Hellhole (28 page)

Max snickered. And deep down wondered if this was Burg's doing. Was the cure starting now that he'd secured a date with her? Was she getting better already?

Maybe, but best not to push his luck. “Why don't you relax and let me handle everything? You shouldn't be running around like this.”

She waved him off and began pulling things out of the pantry. “If the doctor said I was healthy enough to take a cab ride home, I'm healthy enough to throw together an impromptu dinner.”

“Yeah, about that,” Max said. “I was wondering—would it be okay if Lore came too?”

She paused with a box of oatmeal in her hands. “The calculus project girl?”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you were just friends.”

“We are. But, um—”
I need her there for moral support. I need her because we're having dinner with a devil. I need her there in case Burg unhinges his jaw and tries to consume us all.

His mom gave him a wise smile. “Ah,” she said. “But you want to be more than friends.”

“Um—sure.” If that's what she wanted to think, fine.

And it wasn't exactly
un
true.

His mom sighed and studied the pile of food she'd lumped onto the counter: a pan of frozen lasagna, a box of spaghetti, a bottle of sauce, a can of olives, a jar of peanut butter, and two shriveled peaches. “This is . . . sad. Can I send you to the grocery store?”

Max didn't think he could risk showing his face at the Food Baron these days. “I'm sure this will be fine.” He doubted that Burg could eat this stuff anyway, since none of it was stolen.

“But what if he's a picky eater?”

Max reached into the pantry and grabbed three cans of Pringles. “Here,” he said, handing them to her. “Barbecue, ranch, and something called Screamin' Dill Pickle. Three well-balanced courses of hyperbolic paraboloids.”

She crossed her arms. “Max. We can't serve the nice man potato chips for dinner.”

“Oh, I assure you,” Max said, “we can.”

THE CROSS-GENERATIONAL HUMAN-DEVIL
Double-Date Dinner: cute title, terrible idea.

All four of them sat awkwardly around the dining room table, a piece of furniture that had gone unused for as long as Max could remember. Dusty place mats had been unearthed from dusty kitchen drawers, silverware hastily washed and arranged in uncertain settings, and leering creepily at all of them was a Popsicle-stick turkey centerpiece that Max had made for Thanksgiving when he was six.

Max's mom had never exactly been blessed with a gift for entertaining.

“So,” she said, nervously fingering the napkin in her lap, “where do you live, Lloyd?”

Burg-Lloyd took a sip of water and gave her a charming, irresistible smile. “On the other side of Main Street, not far from here. Just a hop, skip, and a jump home after a long day at the bank.”

Max kicked him under the table.

“Phone company,” Lloyd corrected himself.

Max grimaced. The Popsicle-stick turkey looked on.

“And you, Lore?” his mother continued, to Max's further dismay. He appreciated that his mother was trying to take an interest in Lore—really, he did—but when he saw how uncomfortable Lore was, he wanted to call a helicopter taxi and airlift the poor thing out of there.

“Um, I live over in Paradise Fields,” Lore said timidly, picking at her soggy lasagna.

“Oh? I haven't heard of that. Is it a new housing development?”

Lore slouched deeper in her seat. “Yeah. Sure.”

Max's mom struggled to come up with another way to engage her sullen guest, but finally she had the sense to abandon this pursuit. Her other guest, though, was even more puzzling. “Are you sure you don't want any lasagna, Lloyd?”

As expected, Burg-Lloyd had gone straight for the Pringles, arranging them in an artistic spiral on his plate and completely forgoing any of the dinner-type food on the table. “Nah, I'm good. So tell me, what did you do for a living before you started modeling full-time?”

Max's mom giggled and blushed. Max strangled his napkin.

“I was a nurse,” she said.

“Mmm,” he said, nodding. “That must have come in handy around Halloween.”

She cocked her head. “How so?”

“Well, you're all ready to go with a slutty nurse costume—”

“Mom!” Max interrupted, frantic. “Why don't you show Burg—uh, Lloyd—some baby pictures of me?”

But she was lost in his Cusack-y eyes. “Oh, no one wants to see those, Max.”

Max grunted. Years ago, she couldn't pull out those things fast enough. Now some guy waltzes in, bats a few eyelashes, and she forgets she ever had an adorable naked baby boy with a bubble-bath beard.

“Tell me, Lloyd,” his mother said in a sultry tone Max had never heard before and never,
ever
wanted to hear again, “is there a Mrs. Cobbler?”

“Not since—” Burg-Lloyd paused, as if he were choking up. “Not since she passed a few years ago.”

This earned a compassionate coo and a comforting pat to the hand, both of which Max watched with unbridled hatred. He shot a look at Lore, who was looking quite ill. He mouthed to her, “Help, please.”

“Phones!” Lore shouted. Everyone jumped and stared at her. “Wasn't . . . he going to fix the phones?”

“Oh, yes,” Max's mom said hesitantly, “but surely that can wait until after dinner—”

“I'm done!” said Max, tossing his napkin onto his plate.

“Me too,” said Lore, doing the same.

Max's mom looked at Lloyd's plate, on which nothing remained but a couple of Pringle crumbs. “Well, look at that. I guess we
are
done . . .”

“Phone lines are out back,” Max said, grabbing Lloyd by the elbow and dragging him away from the table.

“This is going really well,” Burg whispered to him as they walked. “I'm gonna be your new daddy!”

With an infuriated grunt Max deposited him outside the kitchen. “Good luck,
phone genius.
”

When he returned to the dining room, his mother smacked him on the head. “What is
wrong
with you?”

Max scowled and took her aside, out of earshot of Lore. “Mom, I don't like this guy. I don't think he's right for you.”

She was scowling even harder than he was, but all at once, her face relaxed. “Oh, Max,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “Are you just uncomfortable with the idea of me dating?”

“No. No, that's not it—”

“Because that's totally understandable, honey, especially since I screwed the pooch so badly with your father. But it's been so long since I—”

“I know,” Max interrupted, not wanting to hear the end of that sentence. “Just—not this guy. Anyone else.”

“We barely know him, Max. At least let me socialize a little before you so summarily dismiss him.” Her face brightened. “I have an idea. Why don't we split up for a little while—you and Lore can be alone, and Lloyd and I can be alone. To talk.”

Max grunted. “Fine. But your overprotective son doesn't want you out of his sight.”

She glanced at Lore. “And your responsible parent doesn't want you out of hers. You stay here in the dining room, and Lloyd and I will go sit on the couch.”

“And we'll both agree not to”—he felt squeamish—“do . . . anything.”

“Ew, Max. What do you take me for, a slutty nurse?”

The kitchen door opened and closed. “Phones are fixed!” Lloyd said, swooping back into the dining room.

Max scoffed, but he grabbed the cordless out of its base and hit the Talk button. A dial tone sounded from the earpiece. “It works,” he said in amazement, retrieving the Beige Wonder from the junk drawer where he'd thrown it. It lit up, working and somehow fully charged.

“All in a day's work,” Lloyd said, winking at Max's mom.

She giggled (again with the giggling!) and started backing up into the living room. “Care to come join me on the couch?”

Burg-Lloyd scampered over to the sofa and they sat down together, talking in hushed tones while Max plopped back into his seat at the dinner table. “Can you believe this?” he said to Lore.

“No,” she said. “Especially not that your mother thought this lasagna would be edible. How long has this lived in your freezer?”

“Since the Cryogenian period.” Max picked up his fork and absent-mindedly dug through the now-cold spaghetti. “Here, have some of this.”

She started picking through the pasta. “You know what I wish we had for dessert? One of those cookie cakes. You know what I mean, those giant cookies with frosting that you can get at the bakery section of the grocery store?”

“Yeah. I've never had one, though.”

“Really? Oh man, those things are so good,” she said, slurping up a noodle. “My mom used to get them for my birthday. They must have been, like, the equivalent of forty cookies, but I didn't care. I ate the whole friggin' thing. I still would.”

“That's adorable,” Max said.

“What is?”

He reddened. “I don't know.”

He really didn't. He just knew there was something cute about Little Lore eating a giant cookie, or maybe it was Now Lore not being embarrassed about eating a giant cookie, or maybe Lore was adorable even when there
wasn't
a giant cookie involved. Whatever the case, he'd just made a case for adorability. Out loud.

He dove back into the pasta. The Popsicle-stick turkey looked on.

“So what should we do while the kids have their fun?” Lore asked, graciously ignoring his dysfunction. “Watch a movie?”

“Nah,” Max said. “I watch enough bad movies with my mom. I have a bunch of board games, though. Got any favorites?”

“Nope.”

“What?”

“We don't own any.”

Max gawked at her. “Not one? Not one single board game?”

“I think we have a deck of cards somewhere.”

“Wow. Okay.”

“Oh, how shocking, I don't share your interests. What about you? Got a stash of yarn at your house, any half-finished knitting projects?”

“No.”

“Not one? Not one single ball of wool?”

“Okay, point taken.” He scratched his chin. “So . . . we need to find a common hobby. How about video games?”

“Negative. Jigsaw puzzles?”

“Yuck. Model dinosaurs?”

“If you mention model dinosaurs one more time, I'm going to throw you in a time machine and feed you to an actual T. rex.”

“T. rex doesn't want to be fed,” Max said. “He wants to
hunt.
Can't just suppress sixty-five million years of gut instinct!”

Lore stared at him. Max goofily grinned back at her.

“It's a line from
Jurassic Park,
” he explained.

“Ah.”

You know, Shovel, dinosaur movie quotations are not the panty-droppers that all your paleontology heroes would have you believe.

Max flinched, then glared into the living room. “Go away!” he hissed under his breath. When Lore looked startled, Max pointed at his temple. “Sorry, it's Burg. He's in my head.”

“Oh. Weird. Well, tell him to vamoose.”

Max laughed.

“What?” Lore asked, grinning.

“Vamoose. You're funny.”

“Am I?” Lore looked dubious yet pleased.

“Yeah.”

Ugh,
Adultery Cove
is more stimulating than this,
Burg scoffed.
Here. Watch and learn.

“I like jazz, myself,” he heard Lloyd say. “In my opinion, nothing on earth is more sublime than a good saxophone solo.”

His mom sighed in admiration.

“Stop it,” Max whispered.
“Just stop it.”

Not gonna happen.

“I'm also a volunteer fireman,” Burg droned on, “though sometimes that conflicts with my schedule of delivering toys to impoverished—argh!”

Burg had recoiled to the other side of the couch.

“What's wrong?” Max's mom asked as Ruckus nestled in her lap. She ran her hand down his furry orange back, prompting his butt to pop up in the air, his tail wiggling with pleasure. “You don't like cats?”

Max shouted, “That's a real deal breaker, right there!”

“Max!” his mom shot back. “Be nice!”

“No, no,” Lloyd said with a dashing yet forced grin. “I
love
cats.” He held out his hand and gave Ruckus's head an unconfident tap, as if he'd never petted an animal before. “Here, kitty. Here, Undisputed Lord and Master of the Universe.”

Max's mom raised an eyebrow at him as Ruckus jumped away. “No need to stand on ceremony. ‘Ruckus' is fine.”

Burg shot her a smolder. “
You're
fine.”

Max started to stand up, but Lore pulled him back into his seat. “Max, look at me.” He turned away from the gurgling couple and looked at Lore. She pointed her fork at him. “Don't get mad. That is the key to this operation. When you get mad, you don't think straight, and you need to be thinking as straight as you can. So ignore him. Eat your pasta.”