ggs might’ve melted away. So might everything’ve; ‘cause he thought of tossing a die and seeing where it landed, and a broken mirror, too, and he slid back and forth between them, not sure whether it was one or the other or both seemed most right to him.
He wasn’t a man who knew nothing about things like this, but he thought it was so, sometimes, with drink – you got drunk enough and looked in the mirror, it might’ve been cracked. He’d been hit so many times his face was funny and lopsided; he could see different men in every piece of it, a different man looking down at his bare chest, a different man looking down at his hands or at his hands on Aremu’s or at his fingers digging into his thigh. And underneath the pieces?
Is it just us, then? Men like us? Is it the qalqa? Is it the blood on our hands, shatters us, or was we meant to be like this?
Eggs might’ve melted away behind, caught so; ‘cause he couldn’t stop looking at Aremu, his head bowed, for all Tom couldn’t read a damn thing into his face.
Does it trouble you, this talk? he wanted to ask. They was men, they was; there was no asking such questions.
Maybe he should’ve; he’d not felt so, drunk, the night they’d climbed up to the aeroship. Nor’d he felt so standing with him on the platform. He’d scarce known him, then, and now he knew him less. Funny, how you knew somebody less, the longer you knew him. Men especially, seemed like to him.
“Mirror, I reckon,” he said, soft and low, finding himself a step closer to the imbala than he’d been. “Every maw’s another crack, oes?”
He smiled, his eyes fixed on Aremu’s face; his eyes was still fixed there when Aremu’s rose to meet them. He didn’t know what to say or to feel. His mouth half-opened, then shut; the set of his lips was soft, the set of his face slack. Aremu took his hands, gentle, and he didn’t look nowhere but his face.
He didn’t turn it round, didn’t take Aremu’s in his and stroke them, or kiss them, or set them anywhere on him and pull the other man closer. He let Aremu hold his hands; he wasn’t sure why, but he liked it, being held, quiet and still. Felt like a bird in a nest.
Felt like a lot of things.
Didn’t want him to let go. “Glad of it,” he murmured dumbly, knowing not to reach for the hands as they slipped away. He smiled at the brush of lips on his cheek, and hung there ‘til he realized what he’d said.
He could smell the faint edge of burning. “Oh,” he said, “wo chet – shit,” and turned. “Shiiiiit,” he breathed, yanking the pan off the stove.
No bright circles of yolks on top, though he’d known better than to expect that. Only yellow was the broken yolks slurring about one side, leaking in-between. A couple of the eggs stayed fair separate; mostly, they was a flooding pancake of white, crusted black round the edges.
“Epaemo, dove,” he said, setting the pan aside. He scratched his head, loosing a few strands of hair. There was red in his cheeks. “Should leave such things to a man as knows how to cook,” he murmured, scratching in his beard now; he sucked at a tooth. “I reckon – them that’re in the middle…”
Couldn’t bring himself to look at Aremu, not at first. He could still feel the ghosts of those hands on his; if he shut his eyes, he’d think his hands was somebody else’s. One shard of the mirror, that feeling.
He thought of it, and smiled slow-like, and looked at Aremu. “There’s bread an’ cheese, too,” he offered, sheepish, “an’ apples.” You’ll stay? he wanted to ask, but couldn’t bring himself to. “If it was ever my fami's qalqa, it ain't been for some time,” he joked instead, trying on a smile.