But I'm sure—"
"I've got to go.
I'll call you."
And before she could stop me, I pulled away. I had to get out of that building before everything caved in.
Thinking about it now, I'm certain it was a hallucination.
Dr. Strauss feels that emotionally I'm still in that adolescent state where being close to a woman, or thinking of sex, sets off anxiety, panic, even hallucinations.
He feels that my rapid intellectual development has deceived me into thinking I could live a normal emotional life.
But I've got to accept the fact that the fears and blocks triggered in these sexual situations reveal that emotionally I'm still an adolescent—sexually retarded. I guess he means I'm not ready for a relationship with a woman like Alice Kinnian. Not yet.
May 20
I've been fired from my job at the bakery.
I know it was foolish of me to hang on to the past, but there was something about the place with its white brick walls browned by oven heat… It was home to me.
What did I do to make them hate me so?
I can't blame Donner.
He's got to think of his business, and the other employees.
And yet, he's been closer to me than a father.
He called me into his office, cleared the statements and bills off the solitary chair beside his roll-top desk, and without looking up at me, he said,
"I've been meaning to talk to you. Now is as good a time as any." It seems foolish now, but as I sat there staring at him—short, chubby, with the ragged light-brown moustache comically drooping over his upper lip—it was as if both of me, the old Charlie and the new, were sitting on that chair, frightened at what Old Mr. Donner was going to say.
"Charlie, your Uncle Herman was a good friend of mine. I kept my promise to him to keep you on the job, good times and bad, so that you didn't ever want for a dollar in your pocket and a place to lay your head without being put away in that home."
"The bakery is my home—"
"And I treated you like my own son who gave up his life for his country.
And when Herman died—how old were you? seventeen? more like a six-year-old boy—I swore to myself… I said, Arthur Donner, as long as you got a bakery and a business over your head, you're going to look after Charlie.
He is going to have a place to work, a bed to sleep in, and bread in his mouth.
When they committed you to that Warren place, I told them how you would work for me, and I would take care of you.
You didn't spend even one night in that place.
I got you a room and I looked after you. Now, have I kept that solemn promise?"
I nodded, but I could see by the way he was folding and unfolding his bills that he was having trouble. And as much as I didn't want to know—I knew.
"I've tried my best to do a good job. I've worked hard..."
"I know, Charlie.
Nothing's wrong with your work.
But something happened to you, and I don't understand what it means.
Not only me. Everyone has been talking about it. I've had them in here a dozen times in the last few weeks.
They're all upset. Charlie, I got to let you go."
I tried to stop him but he shook his head.
"There was a delegation in to see me last night. Charlie, I got my business to hold together."
He was staring at his hands, turning the paper over and over as if he hoped to find something on it that was not there before.
"I'm sorry, Charlie."
"But where will I go?"
He peered up at me for the first time since we'd walked into his cubbyhole office.
"You know as well as I do that you don't need to work here any more."
"Mr. Donner, I've never worked anywhere else."
"Let's face it.
You're not the Charlie who came in here seventeen years ago—not even the same Charlie of four months ago.
You haven't talked about it.
It's your own affair.
Maybe a miracle of some kind—who knows?
But you've changed into a very smart young man. And operating the dough mixer and delivering packages is no work for a smart young man."
He was right, of course, but something inside me wanted to make him change his mind.
"You've got to let me stay, Mr. Donner. Give me an- other chance.
You said yourself that you promised Uncle Herman I would have a job here for as long as I needed it.
Well, I still need it, Mr. Donner."