Page 27 of The Care of Broken Things
“No one else wants my food.”
“You don’t know that. A health craze could sweep through here—people wanting to look good for the holidays.”
Eli laughed, as he hoped he would. He always felt one part stupid and three parts crazy whenever he tried for a joke.
“I guess we’re sitting here for three hours, bless my poor ass. What are you reading this time? One of Nathaniel’s?”
He read hardly anything else thesedays. Even more than the books themselves, which were always good, he looked forward to discussing them with Nathaniel, who seemed to have read (and seemingly memorized) every text in the world. He was humbled by the man, the walking library, though Nathaniel himself dismissed the skill as ordinary. “I just read a lot,” he said during their most recent visit. “You should see Darren. He’s the smart one.”
It embarrassed him just how much he liked Nathaniel’s visits and embarrassed him even more that Eli seemed to know it. “Off to your book date, huh?” he’d say and ruffle his hair. “My little nerds. If you elope without me, I’ll die of a broken heart.”
Samuel looked down into the text to hide the blush that was always peeking out these days, and then had an idea. He recalled what Hailey had said in her first letter. “Want me to read aloud?”
There was a pause. “You don’t mind?”
Instead of answering, he flipped back to the front page and began to read. Embarrassment kept him from looking up at Eli’s face, but so long as he concentrated on the words, he could mostly not think about it. That is until a weight dropped onto his shoulder. The weight was Eli’s head. The man had fallen asleep.
He’d known Eli wasn’t sleeping much. He spent a good portion of the night watching the man toss and turn and stare up at the underside of the bunk. Probably missing his family, and too skeeved out to sleep. It had been the same for him at the beginning, when his heart would pound every time his eyes closed, waiting for the assault he was sure would find him. Eli’s exhaustion wasn’t evident in his mood or words, but sometimes, when he was sitting, he would start to sag. Not much. Not obvious. But enough. And now he was asleep.
He wasn’t sure what to do. They were out in the hallway where anyone might pass, and sitting like this on the floor was hardly conducive to real rest. But heknew, somehow, that if he woke Eli to get him to his bed, the man would brush off his concerns and force himself back to wakefulness.
He wanted to look at Eli, to see him. Harmless, helpless, in sleep. A strange tightness seized his chest, and for a moment he was angry at the idiot for letting himself relax so easily.I killed a man.He aimed the words directly at Eli.I could kill you. But he said nothing aloud. Instead, he adjusted his shoulder so that Eli’s head wasn’t at such a bad angle and turned his attention back to his book.
He was still reading when Frank came. He pressed his fingers to his lips, but Frank didn’t take the hint, rolling the shutters up with the usual clambering commotion, but Eli slept on. He was usually such a light sleeper too, his eyes shooting open at the smallest sound, but now he slept like the dead, his breaths deep and even.
“The usual then?” Frank asked once he’d gotten his ass down on the little stool behind the commissary window.
Samuel tore the list free from his notebook. He did it carefully, so as not to jostle Eli, and held it out. Frank grumbled when it became clear he wasn’t going to stand and had to come out to take it from him. The man’s eyebrows rose when he saw the list, but all he said was, “Times are changing, eh?” and went back to the stockroom.
He was prepared to stay where he was until lights out, if necessary, but while Frank was filling their order, Big Tom came down the hall. The man liked to believe he was a magnanimous philanthropist who intervened on behalf of the vulnerable, but really, he was just a particularly annoying brand of bully who talked too much and walked around with an obnoxious swagger. Samuel was pretty sure most people thought as he did, but since ol’ Tommy was so big, very few wore that contempt openly. The man also had a lot of allies, whether bought or broken to his side. Samuel tried to stay clear of the man, and when forced to speak to him, did so in neutral tones that couldn’t be interpreted in any direction.
As usual, Big Tom wasn’t alone. Sometimes a whole mob walked around with him, but today there was only one. A man called Thunk (for obvious reasons). Thunk was the one who took care of the more physical business Big Tom didn’t like to dirty his hands with. As the pair came down the hall, the two were talking, or at least, Big Tom was talking. (Thunk wasn’t much of a conversationalist.) And Samuel hoped they would just keep on keeping on, but then, just as they were passing, Big Tom stopped.
“What do we have here?”
His skin itched. It felt worse to be sitting below Tom with the man towering over him.Danger,his whole body warned,unsafe. He felt his arm snake around Eli, prepared to wake him at a moment’s notice.
“Fuller’s bitch,” Thunk said.
He’d heard the word whispered at his back and had let it go, but it was different to his face. “Not my bitch,” he said. “Not anyone’s bitch.”
“Of course not,” Big Tom said in that voice adults used towards children when they were only humoring them. “Our new doctor is just your—what is he to you again?”
Another good question. People were just full of them these days. “My friend,” he said. But that was Eli’s word and it didn’t sit as well in his mouth.
Big Tom laughed. “Did you hear that, Martin? His friend. Do you cuddle with all your friends, Fuller?”
He didn’t answer. He knew that could be taken as rude, but all the words in his head were even ruder. Big Tom laughed again. It wasn’t anything like Eli’s laugh. This was brash and grating and heavy.
Eli stirred. There was a moment when his breathing changed, softening on hisneck, and then he was awake. “Is there a problem here?” It was impressive how alert he sounded considering how comatose he’d been. Alert and authoritative, his solid mass a protection.
Big Tom held up his hands. “Not at all. Just exchanging pleasantries. But I hope you know you can come to me if you do run into any...difficulties.”
Something warm gripped his shoulder. Eli’s hand. “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”
The words startled him. Well, not so much the words, but the tone. There was steel in it. Steel he hadn’t known the man possessed. He wanted to see the expression that went along with it, but he kept his eyes on Big Tom, trying to look unconcerned and slightly bored.
Big Tom laughed again. He was always laughing. If Samuel could take a knife to a single man’s vocal cords, it would be Big fucking Tom.
