So, over one hundred million dollars a year from that title alone. “You know what,” I said to him, “I just stopped worrying about you.”
There were studies that showed that autism could be “outgrown,” that some fortunate patients could enter the OO (or Optimal Outcome) group whose members no longer showed any of the symptoms of autistic disorder, and that a higher IQ was more likely to lead to this. Inevitably, the research was disputed, but many families offered anecdotal evidence in its support. The Petya case was different. Neither did he achieve, nor did he actually want, entry into the OO group. His HFA and his achievements were closely linked. However, in the aftermath of the breakthrough walk around Manhattan, he seemed increasingly able to manage his symptoms, to be less depressed, less likely to tailspin into crisis, less worried about living alone. He had his buddy in Murray Lett, and his father took care to visit him every day, and he still took his prescribed medication, and he was…functional. As to his new release from fear of the outdoors, nobody could say how permanent it might be, or how far from “home base” he might be willing to roam. But, on the whole, he was in the best shape he’d been in for a long time. Not worrying about him had become a possibility.
He still drank too heavily. Somehow, perhaps because this was a much more familiar problem, it concerned all of us less than it should have.
For a time after that I worried about myself instead. The baby was due soon, and to tell the truth I couldn’t stand the situation in which I found myself, so I scrambled to do as Suchitra wanted and moved out of the Golden house. And yes, my parents had had many close relationships with their neighbors on the Gardens, and to my great delight their diplomat friend from Myanmar, whom in these pages, in order to make him up more easily, I have renamed U Lnu Fnu—the sad-faced sunken-eyed bespectacled widower who had narrowly failed in his quest to follow U Thant as the second Burmese UN Secretary-General—welcomed me into his home. “It will be a pleasure for me,” he said. “It is a large apartment and to be alone in it feels like being a fly buzzing inside a bell. I hear the echo of myself and it is not a sound I love.”
As a matter of fact, my timing was perfect, because he had had a tenant in his spare room for a while, and when I asked him about possibly renting that room this tenant was on the point of vacating it. The exiting character was an airline pilot, Jack Bonney, who liked to say that he flew “for the biggest airline you’ve never heard of,” Hercules Air, which historically had carried cargo but now also accepted soldiers and other clients. “One time recently,” he said, “we had the British prime minister on board with his security detail, and I was like, should he be on your Air Force One? And the security guys said, we don’t have a plane like that. And I airlifted mercenaries into Iraq, that was something. But the biggest thing I ever flew? From London to Venezuela, two hundred million dollars’ worth of Venezuelan currency, which the Brits printed for them, who knew, right. Here’s the weird thing. At Heathrow, they’re loading the pallets, and there’s no security, I’m looking around, but there’s just the regular airport personnel, no armed escort, nothing. Then we get to Caracas and wow, just a huge military operation. Bazookas, tanks, terrifying guys in body armor with guns sticking out of them in every direction. But in London, nothing. That freaked me out.”
When he was gone and I was comfortably ensconced U Lnu Fnu visited me in my room and said in his delicate, careful voice, “I was glad of his company but glad also that you are quieter by nature. Mr. Bonney is a good man but he should be careful about his loose-tongued chitchat. Walls have ears, my dear René. Walls have ears.”
He was solicitous of my well-being, spoke once, shyly, after asking permission, about his respect for my parents and his understanding of my pain at their loss. He himself, he shyly mentioned, had suffered the pain of loss as well. Suchitra was happy about my new location but, noticing my continuing low spirits, took a different tack. “You look like a sad sack since you moved out of the Addams Family mansion. You sure you’re not hankering for a little taste of sweet Russian pastry?” Her tone was light, but it was clear she really wanted to know the answer.
I reassured her; she was a trusting soul and soon laughed it off. “I’m glad you managed to stay on in your beloved Gardens,” she said. “I can only imagine how long your face would’ve gotten if that hadn’t worked out.”