He pushed up on his elbows and smiled his sideways Emmet smile. “I’m a cake?”
I had expected him to tell me he didn’t like similes. “Yes. You’re my cake.”
“I don’t want to get eaten.”
I blushed, but I made myself say the words. “No. I want you to eat me up.” I pressed on, past the embarrassment. It was Emmet. I had nothing to fear. “I don’t want you to try to change for me. I only want to be with you as you are. I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I enjoy it when you touch me soft or hard, when you kiss me or hold me or simply lie beside me. When you’re in the mood to kiss me all over and drive me wild or when you need to be alone and I only can sit outside your door, loving you. That’s what I want from you, Emmet. For you to let me be with you and help you. I don’t ever want you to change for me.”
For a moment his gaze met mine, and I stilled, thrilling. He was so intense I felt pinned to the bed. “You’re my sensory sack.”
“Your what?”
“My sensory sack. Like at the City Council meeting, when The Roosevelt Blues Brothers closed in for me, but this time it’s just you. You’re better than them. You’re the best sensory sack of all. Better sometimes than the real thing.”
I didn’t know what he meant at first, and then I realized. His sack in the closet. I was his…sack, his place to go for comfort. “Yes. Let me be your sensory sack. Let me be your safe place, where you can be yourself, where you can calm yourself, or whatever you need me to be. Come inside me, Emmet, and let me make the world go away.”
It was as if my words unbuckled something in him. He came at me with all his carefulness stripped away, no longer trying to be smooth and tender. I had enjoyed the other, but I preferred this. I wasn’t worried about him faking anything for me, not when he behaved this way.
His kiss was clumsy, overeager, and so full of Emmet I melted. I opened my mouth and took him in, feeling myself dissolve away as I let him move me into the position he wanted on the bed. I enjoyed, though, the way he trembled as he shifted my body, the way he was in control but only barely. Or rather, he was in control, but he wasn’t disciplining his body the way he did in public. He hummed and rocked and jerked, all his autistic tics on full display, and each one warmed my heart, undoing me further as he undressed me, caressed me, got me ready for him.
Yes, my love. Let me see you, all of you.
This was the same Emmet I had discovered when I came into the apartment with Mai, complete with all the aspects of his autism that so often frustrated him, except right now Emmet moved with his disabilities, made them work for him instead of fighting them. Danced with his octopus instead of letting it strangle him. And I knew I was biased. My love colored my vision, but to me this Emmet was so beautiful, so handsome, so perfect. I would never want him to be anyone other than who he was. If someone invented a technology that could make his brain like brains on the mean, could make him behave the same as other men without all the tics and habits setting him apart, I would still love him, but it would break my heart too, because I would miss this Emmet.
I can’t beat you either, RJ King, I thought, shutting my eyes as Emmet placed his mouth on my neck, but I can do this. I can lift up this man, the one who’s already bested you once. I can shine for him, keep him safe, keep him happy. I don’t have many strengths, but I do have this. Watch me, King. Watch me shore him up. Watch me make him as strong as I can, so he can take you down.
As Emmet made love to me, I imagined I was a liquid sheath, that as he stroked and entered my body I enveloped him right back, putting a protective coating around him and sending all my energy into him, feeding his octopus and strengthening his walls, fueling the computers in his brilliant mind. I let my love pour into him, trying to empty myself, except the more I pushed into him, the more power and strength and love I found inside myself. The idea that my love and our power together was endless thrilled me, and I gasped, clutching at him, imagining so long as we were together, nothing bad would ever happen.
I knew, intellectually, this wasn’t true. But in that moment it felt true. And as we lay in his bed together after, Emmet holding me though I knew he was overstimulated, I swam in the rush of endorphins, knowing for at least a little while they would douse my anxiety and depression better than any drug could ever hope to attempt.
I opened my eyes lazily, my lids heavy as I resisted the urge to stroke Emmet’s abdomen, staring across his naked chest instead. “If you need to go rock in the living room, I understand. It’s okay.”
“I don’t need to. You’re my sensory sack. The octopus is fine, with you.”
I shut my eyes again, heady with the rush of emotion. “Okay,” I replied, because it was all I could manage.
Then I held still, as still as I could, lying beside him as my love spun a more protective web around him. Because I was going to be the best sensory sack Emmet had ever had.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Emmet
Our first event was planned for the last Saturday in April at the Dallas County Fairgrounds.
Kaya and the team from marketing helping our project did a lot of the technical setting up of the venue, making sure we had the right lighting and sound. They also promoted our appearance and made sure people were coming, though Darren helped with all of this stuff too. Every other aspect, though, The Roosevelt Blues Brothers team handled alone. We selected Dallas County as our target area for our first run outside of Ames, and we elected to use the fairgrounds as our test-run venue.
“It makes the most sense on both counts,” David said. “West Des Moines is a little conservative, but not completely, and they have money. They’re our target demographic. Plus my dad has a ton of connections there. He can work the crowd while we put on our show.”
Darren made a sign indicating he wanted to speak, and we waited while he typed into his pad. “We want to give them the speech too, right?”
“Oh yeah. And the brochures, the slide show, the whole works. But I think they want the song and dance too.” David shifted his upper body in his chair, grinning his sly grin. “Especially for the West Des Moines crowd. You’re talking prime money there. We might not only get votes. We might get donors for the foundation. Because we might as well kill two birds with one stone.”
Jeremey frowned. “Foundation?”
David’s smile got bigger, and it changed. His nose crinkled, and his eyes narrowed. “I forgot my dad didn’t tell you guys yet. He filed the paperwork with the lawyer yesterday. There’s going to be a Roosevelt Foundation now too, in addition to the project. The foundation is where all the money will go when it gets donated, and hopefully eventually it will become an education and information arm of The Roosevelt Project. He and Kaya want it to become independent and self-perpetuating, but it’s going to take a bit of work. And capital. It’ll be nonprofit, but it’ll need some money to make the wheels go around. Which is why this Dallas County performance is such a good start. We’ll never make enough money in donations to reach our goal. Maybe to keep The Roosevelt solvent, but never to help establish a network of Roosevelts across the state. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to bat my eyelashes at rich people and try to get them to empty their wallets at me. This chair isn’t good for a whole lot, but if I can use it to raise money for our cause, I’m going balls to the wall.”
I wasn’t sure what balls David was putting to the wall and why, and I thought about asking him, but Kaya came over to us and told us the tech crew was ready for us to rehearse, so I didn’t say anything. We needed a lot of practice still, after all.
We weren’t bad, but we’d decided we wanted to be more polished than we’d been for the Target flash mob, which meant more rehearsal. We had better costumes this time, which was nice. All four of us had suits, but they were fitted by a real tailor and they all matched. The hats were my favorite part. They were soft and had a secret strip of grip padding in the front so when we removed them for our dance moves they didn’t fall out of our hands as easily. David
didn’t take his off himself, because it was too difficult for him to execute the gesture in time to the beat, so I took it off for him, and it was easier for me to grab it with the grip strip. Kaya had come up with the idea, and she asked a haberdasher to put the strip in as a special feature. I didn’t know we had a haberdasher in Iowa until she drove us to Des Moines to meet him. He was a nice older man who was excited we all wanted custom hats.
Our musical number was a great deal of work, but I didn’t mind because I got to be Elwood Blues again. Lip-syncing is hard, but “Try Everything” is a good song. I’m not a female singer, so people are suspending their disbelief more than usual, but Kaya says we’re so good it doesn’t matter.
I have fun with this because I don’t only pretend to sing, I dance with Jeremey. The last time we did a lip sync he had a difficult time simply participating, but he’s come a long way with his social anxiety now, and he says being on stage with lights blasting into his face helps a lot because they block out the audience and he can’t see them at all. His biggest struggle is getting out of bed if he’s having a bad bout of depression, but Mai helps him there. Also he says having Mai on stage (she’s also has a costume, a special jacket and hat) makes it okay, though he’s best when he’s with me. In fact if he holds my hand, he can lip sync and dance. So for most of the time he’s either holding Mai’s leash or dancing with me.
There’s one part of the number where we sing into the microphone together, another where we each have our own mics, and one part where I spin him around. Usually I prefer to dance by myself, and I do have a great dance solo where I do my Elwood Blues dance because Kaya says it’s my signature move and I need to include it, but I like the part where I dance with Jeremey better. I enjoy the way he blushes and looks at me like it doesn’t matter how big an audience we have, when I’m spinning him, there’s nobody else in the world but the two of us.
Darren does some dancing too, but he prefers to stay in place when he dances. He has enough mobility and balance issues that he doesn’t want to move too much on stage, and David of course needs to stay in his chair. So Darren and David do their own version of a dance together, where David spins his chair and Darren spins in place. Mostly though they run their own kind of show, as David calls it. David flirts with the audience and with Darren, and Darren signs the lyrics of the song as he does his dance. He uses ASL as much as he can, not his special sign, but he had to choose which parts of the lyrics he would sign, because he can’t do all the signs right, since his hands won’t always behave, sometimes not going fast enough and sometimes they simply won’t do the sign properly at all.
We’ve had audiences a lot of the time at our rehearsals, though the fairgrounds would be our first official performance. At first we performed for the staff at Workiva, but eventually Kaya arranged for us to give private practice concerts at City Hall for the council, Bob Loris’s crew, some of the donors we already had on board, and some other people Dr. North found who he thought would be good for us to practice on. This included our parents.
My mom had come to one of the Workiva practices, but when she came backstage after the City Hall dress rehearsal, she hugged me too tight and cried. “My baby boy is all grown up,” she kept saying, which didn’t make any sense because I have been grown up for some time, and there was nothing about dancing and pretending to sing on a stage in downtown Ames that made me any more grown up. But mostly I needed her to stop hugging me so tight.
“Mom, stop.”
She did, but she kissed me on the cheek first. My dad didn’t hug me, but he smiled a bigger smile than usual and told me he was proud of me with his extra-soft voice. My aunt Althea came too, and she didn’t hug me, but she said she thought our costumes were good and she could tell I’d practiced.
“We have. This was a lot of work. But it’s been fun.”
Jeremey stood beside me too. He touched two fingers to my wrist and tapped twice, his silent question to hold my hand. I touched his fingers, telling him yes, I would hold hands with him now. He laced our fingers together and held my hand tight in his as he spoke to my family. “I hope everyone at the show at the fairgrounds likes it too. I hope it makes them join our cause.”
“It will.” This was Kaya, and she had a proud face on as she came to join us. “Dallas County will be the first performance in a long line of performances, but it’s going to be worth it, and in the end we’re going to win. RJ King is going to rue the day he tangled with The Roosevelt Blues Brothers.”
I still wasn’t sure about this, but I hoped she was right.
We kept practicing at The Roosevelt, but soon it was time for us to get in the van with Kaya and go to Adel and get ready for our event. I didn’t get nervous until we were on the road, or at least I hadn’t realized how nervous I was until we were on the road. I hummed and rocked to calm myself, but I had a great deal of nervousness, and my octopus was especially slippery.
Jeremey sat beside me. He didn’t take my hand, was careful not to touch me, but he spoke quietly to me, being my sensory sack. He didn’t tell me how we’d be fine. He talked about other things, taking my mind off it. He pointed out things he saw on the road, other cars, talked about restaurants we might try in Des Moines. “We could go to Zombie Burger. I always wanted to go there.”
Darren held up his iPad, and we waited while he typed. “It’s quite busy there, according to the Internet. Tough to get a table. No reservations either.”
“But they have the one out at the mall now,” David pointed out. “We could get it there and eat in the food court. And if people didn’t want to eat at Zombie Burger, they would have other options.”
Would the mall be too busy for you? I signed to Jeremey.
He signed back, Not with Mai.
Mai was curled on the seat beside him, asleep. He had her vest off because she didn’t have to work at the moment, and she was more comfortable with it off. She got tired after performances, and he wanted to let her rest now as much as she could.
The event was going to be hard on Mai no matter what we did, however. I knew there was no way around that. “We should get her a treat after we finish.”
Jeremey smiled. “She’d like that.”
Darren signed to speak and then held up his iPad again after he typed. “There’s a store in the mall with treats for dogs.”
“Sounds great.” Jeremey stroked Mai’s head, rubbing behind her ears. “You’re an expert on Jordan Creek Mall, Darren. Have you been there a lot?”
We waited while Darren typed his answer. “I’ve never been there, but I’ve done a great deal of research online.” He paused to type some more. “I want to explore it when we’re done eating if we have some spare time.”
“I’m down for some mall cruising.” David craned his neck as much as he could toward us. “Will you let me be your wingman, D-man?”
Darren held out his fist and bumped David awkwardly in the shoulder in reply, adding a happy grunt for emphasis.
Kaya reached for the radio and pushed a CD into the player. “Okay, Emmet, you said you wanted to start warming up when we were fifteen minutes away, and I think that’s about how close we are. You guys ready to get your jam on?”
We said we were, and I appreciated the way our voices sounded—Jeremey’s blended with mine, his Ready tangling with my Yes over the top of Darren’s excited bark and David’s deep Let’s do this thing. It was as if we were already singing. Mai made a small whine too, waking up and wondering why everyone was so excited, though she calmed when Jeremey stroked her fur.
In the performances we never sing, but in the van we do. We weren’t on-key, because only Jeremey and Kaya can hit the notes properly, and Darren can’t get the words out, but we enjoy making the sound. Darren’s favorite parts are the oh, oh, oh, oh, oh-s because he’s good at them, though sometimes he gets excited and does too many or starts laughing or hissing or rocking too hard. It’s okay though, because it’s a Roosevelt Blues Brothers jam. There aren’t any rules.
Kaya kept the song on repeat all the way to the fairgrounds, and we stayed in the van to finish it once we’d parked.
Then it was time to go inside, get into our costumes, and get ready.
The plan was for us to wait backstage while Kaya and a few other people from Workiva helped Bob prep the room. We’d had a big meeting about it, and we’d decided this first time it would be best for the four of us to make a big entrance before we gave our presentation. Kaya had invited the local news stations and newspapers, and she came backstage before she went out to let us know the room was full of cameras and reporters, and we should expect lots of lights and flashes when we went out.
“It’s a full house. Bob came through with his contacts.” She seemed happy, but worried, especially as she looked at Jeremey. “Will you guys be okay with so many people?”
Jeremey nodded. “I’ve been practicing my breathing, and Mai has been comforting me. She knows I’m uneasy, and we’re working together. I can’t promise I’ll be fine, but I’m doing my best, and I believe I can do it.”
Kaya hugged him, then David, then made the hug sign to Darren and me. “I’m so proud of you guys. You’re going to be fantastic, I just know it. And you look amazing. Dan Aykroyd would think he was staring at a mirror, Emmet.”
I did a little of my Elwood Blues dance, then smiled.
It was difficult to wait, because we got nervous with nothing to do but listen to the murmur of the crowd and Kaya’s and Bob’s voices. I could hear what they were saying, mostly, but even with my super hearing it was difficult to make out individual words. Jeremey hugged Mai, burying his face in her fur. Darren rocked in his seat, absorbed in a video on his iPad. David didn’t do much, only stared at the curtain separating us from the stage where we’d be going out as soon as they told us it was time.
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