She did. Why?
Because she kind of liked him, a little. Maybe. She’d felt comfortable with him during the massage. She’d felt like she could read him, and she hardly ever felt that. It was like what you saw was what you got with him.
People said that all the time about themselves—I’m an open book. What you see is what you get. I tell it like it is.—but it was always bullshit. Manny knew, because people were always shocking the shit out of her, never doing or saying what they meant. Social interaction was like this giant board game, and everybody had the rules but her.
They’d thought she had autism, the first couple of years after she was adopted. Then, when she’d started moving into adolescence, at about ten or eleven or so, and she got violent, they’d begun looking for other answers. Reactive Attachment Disorder had still been a fairly new diagnosis at the time. She and Dmitri were among the first wave of children adopted a few years after the fall of the Soviet union , when news began to break about the conditions for orphaned children in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Like Ukraine. Orphanages filled to bursting with children, who were left to languish in bare cribs or in sullen, rotting, grey rooms.
RAD was so much worse than autism, as far as Manny was concerned. It basically meant that she was trapped in a body and mind that craved human connection but had no fucking idea what to do with it. And there was no way to heal. While normal babies were getting snuggles from their families, Manny had lain alone in a crib. While normal children were being played with and read to and taught the ways of family love, Manny had sat alone on a dingy iron bed, rocking herself. When she had been touched or interacted with in any way, it had been brusque and efficient at best and abusive at worst.
Her brain never built the connections that recognized loving touch. All touch, to her, was pain and hostility. Aggression. She had to make consciously, every time, responses that were natural and intuitive to the rest of the world.
After years of therapy, both inpatient and outpatient, she had learned to go through a checklist in her head and could place most interactions in their proper context and then respond accordingly. She’d gotten fairly deft at it, but it was exhausting. And when she slipped at all, she ended up doing what she’d done at the pub last night.
She spent so much time reminding herself that casual touches were nothing to be upset about, that when somebody actually was hostile, she got very confused. She hated when her family and friends argued, because it fucked with her programming to have loving people behave aggressively toward each other. And the asshole last night, who’d been smiling and sounding sweet right up to the point that he’d grabbed her—well, he’d caused a break.
People just fucking baffled her. She did not get them at all.
Except that she’d felt like she did get Luca, like he really was just laying it out. She’d been much more comfortable during his massage, just talking, than she usually was. Of course, she was in total control of the touch, and his eyes had been closed ninety percent of the time.
She was probably building something up in her head that wasn’t there at all. He was probably just as confusing as everybody else.
But it bothered her that he knew she was psycho. It bothered her a lot.
oOo
She stopped in at home for lunch, hoping to see her folks, but the house was empty, so she rummaged in their kitchen, ate a quick sandwich, left a note, then did her last appointment and headed back to Quiet Cove. She had this Friday night off. The band was practicing for the next night’s gig, but she didn’t have to be there, and she didn’t want to, not after the theatrics of the night before.
One of these days, she and Gigi were going to have it out. She’d probably land in prison before that was done. Or the psych ward. Again.
On her way into town, she passed the big construction site on Westerly Road. Luca’s ridiculous, matte black Hummer was there, parked on the road.
Impulse control was another thing Manny struggled with.
She pulled over and got out, then walked straight into the construction zone.
There were construction guys all over, all of them in red hardhats with the Pagano & Sons logo on them. The day had been hot and sticky, and about half of the guys were shirtless. About half of those really shouldn’t have been.
One of the guys who should have kept his big belly under cover noticed her first. He stomped over.
“Hey, missy, what you doin’? You can’t be in here. Too dangerous.”
“I’m looking for Luca. Luca Pagano.”
“I don’t care if you’re looking for the Christ child hisself, you gotta get gone.” He thumped his plastic hat. “Y’at least need a brain bucket.”