I said, “I hate forgetting words. Hunting through my memory for them; it’s like asking the Magic 8 Ball, you know? ‘Will I be rich when I’m grown?’ ‘Will I travel?’ And then waiting for the answer to float up slowly, slowly in the glass.” “ ‘It is not yet clear,’ ” Max intoned in a solemn voice. “ ‘Ask again later.’ ” “But at least it did float up, when I was young. Now that I’m old, it sometimes doesn’t. I’ll say, ‘It will come to me by and by,’ but it doesn’t.”
