The Speed of Dark

by Elizabeth Moon

  Maybe if the things I was told about myself were not all correct, the things I was told about normal people were also not all correct.

  I fence with Max and then Cindy and sit down next to Marjory until she says she has to go. I carry her bag out to her car for her. I would like to spend more time with her, but I am not sure how to do it. If I met someone like Marjory—someone I liked—at a tournament, and she did not know I was autistic, would it be easier to ask that person out to dinner? What would that person say? What would Marjory say if I asked her? I stand beside the car after she gets in and wish I had already said the words and was waiting for her answer. Emmy’s angry voice rings in my head. I do not believe she is right; I do not believe that Marjory sees me only as my diagnosis, as a possible research subject. But I do not not believe it enough to ask her out to dinner. I open my mouth and no words come out: silence is there before sound, faster than I can form the thought.

  Marjory is looking at me; I am suddenly cold and stiff with shyness. “Good night,” I say.

  “Good-bye,” she says. “See you next week.” She turns on the engine; I back away.

  When I get back to the yard, I sit beside Lucia. “If a person asks a person to dinner,” I say, “then if the person who is asked does not want to go, is there any way to tell before the person who is asking asks?”

  She does not answer for a time I think is over forty seconds. Then she says, “If a person is acting friendly toward a person, that person will not mind being asked but still might not want to go. Or might have something else to do that night.” She pauses again. “Have you ever asked someone out to dinner, Lou?”

  “No,” I say. “Not except people I work with. They are like me. That is different.”

  “Indeed it is,” she says. “Are you thinking of asking someone to dinner?”

  My throat closes. I cannot say anything, but Lucia does not keep asking. She waits.

  “I am thinking of asking Marjory,” I say at last, in a soft voice. “But I do not want to bother her.”

  “I don’t think she’d be bothered, Lou,” Lucia says. “I don’t know if she’d come, but I don’t think she would be upset at all by your asking.”

  At home and that night in bed I think of Marjory sitting across a table from me, eating. I have seen things like this in videos. I do not feel ready to do it yet.

  THURSDAY MORNING I COME OUT THE DOOR OF MY APARTMENT and look across the lot to my car. It looks strange. All four tires are splayed out on the pavement. I do not understand. I bought those tires only a few months ago. I always check the air pressure when I buy gas, and I bought gas three days ago. I do not know why they are flat. I have only one spare, and even though I have a foot pump in the car, I know that I cannot pump up three tires fast enough. I will be late for work. Mr. Crenshaw will be angry. Sweat is trickling down my ribs already.

  “What happened, buddy?” It is Danny Bryce, the policeman who lives here.

  “My tires are flat,” I say. “I don’t know why. I checked the air yesterday.”

  He comes closer. He is in uniform; he smells like mint and lemon, and his uniform smells like a laundry. His shoes are very shiny. He has a name tag on his uniform shirt that says DANNY BRYCE in little black letters on silver.

  “Somebody slashed ’em,” he says. He sounds serious but not angry.

  “Slashed them?” I have read about this, but it has never happened to me. “Why?”

  “Mischief,” he says, leaning over to look. “Yup. Definitely a vandal.”

  He looks at the other cars. I look, too. None of them have flat tires, except for one tire of the old flatbed trailer that belongs to the apartment building owner, and it has been flat for a long time. It looks gray, not black. “And yours is the only one. Who’s mad at you?”

  “Nobody is mad at me yet. I haven’t seen anyone today yet. Mr. Crenshaw is going to be mad at me,” I say. “I am going to be late for work.”

  “Just tell him what happened,” he says.

  Mr. Crenshaw will be angry anyway, I think, but I do not say that. Do not argue with a policeman.

  “I’ll call this in for you,” he says. “They’ll send someone out—”

  “I have to go to work,” I say. I can feel myself sweating more and more. I can’t think what to do first. I don’t know the transit schedule, though I do know where the stop is. I need to find a schedule. I should call the office, but I don’t know if anyone will be there yet.

  “You really should report this,” he says. His face has sagged down, a serious expression. “Surely you can call your boss and let him know…”

  I do not know Mr. Crenshaw’s extension at work. I think if I call him he will just yell at me. “I will call him afterward,” I say.

  It takes only sixteen minutes before a police car arrives. Danny Bryce stays with me instead of going to work. He does not say much, but I feel better with him there. When the police car arrives, a man wearing tan slacks and a brown sports coat gets out of the car. He does not have a name tag. Mr. Bryce walks over to the car, and I hear the other man call him Dan.

  Mr. Bryce and the officer who came are talking; their eyes glance toward me and then away. What is Mr. Bryce saying about me? I feel cold; it is hard to focus my vision. When they start walking toward me, they seem to move in little jumps, as if the light were hopping.

  “Lou, this is Officer Stacy,” Mr. Bryce says, smiling at me. I look at the other man. He is shorter than Mr. Bryce and thinner; he has sleek black hair that smells of something oily and sweet.

  “My name is Lou Arrendale,” I say. My voice sounds odd, the way it sounds when I am scared.

  “When did you last see your car before this morning?” he asks.

  “Nine forty-seven last night,” I tell him. “I am sure because I looked at my watch.”

  He glances at me, then enters something on his handcomp.

  “Do you park in the same spot every time?”

  “Usually,” I say. “The parking places aren’t numbered, and sometimes someone else is there when I get home from work.”

  “You got home from work at nine”—he glances down at his handcomp—“forty-seven last night?”

  “No, sir,” I say. “I got home from work at five fifty-two, and then I went—” I don’t want to say “to my fencing class.” What if he thinks there is something wrong with fencing? With me fencing? “To a friend’s house,” I say instead.

  “Is this someone you visit often?”

  “Yes. Every week.”

  “Were there other people there?”

  Of course there were other people there. Why would I go visit someone if nobody but me was there? “My friends who live in that house were there,” I say. “And some people who do not live in that house.”

  He blinks and looks briefly at Mr. Bryce. I do not know what that look means. “Ah… do you know these other people? Who didn’t live in the house? Was it a party?”

  Too many questions. I do not know which to answer first. These other people? Does he meant the people at Tom and Lucia’s who were not Tom and Lucia? Who didn’t live in the house? Most people did not live in that house… do not live in that house. Out of the billions of people in the world, only two people live in that house and that is… less than one-millionth of one percent.

  “It was not a party,” I say, because that is the easiest question to answer.

  “I know you go out every Wednesday night,” Mr. Bryce says. ‘Sometimes you’re carrying a duffel bag—I thought maybe you went to a gym.“

  If they talk to Tom or Lucia, they will find out about the fencing. I will have to tell them now. “It is… it is a fencing… fencing class,” I say. I hate it when I stutter or maze.

  “Fencing? I’ve never seen you with blades,” Mr. Bryce says. He sounds surprised and also interested.

  “I—I keep my things at their house,” I say. “They are my instructors. I do not want to have things like that in my car or in my apartment.”

  “So�
�you went to a friend’s house for a fencing class,” the other policeman says. “And you’ve been doing it—how long?”

  “Five years,” I say.

  “So anyone who wanted to mess with your car would know that? Would know where you were on Wednesday nights?”

  “Maybe…” I don’t think that, really. I think someone who wanted to damage my car would know where I lived, not where I went when I went out.

  “You get along with these people okay?” the officer asks.

  “Yes.” I think it is a silly question; I would not keep going for five years if they weren’t nice people.

  “We’ll need a name and contact number.”

  I give him Tom’s and Lucia’s names and their primary contact number. I do not understand why he needs that, because the car was not damaged at Tom and Lucia’s house, but here.

  “Probably just vandals,” the officer says. “This neighborhood’s been quiet for a while, but over across Broadway there’ve been a lot of tire slashings and broken windshields. Some kid decided it was getting hot over there and came over here. Something could’ve scared him before he did more than yours.” He turned to Mr. Bryce. “Let me know if anything else happens, okay?”

  “Sure.”

  The officer’s handcomp buzzes and extrudes a slip of paper. “Here you are—report, case number, investigating officer, everything you need for your insurance claim.” He hands me the paper. I feel stupid; I have no idea what to do with it. He turns away.

  Mr. Bryce looks at me. “Lou, do you know who to call about the tires?”

  “No…” I am more worried about work than about the tires. If I do not have a car, I can ride public transit, but if I lose the job because I am late again, I will have nothing.

  “You need to contact your insurance company, and you need to get someone to replace those tires.”

  Replacing the tires will be expensive. I do not know how I can drive the car to the auto center on four flat tires.

  “You want some help?”

  I want the day to be some other day, when I am in my car and driving to work on time. I do not know what to say; I want help only because I do not know what to do. I would like to know what to do so that I do not need help.

  “If you haven’t had to file an insurance claim before, it can be confusing. But I don’t want to butt in where you don’t want me.” Mr. Bryce’s expression is one I do not completely understand. Part of his face looks a little sad, but part looks a little angry.

  “I have never filed an insurance claim,” I say. “I need to learn how to file an insurance claim if I am supposed to file one now.”

  “Let’s go up to your apartment and log on,” he says. “I can guide you through it.”

  For a moment I cannot move or speak. Someone come to my apartment? Into my private space? But I need to know what to do. He knows what I should do. He is trying to help. I did not expect him to do that.

  I start toward the apartment building without saying anything else. After a few steps I remember that I should have said something. Mr. Bryce is still standing beside my car. “That is nice,” I say. I do not think that is the right thing to say, but Mr. Bryce seems to understand it, for he follows me.

  My hands are trembling as I unlock the apartment door. All the serenity that I have created here disappears into the walls, out the windows, and the place is full of tension and fear. I turn on my home system and toggle it quickly to the company ’net. The sound comes up with the Mozart I left on last night, and I turn it down. I need the music, but I do not know what he will think of it.

  “Nice place,” Mr. Bryce says from behind me. I jump a little, even though I know he is there. He moves to the side, where I can see him. That is a little better. He leans closer. “Now what you need to do is—”

  “Tell my supervisor I am late,” I say. “I have to do that first.”

  I have to look up Mr. Aldrin’s E-mail on the company Web site. I have not ever e-mailed him from outside before. I do not know how to explain, so I put it very plain:

  I am late because my car’s tires were all cut and flat this morning, and the police came. I will come as fast as I can.

  Mr. Bryce does not look at the screen while I’m typing; that is good. I toggle back to the public ’net. “I told him,” I say.

  “Okay, then, what you need to do now is file with your insurance company. If you have a local agent, start there—either the agent or the company or both will have a site.”

  I am already searching. I do not have a local agent. The company site comes up, and I quickly navigate through “client services,”, “auto policies,” and “new claims” to find a form on-screen.

  “You’re good at that,” Mr. Bryce says. His voice has the lift that means he is surprised.

  “It is very clear,” I say. I enter my name and address, pull in my policy number from my personal files, enter the date, and mark the “yes” box for “adverse incident reported to police?”

  Other blanks I do not understand. “That’s the police incident report number,” Mr. Bryce says, pointing to one line on the slip of paper I was given. “And that’s the investigating officer’s code number, which you enter there, and his name here.” I notice that he does not explain what I have figured out on my own. He seems to understand what I can and cannot follow. I write “in your own words” an account of what happened, which I did not see. I parked my car at night, and in the morning all four tires were flat. Mr. Bryce says that is enough.

  After I file the insurance claim, I have to find someone to work on the tires.

  “I can’t tell you who to call,” Mr. Bryce says. “We had a mess about that last year, and people accused the police of getting kickbacks from service outlets.” I do not know what “kickback” is. Ms. Tomasz, the apartment manager, stops me on my way back downstairs to say that she knows someone who can do it. She gives me a contact number. I do not know how she knows what happened but Mr. Bryce does not seem surprised that she knows. He acts like this is normal. Could she have heard us talking in the parking lot? That thought makes me feel uncomfortable.

  “And I’ll give you a ride to the transit station,” Mr. Bryce says. “Or I’ll be late for work myself.”

  I did not know that he did not drive to work every day. It is kind of him to give me a ride. He is acting like a friend. “Thank you, Mr. Bryce,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I told you before: call me Danny, Lou. We’re neighbors.”

  “Thank you, Danny,” I say.

  He smiles at me, gives a quick nod, and unlocks the doors of his car. His car is very clean inside, like mine but without the fleece on the seat. He turns on his sound system; it is loud and bumpy and makes my insides quiver. I do not like it, but I like not having to walk to the transit station.

  The station and the shuttle are both crowded and noisy. It is hard to stay calm and focus enough to read the signs that tell me what ticket to buy and at which gate to stand in line.

  Chapter Eight

  IT FEELS VERY STRANGE TO SEE THE CAMPUS FROM THE transit station and not the drive and parking lot. Instead of showing my ID tag to the guard at the car entrance, I show it to a guard at the station exit. Most people on this shift are already at work; the guard glares at me before he jerks his head telling me to go through. Wide sidewalks edged with flower beds lead to the administration building. The flowers are orange and yellow with puffy-looking blossoms; the color seems to shimmer in the sunlight. At the administration building, I have to show my ID to another guard.

  “Why didn’t you park where you’re supposed to?” he asks. He sounds angry.

  “Someone slashed my tires,” I say.

  “Bummer,” he says. His face sags; his eyes go back to his desk. I think maybe he is disappointed that he has nothing to be angry about.

  “What is the shortest way from here to Building Twenty-one?” I ask.

  “Through this building, angle right around the end of Fifteen, then past the fountain with t
he naked woman on a horse. You can see your parking lot from there.” He does not even look up.

  I go through Administration, with its ugly green marble floor and its unpleasantly strong lemon smell, and out again into the bright sun. It is already much hotter than it was earlier. Sunlight glares off the walks. Here there are no flower beds; grass comes right up to the pavement.

  I am sweating by the time I get to our building and put my ID in the door lock. I can smell myself. It is not a good smell. Inside the building, it is cool and dim and I can relax. The soft color of the walls, the steady glow of old-fashioned lighting, the nonscent of the cool air— all this soothes me. I go directly to my office and turn the AC fan up to high.

  My office machine is on, as usual, with a blinking message icon. I turn on one of the whirlies, and my music—Bach, an orchestral version of “Sheep May Safely Graze”—before bringing up the message:

  Call as soon as you arrive. [Signed] Mr. Crenshaw, Extension 2313.

  I reach for the office phone, but it buzzes before I can pick it up.

  “I told you to call as soon as you got to the office,” Mr. Crenshaw’s voice says.

  “I just got here,” I say.

  “You checked through the main gate twenty minutes ago,” he says. He sounds very angry. “It shouldn’t take even you twenty minutes to walk that far.”

  I should say I am sorry, but I am not sorry. I do not know how long it took me to walk from the gate, and I do not know how fast I could have walked if I had tried to walk faster. It was too hot to hurry. I do not know how much more I could do than what I have done. I feel my neck getting tight and hot.

  “I did not stop,” I say.

  “And what’s this about a flat tire? Can’t you change a tire? You’re over two hours late.”

  “Four tires,” I say. “Someone slashed all four tires.”

  “Four! I suppose you reported it to the police,” he says.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “You could have waited until after work,” he says. “Or called from work.”