Marcelo in the Real World Chapter 6 Summary

  • Enter Jasmine. Or rather, enter Marcelo to the mailroom.
  • Jasmine's making copies, and she points Marcelo to his desk without much enthusiasm. 
  • She tells Marcelo to hook up his laptop to the Internet connection at his desk, and he's relieved. Now, when people use figures of speech he doesn't understand, he can look them up.
  • Jasmine wastes no time in telling Marcelo that there was someone else she wanted to hire for his job, a girl named Belinda. She was stuck with Marcelo instead when Arturo insisted.
  • In other words, she's not exactly please to meet him.
  • Marcelo gets the rundown on everything that's expected of him, with the most important reminder of all: the lawyers want everything yesterday.
  • Marcelo's confused, of course. Yesterday already happened.
  • Jasmine takes him around the office, where he meets a secretary named Martha who seems a bit lecherous. Actually, he met her at a barbecue at his house the year before, but he doesn't remember, so he just tells her again that it's nice to meet her.
  • Jasmine warns Marcelo to stay the heck away from the secretaries. He doesn't understand how he can deliver their mail and stay away from them at the same time.
  • Sure enough, as they walk through the office, Jasmine finally asks the question: what's wrong with Marcelo, anyway? Arturo said he had a "cognitive disorder."
  • Marcelo gives the spiel: it's closer to Asperger's Syndrome than anything else, but his cognition is fine. He has no problem thinking; he just doesn't do it like other people.
  • Jasmine asks if he's got autistic interests, like memorizing train schedules.
  • Marcelo's mouth gets dry, and he's nervous about not following a rule, but he tells her his special interest is religion, and he's surprised when she actually finds it interesting.
  • And now we meet the most evil secretary of all: Juliet, who works for Arturo's main competition, Stephen Holmes. Needless to say, Jasmine's not a fan.
  • Even worse, Holmes's smarmy son Oliver Wendell, a.k.a. just Wendell (get it? Oliver Wendell Holmes?), is working at the firm this summer, too, helping with the Vidromek litigation. 
  • Jasmine tells Marcelo to ignore everything Holmes, Juliet, or Wendell tell him to do because he works for her, not them.
  • Easier said than done.