Page 3 of The Care of Broken Things
But that didn’t send Eli away. “I’m not sure exactly when my commissary money will become available, but I’ll pay you back as soon as it does.”
He should have kept silent. He realized later that doing nothing would have been the surest way to be rid of him. But he didn’t do nothing. He said, “Don’t worry about it.”
“Don’t worry? Rat says you dropped two hundred bucks on that stuff.”
Could it really have been that much? Whatever the case, he was going to kill Rat. “He’s exaggerating.”
Eli shook his head. “I can’t accept it.”
“Course you can’t.” That came from Rat, who had snuck into the conversation. The bastard could exude a reptilian quiet when he wanted to. “It’s akin to a proposal around these parts. You asking him to be your bitch, Fuller?”
Samuel slammed his book shut. “Start running, bastard. You’ve got three seconds.” More like one and a half. It wouldn’t take long to get down from his bunk.
Whatever Rat saw on his face had him rethinking his attitude real quick because he said, “I’m joking, Fuller.Joking.Jesus. Everyone knows you’re the damn Ice Queen.”
“Ice Queen?” Eli was only modestly curious, but Rat was eager to share.
“Doesn’t fuck. Doesn’t even jack it, so far as anyone knows. He’s like one of those eunuchs. Sexless.”
He’d had enough. “Rat. For your own safety, I better not see your face for at least three days.”
“Gonna be difficult since we’re bunkmates.”
He tossed his book at him. The full weight of Crime and Punishment beaned the man in the head. “Figure it out.”
Rat didn’t give him any more idiocy, but his look was oddlypiercing as he left.
He was about to give Eli some similar rudeness, but the man was already stooping for the book. “Do you like this one? My husband says Dostoevsky requires Ambien.”
Everything froze, the word so powerful he thought it would push the soul right out of his body. Husband. Eli had a husband.
Something must have shown on his face because Eli frowned. “You feeling okay? You’re a little pale. I noticed it in the hall, but it seems worse now. Are you coming down with something?”
With Eli’s height, it was simple enough to reach out. In another moment, that big brown hand would be against his burning flesh. He slapped it out of the air, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet room. Eli blinked, then scratched his neck, embarrassed. “Instinct. I’m a doctor, not a creep. I promise.”
A doctor. A husband. With every passing moment, the man was becoming more and more impossible.
“We don’t get many of those around here.” He was pushing words out of his unwilling mouth the way one squeezed water out of a rag. “What did you do, illegal organ transplants or something?”
See?He wanted to say.I can be normal. I’m not afraid of you.
Eli chuckled, the sound like warm syrup. “Maybe that’s the story I should spread around. Think that would beef up my street cred?”
Nobody with street cred ever used the phrase “street cred.” The man was so suburban Ivy League it was making his eyes bleed. Eli stuck out his hand. “I should introduce myself properly. I’m—”
“Thompson, I know. I was in the cafeteria, remember?”
Of course, the man remembered. He was just trying to be polite. But Samuel had no interest in playing nice when he was already in too deep. Why hadn’t he just shoved the welcome basket into the man’s hands and been done with it?
He ignored the waiting hand, climbed over the bars of the bed, and jumped down. Again, that should have been the end, but his conscience kept his mouth moving. “Don’t shower too early or too late. There are guys here who wouldn’t hesitate, even with a man your size. They come in packs, or they jump you when you’re least expecting it. Don’t assume you’re out of range. A bar of soap in a tube sock flies further than you think it will."
“Sounds like you speak from experience.”
This time, the flush that came was anger. It was the sympathy on the man’s face that did it. A newcomer had no right to be looking at him with eyes like that. Anyone else, he might have decked right there just to straighten out any assumptions. He’d hit people for less. But somehow he couldn’t hit Eli, and that realization had the fear coming back stronger than ever. If the man decided to take advantage of him, tried to screw him over and tear down everything it had taken him five years to build, what would he do?
“Just watch yourself. And don’t trust anyone. I mean it. No matter how nice anyone seems. The prisoners, the COs, the civilians. None of them. They’re all out to fuck you.”
“Literally or figuratively?”
