The ride from the JFK airport to the Baxters' fifth avenue apartment takes almost as long as the flight. I answer most of the emails and start reading the texts. When we are crossing Triborough Bridge I glance up in time to glimpse the buildings of the Randals Island ahead and the blue of the East River in short snippets between the heavy grey metal posts. The next bridge teases the view of the skyscrapers, and we enter the island of Manhattan.

My eyes are back to my phone and the latest text from Mike.

Mike: I love Angie, but fuck! I'm done with escaping my home because of her fucking parents. Everything they fucking say makes me angry.

Me: Do they plan to stay long? What's the next place they were planning to travel to?

Mike: Fuck if they know. They want to wait and see.

Me: Why don't they book a hotel?

Mike: According to them, they are here to be fucking 'hands-on'. As if all of us being fucking awake all fucking night helps anyone.

The divider in the limousine goes down. "We're almost there, Ms. Baxter. I'll take your bags up for you."

"Thank you, Simon," says Linda to the driver. She turns to me and adjusts the collar of my white shirt. "Don't forget to smile. My mother is suspicious of anyone who does not smile." Linda's instructions throughout the flight on what I should and shouldn't be doing around her relatives are blending together.

"Smile," I repeat.

"And don't let them persuade you to do things you don't want to. We are going out to Del Posto, and our reservation is at six-forty-five. And the chef promised he'll be there to talk to you. And it's only for the two of us, so they can not join us. Can not, I really mean it." Linda lets go of my shirt and chews on the skin around her index finger. How afraid can she be of her own family?

"I will smile and be ready to leave at six."

"Good idea. Let's leave at six. Less chance for them to try something. We can walk there."

The building the driver deposits us at faces the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. He passes our bags to the doorman who assures me he'll be bringing them up. There is only one door on the floor we arrive at, which opens the moment we get out of the elevator, and a woman in black pants and shirt leads us through a double-height foyer up the stairs into a double-height living room.

Linda's childhood home has more art on the walls than a gallery. The sharp corners of the white rectangular modern couches contrast with the curved stone of a carved fireplace featured against a stark grey wall. The arches around the two-story windows could be replicas of the ones inside the Holy Names Catholic Cathderal Mom used to take me to.

Large swaths of green visible through the squares on the french doors and windows must be Central Park. The 'wow' Amelie attached to Linda's wealth when she heard her last name was not an exaggeration.

"Wow," I say.

"My great-grandfather bought this penthouse in nineteen-thirty before they completed the construction." Linda walks over to one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. "You want to see the terrace?" She pushes on the glass, and the semi-circle stone balcony beyond doesn't fit with the sleek stark interior. "Mom's afraid of heights. I used to sneak out here and hide with a book until it got too dark to read." She walks out and leans on the balustrade. "The view never gets old."

I remain on the threshold, one foot in-the other foot out. Even at the height of fourteen floors, the smell of a large city remains.

Steps echo and bounce against the arches, and the ceiling. The doorman's hat swims up, revealing his face, shoulders, and then the hands with my small black and Linda's large red suitcases. He ignores me and continues past the fireplace and down a hallway.

"What are we doing?" I ask the back of Linda's head on the balcony.

"Waiting for everyone to come to greet us and for the maid to unpack our stuff. Lunch is about to end, and they'll come up." She doesn't turn.

Waiting is something I do well.

The couch is not uncomfortable, and I check the comments on the video I posted two days ago. It has one hundred thousand views, two thousand six hundred likes, eighty-three dislikes, and one hundred seventy-six comments.

Angie says, replying even with 'yes' or 'thank you' is necessary. Most of the comments are about my appearance, and one 'Can't decide if the pasta water he's draining or Ben is hotter' got a string of fifteen replies. I don't read those.

Three comments are questions about the particulars of the recipe, and I answer in detail. Five are about the science of starches, and I will have to do some research to answer. And there is one that pops up on most of my videos and makes me doubt myself.

Pearl Hunter (2 days ago): He can't possibly be autistic. My uncle's neighbor is autistic, and he can barely talk and still lives with his mom. This is a gimmick. Don't believe it for a second.

Her comment has one hundred and twenty-six likes and thirteen dislikes.

The research on autism awareness I dug through supports the trend I've noticed in my comments on how little the general population knows about the people on the spectrum. The stereotype that we are either geniuses or idiots prevails. Anger isn't churning inside me as it would have several years ago, but I can't think of an appropriate reply. Angie will know what to say. I screenshot the comment and text it to her.

Me: Help.

Angie: WTF? Another one of those? Don't they read your profile? Or your answers to the comments on other videos?

Me: It does not appear so.

Angie: How about...That's why it's called a SPECTRUM. Autistic people are all different. And if you know one, it does not mean you know them all. Same as with neurotypical people.

Me: Isn't that self-evident?

Angie: It does not appear so.

Mom taught me not to assume people are malicious because most have good intentions, even if they are too ignorant or miserable to know better. I post the reply.

"The infamous boyfriend." A man who doesn't scrape the ceiling only because of their extreme height walks up to me and slaps me on my back before I have a chance to get up. "Bill, was it?"

"Ben." I attempt to get up, but he pushes down on my shoulder and keeps me in place.

"No need to get up." He sits down next to me, puts his elbow on his knees, and leans over to my ear. "The girls are freshening up. Philip too. I'm the only one whose roguish looks require no effort." He erupts in a bout of laughter loud enough for Linda to abandon the balcony and join us in the living room.

"You should've told me Father's already here."

"I didn't give him a chance, mouse," says Mr. Baxter. "Let us have a quick chat while you go get your mother and sister. Their noses are not long enough to require ten minutes of powdering."

"But, Father-"

"No. It'll only take a second."

"I'll be right back, baby." Linda's hand grazes my shoulder, and the clicks of her heels down the steps bounce around the room, through my ears, and into my head.

"My file on you is an inch thick." The man next to me losses the jovial manner he employed earlier. I make eye contact with him, and although the green of his eyes is identical to Linda's, they are bloodshot, with heavy dark bags underneath them. I don't blink and keep looking into them. Staring contests are easy for me to win, and I found them to be the easiest trick to make people look away. Mr. Baxter does not. His eyes begin to water, but he is holding my stare.

"Two things. First, you'll need to come to my office and sign the NDA. Second, and this is your one and only warning, if I see anything about us in the tabloids, my lawyers will drag you through the mud. You were not invited to this wedding, and I have no tolerance for messes. Any sign of trouble and I will have you escorted out of here. Do you understand me?"

I do not. Information is missing or obscured by the layers of meaning behind his words.

"Where's your office?" I ask. "And are you accusing me of being a spy for the press and threatening me?"

"Let's not play games, boy."

"OK." That would be so much easier.

"If Linda's plan is to have you fuck up the wedding-you can let me know. I can pay you more than Linda did. But I'll need guarantees she doesn't get her way."

"You have nothing to worry about. Linda invited me to make sure the wedding goes smoothly." Both statements are true, yet everything feels wrong. My shirt sticks to my back and I recognize the signs. It's not my almost lying to him, but his nearness and his accusations that are unsettling. It's time for me to stim or regret not doing it.

I don't have a pen to twirl, no hand to squeeze, so pacing is my only option to stim and not make Mr. Baxter more suspicious or uncomfortable. If I start rocking in the middle of his living room, like I did as a child, he'll kick me out now.

I try to get up again, and Mr. Baxter puts his hand on my shoulder to suggest with some force that I stay seated. I don't comply. My Taekwondo training comes in handy as I twist out of his grasp and get on my feet.

The distance between my end of the couch and the fireplace is six steps. Three from one end of the fireplace to the other, seven to turn around and walk around back behind the spot where I was sitting. I use the phrase that makes everyone comfortable in these situations.

"You don't mind if I pace, do you?" The answer is always a variation on 'I don't mind'. Then most fill in the reason they come up why my pacing makes sense in this situation. As long as I don't correct them, we both get what we want. I get to pace, and they get to think I'm behaving in an acceptable neurotypical way. Win-win, as Tall likes to point out.

"We did not finish our conversation," says Mr. Baxter.

"I can talk while I pace."

"It's not like you were flying here from Europe. The flight from Chicago is not that long. Linda should've taken the family's private jet. I offered. Her modern notions of female independence are why we got into this mess in the first place."

Voices and the sound of feet clamoring up the steps transform Mr. Baxter back into a jolly man.

"Glad we had this chat, Bill."

"Ben."

"I'll try to remember."

Steps forty-three, forty-four, forty-five, and forty-six take me to the edge of the wood floor that separates the room from the back marble of the staircase. Brenda in real life is better than the airbrushed images of her I've seen on TV and in print.

"Hi, there." She waves her fingers at me.

The green eyes she shares with Linda and her father are bigger than theirs and have striations of gold in them. I find it hard to believe someone this physically perfect is a combination of improbable genetic luck. She does not look pregnant, but I'm not ignorant enough to say that. Angie did not start to show until she was in her second trimester.

"This is my Ben." Linda puts her arm around my shoulder. She's in her performer mode that I've seen her use every time she interacts with the visitors at the library. There are at least three different versions of Linda I know: the performer, the tortured poet, and, occasionally, I glimpse a woman that must be the real Linda. But she hides the last one well.

"So nice to meet you." A tall older woman steps in front of Brenda and extends her hand my way. "I'm Melissa. Sorry to wake you wait. Have you seen your room already?"

"No." I shake her hand.

"Has Dennis brought up the bags?" Melissa asks Linda.

"The doorman carried our suitcases that way." I point to the hallway to our right.

"Excellent." She moves past me into the living room and joins her husband on the couch. "Let's have some nice family time before the wedding madness begins."

Linda's still by the stairs, peering down.

"Philip had to make a call," says Melissa. "He'll join us later."

Linda grabs onto my arm and squeezes it hard. I look at the smiling mask that falls into place and covers up her realness. Linda turns her face to me and her smile grows bigger. Smile. Linda told me to remember to smile. I stretch my lips into the shape I've spent hours practicing in the mirror as a teenager.

Welcome to New York.

Are you getting a feel for Linda's family?

If you liked the chapter, what did you like about it?

This chapter did not turn out how the way I originally planned. Blaming it all on the madness of NaNoWriMo and maybe I will be throwing most of it away, but I'm glad I have another chapter done. I wrote a bit of the end yesterday and today and getting back into this point of the book was harder than I thought.

I dedicate this chapter to @Kit-the-Obscure a fellow NaNoWriMo-er and the writer of the end before the middle :)

NaNoWriMo: Day 12: 25,918 I'm over 25K!! Half-way to my goal of 50K words by the end of November. I'll celebrate tomorrow after a good night's sleep.