “But he’d seen the photograph of your coronation and of course he recognized you, from the theater.”
“We’ll have t
o think of a way to thank him, when we get back,” William Starling remarked to his wife, and Max heard in his voice confidence that they had not been unmasked. “A private performance, perhaps?”
“I suspect,” his wife said, now sure that they knew the whole story, “there’s more to this than Max has told us.”
“Well, of course there is,” Max said with a frank laugh. “Isn’t there always more?”
Their table companions spoke, as if on cue. “Always more. Always something else going on. Never as simple as it seems,” everyone agreed.
Then Max got to his real point, leaning forward toward his parents, his face a mask of sincerity, Frank Worthy from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. “I’ve been thinking about you—because you have been a real King and Queen, and because, as I happen to know, you don’t lack for coins? I’m wondering if it isn’t time for you to make improvements in your living arrangements. Maybe hire a cook-housekeeper, to free you for your work in the theater, and especially when you go out on tour. A nurse for the baby, when it arrives. Otherwise,” he asked his father, “how can you both continue performing? Grammie won’t be next door to help out whenever you need her,” he pointed out to his mother. “And I’ll be in school,” he told them both, “preparing for university. Unless you plan to close the theater?” he concluded, knowing how unlikely this was.
They turned to one another. They hadn’t thought of all this, of these particular difficulties.
“What I can do to help out,” Frank Worthy said, making Max’s offer in such a way that, without even noticing it, they would agree to this major change in their son’s life, “is give you more room at home. Our house isn’t large, as we all know. But if Grammie is going to live with Joachim, I could move over to Grammie’s house. That way, I’ll be nearby to keep an eye on things, and help with the baby, too, when you are at the theater, or on tour, and I’ll still have enough time to do the sets for the theater, even if I’m busy with my jobs or with school.”
“So you’re still going to school, Eyes? Maybe I will, too, if you’re there.” Tomi had interrupted at just the right time and said just the right thing, even though Max hadn’t told him what he was up to. Tomi Brandt was going to be a good friend.
—
By the time breakfast was over and only the three Starlings remained at the table, William Starling had settled their future. “Changes are in the wind,” he warned his wife and son. “But we are a quick and clever family, and we have the Company to reassemble, the theater to reopen, plays to rehearse, and performances to schedule. We have work to do! How long before we can reopen, my dearling? What are your thoughts?”
At that point, Mister Max, Solutioneer, slipped away from the table and went to find Colly, to offer him a home at 17 Brewery Lane, in Grammie’s house.
And after that? After that, he returned to the promenade deck, where he leaned against the rail and considered the wide expanse of clear blue November sky that lay ahead.
EPILOGUE
When La Freccia docked in Queensbridge, a small crowd had gathered in the chill November drizzle to welcome her. Among those who awaited the ship was a hat. As well as being stylish, it was a useful hat against the rain, with its wide felt brim, and a useful hat against November, being a bright cranberry red with a cheerful spray of white feathers held in place with a silver Z. The hat pushed its way forward, until it stood at the front.
A young woman who had covered her head with only a brown woven scarf stepped aside to make room, with a smile so warm and happy that even the little woman in the red hat had to respond, however much it went against the grain to accept friendliness from strangers. Beside this young woman stood a girl and her mother. R Zilla was pleased to see that the mother wore one of the new winter hats, its two black feathers rising out of a close-fitting crown. This hat lacked a protective brim, so rain had moistened the mother’s cheek, but a small hat suited the large blue eyes and strong jaw. As they all watched debarking passengers step off the covered gangplank onto the docks, the mother gripped the girl’s hand in excitement, and the girl, in a hat R Zilla recognized by the spray of blue flowers nestled around its flat crown, smiled back at her mother. All three moved closer to the foot of the gangplank.
First onto the docks, as if eager to have his journey done and return to his own life, came a tall older man wearing a blue beret. He seemed unaware of the light rain falling on his head and shoulders. R Zilla squared her shoulders, ready to begin her assault, but he stepped aside to allow a younger couple to move ahead of him. The man and the woman were both wrapped around by long cloaks, and at the sight of them, people pushed ahead of her. This couple was known. “Isn’t that the actor? And his wife? You’ve seen them, haven’t you? She’s Arabella and he’s— I had such a pash for him when I was younger. I still do, truth be told. I mean, just look at him! He could be a king!”
Then, “There he is, Mum!” the girl cried as a large man in a dark overcoat, his fedora at a jaunty angle, stepped onto the docks, and beside him—“Gabrielle! There they are!”—a slim, handsome young man, his red hair sprinkled with raindrops.
Now R Zilla could name the woman—it was Mrs. Hamish Bendiff, a good customer. The big man, whom she recognized as Hamish Bendiff, wrapped an arm each around his wife and daughter, but the young redhead only took the kind-faced young woman’s hands in his. They leaned toward one another until their foreheads touched and there they stood, as if alone in some mountain meadow, looking into one another’s eyes.
Before the tall man in the beret could move, two boys pushed in front of him. Servants? Not likely, these were first-class passengers, although wearing outlandishly large hats of woven straw that did possess, R Zilla admitted, a certain primitive appeal. The boys were unaccompanied and ungoverned—probably someone’s wandering sons. Boys were like that, they wandered, and men, too. Men took off at a moment’s notice, making it hard work to track down where they might have gotten to, by asking at the railroad station and at the docks, although a persistent woman could eventually learn what she needed to know.
When the tall man, whose gray hair was in need of a trim, in her opinion, finally stepped forward, the hat inched ahead to meet him. But then he offered an arm to the round woman at his shoulder, whose blue eyes sparkled behind the kind of spectacles bookish women wear— Although, actually, she had been beside him all along, hadn’t she?
The hat stopped moving. The woman wearing it was no fool. Far from it. She saw how naturally the man’s arm was accepted and how the woman smiled up at the tall man and he smiled down at her—
He smiled! Outrageous! How could he smile at this person and never have smiled at her, even when—
R Zilla showed her back to the ship, to the people still waiting by the gangplank, to the docks, to the whole scene. She did not need to see more. She had seen enough. Her heart was not breaking—she was not the kind of woman to put up with a breakable heart—but it sank, weighed down with disappointment. Her heart was like a feather caught in a rainstorm, she thought, picturing the sodden, sinking, sunken curve rotating gently down…Curving down under a chin! Echoing the rounded curve of a cheek! Brushing against a shoulder—or would that be too extreme, a peacock feather brushing against a bare shoulder? Her niece would advise her.
R Zilla rushed toward the carriages for hire that waited beside the Harbormaster’s office. She had not a minute to waste. If she really wanted to get herself a husband, she’d take care of that later: The world was full of husbands, but brilliant ideas didn’t come along very often, even to her. If she did want a husband, maybe she’d hire that boy to find her one, or—why settle for second best?—she’d wait for the Solutioneer to come back from wherever he’d been. She’d hire the Solutioneer to take care of it, saving her own energies for her art, her craft, her work.
The last of the first-class passengers—or was he the first of the second-class? It wasn’t clear from his dark suit, his bowler hat, and the one small valise he carried—stepped onto
the docks alone and unnoticed. The fellow seemed to be a stranger to Queensbridge, unknown to, or at least unrecognized by, anyone on the docks—unless the sharp glance from a pair of blue eyes under raised dark eyebrows counted. But he was obviously well-mannered, since when a middle-aged woman in some drab brown housekeeper’s coat and hat stumbled in front of him, he immediately offered her his free hand, to steady herself. She smiled her thanks, said something, and walked off.
—
Max wasn’t sure he’d heard the woman correctly. What could she mean: In three years’ time? Then his fingers recognized the familiar flat, round shape she had put into the hand he’d held out to her and he understood. A button. A summons.
In three years’ time he would be sixteen, with three more years of solutioneering experience, and his assistant would be thirteen, which he happened to know was old enough. In three years’ time he would have learned whatever history, geography, languages, and psychology school could teach him, and be ready to enter the wider world of the university. He had been given three years to think about it, and decide what answer to give when the next summons came. In the meantime, he expected that there would be plenty of work for the Solutioneer. Max slipped the button into his pocket and moved on through the crowd.
—
The dignified young man who had moved with such solemn and stately steps off the gangplank and onto the dock stepped into the crowd, but no bowler hat, no dark suit, no stiff back emerged from it. The only person to step away was a boy—visiting the docks on his way home from school for the excitement of an ocean liner’s arrival? Reluctant to go home and receive whatever punishment awaited him for whatever boyish crime he’d committed? Hoping to earn a coin or two carrying luggage? The boy strode past the Harbormaster’s office, in a hurry, the way boys always are. He was hatless, with his school briefcase in one hand and some round, dark object—probably a soccer ball—under his arm, his jacket over his shoulder, careless of the rain. Turning sharply into Eel Lane, the boy disappeared around the corner.