The Voiceover Artist Read Online Free

“When we first met, I thought you had Asperger’s.”
    I’d heard of Asperger’s syndrome, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. Even so, my face reddened with new embarrassment at whatever I’d done when I met Brittany to make her think I was strange.
    â€œYou’re offended now,” she said.
    â€œI’m not offended.”
    Staring at the ceiling, I replayed our first meeting in my mind. We were sitting in our adjacent, assigned seats in the back row of a nearly empty lecture hall, a few minutes before the second class session of a course, “Mathematics 139 : Finite Math,” we were both taking to fulfill a requirement, when I felt a mobile phone’s rhythmic, intermittent vibration in my feet. The vibration came from Brittany’s bag, which lay on the floor between us.
    Brittany made no move to answer or silence the phone. As the heels of her sandaled feet were tucked up onto the front edge of her chair, making a platform of her bare knees as she examined her nails, I thought it was at least possible that she could not feel the vibration.
    So I waggled, leaned toward her, and said, “Your phone is ringing.”
    The look she gave me communicated, in not so many words, that no one had ever told her anything more obvious and less helpful.
    â€œThanks,” she said, leaving her phone where it was.
    The sting of the exchange stayed with me throughout the hour-long lecture. By the time the professor dismissed us, I’d decided I could either say something to this woman before she left, or sit next to her in uncomfortable silence, twice a week, for the next fifteen weeks. So I hid a waggle in a glance at the floor and said, “See you next week, then.”
    Brittany, already heading for the exit, responded with only one word: “Yep.”
    But all-importantly, she smiled just a little as she said it.
    Looking back, I could see that I’d been awkward, but I couldn’t recall that I’d done anything pathological, or even strange, which made me feel worse. Maybe everything I did was strange, and I just couldn’t see it .
    I waited another moment before I said, “What made you think I had Asperger’s?”
    â€œWell, I thought your little headshakes were a tic or something.”
    That was reasonable. I couldn’t conceal every waggle I needed, and most people needed no waggles at all.
    â€œAnd I thought you were, you know, missing social cues,” she said.
    I groaned at the thought that I was giving this impression to everyone I met. “It’s not that I miss them,” I said. “It’s just that, sometimes, I don’t know what to say when I see them.”
    â€œI get that now.”
    â€œI know what other people might say,” I said, “but I didn’t speak for almost two decades. I haven’t had enough conversations to know what I should say.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œOr I know what I should say, but I really want to say something else, and I’m trying to figure out if what I want to say will make trouble.”
    â€œSimon,” she said. “I know.”
    I waggled and tried again. “It’s like, I get the cues, but I’m still learning my lines.”
    I turned my head to look at Brittany. She rolled her eyes and threw off the covers.
    â€œWhat?” I asked.
    â€œYour metaphor melted down, Simon,” she said, getting out of bed.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œTo the bathroom,” she said. “You should’ve come on to me a half hour ago. You missed that cue.”
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    THE FOLLOWING APRIL, on the night before Connor made his only visit to Carbondale, Brittany was watching television on the couch in my apartment, a one-bedroom on the first floor of an old home long since divided into rental units. Her bare legs were hugged to her chest and swaddled in a thin fleece blanket. I was sitting alongside her, but