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few bits of broken glass touched my car. And there are lots of other people to give assistance. I am not trained to give assistance.
    I look carefully behind me and slowly, carefully, edge past the wreck. People look at me angrily. But I didn’t do anything wrong; I wasn’t in the accident. If I stayed, I would be late for work. And I would Page 13

    have to talk to policemen. I am afraid of policemen.
    I feel shaky when I get to work, so instead of going into my office I go to the gym first. I put on the
    “Polka and Fugue” from Schwanda the Bagpiper , because I need to do big bounces and big swinging movements. I am a little calmer with bouncing by the time Mr. Crenshaw shows up, his faceglistening an ugly shade of reddish beige.
    “Well now, Lou,” he says. The tone is clouded, as if he wanted to sound jovial but was really angry.
    Coach Jerry used to sound like that. “Do you like the gym a lot, then?”
    The long answer is always more interesting than the short one. I know that most people want the short uninteresting answer rather than the long interesting one, so I try to remember that when they ask me questions that could have long answers if they only understood them. Mr. Crenshaw only wants to know if I like the gym room. He doesn’t want to know how much.
    “It’s fine,” I tell him.
    “Do you need anything that isn’t here?”
    “No.” I need many things that aren’t here, including food, water, and a place to sleep, but he means do I need anything in this room for the purpose it is designed for that isn’t in this room.
    “Do you need that music?”
    That music.Laura taught me that when people say “that” in front of a noun it implies an attitude about the content of the noun. I am trying to think what attitude Mr. Crenshaw has about that music when he goes on, as people often do, before I can answer.
    “It’s so difficult,” he says.“Trying to keep all that music on hand. The recordings wear out… It would be easier if we could just turn on the radio.”
    The radio here has loud banging noises or that whining singing, not music.And commercials, even louder, every few minutes. There is no rhythm to it, not one I could use for relaxing.
    “The radio won’t work,” I say. I know that is too abrupt by the hardening in his face. I have to say more, not the short answer, but the long one. “The music has to go through me,” I say. “It needs to be the right music to have the right effect, and it needs to be music, not talking or singing. It’s the same for each of us. We need our own music, the music that works for us.”
    “It would be nice,” Mr. Crenshaw says in a voice that has more overtones of anger, “if we could each have the music we like best. But most people—” He says “most people” in the tone that means “real people, normal people.”
    “Most people have to listen to what’s available.”
    “I understand,” I say, though I don’t actually. Everyone could bring in a player and their own music and wear earphones while they work, as we do. “But for us—” For us, the autistic, the incomplete. “It needs to be the right music.”
    Now he looks really angry, the muscles bunching in his cheeks, his face redder and shinier. I can see the tightness in his shoulders, his shirt stretched across them.
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    “Very well,” he says. He does not mean that it is very well. He means he has to let us play the right music, but he would change it if he could. I wonder if the words on paper in our contract are strong enough to prevent him from changing it. I think about asking Mr. Aldrin .
    It takes me another fifteen minutes to calm down enough to go to my office. I am soaked with sweat. I smell bad. I grab my spare clothes and go take a shower. When I finally sit down to work, it is an hour and forty-seven minutes after the time to start work; I will work late tonight to make up for that.
    Mr. Crenshaw comes by again at closing time, when I am still working. He