Untitled Story

         The clock read 7:37 am. It was only the third time in the last hour I had looked up at it. The sun was shining through the window to my left highlighting the dust covering the table in front of me. I was sitting back on my chair with my legs laid up on an expensive leather stool. The boys breathing was nearly in-audible, but incessant. His purposeful silence was bearable. When he came in early this morning for our scheduled meeting he was in angst over his mother’s refusal to allow him to go into the playground at the fast food restraint they went to just before. The mother left as soon as she came and right away the boy responded to me watching him throw his fit, “what are you looking at?”. I didn’t respond immediately but smiled and told him to have a seat at the couch adjacent to my chair. He did so with much reluctance.

         “I’m going to be a professional poker player one day you know.” He squirmed a bit, and looked down at the floor. “I have a deck of cards with me right now, do you want to play?”

         I lied and told him I didn’t know how to play. His response: “Thats all right, lesser men aren’t expected to know everything.”

         “Do you see me as a lesser man?”

         He just shrugged. “Do you want to play 52 Card Pick-Up? It’s a fascinating game.”

         “Sure.” With that he pulled a deck of cards out of his coat pocket and dropped them to the ground and said, “52 Pick Up”

         “I do believe you are a lesser man than me. You are only a counselor trying to figure out why I am the way I am; only a grown man trying to pick apart a brain of a child.” He scratched his head, then his neck. Without asking or telling, he got up and headed for the door.

         “Where are you going Billy?”

         “Screw you, anywhere I want.”

         I felt abated. He was a smart child; a savant; a prodigy. He could play the piano as if possessed by Beethoven’s soul and fingers. He could do Math as if Einstein whispered the answers into his ears. But, he couldn’t socialize with a normal child his age. He could socialize with me, with other teachers, and with his parents. His age was not what it seemed. His long blonde hair was there because he didn’t like to get it cut. His clothes resembled those of an old English professor, with khaki pants and a sports coat. His dress shoes where polished to a shine. He still was a child though. He still cried when his mother punished him, took away his toys, or anything that makes a child do so.

         The playing cards lay strewn across the floor next to my desk. The sun light reflected off of them as if they were shiny pieces of metal lying at the foot of a professional metal cutter.