Grand Passion

Amos Luttrell paintings, he was going to have to bide his time. “I'll see what I can do.”
    “Wonderful. I really appreciate this.” Cleo thrust the plunger into his hand and gave him a smile of deep gratitude. “Run along with Sammy, now. I've got to get back to the front desk.” She turned and hurried down the hall without a backward glance.
    “This way.” Sammy yanked on Max's jacket. “There's stairs in the back.”
    Max set his teeth and allowed himself to be dragged off, plunger in hand, toward an unknown destiny. He felt as if he'd accidentally stepped into another world, where the laws of nature were slightly altered. Jason, what the hell were you doing out here , he asked silently as Sammy led him up the back stairs to the second floor.
    “In here.” Sammy pushed open the door marked two-ten.
    The room was empty. Max swept the frilly, fussy, overstuffed furnishings with a single glance and dismissed everything, including the picture of the spaniels that hung over the bed. It was a classic example of Victorian sentimentalism and extravagance at its worst.
    Max walked across the ugly flower-pattern carpet and glanced warily into the white-tiled bath. He was willing to acknowledge that the Victorians had known how to do bathrooms. He approved of the huge, white, claw-footed tub.
    He did not, however, like the way water lapped at the edge of the toilet bowl, threatening to spill over onto the floor. At least it appeared to be clean water, he thought. He supposed he should be grateful for that much.
    “Lucky Ducky go swimming,” Sammy reminded him again.
    Realization dawned on Max. “In this particular toilet?”
    “Ducks can swim anywhere.”
    Max resigned himself to the inevitable. He leaned his cane and the plunger against the wall while he shrugged out of his expensive jacket. He hung the jacket carefully on the hook behind the door. Then he unfastened his gold cuff links, put them in his pocket, and rolled up the sleeves of his handmade white silk shirt.
    Family pitches in at times like this .
    It was an odd thing to say to a man who had not been part of a real family since the age of six. As far as Max was concerned, the series of foster homes he had lived in after his mother was killed in a car accident did not count.
    He had never known his father, a faceless figure who had walked out of his life before he was even born. Max had never bothered to search for him. He had no interest in locating a father who did not want to claim him.
    It was after he had been shunted off to the second foster home that Max had begun collecting things. Things didn't reject you, he had discovered. Things didn't walk away from you. Things didn't tell you in a thousand subtle ways that you weren't good enough to be a member of the family. Things could be taken with you when you moved on to the next temporary location.
    It had been books at first. Surprisingly enough it was easy to collect books, even if you couldn't afford them. People were astonishingly eager to give them to you. Teachers, social workers, librarians, foster mothers—they had all been delighted to give books to young Max.
    For a long while he had worried that someone would eventually ask for them back. But no one ever did. Not even the librarian who had given Max his very first volume of Dr. Seuss.
    Most of the other children had quickly grown bored with their free books and had traded them to Max for what seemed to him like ridiculously low prices: a candy bar, a toy, a couple of quarters. Each book had been a rare bargain as far as Max was concerned. It was something that belonged to him. Something he could keep forever.
    When he was young he had hoarded his treasures in his suitcase. They were always packed and ready for the next, inevitable move. He had asked his social worker for a lock and key for the dilapidated piece of luggage. She had smiled an odd, sad smile and given him one without question.
    Max was sixteen when he discovered what was to become the grand passion of his life: modern art. He had skipped school one afternoon to wander through Seattle's Pioneer Square. For no particular reason he had walked into several of the galleries. In two of them he had seen paintings that had reached straight into the secret center of his being. For the first time he understood that there were others in the world who had nightmares and dreams that resembled his own. He had never forgotten the experience.
    When he was in the presence of paintings