Max Read Online Free PDF Page A

their youth) and play cards, listen to music and watch TV. Sometimes Max’s mates would be there. Once a girl called Jodi turned up in Max’s life but after a couple of love bites and a hundred phone calls, she disappeared from the kitchen table.
    Dave’s girlfriends came and went. There was always something exotic, eccentric or mad about them. Cathy, the one before Naomi, was into numerology. She was a nurse like Dave, so they always had plenty to rave about. She shuffled numbers like a pack of cards.
    One Sunday afternoon Woody was playing in the loungeroom with his plastic soldiers. Max was trying to finish an assignment, thinking about the run he and Lou would do that night.
    Cathy said: ‘You know Dave, if you add both our birth dates together and multiply that by the number you come up with when you subtract my age from your age, the result is a ruling number 7... which luckily, we both have. And if you do that with my ex’s numbers, you arrive at a ruling number 3... and historically and astrologically 3s and 7s have never got on well. What’s your ex-wife’s birth date, Dave?’
    â€˜Don’t remember’, said Dave, getting up to find himself a beer.
    And that was the last time Cathy’s face was seen at breakfast around their kitchen table.
    Lou, of course, was often there. Max knew almost nothing about his family, except that he was the only son. His older sister had run off to another state looking for work and escaping her parents. Lou hadn’t seen her for four years and his parents didn’t talk about it, which meant Lou wasn’t to raise the subject. His father worked in an office in the city somewhere and his mum was a primary school teacher. His parents would go to work, come home, eat tea, watch TV, go to bed, get up, go to work...
    About the only thing that Lou ever mentioned was his father’s television watching habits. ‘He comes in at night, takes off his tie and puts on a jumper. He switches on the telly, reads the paper, eats his tea, then reads a book, all the time the TV’s blaring away. Oh yeah, and when I come in he nods at me and I nod back.’
    Lou spent many nights sitting around the oregon table, his long hair falling over his face. A face that always appeared to be puzzled, in school or out. Apart from when he was with Max, Lou was quiet, often answering others’ questions with a smile or a quizzical look.
    That face hovered in Max’s brain, while Woody and Dave continued to chat.
    â€˜Want some jam, Max?’ asked Woody. ‘Want some, Dave?’ he asked his dad.
    Woody’s habit of calling their father ‘Dave’ rankled Max. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because it showed what good friends his father and Woody were. They joked around. They both liked football – watched games, footy panel shows, videos of their favourite grand finals. Dave put up with and even encouraged Woody’s constant stream of whacky reflections and questions about life, the cosmos, ants and sex.
    â€˜Max?’
    â€˜Yes, Woody?’
    â€˜Maybe Lou’s still around.’
    Dave, with his back to his two sons, kept slicing the bread.
    â€˜He’s probably gone into another world, just like ours – maybe exactly like ours.’
    â€˜Yeah?’ said Max lifting his eyes from the wooden tabletop to look straight into Woody’s bright eyes. ‘Where’s this parallel universe? Next door?’
    Dave placed the bread knife on the bench and looked out the kitchen window.
    â€˜Maybe... maybe we go in and out of different worlds and just don’t remember it.’ Woody fidgetted with the jar of jam. ‘Lou might be a spirit in a next door world – starting all over again.’
    â€˜Yeah. And he got there by walking through the back of his bedroom cupboard.’ Max almost regretted his snipe but not enough to stop him. ‘He’s probably riding on Aslan’s back right