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Hello, Everyone,
Here is another snippet from LABEL. ME. MAN, a work in progress that will be available for pre-order in June 2025.
Blurb:
Born a savant with Autism Spectrum Disorders and labeled as unusually bright, Gioacchino Tarinni lacked any social, emotional, or spiritual graces. The scientific world labeled him a Robot. Peddled between medical offices and laboratories, doctors and scientists examined whether he could be considered human. He has failed in every experiment except for his friendship with his manservant and chauffeur, Ferro. But no one knows how it happened.
Sitting in a cafe with Ferro, Gioacchino’s eyes are drawn to a woman working on her tablet. She has a head full of braids, and he attempts to count them. But the woman keeps moving her head, foiling his efforts to get an accurate count. Annoyed, he approaches her table, intending to ask her to be still. However, in a moment of impulsive audacity, he proposes marriage instead.
EXCERPT
Gioacchino took the stairs slowly to their bedroom as he pondered why she’d gone to his office. He entered their bedroom quietly. Even though he’d agreed to her returning home, he didn’t understand why. Her early morning escape from their home had cost him his ability to concentrate on his negotiations. After receiving the text message from Ferro that Jediah had disappeared somewhere in the house, he rescheduled the talks for the next day and gave Ferro strict instructions to keep his eyes open.
The door that led out to the spacious balcony adjoining their bedroom stood open. The venetian blinds were hanging loosely down, with the panels slightly opened, letting through rays of sunlight.
Gioacchino grinned to himself. Jediah’s clothing lay scattered in a pattern on the floor. He picked them up as he reached them, piece by piece, and headed to the closet to hang them up.
Your disorderliness coincides very well with my need to organise and order things.
He looked at the motionless figure lying on her stomach in their bed, and his eyes widened in shock.
He blinked to ensure he was seeing correctly. A series of numbers shaped into a curvaceous body lay on their bed. Until today, he’d seen Jediah as scrap pieces of brown, velvety cloth he couldn’t put together. It astounded him that the outer layer of her skin was comprised of integers.
He stared at the bed, expecting the numbers to disappear; instead, two large, marbled threes looked back at him and laughed silently.
Discombobulated, Gioacchino turned to the closet to dispose of her clothing, shaken by what he saw. He had long calculated the function of picking her clothes up every day, and getting to the closet, variable a, to getting to variable b, which was landing in their bed at night to create order among the velvety brown pieces he assumed were who she was.
“You’re home. No one told me you’d be home early,” Jediah said, not moving.
“I couldn’t think in the office,” he answered, putting her dress on a hanger.
“Why not? I told you I wouldn’t run away again.”
“How are you?” Gio asked, ignoring her response and asking a question of his own.
“Fine. Are you all right?”
“I’m okay.”
“Just okay?”
“At the moment, just okay,” he repeated, turning toward her, frowning, hoping the numbers hadn’t disappeared.
“Something happened after you brought me home and returned to work.”
“What?” She was still a cluster of numbers but had now transformed into a curvaceous one stretched out on the bed, and that stirred his libido.
“I went to write in your office and didn’t think to tell Ferro. I was so happy to find a hiding place where I could write without people watching me that I didn’t think about telling him or anyone else where I was,” Jediah said, gazing at him. “I didn’t mean to upset you after what I experienced with you in the car on the way home this morning. Does that make sense to you?”
“So it wasn’t intentional?”
“No, although I’m sure Ferro thinks it was.”
The frown on Gioacchino’s face faded. The harshness in his voice vanished, and he addressed her softly in a soft, deep whisper.
“Stop worrying. Ferro told me he didn’t think you meant to cause a furore. But he was concerned because no one knew where you were.”
“So you’ve already heard?”
***
https://patgarciaauthor.com/?p=8314Shalom shalom
Pat Garcia
