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kitchen? What would a hammer be doing in the kitchen?" Gary asked. He really had no sense of humor at all, thank god.
    Now he was in front of Max again. He was looking out the window, at his car, a crumbling white sedan. "Not that I'm 'handy' or anything," he said, making a crank-turning gesture intended to mean "handy." "I can't get my trunk open. I need a big hammer or something. Sometimes you just need a hammer to get down to real business, am I right or am I right?"
    Max couldn't think of a good answer to that round of nonsense, so he went back to his sports section.
    "Oh well," Gary said, as he shoved his pale, freckled arms through the sleeves of his jacket. "Another day, huh?"
    Max shrugged again without looking up.
    Gary took a few steps toward him; he was suddenly far too close. "Listen. I'm, like, trying to make your mom happy."
    Max's face went hot. Every so often Gary decided to make such a pronouncement, a statement meant to define exactly why he was sleeping in their home three or so nights a week. And always Max wanted these moments over as soon as possible. He felt Gary close, standing to his right, trying to catch Max's eye. Max stared so intensely at his cereal that he felt sure he could see the microscopic chemical compounds that formed each flake.
    "Whatever," Gary finally said. He walked over to the stairs. "See ya Connie," he yelled.
    "What?" his mother yelled down the stairs.
    Gary mumbled something to himself and, returning to the foyer, began looking for something in his pockets. He didn't find it, so he eyed the change bowl on the bench. It was a silver bowl, evidence of some anniversary, and it was always full of coins, safety pins, barrettes, pens and pencils. And now it was filled with Gary's soft pink hand. Max watched as Gary's fingers made their way through the bright coins, slithering in every direction. Like the tentacles of a squid bringing food into its gaping maw, the fingers gathered ten or so quarters into the sweaty center of his Gary's fist. He deposited the bounty into his front pants pocket and left.
    Seconds later, Max's mom appeared in the foyer, head tilted, installing an earring.
    "Someone yelled upstairs," she said. "Was that you?"
    Max shook his head. Together they looked outside. Gary was folding himself into his old white car, licked everywhere by rust. With a cough of blue smoke, it shook to life and Gary was gone.

CHAPTER VII
    "You ready?" his mom asked.
    Max didn't want to be driven to school, but he had no choice. His school had done away with bus service. There were only a handful of kids whose parents had allowed them to ride it in the first place, and so the previous year they'd gotten rid of it entirely. No one complained, no one missed it.
    Riding his bike to school was no longer an option. After he'd been biking to school for a month, one of the parents, Mr. Neimenov, had complained. First to Max's mom, then Max's dad, and finally to the principal. He thought that Max's unchaperoned riding was attracting potential child-abductors and child-assaulters. "Just as a liquor store attracts drunks," he'd written in a note to Max's mom, "so does an 8-year-old riding alone attract all kinds of unsavory types ..."
    When Max's parents hadn't responded, Mr. Neimenov brought the matter up with the school, and they quickly gave in. It wasn't even a battle. There wasn't a bike rack on the grounds in the first place. Max had been the only one who'd been riding to school.
    The good thing about Thursdays was that on Thursdays there was gym. Thursdays were the only day, in fact, when gym occurred. And given budget cutbacks and new priorities and bi-weekly all-school testing sessions, there were only twelve gym days a year. So Max knew to savor each one. He ran out to the blacktop -- the school had paved over the grass to save money to buy more Scantron forms -- and lined up.
    "Okay folks," Mr. Ichythis said to the class, "as you know, we have only one day for each sport, so today's