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Most of the time, Sid’s old buddy, Eugene, and his new buddy, Bob, the two of them bicker like old wives. It’s really only when the two the three of them are alone like this that the gloves come off and they tenderly tend to each other’s wounds. All Sid can do is hang around and feel like he’s been shut out.
Tonight, for example, him and Sid have only just entered Bob’s tent slash library when Eugene sits down next to Bob and tousles his hair affectionately. Sid still likes taking liberties with Bob’s hair like that, too. Stuck on the other side of the tent, his throat constricts and his stomach hurts. When he grabs one of the books in Bob’s collection, he wonders if the one he picks at random will be any good at making either of those two things go away.
“Do you get any sleep, Leckie?” Eugene asks. He’s looking into Bob’s eyes at those dark circles, and stroking his curls off his forehead like Bob is the one hurting most of all. Honestly, Sid wouldn’t question it if someone told him Bob was hurting the most. Pretty much everything since coming to Pavuvu seems random. It’s hard to remember, when he watches Eugene and Bob, that the two of them meeting was the good kind of random.
“Plenty of time for sleep later,” Bob says, and Sid reminds himself, again, to be charitable.
“When you’re dead?” Eugene asks, and winces immediately.
Bob, who probably set Eugene up on purpose, seems to find some funny in it. He throws Eugene one of his trademarked smug grins and goes back to his book. He doesn’t move away or make any moves to jostle Eugene out of his personal space.
Sid clears his throat, but they both ignore him. Instead, Eugene slides closer to Bob, allowing his hand to trail down through Bob’s curly hair and rest companionably on the nape of his neck. Sid’s trying not to notice all this—not even how Eugene is pressing his chest against Bob’s arm as he tries to read whatever Bob is reading over his shoulder, but the two of them don’t seem even the least bit aware that they’re making Sid try.
Sid is also trying not to take it out on the book he’s picked from Leckie’s Library, mostly because he knows that if Bob sees any damage not wrought upon any novel in his collection by the elements or other uncontrollables, the self-titled librarian is visiting that damage, doubled, on the agent of said book’s mutilation.
“What are you muttering about, Sid? Bad book?”
As if he doesn’t know. He’s red! “I think I’ve caught something.”
“Again?”
Sid grunts. “Yeah, again, I guess.”
“Well, aren’t you the prototypical American boy on Pavuvu.”
“That’s sure true. Seems like everybody gets sick here.” Eugene smiles friendship-ly at his old buddy Sid. “Used to be just me getting sick all the time, back in Mobile.”
“Right,” Bob says slowly. His wandering eyes rove on down Eugene’s collar to his sternum; then a little left, then a little right.
Sid slaps his hands on his knees. “Alright,” he stands, “I’m gonna go see if I can’t read by one of those lights they’ve finally strung up outside.”
“Nice night for it,” Bob observes.
“Better be,” Sid mutters.
He’s outside for only a couple pages—reading by a dull yellow light under a blank sky, when the elements decide to become uncontrollable. Although he spends a split second debating if he shouldn’t just chuck the novel inside and embrace the rain, Sid ducks back into the library tent. He exhales heavily at what he sees.
“I wasn’t out there hardly a minute.” His voice is more monotone than he means it to be, more resigned.
“Yeah, the weather really is a problem here on Pavuvu.” Eugene chuckles. His blush could be due to anything. His mouth, however, is awful wet for someone not caught in the rain.
Sid ignores this. Ignores Bob covertly wiping his mouth, too. He, of all people, would know certain things about these two men in particular. But Sid’s not jealous. When he slumps back down on the cot he’d taken for his seat, he’s not working up a rage in his heart. Mostly his stomach just hurts, and now, his head and clothes are damp.
“That book didn’t get wet, did it?”
Sid looks it over, wiping his hands of excess moisture first. He knows it really matters to Bob so there’s no use getting his hackles up. “No. We’re all good with this one.”
He looks back up in time to see Bob frown in an omniscient sort of way. Like he can just tell exactly which of the books he’s lent out are getting rained on right now.
Sid’s staring at him but it’s sort of fine because Eugene is gazing at him, too. Geez Louise, staring at the same thing really puts Sid in mind of how the two of them would go look at art sometimes. Eugene wasn’t much more of an artist than Sid—or at least hadn’t made Sid aware of the contrary, but he always seemed to get more out of it.
“Hey!” A boot stumbles into the tent and immediately switches from excited to abashed. “I, uh, found this outside? I was wondering if it belonged here.” He stammers under the librarian’s strict glare.
“You’ve never borrowed a book from me.”
“Um, no. No, sir?”
“So you, kid,” Bob points dramatically, “are innocent.”
“I would never leave a book outside!”
Bob waves this assertion aside, waves for the book, and then, finally, waves for the ‘kid’ to get out of his way. “Well… Well, well, well. Looks like we have a Private Craig Middleton to track down. Sid, dry this, will you?” He flings Sid the book and nods in satisfaction when Sid doesn’t bend the cover when he catches it. Bob could have just handed it to him. “Ugin, you’re my back-up.”
“Ugin?!” Now at that transgression, Sid is spitting mad. “Who gave you the right to call him that?”
Eugene must feel the tension, but he laughs it off. “Yeah, Bob! Who do you think you are?”
“Someone who should never call you ‘ugin’?” Bob inquires innocently.
“So you know exactly who you are.” Eugene smiles, disgustingly soft. It’s like the part of the play where the stage dims to just one intimate light—and Sid isn’t either of the men bathed in it.
“I know some of it.” Bob laughs nervously, “Now come on, we have books to beat grown men with.”
The silence falls on Sid and the new kid like an anvil when the other two have tumbled through the canvas like a pair of giddy schoolgirls, out into the rain. He had reached out to grab them by their wrists when they moved past him. He had wanted to grab them because it feels lately as if they have both taken hold of something he wants to take care of. Like, when one of them would find a kitten or a flag and one of them holding it meant the other one couldn’t. They have something he wants to call his own.
He hadn’t been able to stop them and neither one was wise to his attempt. What the hell, of course he hadn’t stopped them. Sid couldn’t even ask what Eugene and Bob had taken. And they weren’t ever going to tell him because, of all people, the two of them knew Sid wasn’t ignorant.
The three of them knew what door had really been walked through. Sid had opened that door.
“Um,” the new kid, too skittish to even sit without Sid’s permission, clears his throat, “Uh-hm, hey, I guess.”
“Hey. Oswalt, right?” Sid asks. His mind feels like it followed Eugene and Bob outside. Oswalt asks him something like, will the two of them be alright? Or something. Whatever he asks, Sid jumps up to take a look. “They’re alright,” he calls back. Eugene and Bob break apart. Yeah, no need to wonder and no need to explain or deny. Hell, why should they? Sid feels what little fight he had left (what little fear) leave his body. He calls back to Oswalt, “It’s just rain.” It falls on his eyes, so he closes them. “Won’t last long anyway.”