All the Time in the World Read Online Free PDF

light that came on behind it. The door opened and I had to raise my arms against the light. I must have made an odd picture, sitting there with each hand in a wingtip shoe, as if that were how shoes were worn, because whoever was standing there began to laugh.
    In this way, I became a familiar of two of the unfortunates who lived in the basement dormitory under the care of Dr. Sondervan.
    ONE WAS A DOWN-SYNDROMER by the name of Herbert. Emily, his pal, was the other—I don’t know what she was, but she couldn’t keep from smiling, out of unceasing happiness or a neurological glitch, but either way it was eerily unnatural. This bucktoothedgirl with very thin hair, I couldn’t tell her age—she might have been anything from fourteen to nineteen. She and Herbert, who was smaller in his proportions than he should have been, with a round head, slanted eyes, and a nose that looked as if he’d had a boxing career, seemed distinct from the four other patients down there, who were aloof, who took me in with a glance that first night and couldn’t care less after that—teenagers, apparently, three male, one female, physically normal-looking, compared with Herbert and Emily, but living in their own minds, with not much concern for what went on around them. I assumed that they were a variety of autistics, though of course I knew nothing about autism, except what I had read in magazines or seen on television.
    But Herbert and Emily loved me from the moment they saw me sitting there with the shoes on my hands, as if they had found someone mentally less fortunate even than they, who may not have known much but did know that shoes were more properly worn on the feet. They didn’t ask what had brought me to their door, but welcomed me as one might a stray cat. From that first moment, they were solicitous and protective, instructing me to repeat their names after them to make sure I understood, and then asking my name. Howard, I said, my name is Howard.
    They brought me a glass of water and Emily, giggling all the while, brushed the sweated thatch of hair from my forehead. Howard is a fine name, she said. Don’t you love the autumn, Howard? I love the falling leaves, don’t you?
    They took the shoes from my hands and fitted them on my wet feet, Herbert, with his mouth open as befit his concentration, tying the laces, and Emily looking on as if it were a surgical procedure. Neatly done, Herbert, very fine indeed, she said. As soon as I judged it safe to go, they insisted on following me to my garage and watched as I climbed the stairs to make sure that I did not fall.
    So now two of Dr. Sondervan’s mental defectives knew aboutme. It would be a costly pair of shoes if they blabbed about Howard, the nice man who lived next door over the garage. There was not only the doctor but his staff, the three or four women who ran the household, to whom they might say something. I looked around the attic, my de facto home. The only sensible thing to do was to leave. But how could I? While I struggled with this, I maintained a watch by day and didn’t make my nightly forage until well past their lights-out.
    A couple of mornings later, I saw Herbert and Emily and the others in the backyard. They were sitting on the ground, and there was Sondervan addressing them, like students in a class. The doctor was a tall but stooped man in his seventies, with a gray goatee and black horn-rim glasses. I had never seen him without a jacket and tie, and in deference to the season he had added a short-sleeved sweater that served as a vest. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, though I could hear his voice; a thin, high elderly man’s voice, it was, but self-assured and with an almost smugly assumed authority. At one point, Herbert grabbed a handful of fallen leaves and tossed them up so that they rained down on Emily’s head. She, of course, laughed, thus interrupting the lecture. The doctor glared. How normal this all was. Had Herbert and Emily revealed my