The Speed of Dark

CHAPTER TWO

Mr. Crenshaw is the new senior manager. Mr. Aldrin, our boss, took him around that first day. I didn’t like him much — Crenshaw, that is — because he had the same false-hearty voice as the boys’ PE teacher in my junior high school, the one who wanted to be a football coach at a high school. Coach Jerry, we had to call him. He thought the special-needs class was stupid, and we all hated him. I don’t hate Mr. Crenshaw, but I don’t like him, either.

Today on the way to work I wait at a red light, where the street crosses the interstate. The car in front of me is a midnight-blue minivan with out-of-state plates, Georgia. It has a fuzzy bear with little rubber suckers stuck to the back window. The bear grins at me with a foolish expression. I’m glad it’s a toy; I hate it when there’s a dog in the back of a car, looking at me. Usually they bark at me.

The light changes, and the minivan shoots ahead. Before I can think, No, don’t! two cars running a red light speed through, a beige pickup with a brown stripe and an orange watercooler in the back and a brown sedan, and the truck hits the van broadside. The noise is appalling, shriek/crash/squeal/crunch all together, and the van and truck spin, spraying arcs of glittering glass… I want to vanish inside myself as the grotesque shapes spin nearer. I shut my eyes.

Silence comes back slowly, punctuated by the honking horns of those who don’t know why traffic stopped. I open my eyes. The light is green. People have gotten out of their cars; the drivers of the wrecked cars are moving, talking.

The driving code says that any person involved in an accident should not leave the scene. The driving code says stop and render assistance. But I was not involved, because nothing but a few bits of broken glass touched my car. And there are lots of other people to give assistance. I am not trained to give assistance.

I look carefully behind me and slowly, carefully, edge past the wreck. People look at me angrily. But I didn’t do anything wrong; I wasn’t in the accident. If I stayed, I would be late for work. And I would have to talk to policemen. I am afraid of policemen.

I feel shaky when I get to work, so instead of going into my office I go to the gym first. I put on the “Polka and Fugue” from Schwanda the Bagpiper, because I need to do big bounces and big swinging movements. I am a little calmer with bouncing by the time Mr. Crenshaw shows up, his face glistening an ugly shade of reddish beige.

“Well now, Lou,” he says. The tone is clouded, as if he wanted to sound jovial but was really angry. Coach Jerry used to sound like that. “Do you like the gym a lot, then?”

The long answer is always more interesting than the short one. I know that most people want the short uninteresting answer rather than the long interesting one, so I try to remember that when they ask me questions that could have long answers if they only understood them. Mr. Crenshaw only wants to know if I like the gym room. He doesn’t want to know how much.

“It’s fine,” I tell him.

“Do you need anything that isn’t here?”

“No.” I need many things that aren’t here, including food, water, and a place to sleep, but he means do I need anything in this room for the purpose it is designed for that isn’t in this room.

“Do you need that music?”

That music. Laura taught me that when people say “that” in front of a noun it implies an attitude about the content of the noun. I am trying to think what attitude Mr. Crenshaw has about that music when he goes on, as people often do, before I can answer.

“It’s so difficult,” he says. “Trying to keep all that music on hand. The recordings wear out… It would be easier if we could just turn on the radio.”

The radio here has loud banging noises or that whining singing, not music. And commercials, even louder, every few minutes. There is no rhythm to it, not one I could use for relaxing.

“The radio won’t work,” I say. I know that is too abrupt by the hardening in his face. I have to say more, not the short answer, but the long one. “The music has to go through me,” I say. “It needs to be the right music to have the right effect, and it needs to be music, not talking or singing. It’s the same for each of us. We need our own music, the music that works for us.”

“It would be nice,” Mr. Crenshaw says in a voice that has more overtones of anger, “if we could each have the music we like best. But most people—” He says “most people” in the tone that means “real people, normal people.”

“Most people have to listen to what’s available.”

“I understand,” I say, though I don’t actually. Everyone could bring in a player and their own music and wear earphones while they work, as we do. “But for us—” For us, the autistic, the incomplete. “It needs to be the right music.”

Now he looks really angry, the muscles bunching in his cheeks, his face redder and shinier. I can see the tightness in his shoulders, his shirt stretched across them.

“Very well,” he says. He does not mean that it is very well. He means he has to let us play the right music, but he would change it if he could. I wonder if the words on paper in our contract are strong enough to prevent him from changing it. I think about asking Mr. Aldrin.

It takes me another fifteen minutes to calm down enough to go to my office. I am soaked with sweat. I smell bad. I grab my spare clothes and go take a shower. When I finally sit down to work, it is an hour and forty-seven minutes after the time to start work; I will work late tonight to make up for that.

Mr. Crenshaw comes by again at closing time, when I am still working. He opens my door without knocking. I don’t know how long he was there before I noticed him, but I am sure he did not knock. I jump when he says, “Lou!” and turn around.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Working,” I say. What did he think? What else would I be doing in my office, at my workstation?

“Let me see,” he says, and comes over to my workstation. He comes up behind me; I feel my nerves rucking up under my skin like a kicked throw rug. I hate it when someone is behind me. “What is that?” He points to a line of symbols separated from the mass above and below by a blank line. I have been tinkering with that line all day, trying to make it do what I want it to do.

“It will be the… the link between this” — I point to the blocks above — “and this.” I point to the blocks below.

“And what are they?” he asks.

Does he really not know? Or is this what the books call instructional discourse, as when teachers ask questions whose answers they know to find out if the students know? If he really doesn’t know, then whatever I say will make no sense. If he really does know, he will be angry when he finds out I think he does not.

It would be simpler if people said what they meant.

“This is the layer-three system for synthesis,” I say. That is a right answer, though it is a short one.

“Oh, I see,” he says. His voice smirks. Does he think I am lying? I can see a blurry, distorted reflection of his face in the shiny ball on my desk. It is hard to tell what its expression is.

“The layer-three system will be embedded into the production codes,” I say, trying very hard to stay calm. “This ensures that the end user will be able to define the production parameters but cannot change them to something harmful.”

“And you understand this?” he says.

Which this is this? I understand what I am doing. I do not always understand why it is to be done. I opt for the easy short answer.

Yes, I say.

“Good,” he says. It sounds as false as it did in the morning. “You started late today,” he says.

“I’m staying late tonight,” I say. “I was one hour and forty-seven minutes late. I worked through lunch; that is thirty minutes. I will stay one hour and seventeen minutes late.”

“You’re honest,” he says, clearly surprised.

“Yes,” I say. I do not turn to look at him. I do not want to see his face. After seven seconds, he turns to leave. From the door he has a last word.

“Things cannot go on like this, Lou. Change happens.”

Nine words. Nine words that make me shiver after the door is closed.

I turn on the fan, and my office fills with twinkling, whirling reflections. I work on, one hour and seventeen minutes. Tonight I am not tempted to work any longer than that. It is Wednesday night, and I have things to do.

Outside it is mild, a little humid. I am very careful driving back to my place, where I change into T-shirt and shorts and eat a slice of cold pizza.

Among the things I never tell Dr. Fornum about is my sex life. She doesn’t think I have a sex life because when she asks if I have a sex partner, a girlfriend or boyfriend, I just say no. She doesn’t ask more than that. That is fine with me, because I do not want to talk about it with her. She is not attractive to me, and my parents said the only reason to talk about sex was to find out how to please your partner and be pleased by your partner. Or if something went wrong, you would talk to a doctor.

Nothing has ever gone wrong with me. Some things were wrong from the beginning, but that’s different. I think about Marjory while I finish my pizza. Marjory is not my sex partner, but I wish she were my girlfriend. I met Marjory at fencing class, not at any of the social events for disabled people that Dr. Fornum thinks I should go to. I don’t tell Dr. Fornum about fencing because she would worry about violent tendencies. If laser tag was enough to bother her, long pointed swords would send her into a panic. I don’t tell Dr. Fornum about Marjory because she would ask questions I don’t want to answer. So that makes two big secrets, swords and Marjory.

When I’ve eaten, I drive over to my fencing class, at Tom and Lucia’s. Marjory will be there. I want to close my eyes, thinking of Marjory, but I am driving and it is not safe. I think of music instead, of the chorale of Bach’s Cantata no. 39.

Tom and Lucia have a large house with a big fenced backyard. They have no children, even though they are older than I am. At first I thought this was because Lucia liked working with clients so much that she did not want to stay home with children, but I heard her tell someone else that she and Tom could not have children. They have many friends, and eight or nine usually show up for fencing practice. I don’t know if Lucia has told anyone at the hospital that she fences or that she sometimes invites clients to come learn fencing. I think the hospital would not approve. I am not the only person under psychiatric supervision who comes to Tom and Lucia’s to learn to fight with swords. I asked her once, and she just laughed and said, “What they don’t know won’t scare them.”

I have been fencing here for five years. I helped Tom put down the new surface on the fencing area, stuff that’s usually used for tennis courts. I helped Tom build the rack in the back room where we store our blades. I do not want to have my blades in my car or in my apartment, because I know that it would scare some people. Tom warned me about it. It is important not to scare people. So I leave all my fencing gear at Tom and Lucia’s, and everyone knows that the left-hand-but-two slot is mine and so is the left-hand-but-two peg on the other wall and my mask has its own pigeonhole in the mask storage.

First I do my stretches. I am careful to do all the stretches; Lucia says I am an example to the others. Don, for instance, rarely does all his stretches, and he is always putting his back out or pulling a muscle. Then he sits on the side and complains. I am not as good as he is, but I do not get hurt because I neglect the rules. I wish he would follow the rules because I am sad when a friend gets hurt.

When I have stretched my arms, my shoulders, my back, my legs, my feet, I go to the back room and put on my leather jacket with the sleeves cut off at the elbow and my steel gorget. The weight of the gorget around my neck feels good. I take down my mask, with my gloves folded inside, and put the gloves in my pocket for now. My epee and rapier are in the rack; I tuck the mask under one arm and take them out carefully.

Don comes in, rushed and sweating as usual, his face red. “Hi, Lou,” he says. I say hi and step back so he can get his blade from the rack. He is normal and could carry his epee in his car if he wanted without scaring people, but he forgets things. He was always having to borrow someone else’s, and finally Tom told him to leave his own here.

I go outside. Marjory isn’t here yet. Cindy and Lucia are lining up with epees; Max is putting on his steel helmet. I don’t think I would like the steel helmet; it would be too loud when someone hit it. Max laughed when I told him that and said I could always wear earplugs, but I hate earplugs. They make me feel as if I have a bad cold. It’s strange, because I actually like wearing a blindfold. I used to wear one a lot when I was younger, pretending I was blind. I could understand voices a little better that way. But feeling my ears stuffed up doesn’t help me see better.

Don swaggers out, epee tucked under his arm, buttoning his fancy leather doublet. Sometimes I wish I had one like that, but I think I do better with plain things.

“Did you stretch?” Lucia asks him.

He shrugs. “Enough.”

She shrugs back. “Your pain,” she says. She and Cindy start fencing. I like to watch them and try to figure out what they’re doing. It’s all so fast I have trouble following it, but so do normal people.

“Hi, Lou,” Marjory says, from behind me, I feel warm and light, as if there were less gravity. For a moment I squeeze my eyes shut. She is beautiful, but it is hard to look at her.

“Hi, Marjory,” I say, and turn around. She is smiling at me. Her face is shiny. That used to bother me, when people were very happy and their faces got shiny, because angry people also get shiny faces and I could not be sure which it was. My parents tried to show me the difference, with the position of eyebrows and so on, but I finally figured out that the best way to tell was the outside corners of the eyes. Marjory’s shiny face is a happy face. She is happy to see me, and I am happy to see her.

I worry about a lot of things, though, when I think about Marjory. Is autism contagious? Can she catch it from me? She won’t like it if she does. I know it’s not supposed to be catching, but they say if you hang around with a group of people, you’ll start thinking like them. If she hangs around me, will she think like me? I don’t want that to happen to her. If she were born like me it would be fine, but someone like her shouldn’t become like me. I don’t think it will happen, but I would feel guilty if it did. Sometimes this makes me want to stay away from her, but mostly I want to be with her more than I am.

“Hi, Marj,” Don says. His face is even shinier now. He thinks she is pretty, too. I know that what I feel is called jealousy; I read it in a book. It is a bad feeling, and it means that I am too controlling. I step back, trying not to be too controlling, and Don steps forward. Marjory is looking at me, not at Don.

“Want to play?” Don says, nudging me with his elbow. He means do I want to fence with him. I did not understand that at first. Now I do. I nod, silently, and we go to find a place where we can line up.

Don does a little flick with his wrist, the way he starts every bout, and I counter it automatically. We circle each other, feinting and parrying, and then I see his arm droop from the shoulder. Is this another feint? It’s an opening, at least, and I lunge, catching him on the chest.

“Got me,” he says. “My arm’s really sore.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. He works his shoulder, then suddenly leaps forward and strikes at my foot. He’s done this before; I move back quickly and he doesn’t get me. After I get him three more times, he heaves a great sigh and says he’s tired. That’s fine with me; I would rather talk to Marjory. Max and Tom move out to the space we were using. Lucia has stopped to rest; Cindy is lined up with Susan.

Marjory is sitting beside Lucia now; Lucia is showing her some pictures. One of Lucia’s hobbies is photography. I take off my mask and watch them. Marjory’s face is broader than Lucia’s. Don gets between me and Marjory and starts talking.

“You’re interrupting,” Lucia says.

“Oh, sorry,” Don says, but he still stands there, blocking my view.

“And you’re right in the middle,” Lucia says. “Please get out from between people.” She flicks a glance at me. I am not doing anything wrong or she would tell me. More than anyone I know who isn’t like me, she says very clearly what she wants.

Don glances back, huffs, and shifts sideways. “I didn’t see Lou,” he says.

“I did,” Lucia says. She turns back to Marjory. “Now here, this is where we stayed on the fourth night. I took this from inside — what about that view!”

“Lovely,” Marjory says. I can’t see the picture she’s looking at, but I can see the happiness on her face. I watch her instead of listening to Lucia as she talks about the rest of the pictures. Don interrupts with comments from time to time. When they’ve looked at the pictures, Lucia folds the case of the portable viewer and puts it under her chair.

“Come on, Don,” she says. “Let’s see how you do with me.” She puts her gloves and mask back on and picks up her epee. Don shrugs and follows her out to an open space.

“Have a seat,” Marjory says. I sit down, feeling the slight warmth from Lucia in the chair she just left. “How was your day?” Marjory asks.

“I almost was in a wreck,” I tell her. She doesn’t ask questions; she just lets me talk. It is hard to say it all; now it seems less acceptable that I just drove away, but I was worried about getting to work and about the police.

“That sounds scary,” she says. Her voice is warm, soothing. Not a professional soothing, but just gentle on my ears.

I want to tell her about Mr. Crenshaw, but now Tom comes back and asks me if I want to fight. I like to fight Tom. Tom is almost as tall as I am, and even though he is older, he is very fit. And he’s the best fencer in the group.

“I saw you fight Don,” he says. “You handle his tricks very well. But he’s not improving — in fact, he’s let his training slide — so be sure you fight some of the better fencers each week. Me, Lucia, Cindy, Max. At least two of us, okay?”

At least means “not less than.”

“Okay,” I say. We each have two long blades, epee and rapier. When I first tried to use a second blade, I was always banging one into the other. Then I tried to hold them parallel. That way they didn’t cross each other, but Tom could sweep them both aside. Now I know to hold them at different heights and angles.

We circle, first one way, then the other. I try to remember everything Tom has taught me: how to place my feet, how to hold the blades, which moves counter which moves. He throws a shot; my arm rises to parry it with my left blade; at the same time I throw a shot and he counters. It is like a dance: step-step-thrust-parry-step. Tom talks about the need to vary the pattern, to be unpredictable, but last time I watched him fight someone else, I thought I saw a pattern in his nonpattern. If I can just hold him off long enough, maybe I can find it again.

Suddenly I hear the music of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, the stately dance. It fills my head, and I move into that rhythm, slowing from the faster movements. Tom slows as I slow. Now I can see it, that long pattern he has devised because no one can be utterly random. Moving with it, in my personal music, I’m able to stay with him, blocking every thrust, testing his parries. And then I know what he will do, and without thought my arm swings around and I strike with apunta riversa to the side of his head. I feel the blow in my hand, in my arm.

“Good!” he says. The music stops. “Wow!” he says, shaking his head.

“It was too hard I am sorry,” I say.

“No, no, that’s fine. A good clean shot, right through my guard. I didn’t even come close to a parry on it.” He is grinning through his mask. “I told you you were getting better. Let’s go again.”

I do not want to hurt anyone. When I first started, they could not get me to actually touch anyone with the blade, not hard enough to feel. I still don’t like it. What I like is learning patterns and then remaking them so that I am in the pattern, too.

Light flashes down Tom’s blades as he lifts them both in salute. For a moment I’m struck by the dazzle, by the speed of the light’s dance.

Then I move again, in the darkness beyond the light. How fast is dark? Shadow can be no faster than what casts it, but not all darkness is shadow. Is it? This time I hear no music but see a pattern of light and shadow, shifting, twirling, arcs and helices of light against a background of dark.

I am dancing at the tip of the light, but beyond it, and suddenly feel that jarring pressure on my hand. This time I also feel the hard thump of Tom’s blade on my chest. I say, “Good,” just as he does, and we both step back, acknowledging the double kill.

“Owwww!” I look away from Tom and see Don leaning over with a hand to his back. He hobbles toward the chairs, but Lucia gets there first and sits beside Marjory again. I have a strange feeling: that I noticed and that I cared. Don has stopped, still bent over. There are no spare chairs now, as other fencers have arrived. Don lowers himself to the flagstones finally, grunting and groaning all the way.

“I’m going to have to quit this,” he says. “I’m getting too old.”

“You’re not old,” Lucia says. “You’re lazy.” I do not understand why Lucia is being so mean to Don. He is a friend; it is not nice to call friends names except in teasing. Don doesn’t like to do the stretches and he complains a lot, but that does not make him not a friend.

“Come on, Lou,” Tom says. “You killed me; we killed each other; I want a chance to get you back.” The words could be angry, but the voice is friendly and he is smiling. I lift my blades again.

This time Tom does what he never does and charges. I have no time to remember what he says is the right thing to do if someone charges; I step back and pivot, pushing his off-hand blade aside with mine and trying for a thrust to his head with the rapier. But he is moving too fast; I miss, and his rapier arm swings over his own head and gives me a whack on the top of the head.

“Gotcha!” he says.

“You did that how?” I ask, and then quickly reorder the words. “How did you do that?”

“It’s my secret tournament shot,” Tom said, pushing his mask back. “Someone did it to me twelve years ago, and I came home and practiced until I could do it to a stump… and normally I use it only in competition. But you’re ready to learn it. There’s only one trick.” He was grinning, his face streaked with sweat.

“Hey!” Don yelled across the yard. “I didn’t see that. Do it again, huh?”

“What is the trick?” I ask.

“You have to figure out how to do it for yourself. You’re welcome to my stump, but you’ve just had all the demonstration you’re going to get. I will mention that if you don’t get it exactly right, you’re dead meat to an opponent who doesn’t panic. You saw how easy it was to parry the off-hand weapon.”

“Tom, you haven’t showed me that one — do it again,” Don said.

“You’re not ready,” Tom said. “You have to earn it.” He sounds angry now, just as Lucia did. What has Don done to make them angry? He hasn’t stretched and gets tired really fast, but is that a good reason? I can’t ask now, but I will ask later.

I take my mask off and walk over to stand near Marjory. From above I can see the lights reflecting from her shiny dark hair. If I move back and forth, the lights run up and down her hair, as the light ran up and down Tom’s blades. I wonder what her hair would feel like.

“Have my seat,” Lucia says, standing up. “I’m going to fight again.”

I sit down, very conscious of Marjory beside me. “Are you going to fence tonight?” I ask.

“Not tonight. I have to leave early. My friend Karen’s coming in at the airport, and I promised to pick her up. I just stopped by to see… people.”

I want to tell her I’m glad she did, but the words stick in my mouth. I feel stiff and awkward. “Karen is coming from where?” I finally say.

“Chicago. She was visiting her parents.” Marjory stretches her legs out in front of her. “She was going to leave her car at the airport, but she had a flat the morning she left. That’s why I have to pick her up.” She turns to look at me; I glance down, unable to bear the heat of her gaze. “Are you going to stay long tonight?”

“Not that long,” I say. If Marjory is leaving and Don is staying, I will go home.

“Want to ride out to the airport with me? I could bring you back by here to pick up your car. Of course, it’ll make you late getting home; her plane won’t be in until ten-fifteen.”

Ride with Marjory? I am so surprised/happy that I can’t move for a long moment. “Yes,” I say. “Yes.” I can feel my face getting hot.

On the way to the airport, I look out the window. I feel light, as if I could float up into the air. “Being happy makes it feel like less than normal gravity,” I say.

I feel Marjory’s glance. “Light as a feather,” she says. “Is that what you mean?”

“Maybe not a feather. I feel more like a balloon,” I say.

“I know that feeling,” Marjory says. She doesn’t say she feels like that now. I don’t know how she feels. Normal people would know how she feels, but I can’t tell. The more I know her, the more things I don’t know about her. I don’t know why Tom and Lucia were being mean to Don, either.

“Tom and Lucia both sounded angry with Don,” I say. She gives me a quick sideways glance. I think I am supposed to understand it, but I don’t know what it means. It makes me want to look away; I feel funny inside.

“Don can be a real heel,” she says.

Don is not a heel; he is a person. Normal people say things like this, changing the meaning of words without warning, and they understand it. I know, because someone told me years ago, that heel is a slang word for “bad person.” But he couldn’t tell me why, and I still wonder about it. If someone is a bad person and you want to say that he is a bad person, why not just say it? Why say “heel” or “jerk” or something? And adding “real” to it only makes it worse. If you say something is real, it should be real.

But I want to know why Tom and Lucia are angry with Don more than I want to explain to Marjory about why it’s wrong to say Don is a real heel. “Is it because he doesn’t do enough stretches?”

“No.” Marjory sounds a little angry now, and I feel my stomach tightening. What have I done? “He’s just… just mean, sometimes, Lou. He makes jokes about people that aren’t funny.”

I wonder if it is the jokes or the people that aren’t funny. I know about jokes that most people don’t think are funny, because I have made some. I still don’t understand why some jokes are funny and why mine aren’t, but I know it is true.

“He made jokes about you,” Marjory says, a block later, in a low voice. “And we didn’t like it.”

I don’t know what to say. Don makes jokes about everybody, even Marjory. I didn’t like those jokes, but I didn’t do anything about it. Should I have? Marjory glances at me again. This time I think she wants me to say something. I can’t think of anything. Finally I do.

“My parents said acting mad at people didn’t make them act better.”

Marjory makes a funny noise. I don’t know what it means. “Lou, sometimes I think you’re a philosopher.”

“No,” I say. “I’m not smart enough to be a philosopher.”

Marjory makes the noise again. I look out the window; we are almost to the airport. The airport at night has different-colored lights laid out along the runways and taxiways. Amber, blue, green, red. I wish they had purple ones. Marjory parks in the short-term section of the parking garage, and we walk across the bus lanes into the terminal.

When I’m traveling alone, I like to watch the automatic doors open and close. Tonight, I walk on beside Marjory, pretending I don’t care about the doors. She stops to look at the video display of departures and arrivals. I have already spotted the flight it must be: the right airline, from Chicago, landing at 10:15 P.M., on time, Gate Seventeen. It takes her longer; it always takes normal people longer.

At the security gate for “Arrivals,” I feel my stomach tightening again. I know how to do this; my parents taught me, and I have done it before. Take everything metallic out of your pockets and put it in the little basket. Wait your turn. Walk through the arch. If nobody asks me any questions, it’s easy. But if they ask, I don’t always hear them exactly: it’s too noisy, with too many echoes off the hard surfaces. I can feel myself tensing up.

Marjory goes first: her purse onto the conveyor belt, her keys in the little basket. I see her walk through; no one asks her anything. I put my keys, my wallet, my change into the little basket and walk through. No buzz, no bleep. The man in uniform stares at me as I pick up my keys, my wallet, my change and put them back in my pockets. I turn away, toward Marjory waiting a few yards away. Then he speaks.

“May I see your ticket, please? And some ID?”

I feel cold all over. He hasn’t asked anyone else — not the man with the long braided hair who pushed past me to get his briefcase off the conveyor belt, not Marjory — and I haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t have to have a ticket to go through security for arrivals; you just have to know the flight number you’re meeting. People who are meeting people don’t have tickets because they aren’t traveling. Security for departures requires a ticket.

“I don’t have a ticket,” I say. Beyond him, I can see Marjory shift her weight, but she doesn’t come closer. I don’t think she can hear what he is saying, and I don’t want to yell in a public place.

“ID?” he says. His face is focused on me and starting to get shiny. I pull out my wallet and open it to my ID. He looks at it, then back at me. “If you don’t have a ticket, what are you doing here?” he asks.

I can feel my heart racing, sweat springing out on my neck. “I’m… I’m… I’m…

“Spit it out,” he says, frowning. “Or do you stutter like that all the time?”

I nod. I know I can’t say anything now, not for a few minutes. I reach into my shirt pocket and take out the little card I keep there. I offer it to him; he glances at it.

“Autistic, huh? But you were talking; you answered me a second ago. Who are you meeting?”

Marjory moves, coming up behind him. “Anything wrong, Lou?”

“Stand back, lady,” the man says. He doesn’t look at her.

“He’s my friend,” Marjory says. “We’re meeting a friend of mine on Flight Three-eighty-two, Gate Seventeen. I didn’t hear the buzzer go off…” There is an edge of anger to her tone.

Now the man turns his head just enough to see her. He relaxes a little. “He’s with you?”

“Yes. Was there a problem?”

“No, ma’am. He just looked a little odd. I guess this” — he still has my card in his hand — “explains it. As long as you’re with him…”

“I’m not his keeper,” Marjory says, in the same tone that she used when she said Don was a real heel. “Lou is my friend.”

The man’s eyebrows go up, then down. He hands me back my card and turns away. I walk away, beside Marjory, who is headed off in a fast walk that must be stretching her legs. We say nothing until after we arrive at the secured waiting area for Gates Fifteen through Thirty. On the other side of the glass wall, people with tickets, on the departures side, sit in rows; the seatframes are shiny metal and the seats are dark blue. We don’t have seats in arrivals because we are not supposed to come more than ten minutes before the flight’s scheduled arrival.

This is not the way it used to be. I don’t remember that, of course — I was born at the turn of the century — but my parents told me about being able to just walk right up to the gates to meet people arriving. Then after the 2001 disasters, only departing passengers could go to the gates. That was so awkward for people who needed help, and so many people asked for special passes, that the government designed these arrival lounges instead, with separate security lines. By the time my parents took me on an airplane for the first time, when I was nine, all large airports had separated arriving and departing passengers.

I look out the big windows. Lights everywhere. Red and green lights on the tips of the airplanes’ wings. Rows of dim square lights along the planes, showing where the windows are. Headlights on the little vehicles that pull baggage carts. Steady lights and blinking lights.

“Can you talk now?” Marjory asks while I’m still looking out at the lights.

“Yes.” I can feel her warmth; she is standing very close beside me. I close my eyes a moment. “I just… I can get confused.” I point to an airplane coming toward a gate. “Is that the one?”

“I think so.” She moves around me and turns to face me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. It just… happens that way sometimes.” I am embarrassed that it happened tonight, the first time I have ever been alone with Marjory. I remember in high school wanting to talk to girls who didn’t want to talk to me. Will she go away, too? I could get a taxi back to Tom and Lucia’s, but I don’t have a lot of money with me.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” Marjory says, and then the door opens and people start coming off the plane. She is watching for Karen, and I am watching her. Karen turns out to be an older woman, gray-haired. Soon we are all back outside and then on the way to Karen’s apartment. I sit quietly in the backseat, listening to Marjory and Karen talk. Their voices flow and ripple like swift water over rocks. I can’t quite follow what they’re talking about. They go too fast for me, and I don’t know the people or places they speak of. It’s all right, though, because I can watch Marjory without having to talk at the same time.

When we get back to Tom and Lucia’s, where my car is, Don has gone and the last of the fencing group are packing things in their car. I remember that I did not put my blades and mask away and go outside to collect them, but Tom has picked them up, he says. He wasn’t sure what time we would get back; he didn’t want to leave them out in the dark.

I say good-bye to Tom and Lucia and Marjory and drive home in the swift dark.