Rachel Alexander 04 - Lady Vanishes

Dashiell to eat and he was very hungry, saying good-bye with something he could relate to.
    Cora thought I was her daughter, and as she’d wisely told me, she didn’t know the time of day, but she’d remembered that Lady didn’t do tricks but came to love her.
    I flipped back through the drawings once again, stopping at the incomplete squirrel. Only part of the story, like the one Venus was telling me.
    I wondered what I’d hear next, the details carefully orchestrated, but for what purpose, I didn’t know.
    Was she protecting someone?
    And if so, who?
    I held the door for Dashiell, then tried it to make sure it was locked and followed him down the hall. There were two more residents who had biscuits in their pockets, and though they probably didn’t know it, they were waiting for his visit.

Chapter 9
    He Wants To Run

    It was one of those triple-H New York summers, day after steamy day so hot, people always say, you could cook an egg on the sidewalk, a suggestion worth ignoring. If the germs didn’t get you up front, the cholesterol would surely do it over time.
    When we got to the pier, Dashiell lay down, his tongue out. I was thinking that, despite the heat, after his last visit, he’d need to run. But even after finishing most of the water, he refused to move.
    I thought about doing a round of t'ai chi, but practicing moves your energy and makes you hotter. So instead, we left the pier and headed south along the path the bicyclers used; no one was dumb enough to be riding while the sun was still up. There was a little shade here, still, the first huge planter we got to—a twelve-by-twelve-foot cement square filled with trees and room for people to sit along the rim—Dash jumped up, walked to the nearest tree, dug away the topsoil until he got to a cooler layer of earth, and lay down.
    Jackson, second on my list, hadn’t been in his room, but we’d found him downstairs, sitting in the comer of the dining room, dripping paint from his fingers onto one of the pages of a drawing pad.
    There were two women I hadn’t yet met there, one at either end of one of the rectangular tables. They looked far enough apart in age to be mother and daughter. The older one, wearing a tiara, might have been fifty, the younger one in her late twenties, but when people have no expressions on their faces, age can be difficult to judge.
    There was a fat, bald man at one of the round tables, playing with a busy box, his fingers short and wide, the fingertips almost square, his round face flat. Charlotte was there, too, sharpening a stack of colored pencils, watching the curl of wood as it emerged from the sharpener, smelling each new point carefully before she laid the pencil down and picked up the next one. I gave her shoulder a quick squeeze in passing, but she never looked up. Touch is considered pretty much of a no-no with autistics, but I hadn’t found that to be the case. If I didn’t believe the people I worked with had the same need for contact as everyone else, what on earth was I doing here? Maybe it was because of Dashiell that I could get away with touching. I didn’t know. But hadn’t Venus done it, too, a quick touch on David’s shoulder in passing, over and done with before he even knew it was happening?
    When I’d first worked with Emily, a touch would start her trembling, her arms jerking violently up and down, her head shaking from side to side. I’d wait until she stopped, then touch her again, patting her arm and putting a hand on her shoulder for just a second. Each time, her reaction was less violent and shorter-lived until, near the end, before she was to move to a larger institution closer to where her parents lived, she would hug me if I requested it, though never on her own.
    By the time we’d gotten to the far comer of the dining room, Jackson had stopped painting. He had wiped his hands carefully on some paper towels and was sitting there, staring straight ahead, a man of about sixty, tall, thin, elegant looking in his collarless shirt, even though he had paint all over his cuffs and on his cheek where he’d forgotten and touched himself before wiping his hands. I took the chair next to his, leaving room for Dashiell to come in between us and place his head on Jackson’s leg.
    “How are you today?”
    I waited for a response, then when none came, I waited for an inspiration.
    “I like your painting,” I told him, looking at it rather than at him. “What do you call it?”
    That went