mean?” asked Karen, curious to finally learn something about the woman in the $3,000 Chanel dress, or a very good copy of one.
“How to interpret the noises you make and the things you do. Like laughing. Medically, clinically, I have no sense of humour. A lesion in my brain’s right hemisphere creates tone-blindness that hinders my ability to appreciate what you call humour, irony, passion, and God. Another right-hemisphere lesion strips my speech of inflection and tone. People say I sound like a robot. I can’t tell. And finally, I have autism-related facial recognition blindness syndrome. Which is all to say that when people make the laughing noise, I have to talk myself out of being frightened.”
“Is there a name for your condition?”
“I have several. I have autistic spectrum disorder. I have problems with inhibition and disinhibition, as well as mild OCD. My sequencing abilities are in the top half percentile. I know pi to just over one thousand digits.”
“I’ve seen a few people with that come through the office I work in — used to work in. So you can’t tell faces apart?”
“No.”
“Can you tell if loud people are angry or happy?”
“A little bit. But in normalcy training I learned a set of questions one can ask to neutralize emotionally extreme situations, such as right now.”
“Like what?”
“For example, you can always ask neurotypical people what their job is, and what they’ve learned through their jobs. And, as I believe we need a distraction here, I’m going to initiate this procedure. Luke, you have a wad of cash in your pocket and recently lost your religious faith. Can you tell us more about what you do?”
Luke waited for Karen to hand him his drink before saying, “Up until this morning I was a pastor in a nice little church beside a freeway off-ramp up in Nippissing. But yesterday I lost my faith, and this morning I stole the church’s entire renovation fund, jumped on a plane, and came here.”
“Seriously?” asked Rick.
“Yup. Twenty grand.” Luke sipped his Scotch.
“So,” said Rachel, “technically you’re unemployed?”
“Yup.”
“Can you tell us anything you’ve learned about people from your job as a small-town pastor?”
A funny expression crossed Luke’s face — a combination of amusement and relief. “It seems like I’ve been waiting over a decade for someone to ask me that very question.” Luke paused for a moment, as if ordering his thoughts, then said, “Here goes. To start with, if you’re at work and someone’s bothering you, ask him or her to make a donation to a charity. Keep a charity can and donation envelopes in your desk. They’ll never bug you again. It works.”
“What else?”
“What else? Okay, chances are you feel superior to almost everyone you work with — but they probably feel the same way about you. Also, more men than you might think beat their wives with full plastic bottles of fabric softener.” Luke stared at the ceiling as he continued his litany. “Relentlessly perky women often have deeply rooted fertility issues. Also, for the first time in history, thanks to the Internet, straight people are having way more sex than gay people. And I think I can easily generalize and say that too much free time is a monkey’s paw in disguise. Humans weren’t built to handle a structureless life.”
Rachel asked, “What else?”
“What else . . . Here’s one: by the age of twenty, you know you’re not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you’re not going to be a dentist or any kind of professional. And by thirty, darkness starts moving in — you wonder if you’re ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life, and you become resigned to your fate.”
Luke paused and rubbed a finger around the rim of his glass. “You know, in the end I just got so darned tired of hearing about
“How to interpret the noises you make and the things you do. Like laughing. Medically, clinically, I have no sense of humour. A lesion in my brain’s right hemisphere creates tone-blindness that hinders my ability to appreciate what you call humour, irony, passion, and God. Another right-hemisphere lesion strips my speech of inflection and tone. People say I sound like a robot. I can’t tell. And finally, I have autism-related facial recognition blindness syndrome. Which is all to say that when people make the laughing noise, I have to talk myself out of being frightened.”
“Is there a name for your condition?”
“I have several. I have autistic spectrum disorder. I have problems with inhibition and disinhibition, as well as mild OCD. My sequencing abilities are in the top half percentile. I know pi to just over one thousand digits.”
“I’ve seen a few people with that come through the office I work in — used to work in. So you can’t tell faces apart?”
“No.”
“Can you tell if loud people are angry or happy?”
“A little bit. But in normalcy training I learned a set of questions one can ask to neutralize emotionally extreme situations, such as right now.”
“Like what?”
“For example, you can always ask neurotypical people what their job is, and what they’ve learned through their jobs. And, as I believe we need a distraction here, I’m going to initiate this procedure. Luke, you have a wad of cash in your pocket and recently lost your religious faith. Can you tell us more about what you do?”
Luke waited for Karen to hand him his drink before saying, “Up until this morning I was a pastor in a nice little church beside a freeway off-ramp up in Nippissing. But yesterday I lost my faith, and this morning I stole the church’s entire renovation fund, jumped on a plane, and came here.”
“Seriously?” asked Rick.
“Yup. Twenty grand.” Luke sipped his Scotch.
“So,” said Rachel, “technically you’re unemployed?”
“Yup.”
“Can you tell us anything you’ve learned about people from your job as a small-town pastor?”
A funny expression crossed Luke’s face — a combination of amusement and relief. “It seems like I’ve been waiting over a decade for someone to ask me that very question.” Luke paused for a moment, as if ordering his thoughts, then said, “Here goes. To start with, if you’re at work and someone’s bothering you, ask him or her to make a donation to a charity. Keep a charity can and donation envelopes in your desk. They’ll never bug you again. It works.”
“What else?”
“What else? Okay, chances are you feel superior to almost everyone you work with — but they probably feel the same way about you. Also, more men than you might think beat their wives with full plastic bottles of fabric softener.” Luke stared at the ceiling as he continued his litany. “Relentlessly perky women often have deeply rooted fertility issues. Also, for the first time in history, thanks to the Internet, straight people are having way more sex than gay people. And I think I can easily generalize and say that too much free time is a monkey’s paw in disguise. Humans weren’t built to handle a structureless life.”
Rachel asked, “What else?”
“What else . . . Here’s one: by the age of twenty, you know you’re not going to be a rock star. By twenty-five, you know you’re not going to be a dentist or any kind of professional. And by thirty, darkness starts moving in — you wonder if you’re ever going to be fulfilled, let alone wealthy or successful. By thirty-five, you know, basically, what you’re going to be doing for the rest of your life, and you become resigned to your fate.”
Luke paused and rubbed a finger around the rim of his glass. “You know, in the end I just got so darned tired of hearing about
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