Page 34 of Saint
“I–I um… We’ll talk at home?”
I shook my head, feigning confusion. “Talk about what, Saint? You have your quirks just like I have mine, apparently. There’s nothing for us to talk about.”
“Okay.”
And that was that.
Returning to work, I tried to focus on my new sketches, but in truth, I was deflated. Wholly pricked, in offending Saint, I’d somehow offended myself. My conscience wore on me, evaporating my creative juices until there was nothing left. Staring blankly at my sketch paper and unanswered emails, I realized I had to apologize. The number of times I’d ever had to admit my wrongs was infrequent, making the required task ahead of me difficult. With two hours passing at the office and accomplishing nothing, I headed home to carry out my duty.
Saint was in the kitchen when I arrived with what looked like Fruity O cereal spread out across the dining room table. I sat my bag down nearby and joined him in the seat across from him. Void of interest, he didn’t show the tiniest bit of acknowledgment for me when I sat down. His attention was in surplus for the colorful breakfast in front of him. He continued with what appeared to be sorting the different colors into their respective containers with gloved hands.
“You like Fruity Os?” He asked, not breaking his focus.
“I can eat it. Yeah.”
“I normally don’t wear gloves, but people typically think it’s disgusting for someone to touch food with their bare hands.”
“Well… yeah. Maybe,” I agreed, seeking an opportunity to present my contrition. “Saint–”
“Chefs don’t wear gloves when they make our food. Neither do fast food workers. They’re probably the worst when it comes to shit like washing hands, as a matter of fact. Fast food workers. There are approximately fifteen hundred germs per square centimeter on our hands,” he spoke, heavily focused on sorting the cereal colors.
The little-known fact prompted me to glance at my hands before redirecting my attention.
“Saint, I –”
“They’re all different flavors... The colors.”
“The colors of the cereal?” I asked, my eyes blossoming at yet another little-known fact as I wondered how he’d discovered that.
“Mmmh hmmm. That’s why I sort. They always short you on the blue ones.”
“Your favorite?”
“Yep.”
“I’m sorry for calling you Beast earlier,” I barreled out, hoping I’d mustered enough sincerity in my tone as I spoke. “It was a poor descriptor of who you are – who you’ve been to me – and the comment was made in poor taste.”
“Okay.”
Two syllables, he granted me. Nothing more. If I could wrangle his neck with those two syllables, I would. The word itself was so diminutive to what I thought he felt inside. I wanted him to be more verbal and more expressive, but he wouldn’t, and it just… ugh. It drove me up the wall.
There was a fraction of a second where I thought I’d witnessed a pause, but much more likely that I’d imagined it. He continued with his present task, refusing to divert his attention. He was almost finished. Or so I thought. But then he grabbed another bag from what seemed to be several from the floor, opened that, and poured its contents onto the table. I wondered how long he’d been sitting there sorting. How many bags had been deconstructed?
“Can I help?” I asked, prompting his glance in my direction finally.
“Wash your hands first. And if you’re weird about it, there’s gloves in the pantry.”
Rising, I headed for the kitchen sink, where I rinsed my hands clean. After drying them thoroughly, I returned to my seat and began to drag matching cereal bits into a pile. The way Saint stopped to peer at my movements wasn’t lost on me.
“No gloves?”
“No gloves,” I affirmed with a smile.
Relieved, he peeled his gloves away from his hands and continued sorting quietly. It was quirky but also comfortably nice being granted access to this side of him. And I wondered how many people had failed to hold space for him, causing the erection of walls where it was difficult for him to be vulnerable. Causing the stony presence of a beast to be the inaccurate poster of all things concerning him. Despite what I’d said earlier, out of frustration, maybe we did have things to discuss. But we also had fifty more weeks to chat at length. This was only the start of week three.
“I’m autistic,” he revealed after we’d been sorting through cereal for half an hour.
I’d heard of the term, but I didn’t exactly know what it meant. I’d never known anyone who was autistic… Until him. What the hell is autism?