“To think that I could scare the piss out of anybody is a bit on the laughable side, Chas.”
“Anne… Come on.” Ohlmeyer twisted the knob and let Anne enter before he followed and closed the door behind. The pace of Simon’s rocking increased, but he did not look up. “Hello, Simon.”
A boyish face rose in a flash, and fell as quickly. “Hello Doctor Chazzz.” His voice was young and tinny, and he over enunciated the last sound in Ohlmeyer’s given name. It was intentional, but not mocking.
“Simon, I have someone I’d like you to meet. Her name is Anne. She’s a doctor, also.”
Another glance at the face. Anne noted very fair skin this time before it retreated to ponder the nearest edge of the table. There was little color in the cheeks, maybe a hint of natural blush, and bright white teeth gleamed through a chance part in thin lips. “It’s nice to meet you, Simon.”
“It’s nice to meet Simon,” Simon said as though parroting her greeting, but he was not.
“You can call her Dr. Anne,” Ohlmeyer suggested.
“I can call you Dr. Anne,” came the repetition. Simon’s chin rose a bit. He was now tracking the far edge of the table.
“Dr. Anne is a good friend of mine,” Ohlmeyer said as a subtle assurance. And for a more important reason.
Simon wore an oversized grey sweatshirt. He reached up and then down through the loose collar, and pulled out a set of ringbound three-by-five cards that hung around his neck on a lanyard. A small pen, clipped to the front card, was similarly attached by a single string to one of the rings that held the cards together. Simon pulled the pen free, clicked the top, and flipped through a precise number of cards. He stopped at one with the large title FRIENDS written across the top in blue marker. Below it were rudimentary scribbles on individual lines. Anne could make out the name DOKTR CHAZ near the top, and thought immediately: He writes phonetically…but without e’s.
Simon held the stubby pen close to the card in a fierce grip. He found the next empty line and wrote DOKTR AN. He now had a friend named Dr. Anne. Friends were good people who could be trusted. Only friends could tell you if another person was a friend. Father had told him that. So had mother. And what they said was right.
Anne dipped her head a bit, eyes trying to meet Simon’s. “You do puzzles very well, Simon.”
His head seemed to nod between extremes of the rocking. “I like this puzzle.”
“Simon, Anne is going to be working with you some days,” Ohlmeyer said. “Is that all right with you?”
He inspected the FRIENDS list, then dropped the cards back down the neck of his sweatshirt. “It’s all right with me.”
“Good!” Ohlmeyer said with enthusiasm. Tone conveyed feeling more than words, he knew. “And speaking of puzzles, remember I told you I had a magazine with some good puzzles in it?”
Remember… He didn’t. But ‘magazine’ meant something. “I read Ranger Rick.”
“That’s a good magazine,” Ohlmeyer said. “And here’s a new magazine for you.” He held it out. Simon accepted it with both hands and brought it to his lap. He flattened it out, pressing with both palms and ironing toward the sides, without letting his eyes settle upon it. His dry skin caressing the slick cover made a sound somewhere between a whine and a hiss. “When you get home you can look at the puzzles.”
Home… Simon pulled the cuff of his left sleeve up and brought the watch on his wrist very close to his face. Big hand three ticks before the 12. Little hand on the 4. He saw many things in that, but he knew that one of them was the time, and it was almost at the time when his mother had told him he should get in the yellow bus. He let the cuff fall and tugged at the long edges of The Tinkery once before tucking it under his arm. He stood, the chair screeching as it slid backward. “Dr. Chazzz, my mother said I should go now.”
Déjà vu was an easy thing to experience with autistics, Ohlmeyer knew. He’d had this same exchange with Simon each afternoon when it was time to head for the bus. “You’re right, Simon. It’s almost four o’clock. Carolyn is waiting down the hall for you. She’ll take you to the bus.”
Simon reached toward his collar, then stopped. He seemed rapt in some thought.
“Simon?” Ohlmeyer inquired.
“Carolyn is my friend.”
Ohlmeyer smiled, nodding. A small success. “Yes she is.”
Simon stepped around the table and took two steps toward the door, then he stopped in front of Anne, his left shoulder to her. His head came up and twisted toward her for an instant. He resumed a head-down posture and said, “My mother is a pretty lady.”
“I bet she is,” Anne said, accepting the roundabout compliment.
“Okay, Simon.” Ohlmeyer placed a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “You had better get moving.” He opened the door and guided Simon through it. He watched him until he was safely in Carolyn’s hands. When Ohlmeyer turned back, Anne was resting against the table in a half-sit. “You passed muster, I have to say.”
“He’s—” She checked ‘nice’ before it came out. “—sweet.”
“He’s special,” Ohlmeyer added not as a correction, but as a statement of additional fact. “Very special. If we can work with him, and get him to explore his abilities, we might pick something up in the process.” He crossed his arms, his face twisting into a teeth-gritted smile. “Something to help explain this damned disorder.”
“Anything I can do, Chas, just put it to me.”
“Talking to the parents might help. I want him here five days a week. He needs to be here five days.”
A slow nod agreed…almost completely. “Just promise me something.”
Some old friends never changed, Ohlmeyer recognized. “Anne…”
She showed a cautionary palm to her friend. “Not you, Chas, but that young man does not need to be made into a lab rat for one of these eager young PhD candidates you’ve got lurking in the shadows. He has a life, he deserves a life. I won’t be party to his exploitation.”
Ohlmeyer held four fingers up. “Scout’s honor.”
“Wrong number, Chas,” Anne commented. “Well, this has been a rather pleasant ending to the day.”
“And now you get to go home to your G-Man,” Ohlmeyer said with a smile. “So, tell me, is the Windy City keeping Art busy?”
“Well, he has a saying: There’s bad guys wherever you go.”
“Atrocious grammar,” Ohlmeyer said, then added soberly, “But true.”
Anne nodded. “Very.”
The day was almost done when Art Jefferson swiveled his chair toward the window that, on a clear day, afforded him a partial view of Lake Michigan and pulled the folded note from his shirt pocket. He opened it and smiled at the five words.
Love you. Tonight, my place?
As if it were some tryst his new bride were planning. He tucked the note away and chuckled to himself, realizing that he felt somewhat like a twenty year old newlywed. Well, he was the latter, but he was thirty years and change past the former, on his second and last wife — knock wood — and at a place in his life he’d hardly dreamed possible three years ago.
Recently divorced, number four in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Los Angeles Field Office, handling the biggest investigation of his career, and on the edge. What had come of that combination? A good agent — a friend — with a bullet in his neck, a heart attack, and a quasi-demotion from command to street duty. Two years of taking stock followed, case after case, some big, most not, just plodding along until the world began to spin his way again.
Anne… he thought, feeling his warm cheeks rise. On a blind date of all things he had met her. A woman of impossibly meshed qualities. Fiercely strong and independent, vital, intelligent beyond his measure by far, and at heart she was a little girl who savored life. Tonight, my place?