The Speed of Dark Read Free

first. I would not want to come here and sit at another table, so I know that Chuy will not come here and we will not have to try to squeeze him in. A new manager last year did not understand that. He was always trying to arrange big dinners for us and mix us up in seating. “Don’t be so hidebound,” he would say. When he wasn’t looking, we went back to where we like to sit. Dale has an eye tic that bothers Linda, so she sits where she can’t see it. I think it’s funny and I like to watch it, so I sit on Dale’s left, where it looks like he’s winking at me.
    The people who work here know us. Even when other people in the restaurant look too long at us for our movements and the way we talk— or don’t—the people here don’t ever give us that go-away look I’ve had other places. Linda just points to what she wants or sometimes she writes it out first, and they never bother her with more questions.
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    Tonight our favorite table is dirty. I can hardly stand to look at the five dirty plates and pizza pans; it makes my stomach turn to think of the smears of sauce and cheese and crust crumbs, and the uneven number makes it worse. There is an empty table to our right, but we do not like that one. It’s next to the passage to the rest rooms, and too many people go by behind us.
    We wait, trying to be patient, as Hi-I’m-Sylvia—she has that on her name tag, as if she were a product for sale and not a person—signals to one of the others to clean up our table. I like her and can remember to call her Sylvia without the Hi-I’m as long as I’m not looking at her name tag. Hi-I’m-Sylvia always smiles at us and tries to be helpful; Hi-I’m-Jean is the reason we don’t come in on Thursdays, when she works this shift. Hi-I’m-Jean doesn’t like us and mutters under her breath if she sees us. Sometimes one of us will come to pick up an order for the others; the last time I did, Hi-I’m-Jean said, “At least he didn’t bring all the other freaks in here,” to one of the cooks as I turned away from the register. She knew I heard. She meant me to hear. She is the only one who gives us trouble.
    But tonight it’s Hi-I’m-Sylvia and Tyree, who is picking up the plates and dirty knives and forks as if it didn’t bother him. Tyree doesn’t wear a name tag; he just cleans tables. We know he’s Tyree because we heard the others call him that. The first time I used his name to him, he looked startled and a little scared, but now he knows us, though he doesn’t use our names.
    “Be done in a minute here,” Tyree says, and gives us a sidelong look. “You doin ’ okay?”
    “Fine,” Cameron says. He’s bouncing a little from heel to toe. He always does that a little, but I can tell he’s bouncing a bit faster than usual.
    I am watching the beer sign blinking in the window. It comes on in three segments, red, green, then blue in the middle, and then goes off all at once.Blink, red. Blink, green, blink blue, then blink red/green/blue, all off, all on, all off, and start over. A very simple pattern, and the colors aren’t that pretty (the red is too orange for my taste and so is the green, but the blue is a lovely blue), but still it’s a pattern to watch.
    “Your table’s ready,” Hi-I’m-Sylvia says, and I try not to twitch as I shift my attention from the beer sign to her.
    We arrange ourselves around the table in the usual way and sit down. We are having the same thing we have every time we come here, so it doesn’t take long to order. We wait for the food to come, not talking because we are each, in our own way, settling into this situation. Because of the visit to Dr.
    Fornum , I’m more aware than usual of the details of this process: that Linda is bouncing her fingers on the bowl of her spoon in a complex pattern that would delight a mathematician as much as it does her.
    I’m watching the beer sign out of the corner of my eye, as is Dale. Cameron is bouncing the tiny plastic dice he