Page 8 of Rooster's Remorse
Ruby's pozole from this weekend is still in the air and it's the middle of the week now.
The heater ticks and he pours a cup of coffee, holding it under his chin like a candle.
"You ever sleep?"
"Sometimes."
"Like, hours? Consecutive?"
"Sure." I take a sip of my coffee.
"You know what's messed up." He blows across the cup. "I've been prospecting for two years and I'm losing my mind about it. Two years. And you've been?—"
"Longer."
"Waylonger." He looks at me over the rim. "Doesn't that eat at you?"
"No."
"Why not?"
Down the hall a door opens and shuts.
"I'm not in a hurry," I tell him.
He sets his cup down and looks at me like he's about to try again from a different side, which he will, because he's twenty-six and it's five in the morning and there's nobody else to talk to.
"See, that's not a thing people say."
"Okay."
"Nobody says that. Everybody's in a hurry. Boulder was in a hurry. Doom was in a hurry, and he'd have cut his own hand offbefore he told you so." He points at me with two fingers around the cup. "You've been here since before I got here."
"I know when I got here."
"So?"
Ruby's got a coffee can up on the shelf over the stove, and the lid's been sticky since the summer.
I take it down and work it open with the flat of my thumb and get it started for her so she doesn't have to fight it at six.
"So nothing," I tell him.
"That's it? That's the whole?—"
"You want eggs?"
He stops and blinks. "I mean. Yeah."
I get the pan down.
* * *
Ruby comes in at six, looks at the coffee I made, dumps it, and makes her own.
She sees the can open on the counter and doesn't say anything about it.
She never has.
