New Drabble: Twenty Words for Silence

[sjames_centre]

Not sure if 300 words still gets to be called a drabble. Triple drabble? Short snippet?

Anyway....

Slash or gen, I guess
Rated G
Post-Survival

Twenty Words for Silence

Starsky learned a new word yesterday.

 

The word was ruminate. He said it rhymes with Hutchinson.  

 

I told him he spends too much time in the bathroom with Reader’s Digest.  

 

Today’s word is querulous.

 

“Inclined to find fault,” he explains.

 

I don’t tell him he’s pronouncing it wrong.

 

We’ve been sitting in his car for three hours. The tip sounded too good to be true, but Captain said “check it out”, so here we sit. I suspect Starsky called in the tip himself. He thinks I need to stay off my leg. I think he needs to stay out of my business.  I also suspect I won’t be able to walk at all after three hours folded in his front seat.  

 

Starsky reaches into the glove compartment and hands me a beat up issue of Reader’s Digest from 1969.

 

“Test my word power,” he says. “I’ve been studying up.”

 

The index is on the front cover.  So is the peeling address label. Dr. John Faith. Orthopedic surgeon to my Humpty Dumpty act. Starsky sees recognition in my eyes, looks away, then answers the question before I can ask it.

 

“I made an appointment with him. I was worried. You wouldn’t talk to me.” He shrugs. Part apology. Part resignation. “Neither would he.”

 

“I’m fine.”   

 

“I’m so fucking sick of that word.”

 

“Then find another one.” I throw the magazine at him. I’d walk away if I thought I could.

 

“Certifiable? Stubborn? Asinine? You almost died! And you won’t talk to me about it.”  

 

I rest my hand on his leg.  “I don’t talk. I ruminate, remember?”

 

I’m rewarded with a tentative smile. He’s satisfied. For now.

 

One day I’ll tell him what it was like. But I won’t tell him it could have been worse.

 

It could have been him.