“I will be downstairs,” I say. “Not in this room; it is too noisy.” I have said this before when she has asked me to keep an eye on her clothes. I always think of taking out an eye and putting it on the clothes, but I do not tell her that is what I think. I know what the expression means socially, but it is a silly meaning. She nods and smiles and goes out. I check again that the setting on both washers is correct and then go out into the hall.

The floor in the laundry room is ugly gray concrete, sloping down slightly to a big drain under the washing machines. I know the drain is there because two years ago I brought my washing down and workmen were there. They had moved the machines out and had the cover off the drain. It smelled very bad, sour and sick.

The floor in the hall is tile, each tile streaked with two shades of green on beige. The tiles are twelve-inch squares; the hall is five squares wide and forty-five and a half squares long. The person who laid the tiles laid them so that the streaks are crosswise to each other — each tile is laid so that the streaks are facing ninety degrees to the tile next to it. Most of the tiles are laid in one of two ways, but eight of them are laid upside down to the other tiles in the same orientation.

I like to look at this hall and think about those eight tiles. What pattern could be completed by having those eight tiles laid in reverse? So far I have come up with three possible patterns. I tried to tell Tom about it once, but he was not able to see the patterns in his head the way I can. I drew them all out on a sheet of paper, but soon I could tell that he was bored. It is not polite to bore people. I never tried to talk to him about it again.

But I find it endlessly interesting. When I get tired of the floor — but I never do get tired of the floor — I can look at the walls. All the walls in the hall are painted, but on one wall there was tile-patterned wallboard before. Those pretend tiles were four inches on a side, but unlike the floor tiles, the pretend wall tiles had a space for pretend grout. So the real pattern size is four and a half inches. If it were four inches, then three wall tiles would make one floor tile.

I look for the places where the line between the tiles can go up the wall and over the ceiling and back around without stopping. There is one place in this hall where the line almost makes it, but not quite. I used to think if the hall were twice as long there would be two places, but that’s not how it works. When I really look at it, I can tell that the hall would have to be five and a third times as long for all the lines to match exactly twice.

Hearing one washing machine whine down from spin, I go back into the laundry room. I know that it takes me exactly that long to arrive at the machine just as the drum stops turning. It is a kind of game, to take that last step when the machine takes its last turn. The left-hand dryer is still mumbling and bumbling; I take my wet clothes and put them in the empty right-hand dryer. By the time I have them all in and have checked to be sure nothing is left in the washer, the second washer comes spinning down. Once last year I worked out the relationship between the frictional force slowing the rotation and the frequency of the sound it makes. I did it by myself, without a computer, which made it more fun.

I take my clothes from the second machine, and there at the bottom is the missing coin, shiny and clean and smooth in my fingers. I put it in my pocket, put the clothes into the dryer, insert the coins, and start it up. Long ago, I used to watch the tumbling clothes and try to figure out what the pattern was — why this time the arm of a red sweatshirt was in front of the blue robe, falling down and around, and next time the same red arm was between the yellow sweatpants and the pillowcase instead. My mother didn’t like it when I mumbled while watching the clothes rise and fall, so I learned to do it all in my head.

Miss Kimberly comes back just as the dryer with her clothes in it stops. She smiles at me. She has a plate with some cookies on it. “Thanks, Lou,” she says. She holds out the plate. “Have a cookie. I know boys — I mean young men — like cookies.”

She brings cookies almost every week. I do not always like the kind of cookie she brings, but it is not polite to say so. This week it is lemon crisps. I like them a lot. I take three. She puts the plate on the folding table and takes her things out of the dryer. She puts them in her basket; she does not fold her clothes down here. “Just bring the plate up when you’re done, Lou,” she says. This is the same as last week.

“Thank you, Miss Kimberly,” I say.

“You’re quite welcome,” she says, as she always does.

I finish the cookies, dust the crumbs into the trash basket, and fold my laundry before going upstairs. I hand her the plate and go on to my apartment.

On Saturday mornings, I go to the center. One of the counselors is available from 8:30 to 12:00, and once a month there’s a special program. Today there is no program, but Maxine, one of the counselors, is walking toward the conference room when I arrive. Bailey did not say if she was the counselor they talked to last week. Maxine wears orange lipstick and purple eye shadow; I never ask her anything. I think about asking her anyway, but someone else goes in before I make up my mind.

The counselors know how to find us legal assistance or an apartment, but I do not know if they will understand the problem we face now. They always encourage us to do everything to become more normal. I think they will say we should want this treatment even if they think it is too dangerous to try while it is still experimental. Eventually I will have to talk to someone here, but I am glad someone is ahead of me. I do not have to do it right now.

I am looking at the bulletin board with its notices of AA meetings and other support group meetings (single parents, parents of teens, job seekers) and interest group meetings (funkdance, bowling, technology assistance) when Emmy comes up to me. “Well, how’s your girlfriend?”

“I do not have a girlfriend,” I say.

“I saw her,” Emmy says. “You know I did. Don’t lie about it.”

“You saw my friend,” I say. “Not my girlfriend. A girlfriend is someone who agrees to be your girlfriend and she has not agreed.” I am not being honest and that is wrong, but I still do not want to talk to Emmy, or listen to Emmy, about Marjory.

“You asked her?” Emmy says.

“I do not want to talk to you about her,” I say, and turn away.

“Because you know I’m right,” Emmy says. She moves around me quickly, standing in front of me again. “She is one of those — call themselves normal — using us like lab rats. You’re always hanging around with that kind, Lou, and it’s not right.”

“I do not know what you mean,” I say. I see Marjory only once a week — twice the week of the grocery store — so how can that be “hanging around” with her? If I come to the Center every week and Emmy is there, does this mean I am hanging around with Emmy? I do not like that thought.

“You haven’t come to any of the special events in months,” she says. “You’re spending time with your normal friends.” She makes normal into a curse word by her tone.

I have not come to the special events because they do not interest me. A lecture on parenting skills? I have no children. A dance? The music they were going to have is not the kind I like. A pottery demo and class? I do not want to make things out of clay. Thinking about it, I realize that very little in the Center now interests me. It is an easy way to run into other autistics, but they are not all like me and I can find more people who share my interests on-line or at the office. Cameron, Bailey, Eric, Linda… we all go to the Center to meet one another before going somewhere else, but it is just a habit. We do not really need the Center, except maybe to talk to the counselors now and then.