“No, Mom, I know what you’re going to say, but I know him now. Honestly, truthfully, I feel as though I’ve known him forever. I can see inside his heart—I have seen inside his heart. We spent all day together Saturday, and we talked till probably two a.m., and I heard his whole life story and he heard mine. He lived through a horrible experience when he was my age, and I think now after thirty years he’s just starting to get over it. And I think I can help him to get over it—I don’t completely understand why or how it is that I can help him, but I’m pretty sure I can. He needs me, and in a way I kind of need him too. So what we’re planning on doing is, he’ll have his plane pick me up on Friday—every Friday till I head back to school—and fly me back on Sunday, so it won’t interfere with work. I won’t have time for any more restorations, but, I’m telling you, this seems more important to me right now than doing another car. There’s only one thing I’m worried about though—And I’m really worried; I hope to God I’m wrong.”
“About what, honey? What got you worried so much that you’re hopin’ to be wrong?”
“Remember when Dad was just starting to get sick? Before he got bad, I mean—when everybody still thought he was OK—Do you remember?”
“Remember what? I’m not ezackly sure….”
“OK, well, he used to get those episodes where he’d get tired or excited and then for a minute or two, he couldn’t catch his breath—Do you remember that?”
“I do remember, Tommy. Neither of us really thought that much about it at the time. He’d get to breathin’ a little hard-like, then he’d get better right away—that’s why we weren’t too concerned about it back then. He’d sit down for a minute and rest, then get up again and everythin’ was fine.”
“OK, well that’s the thing that’s got me scared.”
“Scared? Of what? Why? I don’t understand.”
“I’m scared because I noticed that Ben when he gets excited or climbs a flight of stairs, is reacting the same exact way.”
32
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: R U HERE 2DAY?
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Yes, Mr. Daugherty, I arrived at my desk at 8:00 a.m. and have been avidly awaiting your initial communication since that time.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: GLAD. NOT SURE U WRE GOING 2 COME.
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: I was not entirely certain either; but I made my decision late last night. A precipitate decision, admittedly, but thus far it appears to be a fortuitous one.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: Y
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: My apologies: The single character which encompasses the entirety of your previous response is incomprehensible. Please clarify further. Is this a ‘Y’ for ‘Yes’, or does it have some other cryptic interpretation beyond my ken?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: OTHER INTERP—Y=
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Understood. Thank you for the clarification. As much as I revel in our scintillating dialogue, my dear Mr. Daugherty, it would be decidedly preferable if you were somewhat less opaque in your verbiage, i.e., I would greatly appreciate the elimination of homophonic lettering and numeration in substitution for entire words, and additionally the provision of full and complete spellings rather than terse abbreviations with consequent deletion of vowels. In submitting this suggestion to you, I would hope you realize that I, in my admittedly subordinate capacity, pose this as a request only, my dear sir, and do not intend it as an obligatory mandate of any kind.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: OK IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY I WILL WRITE OUT WORDS WITH VOWELS LIKE THIS & NOT USE #’S & LETTERS WHEN CONFUSION MIGHT EXIST / WHY DO YOU SAY YOUR DECISION TO COME IN IS FORTUITOUS?
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Primarily because your response to my presence was so gratifying. Your kindly expression of pleasure at my decision to be in attendance this morning was both flattering and appreciated. To what may I attribute it?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: I LIKE TO TALK TO YOU / YOU ARE SMART / YOU ARE VERY SMART / I LIKE PEOPLE WHO ARE VERY SMART.
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: And I feel very much the same about you. There are so few of us available as communicants that it is exhilarating to encounter and interact with an intellectual peer for once—For me, it is possibly the first time I have ever had that much-appreciated opportunity. I realize that our proclivities diverge significantly—even dramatically—mine trending more toward the linguistic and philosophically analytical, yours obviously toward the conceptual and scientifically creative. But intellect is intellect, and the possession of that quality in copious abundance is so rare and singular a virtue that individuals so gifted must inevitably gravitate toward communication with others of their ilk, although those others may be difficult to encounter, by virtue of their scarcity. Thus, I was highly gratified to discover your intellectual—may I term it kinship?— last week. Although the obscurity of your verbiage can be somewhat challenging at times to the uninitiate, the brilliant mind that underpins it shines through clearly enough to be readily manifest to anyone with a similarly perspicuous mind. In short, my dear sir, our electronic dialogue of the past few days has been stimulating—And, moreover, it’s been fun.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: YES / A LOT OF FUN / LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF FUN!
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Indeed it has been—and is so now. It was fortunate that Mr. Patel was obliged to depart the premises at the very point in time I happened to be present to fill the resulting void.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: RAJIV IS MY FRIEND / RAJIV IS A VERY GOOD FRIEND / I LIKE RAJIV VERY VERY VERY VERY MUCH.
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Yes, I am in full agreement. He is a fine person, unquestionably. You are fortunate to have such a person as a friend. I have never enjoyed the company of a friend as fine or as close as Mr. Patel is to you.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: NO? NEVER?
Linda to Alex@Rajiv: No, no friends of that nature or caliber, at any time, ever. But I did receive the ministrations of a highly qualified therapist in my mid-to late-teen years, as you can no doubt discern from the great advances I have made in my linguistic skills. He directed me toward language and literature on the basis of an aptitude test I underwent, and I have diligently pursued those studies ever since. Did you have a beneficial therapist yourself at that juncture in your life to direct you toward the sphere of the digital?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: NO / NO THERAPIST / JUST RAJIV MY FRIEND.
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Yes, a friend is good—beyond disputing, very good. But it can be extremely ameliorative to have a clinically knowledgeable therapist as well. I believe all aspies require a therapist to help them realize their maximum intellectual potential. Therapeutic interactions for aspies are highly recommended in the psychiatric literature.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: DEFINE WORD
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: This, I suspect, is a whimsical attempt at tractio pedalis, I doubt not. Are my suspicions correct?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: NO / NOT CORRECT / DEFINE
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Lingua latina for ‘pulling my leg’. You sincerely and legitimately are not guilty of this attempted assault on my credulity?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: NO ASSAULT ON CREDULITY / NO / DEFINE WORD
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: I stand amazed! I stand utterly astonished! Is it possible?— is it even conceivable?— that you are truly unfamiliar with the term? To answer succinctly: WE—WE are aspies—Asperger’s people are referred to as ‘aspies’ within the affected community. Are you genuinely unfamiliar with the aspie network and its blogs?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: IS THAT WHAT YOU HAVE?
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Yes, my esteemed Mr. Daugherty, that is what we both have, you and I both. Are you truly unaware of your formal diagnosis and the various support groups available to those of us possessed of this not entirely undesirable affliction? That is where professionals can be of marked assistance, I assure you. Were your parents culpably negligent in failing to arrange for such counseling? And if they did indeed neglect that bounden duty, how did you possibly fail to recei
ve the appropriate therapeutic ministrations during the time you attended school?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: WOULDN’T GO. DIDN’T WANT TO GO.
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: And—they didn’t make you? It wasn’t required by the school?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: NO IF YOU DON’T WANT TO GO YOU DON’T GO / I DON’T DO WHAT I DON’T WANT TO DO / NEVER DO / NEVER HAVE / NEVER WILL
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: I see. Quite exceptional, I must say. You are very fortunate to have had Mr. Rajiv Patel as a friend, in that case. He seems to have served you, in loco parentis, as both therapist and counselor in one. I have never had a relationship with a neuro-typical at all, and certainly no personal contact with an individual even remotely as helpful and protective as your very good friend Rajiv has been to you. It is envious.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: YES I LIKE RAJIV / I LOVE RAJIV / WHAT MEANS
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: My goodness! My astonishment grows apace. I see that I have a great deal to teach you if you wish to be taught about autism and its various ramifications—things, Mr. Daugherty it would greatly behoove you to learn. Anyone who fails to qualify as an aspie, or as one of the more intellectually challenged forms of autistic, is termed neuro-typical. Rajiv is quite possibly the optimal neuro-typical any aspie could wish to have as a friend.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: YES / AGREE / A QUESTION—HAVE YOU OBSERVED ANYTHING DIFFERENT ABOUT RAJIV’S BEHAVIOR DURING PAST FEW DAYS?
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: I am not sufficiently familiar with Mr. Rajiv Patel and his behavior to have the ability to judge either one.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: OK WELL I KNOW RAJIV BETTER THAN ANYBODY AND IM PRETTY SURE HE’S TRYING TO SET US UP
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Set us up? What exactly do you mean by this?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: SET UP LIKE BOY GIRL RELATIONSHIP / RAJIV HAS TRIED TO SET ME UP WITH GIRLS SINCE WE WERE IN 10TH GRADE
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Did you meet a lot of girls that way?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: A FEW—LIKE TWO OR THREE
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: And did you like them? Did you have a meaningful relationship with said girls?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA / DID YOU EVER HAVE A MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH A SAID BOY?
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: No, I never really talked to a boy before, or wrote, or had any sort of contact. It’s infinitely easier to communicate like this than it is to talk in person.
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: RIGHT—IMPOSSIBLE TO TALK IN PERSON BUT I THINK I COULD TALK TO YOU IN PERSON NOW / DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD?
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: Yes, Mr. Daugherty, I think that would be OK—When?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: PRETTY SOON / RAJIV TOOK ME TO GET NEW CLOTHES YESTERDAY BUT I WANT TO GET HAIRCUT FIRST
Linda@Rajiv to Alex: So maybe tomorrow? Does that sound OK?
Alex to Linda@Rajiv: OK YES / DO YOU LIKE PIZZA / I LIKE PIZZA / AND FROM NOW ON YOU ARE REQUIRED TO CALL ME ALEX PLEASE. GOODBYE
33
Cindy looked kind of down. And she looked pretty stressed as well. All of them were stressed right now, the guys at AthCorp sure—every single one of them—but half the folks in Red Bank too; and its surroundings, and the surroundings of its surroundings, from the City clear up north down to Trenton and Philly in the south, and way out west to the Water Gap just about. People knew Ben; and loved him; and the hundreds—probably thousands—of people who knew him, and loved him, and had heard about the test he was going to be having on his heart—Hell, half of the Eastern Corridor was sitting there biting their figurative nails till the results came in, and till they showed he was OK, at which point they could sit back gladly and relax, all of them could. But now, this morning, you could say the collective Jersey world was teetering at the edge of it cumulative seat.
That call from Tommy Mulroy first thing Tuesday morning: “Get Ben checked,” he’d said to Eddie; then Eddie had got on the phone to Carole. And wham—bam! once you told Carole and got her on the case, knowing how protective—you’d have to call it compulsive—she was about her darling husband Ben—well, anyone could have predicted the alarm bells that call was bound to set off. Carole wasn’t the kind of worrier who’d let sleeping dogs lie, even if their teeth were bared and their mouths were full of foam
So what she does right after Tommie’s phone call: she gets on the phone to the doctors’ offices; and the doctors’ offices, the receptionists, the nurses, the techs—hell, even the docs themselves—everyone loves Ben Atherton, right? And everyone owes him big time. All the gifts, the favors, the big and little kindnesses the guy had lavished on every single soul he’d ever come in contact with, while never asking even the smallest ‘thank you’ in return: Well, now, here’s a chance to pay him back at least a nickel on the buck for all he’s given you, all he’s done for you, all he’s done to help your friends, your relatives, your kids.
“Can you get him in as soon as possible?” That’s what Carole asks when she calls, and, hell, if she would have called at the stroke of midnight Sunday, they would have taken Ben straight in for the test at one a.m. Monday morning. They would have turned the lights on in the lab; they would have called the techs in from their couple hours of sleep—Sure they would have. But Carole made the call on Tuesday, shortly after Tommy via Eddie had set her to the task. So as it turned out in the end, Wednesday morning right around 11:00, she agreed, would be an appointment time that would suit their requirements just fine.
OK, so here they were on Wednesday morning, not too terribly long a wait, considering. And the test that our mechanical genius Mulroy had prescribed was scheduled to get done just before noon this very day. All the Atherton folks who’d got wind of what was brewing: they’re nervous, they’re brooding, they’re biting their collective nails, you’d have to say, paying no attention whatsoever to the work they had to do—All of them are worried shitless right now—with the significant exception of …
Ben.
“The boss in?” Eddie asked. Cindy’s face looked white, pasty, frightened.
“Sure, Mr. P.” She said it boldly, but you could hear the tremor in her voice. “You want me to buzz or you want to surprise him yourself?”
“I’ll surprise him, Cindy, if you don’t think he’ll mind that much. He goes to the doctor this morning, right? You got it in in your schedule book?”
“Sure do, sir, sure do. Mrs. A. is picking him up herself, and she’s going along to see to it personally that he actually shows up for the appointment and gets the testing done—What is it again that they’re testing, Mr. P.? Do you know what the exam they’re doing is called?”
“Yeah, sure I know—I know the name, at least. It’s an echocardiogram. That’s what the kid recommended, but don’t ask me what the hell that means. From what Tommie says, if it comes out OK, Ben gets a clean bill of health, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief. So let’s keep our fingers crossed that nothing the kid got concerned about shows up.”
“Everybody’s hoping that, sir. But I’m pretty sure Mr. A. is as healthy as anybody here in the building.” Cindy spoke the words alright, but the voice she spoke them in showed you just how really terrified she was. “You can tell he’s healthy, Mr. P., can’t you? I mean, look at him; just look at the energy he’s got. For a guy in his middle fifties, he sure runs circles around me.”
Eddie smiled. Not a proper time for smiling, no; but he couldn’t resist. Circles around Cindy, eh? Shit, you could burn a tank of Exxon Premium doing a couple of circuits around Cindy’s hefty flanks. But he bit his lip and passed her by without her noticing the expression on his face. And when he thought of Ben again—which he did within a second or two—the smile was instantaneously gone.
“Hey, Bennie, how ya doin’? How do you feel today?”
“You asking as a formality, Ed, or you still worried about my heart?” Bennie chuckled. That was Ben, alright: he seemed to be the only person in New Jersey with no concern whatever about the chance of his being sick.
“Hey, it’s not me, Ben; it�
�s the kid. I don’t know heart disease from hemorrhoids. Your boy Tommy’s the one who’s been calling me every goddamn hour since yesterday morning making sure we got you scheduled for that test.”
“Yeah, he’s really something, isn’t he? It hardly seems possible that I only met him the other day. He’s been calling you a lot too?”
“A lot, yeah: like three times from the garage he works in yesterday—you could hear the air tools running in the background—And then this morning again—every goddamn hour, it seems like, since around eight—which is like five or six Arizona time, you realize, so he’s picking up the phone even before he goes to work. And then yesterday—Jesus!— once he got me to call Carole to get the damn test scheduled, he called back a couple of times afterward to make sure it was the right kind of test, and that the doctor doing it was board certified in cardiology—He’s a pest, that kid, I’m telling you—a goddamn cellphone pest!”
“Yeah, funny; he’s been pulling the same stuff with me too. Every time he takes a break from what he’s doing—his tune-ups or valve jobs—whatever—I get another call, and we talk until his break is done—however long it is; five minutes or ten. Then last night—I must have been on the phone with him for two hours straight, I think—from 9:00 till 11:00, or maybe it was even later, maybe after 11:15.”
“Right; a goddamn pest, like I said before—So what do you talk about in all that time? Hey you and I never talked for even fifteen minutes straight, did we? Let alone a couple of hours—Christ!”
“If we did, I sure as hell don’t remember it, Eddie. But to answer your question, Tommie and I talk about everything. We talk about mergers and acquisitions, about carburetors and fuel pumps—Hey, he just put a new fuel pump in his mother’s car, did you know that? Did you know they have to drop the gas tank to put a fuel pump in?”
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