"Elizabeth Moon. The Speed of Dark " - читать интересную книгу автора

What I mean is I know what I like and want, and she does not, and I do
not want to like or want what she wants me to like or want.
She doesn't want to know what I mean. She wants me to say what other
people say. "Good morning, Dr. Fornum."
"Yes, I'm fine, thank you."
"Yes, I can wait. I don't mind."
I don't mind. When she answers the phone I can look around her office
and find the twinkly things she doesn't know she has. I can move my head
back and forth so the light in the corner glints off and on over there, on
the shiny cover of a book in the bookcase. If she notices that I'm moving
my head back and forth she makes a note in my record. She may even
interrupt her phone call to tell me to stop. It is called stereotypy when I
do it and relaxing her neck when she does it. I call it fun, watching the
reflected light blink off and on.
Dr. Fornum's office has a strange blend of smells, not just the paper
and ink and book smell and the carpet glue and the plastic smell of the
chair frames, but something else that I keep thinking must be chocolate.
Does she keep a box of candy in her desk drawer? I would like to find out.
I know if I asked her she would make a note in my record. Noticing smells
is not appropriate. Notes about noticing are bad notes, but not like bad
notes in music, which are wrong.
I do not think everyone else is alike in every way. She has told me
that Everyone knows this and Everyone does that, but I am not blind, just
autistic, and I know that they know and do different things. The cars in
the parking lot are different colors and sizes. Thirty-seven percent of
them, this morning, are blue. Nine percent are oversize: trucks or vans.
There are eighteen motorcycles in three racks, which would be six apiece,
except that ten of them are in the back rack, near Maintenance. Different
channels carry different programs; that would not happen if everyone were
alike.
When she puts down the phone and looks at me, her face has that look.
I don't know what most people would call it, but I call it the I am real
look. It means she is real and she has answers and I am someone less, not
completely real, even though I can feel the nubbly texture of the office
chair right through my slacks. I used to put a magazine under me, but she
says I don't need to do that. She is real, she thinks, so she knows what I
need and don't need.
"Yes, Dr. Fornum, I am listening." Her words pour over me, slightly
irritating, like a vat of vinegar. "Listen for conversational cues," she
tells me, and waits. "Yes," I say. She nods, marks on the record, and says,
'Very good," without looking at me. Down the hall somewhere, someone starts
walking this way. Two someones, talking. Soon their talk tangles with hers.
I am hearing about Debby on Friday... next time... going to the... Did
they? And I told her. But never bird on a stool... can't be, and Dr. Fornum
is waiting for me to answer something. She would not talk to me about a
bird on a stool. "I'm sorry," I say. She tells me to pay better attention
and makes another mark on my record and asks about my social life.
She does not like what I tell her, which is that I play games on the
Internet with my friend Alex in Germany and my friend Ky in Indonesia. "In
real life," she says firmly. "People at work," I say, and she nods again