Breaking the silence Troy asked, “Plans today?”
“What do you mean? A shower. The office. Helping all my little old ladies…I can’t just take the day off from their financialfutures.”
It’s what they used to do. On a whim. In those early New York years: Take the day together, spend it in bed, sex all day. A few years later, they’d spend the day in that same bed, reading theTimes, watching movies, eating, napping. After moving to Las Vegas, they’d spend the day exploring and hiking in the national parks—lately, avoiding each other’s eyes…
“We haven’t played hooky in a long time,” said Hank.
“We could. Take a drive. The wild flowers are blooming in Death Valley.”
“A super bloom, they’re calling it.” Hank ran his fingers through damp, thinning hair.
Who would have thought they’d last thirty-eight years? They’d seen domestic partnerships, and civil unions, and then legal marriage. They’d gotten married, because they could. Troy thought of it then aspaperwork, but on anniversaries, a secret shimmer of something cascaded inside, a remnant of those early years. After all those years, they were officially newlyweds, even though the bloom had long faded on that romantic ideal.
“I’ll look at my book,” said Hank. “Just to make sure I don’t have anything scheduled that can’t be rescheduled.”
“The flowers won’t be there long.”
“I said I’d check.” The heat in his voice strong. “If I can’t go, you can go without me. You can take pictures.”
“Check your book,” Troy said with gentle encouragement. He watched his husband. The wheels turned in his head. He could always tell. The way Hank’s eyes distanced into the unknowable future. Those crinkled crow’s feet at their edges. The dark brown of the past, now paler, a hint of blue. Cataracts forming.
Hank took his phone from his pocket, tapped at it, unlocked the modern world, his private universe. He studied, pushed at the screen, held the phone close to his mouth: “Tim.”They listened to his assistant offer a greeting.
“Please reschedule my two o’clock for next week. I’ll be out of the office today. Unreachable,” Hank said and hung up. “Get the cooler packed while I shower.” He smiled, that frisky smile of old. “We’ll make a day of it. Have a picnic near the dunes or up by that crater you like. The one I can never pronounce: Wabawaba…”
“Ubehebe,” Troy said.
New Truth by Ben Murigu
I learned it very early in life to mind my own business, that meddling was the sole preserve of the idle. The idle, and the foolish. As a brainiac, I was taught to persistently keep busy, to always stay focused.
During my Bureti Primary days, my mostly Kipsigis teachers who admired my quietude and positive attitude cited me as an example of a disciplined pupil during Monday morning assembly. In Kericho Boys’ High, the celebrated national school that I ended up enlisted by, they started calling mepromisingin first term of Form One. That word followed me around like a debt someone else had already calculated.
When I finished Form Four, reality arrived fast and without ceremony. Results were good. Opportunities were theoretical. My mother Wacu sold vegetables at akibandain Bureti. My absentee father Muhia, a pork place owner who’d relocated to Nairobi to escape crippling debt, was already a story people around me told in the past tense.
Whatever future I wanted for my wildly ambitious self would need funding. Adequate, steady. And the world that I’d foolishly assumed would meet me—an intelligent and promising Kikuyu boy—halfway clearly wouldn’t.
That is how I ended up outside Furaha Hardware, one of Mister Kirui’s four well-stocked hardware shops, straight out of high school, asking—nay, begging—for work. Rehearsing a sentence over and over in my head:
“Kuna kazi, mzee?”Is there work, old man?
He looked at me longer than was polite. Not suspicion—scrutiny. Like a man assessing, deciding in his mind whether something smelly was truly worth bringing inside.
* * * *
Overnight packing and stock-taking is lonely work, I tell you. It is by no measure heroic labour. It is quiet, methodical, unglamorous. You learn to listen to your own breathing. To mosquitoes. You stick to numbers, patterns, until you start to doubt your own sanity.
Me? I was good at it, and managed to turn it into something tolerable. Enjoyable.
And Mister Aron Kirui noticed that almost immediately, choosing to reward me—not with flowery praise or with a hefty raise, but with instant trust. He left me alone with inventory. Left me keys, money. Responsibility.
I ended up overseeing all four hardware stores; his numerous attendants answering to me, fearing me just as much as they feared him. I was his bona fide assistant. His right-hand man.
His voice.
See, men like him—wealthy, wed, tightly wound—they don’t trust easily. When they do, it feels like heaven. Way better than a promotion even.
Whenever we spoke and he asked what I wanted to study, he nodded approvingly when I saidEconomics, as though I was confirming something he already suspected: that I was smart, worthy of his time. His attention.
