98 CHARACTER
business, the business of curating, the business of public responsibility, the
business in general. I was hoping to get him on his arch tirade about
the average intelligence in his department couldn’t make a picture by
necting the dots, a routine which Cody could dial up like a phone
But I wasn’t going to get it tonight; he was already on business, his favorite
topic.
The truth is that Maxwell is a simple crook. He uses his office to travel5 like a pasha; he damages borrowed work, sees to the insurance, and then buys
some of it for himself; he only mounts three shows a year; and he only goes in
four days a week.
Cody came in for one of her favorite parts, Maxwell’s catalogue (includ-
ing stores and prices) of the clothing and jewelry he was wearing tonight. Cody always asked about the clerks, and so his glorious monologue was sprinkled with diatribes about the help. Old Maxwell.
When his girlfriend, Laurie, finally did arrive, breathless and airy at the same time, Maxwell had all three rings on the coffee table and he was show- ing Cody his new watch. Laurie tossed her head three times taking off her coat; we were in for a record
evening.
Maxwell would show her off for a while, making disparaging remarks about exercise of any kind, and she would admire his rings, ranking them like tokens on the table, going into complex and aesthetic reasons for her choices. I would fill her full of the white wine that all of Maxwell’s girlfriends drink, and then when she asked where the powder room was, I would rise with her and go into the kitchen, wait, count to twenty-five while selecting another Buckhorn out of the fridge, and let Max in.
CONSIDERATIONS FOR CRITICAL THINKING AND WRITING
1. FIRST RESPONSE. Why do you think the story is titled “Max” rather than
“Maxwell”?
2. What details are especially effective in characterizing Maxwell and his
girlfriend?
3. How does the narrator serve as an implicit foil to Maxwell?
4. CREATIVE RESPONSE. Write an additional final paragraph that describes
what happens when Max is let back into the house, a paragraph that is
worthy of the humor in the rest of the story.
5. Why do you think Carlson didn’t write that paragraph?
HERMAN MELVILLE (1819-1891) Herman
Melville left
New York and went to sea as a young common sailor. He
returned to be-