did. Archie just found them easier to talk to, easier to share a meal with, easier to take advice from. It was clear to everyone that Archie had found a wondrous and powerful match in Belladonna, a brilliant, passionate, dark-eyed lawyer who was the only daughter in a family of eight sons.
Belladonna’s misfortune was to thumb her nose at fate one too many times. One day, when Poison and her daughters Pain, Solitude, Corrupted Innocence and Bad Marriage were sunbathing on the fourth-story roof of Archie’s northeast Hennington estate, an earthquake opened up the ground and reduced the building and the five women to rubble. Archie had been inspecting a vineyard on a horse which hadn’t even thrown him during the tumult. Thomas turned up later full of unsatisfactory explanations.
Archie’s grief, a deep and powerful thing even if he hadn’t been by then the richest man in Hennington, was finally only mollified by an endocrinologist called Maureen Whipple, a name Archie thought inoffensive enough not to anger the gods. Copper haired with copper-rimmed eyeglasses, Maureen was an amateur lepidopterist and singularly devoid of risky imagination. But she liked Archie quite a bit, and he liked her quite a bit right back. Eleven days after their fourth wedding anniversary, she was killed when a derailing train hurtled through her windshield.
Archie’s third wife, Anna Grabowski, about whom the less said the better, barely made it down the aisle before perishing in a trapeze mishap.
His fourth wife was a devil-may-care whirlwind named May Ramshead. Eight years older than Archie, she was a zoologist with a wild streak. She rappelled off of cliffs, swam with sharks, and had spent time as a rodeo clown. Two and a half years of blissful marriage later, May died peacefully in her sleep when her heart failed.
Archie finally took the hint and settled, at age sixty, for a single life with female friends. That was when he met and hired Cora Larsson. Contrary to the whisperings of those few existing enemies of Cora, Archie wasn’t responsible for Cora’s success. True, Archie had sent Cora poking into some fishy business dealings of then-Mayor Jacob Johnson, but it was Cora who had followed the now-infamous trail to the mysterious death of Johnson’s father and the millions stashed away in accounts under the name of Johnson’s mistress, a story so familiar it needs no rehashing here.
It was, however, Archie’s suggestion, with a helping hand from Albert, that Cora run for Mayor some twenty years ago. Archie was thirty years Cora’s senior, but he was, if the truth be known, in love with her and always had been. Thank goodness she was already married to Albert and also that Archie realized marriage to him meant certain death. He merely had to be her friend. He gave her money and advice when she ran for Mayor and threw the inaugural ball when she won. She was also the reason Banyon Enterprises hadn’t cheated the city in over two decades. Archie respected her too much to ever want to face the disappointment of her certain litigation. He loved her, and that was that, more than enough reason to support her.
—What’s with this traffic?
—It seems to be clearing up, sir.
—Thank God for that.
—Yes, sir. Thank God, indeed.
17. ‘The Tale of Rufus and Rhonda'.
—How’s your head, baby?
—I want to cut it off.
—But then you wouldn’t have one at all.
—I don’t care.
—Medicine’s not helping?
—I guess. It makes me tired.
—Try to sleep, then.
—I can’t keep my mind clear. It races and races and it’s all just thing after thing after thing.
—That’s the fever, darling. It can’t be helped.
—I’m so tired.
—Do you want me to tell you a story?
—Don’t you think I’m a little old for that?
—Do you think you’re a little old for that?
—Depends on the story.
—I’ll make it age-appropriate, how about that?
—Maybe.
—Okay, let’s see. ‘There was once a girl named Talon …’
—Stop. I don’t want to be the heroine.
—Why not?
—I just don’t. Please?
Max thought for a minute.
—All right. How about this?
There once was a great king called Rufus the Swarthy. (—What was he king of?) He was king of all the land. (—Which land?) He was king of all the Southern Lands. (—What were they called? —Just flow with me here, Talon.) He had arisen to the throne after his father was killed in a great war with the people to the North that had raged on and on for generations. King Rufus didn’t believe in war. (—That’s a pacifist, right? —Very good.) He had seen war take the lives of all of his friends and classmates and all the rest of the young men in his land. Now it had taken the life of his father, and King Rufus decided enough was enough. He was going to end the war, once and for all.
The war had gone on for so long, hundreds of years, it turned out no one could remember what the war was being fought over. So the first thing King Rufus did was send his Royal Researchers to work. They worked night and day for months on end, going back further and further into history, searching the research, combing the catacombs, delving into the delvements. (—Is that a word? —Probably.) At last, on a bright, cold morning, they found the reason. Forty-seven generations before, the King of the Southerners had stolen a rhinoceros out of the Northern King’s private zoo. (—That’s it? —Wars have started for less. —But that’s stupid. —Precisely.) King Rufus couldn’t believe that so many thousands of lives and hundreds of years had been wasted on something so small, especially since both the cities of the North and the cities of the South had grown over time despite the war and each side had more than their share of zoos chock-full of rhinoceros.
He decided a symbolic gesture was in order. He would give a present to the ruler of the Northerners, who during this time was Queen Rhonda the Stout. King Rufus ordered his kingdom’s zoologists to select the top male and female rhino from his stock and prepare them for a journey to the North. Rufus himself would then deliver them to the Queen in person, unaccompanied by any guard. He sent word to Queen Rhonda’s court of his plan, and she sent word back that he would be allowed to make the journey unmolested.
For one hundred and twenty-two days, King Rufus walked with the male and female rhinoceros towards the North’s capital city, through sun and rain, light and dark, all alone save for the rhinos. The three lived off the land, Rufus hunting game for himself and finding lush spots for the rhinos to graze. At last, late one afternoon, King Rufus reached the castle doors of Queen Rhonda. He entered through a long hallway that led from chamber to chamber, on and on and on through one hundred separate rooms, the male and female rhinos with him at every step, until finally, he reached the throne room of Queen Rhonda. (—And she was beautiful and they fell instantly in love. —Yes and no. They fell in love, but she wasn’t beautiful. —Oh, I
