Now that I have fenced in the tournament, I feel very relaxed fencing here. I do not think about Don; I think only about Marjory’s blade. Again I have the feeling that touching her blade is almost like touching her—that I can feel, through the steel, her every movement, even her mood. I want this to last; I slow a little, prolonging the contact, not making touches I could make so that we can keep this going. It is a very different feeling from the tournament, but light is the only word I can think of to describe it.
Finally she backs up; she is breathing hard. “That was fun, Lou, but you’ve worn me out. I’ll have to take a breather.”
“Thank you,” I say.
We sit down side by side, both breathing hard. I time my breaths to hers. It feels good to do that.
Suddenly Don comes out of the equipment room, carrying his blades in one hand, his mask in the other.
He glares at me and walks around the corner of the house, stiff-legged. Tom follows him out and shrugs, spreading his hands.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” he says to Lucia. “He still thinks I insulted him on purpose at the tournament. And he only placed twentieth, behind Lou. Right now it’s all my fault, and he’s going to study with Gunther."
“That won’t last long,” Lucia says. She stretches out her legs. “He won’t put up with the discipline.”
“It is because of me?” I ask.
“It is because the world does not arrange itself to suit him,” Tom says. “I give him a couple of weeks before he’s back, pretending nothing has happened.”
“And you’ll let him back?” Lucia says with an edge to her voice.
Tom shrugs again. “If he behaves, sure. People do grow, Lucia.”
“Crookedly, some of them,” she says.
Then Max and Susan and Cindy and the others arrive in a bunch and they all speak to me. I did not see them at the tournament, but they all saw me. I feel embarrassed that I didn’t notice, but Max explains.
“We were trying to stay out of your way, so you could concentrate. You only want one or two people talking to you at a time like that,” he says. That would make sense if other people also had trouble concentrating. I did not know they thought that way; I thought they wanted lots of people around all the time.
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?”