The slap left his cheek bright red, except for the areas covered in scar tissue—a number of small, haphazardly crisscrossing scars pockmarking his right cheek. There were no scars on his left cheek because Eddie was right-handed. When he self-mutilated, the right side bore the brunt. The scars were reminders of just how bad his outbursts could get.
Eddie glanced in the mirror, inspecting his cheek. No blood. That was good. He checked his watch to record the exact time of the slap in a binder labeled #101 sitting next to him. It was his third slap of the day, which put today’s count over his daily average of 2.7. Eddie was certain that Dr. Fenton would have something to say about this at their next therapy session, because Eddie was supposed to be slapping himself less, not more, but at least there hadn’t been any picture frames or kitchen utensils involved. Those were among the items that drew blood and left scars. Hearing footsteps down the hall, he quickly put down the binder.
Eddie’s room was unique in Harmony House in that it was the only patient room with acoustic tiles affixed to the walls and ceiling. He had been so excruciatingly sensitive to sound, upon arrival at the facility, that the staff couldn’t imagine how he’d survived in the outside world for as long as he had. Heightened sensitivities were nothing new among patients on the autism spectrum, but Eddie brought the matter to an entirely new level. Even the slightest noise could send him wailing. His agonal screams had been so unsettling to the other patients when Eddie first arrived that they almost caused an uprising of sorts. And no matter how valuable this particular patient and his gifts might be, he wasn’t worth more than the entire lot.
At least, not yet.
The acoustic tiles in Eddie’s room were not like those affixed around the interior of most recording studios. They were fabricated to Eddie’s exact specifications, at an initial cost of $91 per tile. There were 335 tiles in the room. With labor, the project ended up costing American taxpayers close to $35,000. Eddie brought the cost down slightly by developing his own epoxy-based resin to affix the tiles, but the money factor had nothing to do with it. Eddie didn’t grasp the concepts of commerce or currency. Money had never played a part in his life. His concern was that the installers had intended to use glue with an unacceptably low adhesion factor. The wrong glue could have ruined the acoustics of the room and, therefore, Eddie’s life. And Dr. Fenton wasn’t about to allow that.
The tiles weren’t much to look at. In fact, they were downright ugly, but only because Eddie had given absolutely no consideration to their appearance. (The aesthetics would later be improved by the engineers tasked with fabricating them for commercial use. Total revenue to date had exceeded $17 million, making the initial outlay of $35,000 look like quite a prudent investment.) He cared about only one thing, and that was how the tiles made the space sound.
The result was amazing. The very air in this room seemed to be quieter than anywhere else in the entire facility. And, in fact, it was. Measurably. Dr. Fenton had demonstrated it on numerous occasions for high-profile visitors. Any sound anywhere else in the facility seemed magnified in comparison. Like the FOOTSTEPS of the young woman walking briskly down the hall, away from Dr. Fenton’s office, which could be heard through the crack beneath his door.
Eddie stopped moving as he listened intently. He even stopped blinking. The footsteps ECHOED lightly but clearly. The strange thing was that Eddie didn’t recognize these particular footsteps. He could identify everyone who worked at Harmony House—the doctors, nurses, cooks, janitors, security guards, deliverymen, repairmen, and even the regular visitors of certain patients, none of whom ever came to see him—by the sounds of their footsteps. He also knew most of their names, where they were from, and other odd tidbits he picked up from the snippets of conversation he’d hear from inside his room.
But he’d spoken directly with very few of them. Eddie didn’t feel comfortable around most people, but particularly not around strangers. They made him nervous, because he never knew what they would do next. Eddie didn’t like surprises. To make matters worse, most strangers stared at him like he was some kind of oddity, reminding him just how different he was from most people. And how alone. In all his twenty-seven years, Eddie had never had a real friend. He often wondered what that would feel like, but knew that he would probably never have a friend, so he contented himself with listening to the comings and goings of others, learning as much as he could about each of them.
The one person he knew nothing about was the muscular man Eddie sometimes saw sitting in a beige Chevrolet Impala in the parking lot. The man clearly worked at Harmony House, because he was there almost every day, but Eddie had no idea what he did. He had asked Dr. Fenton about this mystery man on several occasions, but each time Dr. Fenton insisted that the man was none of Eddie’s concern.
Whoever the stranger in the hallway was, she’d been in Dr. Fenton’s office for one hour and thirteen minutes, which was an unusually long visit. The old doctor rarely met with anyone for more than thirty minutes, much less an hour. Eddie made a note of it in a binder labeled #37, where he kept a log of every meeting Dr. Fenton had had in the last six months. Logs of the doctor’s meetings from prior to six months ago were contained in binders labeled #1 through #36. Each contained approximately six months’ worth of meetings. The first date in binder #1 was April 14, 2001, the day Eddie had arrived at Harmony House at age eleven. The nursing staff referred to Eddie’s binders, at least #1 through #37, as “The Old Man’s Minutes.” They called #101 “The Book of Slaps,” but never to Eddie’s face. They were all too fond of him—and of their jobs.
Other numbered binders, such as #121 through #125, contained logs of temperature readings; the ones beginning with #131 listed what kinds of food had been served in the cafeteria, and whether or not they were prepared to Eddie’s liking. The #150 series listed the number of people who’d walked past his door during certain hours. The clear winner was always 5:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m., because that was when the daytime staff left.
The binders were all carefully arranged in numerical order along five evenly spaced wooden shelves. Eddie didn’t mind if any of the staff used his logs for reference, as long as they returned the binders to their original locations. He was surprised at how few of the doctors and nurses ever utilized his data. There was so much to be gleaned from it.
One day, he would show them.