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second.”
    â€œPlease,” Max said, flashing a seasick grin. “Have whatever you want tonight. My treat.”
    After the waiter returned with Mama’s cocktail and uncorked and served the wine, Mama ordered two appetizers of crab cakes and the day’s special, a lobster savannah. Max and I requested the standard lobster plate. Mama encouraged me to order an appetizer, too, since Max was so generously offering, but I demurred. The truth was I didn’t think I could trust my hands, eating alone. A line of sweat had broken over my forehead, but I couldn’t wipe it, not then.
    Mama said, “Giovanni tells me you worked in the circus.”
    â€œCircle Top Circus, that’s right. Stage manager for four years. Developed some acts of my own, too. Mainly with animals. Animals and I have—it’s an almost unnatural kinship. Dogs in particular.” Max sipped his brandy. “People like to see animals do extraordinary things—jump through hoops, walk on two legs. You know why?”
    â€œI would love to understand why.”
    â€œWe think it’s because they resemble humans, that they’re like us—but no! It reminds us that
we
—we mighty humans—we’re just
like them
. You see a dog dance on two legs, see a parrot talk—and we think, We’re animals, just like that, with animal needs: food, water, sex, shelter. It gives an audience relief.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œ
Perspective
. Like Giovanni’s imitations. And, believe you me, Ms. Bernini, there’s a market for perspective these days. Which reminds me”—he lifted a finger—“I brought my references since I was sure you’d want to, as they say,
peruse
them.” He reached into his breast pocket and produced a swatch of creased, gray documents so thick it was hard to believe it had fit in his suit jacket. He stood and, with both hands, delivered the brick of paper to Mama.
    She made a bemused expression and began, as it were,
perusing
them. Max winked at me, and I winked back and then blinked two times to erase the effect, a needless precaution, I was happy to realize, as Max was now eyeing Mama, biting his lip and scratching his forehead with an arched finger.
    Either Mama truly had no idea Max was watching her read—sighing and tapping his foot—or she did an excellent job of dissembling, here and there snickering, or nodding while pursing her lips as people do to indicate something has impressed them. When the crab cakes arrived, she set the stack of folded papers next to her silverware and continued to read, as if alone at the table, flipping from page to page as she ate, here and there dabbing the corners of her mouth with the peach napkin. When she had finished eating, she looked at both of us and smiled. “Hmmm-mmm. That was good.”
    By this point, Max was halfway through his second brandy. He’d pushed his chair back from the table, resting his fist on his hip. A nervous checking of his watch would have completed the pose.
    â€œWould you like to take a look?” Mama asked me after she had restored the pages to their original order.
    â€œOkay,” I said in as calm a voice as I could muster, receiving the stack with trembling hands. This was unwise, I knew—freeing my fingers—but I was curious, not so much to read the papers as to touch
them. The pile, I soon saw, consisted largely of well-folded letters, but included, too, such diverse media as bar tabs, cocktail napkins, fortunes from Chinese cookies, and, in one case, a laminated slab of toilet paper on which a man named Russ had attested, in curling pen strokes, to Max’s having “a confused kind of grace.” “You can’t do no better than Max,” signed Jenny. Most were unreadable. The only typed reference in the packet was signed by a Dr. Seamus Finnegan, Director, Circle Top Circus, and read as follows: “Maximilian Horatio is occasionally