Week 48: Maxie (in The Roundabout Waltz)

   This week's book, Maxie, is the second little story about a car entering The Roundabout Waltz... (Week 46's poem about a roundabout.)  Like Week 47's little book Sadie... Maxie is another tiny (1-inch by 1-inch) accordion book that is made as a luggage rack for another tiny cardboard car. The car is covered in floral print Japanese paper, with collaged-on paper headlights and windshields. The little book was digitally printed with 10-point Times New Roman font on text paper, then folded accordion-style. Its board covers are covered in fusha, orange, and gold-printed paper from Nepal.

Maxie's car, Tulip, on title page of The Roundabout Waltz

A black paper luggage rack glued to the top of the car holds the little book in place. On the bottom of the car is a velcro disk for affixing the car to any of the 5 rotating roundabout signs in the big book, The Roundabout Waltz. 

 Maxie.. off the luggage rack and opened to its title page

This is the story of Maxie in the Roundabout Waltz...

   Maxie’s car is named Tulip. Tulip is a 17-year old Subaru Outback with 220 K miles and a bad muffler. Maxie is a 60-year-old artist with two grown kids, a husband who likes sports, and a cat named Charlemagne. She’s painted flowers all over Tulip in order to hide the rust (and the dents.)

   Inside, Tulip is filled to the roof with Maxie's art supplies…and other things. Paints and papers, stacks of empty yogurt cups, fabric scraps, old T-shirts and sheets she’s collected for rags, and an easel, two Dremel tools (with boards), the cat crate, sandpaper, a bag of books for the used book store, maps, her water bottle, last week’s lunch (uneaten), the mail, recycling (for the dump), a stack of mat board, a stack of card board, wooden dowels, towels, bits of scrap iron, and wax paper, a box of laundry detergent, a pair of eyeglasses, a pair of sunglasses, a tube of hand cream, a brush. On the back seat floor are some flakes of mica, bits of moss, lichen, rocks, pieces of driftwood, some shells, and a box of Kleenex. 

   Maxie can’t really see out of Tulip’s back window so she uses her breaks a lot! That way, if anyone’s behind her, they’ll be on guard and not run into her if she needs to make a sudden stop. Maxie slows down for the roundabout at Hillsboro Street and Pullen Road; pumping her breaks 5 or 6 times. She knows about roundabouts. She saw them when she took an art workshop in France five years ago. 

   As she nears the roundabout, she grips the steering wheel and opens her eyes wide, getting ready to enter. Her Hawaiian-print drugstore glasses slip down her nose and her gray bangs fall in her eyes, tickling her face. She sees a gap in the circle of cars ahead. She hits the gas as Tulip barrels into the loop of cars. In the same motion, everything in the car shifts as Tulip lurches forward and then tilts to the right. 

   On the dashboard, Maxi’s favorite coffee mug takes a flying leap towards the back of the car. From the corner of her eye, Maxie watches as it lands facedown in the middle of the front passenger seat. She watches the dregs of her morning coffee seep into the tan seat cushion and marvels at the spreading stain. She smells the aroma of her French roast coffee... with half cup of cream.. knowing it’ll really be rich tomorrow!
                                                The End

the accordion book, Maxie, coming out of Tulip's luggage rack

   When Maxie isn't being read, it can be placed in the little car's luggage rack and parked on the stationary roundabout sign on the front cover of The Roundabout Waltz.. along with the other little car and book Sadie.

Maxie and Sadie in The Roundabout Waltz