In this story, a mentally-challenged person is taken advantage of. This is completely a work of fiction and means no disrespect to anybody with any kind of disability. I strongly advocate that no person, healthy or otherwise, should ever be taken advantage of.
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In the 19th century, Mark Baker might have been flogged out of New York as the village idiot, if one would call New York a village. Medical advances of the 20th and 21st centuries allowed doctors to diagnose his autism, and movies like Rainman had encouraged people to accept him into society.
His middle-class parents had tried to protect him for the last 24 years. However, even they realized they wouldn't be around to help him forever. They had spent the better part of the last year (and most of their savings) in intense therapeutic workshops with him and just a couple of months earlier his psychiatrist had cleared him for basic jobs like of a janitor, loading and unloading, maintaining official records, etc.
Mark was hired by a warehouse where he spent his weekdays transferring crates of T-shirts to and from trucks under the close supervision of a floor manager. Every evening he continued therapy and on weekends he liked to cuddle up on the couch at home. Like every other day, the lunch horn sounded through the warehouse and Mark located a safe place for the crate he was shipping. His manager helped him punch out and he walked a block down the street where he would get lunch from a food truck every day.
He walked to the Street Kitchen truck parked by the curb and joined a queue of hungry office-goers. As he stepped up to the window, a soft, kind voice floated out, "Hey Mark! The usual?"
"Hi Abigail. Yes, please," he replied, handing her a $10 bill. He hung around for a couple of minutes and soon stuff started appearing in the window - a large grilled cheese sandwich, a fresh salad, some fries and a thick chocolate milkshake. It would have been difficult for anyone to carry it all out at once and Abigail didn't mind if he would come back to pick up some of it later, but Mark preferred to take his meal and sit by a fountain a block away from the warehouse in the opposite direction.
He stepped aside so that the next person could place their order, then stuffed the paper bag of fries into the already bursting box that held the sandwich. He picked up a bottle of tartare sauce and squeezed some of it into the box. He placed the salad box on top of the sandwich box, and picked them both up so that his first two fingers and thumb were holding the salad box, and the last two fingers supported the lower one. With his left hand, he picked up the milkshake and took a swig through the straw.
"See you tomorrow, Abigail," he shouted into the window as he quickly turned around.
Unfortunately for him, a young and very tense-looking 20-something woman was standing directly behind him. Apparently she was reaching for a bottle of sauce when Mark pivoted on his feet. If they were a pair of cymbals, one would have been deafened by the clang. Instead, she shrieked as their shoulders collided and most of the milkshake floated straight out of the cup and poured down her chest and waist. Some of it even got into her hair.
Mark saw that she had curly blonde hair wrapped under a colorful scarf, and a pair of dark glasses on her face. Ruby red lips contrasted the blackness of the glasses. A survey of the damage revealed that she had a very sexy (an emotion Mark didn't know of yet) stiff red dress with a deep plunging neckline. It went down to just above her knees. Brown stains were growing larger as the milk was dripping down her clothes, some of it collecting under the black belt that cinched her small waist. A black leather handbag adorned her left shoulder. One wouldn't need to look too closely to similar rivers forming down the very deep cleavage and the exposed mounds of her large white breasts.
"Holy fuck! Look what you've done!" she screamed fiercely. "How am I supposed to make it to my audition now?" Her elbows were raised by her side in helplessness, as though she was avoiding getting them soiled!
Mark hurried turned around, emptied his hands on the little platform of the truck and snatched a handful of paper towels from next to the window. Abigail had seen what had happened. If this woman got very aggressive, she would step in, but right now things hadn't got too bad.
For the third time, Mark swung around (he really has to stop doing that), separated one paper towel from the stack and, without warning or apology, started rubbing the milk off the woman's dress. He braced her by the shoulder with his left hand and rubbed hard with his right. She was so shocked that before she knew what was happening, he had already made four long strokes from shoulder to belt, even reaching under the belt to soak up the fluid. She had gasped when he had roughly pressed each boob. Every couple of strokes he pulled out a fresh napkin.
The third napkin started from under her clavicle and went straight past her sternum to her navel, below which the left and right halves of her dress met. He stuffed the towel (and his fingers) under the belt past her navel, then returned up. Once again the woman let out a gasp. If Mark could have looked through her glasses, he would have seen that her eyes were wide open with shock and horror, staring at nothingness.
He got a fresh napkin and rubbed the exposed blob of her left breast, then reached under the dress to rub all of it properly. He repeated the action with the right breast. The tingling sensations from her nipples brought the woman back to her senses. She forced herself out of his grip and took a step back. "What are you doing?" she demanded.
In an extremely mild and matter-of-fact manner Mark replied, "I'm sorry your clothes got spoilt. You were standing in my way. I'm helping you clean it up."
She didn't know what to say. Something about his mannerisms indicated his innocence. Also, having already been put so publicly on display, she no longer wanted to create a scene here. "Look here, I wasn't standing in your way. You bumped into me. Anyway, what's happened has happened. This is not the way to clean up this mess though."
She turned around and walked towards an apartment building. Mark, having received no instructions, and having left the clean-up mission only halfway, picked up his remaining lunch and followed. Maybe she meant to show him how the cleaning was supposed to be done? Her parting sentence could be interpreted in any number of ways.
Mark saw the woman ring through all the buzzers next to the apartment door. Someone rang her in. He quickly followed before the door closed. He was three steps behind her when she looked behind. She stopped and took off her glasses. "It's you again! Why are you following me?"
"I wanted to help clean up your dress," he said, holding up a few more paper towels like a trophy. "Then I can eat lunch and get back to work."
She gave an exasperated sigh. "What's your name?"
"Mark."
