The Book of Secrets by Deepak Chopra

Author:Deepak Chopra
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: Meditations, Self-Help, General, Spiritual life, Life skills, Fiction
ISBN: 9781844135554
Publisher: Rider & Co
Published: 2004-07-10T07:09:17+00:00

The Mayor’s Job

• ACT II •

SCENE 1 ~ THE CAPTURE

Max didn’t sleep well that night. The next morning, he couldn’t concentrate on his painting. His mind jumped from one thing to another, like a frog trying to find his dinner, hopping from one lily pad to another, chasing one bug after another, always leaping and landing and looking hungrily about. There was his father’s letter and the problem of how to find some not-dangerous way to discover who was threatening the shopkeepers of the old city. There was the question of Nissa, and how to discover her secret, and also the question of whether he would be wise to try to talk to Tomi Brandt, or if it would be wiser to continue keeping his own secrets. Not to mention, now that he knew what she had been keeping from him, what he should say to Grammie. Not to mention why his father had written that kind of letter, which was probably because it was dangerous for someone—for Max? for his parents?—to write the plain clear truth. And there was that maddening button.

Hop. Hop. Hop. And not one fly in range of his long tongue.

The Mayor’s request at least was not an elusive mystery. However, Max didn’t know if he owed his first loyalty to his grandmother, in which case it was honorable and responsible to decline the job, or to the city where he lived, in which case the honorable and responsible thing was to agree to be the bait in the Mayor’s trap. He knew what the heroic Lorenzo Apiedi would do, but he thought he also knew what the Absentminded Professor would say, being, as he was, a humanist and believing, as he did, that the most important thing in life is to harm no one, especially your own family.

Unfortunately for Max, he could see the wisdom and rightness of both of these points of view.

Maybe he should try to find Tomi Brandt, after all, go into the old city and look for him …

He didn’t bother with any disguise that morning. That morning, he was a boy on a bike, in a boy’s dark trousers and a boy’s cotton shirt, with a boy’s blue cap on his head. He was twelve-year-old Max Starling, not Mister Max, the Solutioneer.

In other words, he was a little careless.

If he couldn’t have any ideas about how to solve any of the problems facing him, Max said to himself as he pedaled vigorously along the narrow street, he could still be sure that the Starling Theater was safe. He didn’t think it was in any danger but checking would give him something useful to do. After he had seen that everything was all right with the theater, he decided, he would walk to the baker for a roll and stop at the cheese store, so he could have a quick sandwich for his midday meal. He hoped that while he walked something about his feet landing squarely on the ground in a regular rhythm, thunk-thunk-thunk, would jar ideas loose in his brain.

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