Stay Up with Hugo Best

by Erin Somers

  “Can we go stand outside or something?” I said at last. I motioned to the pictures on the walls. “These guys are making this weirdly heavy.”

  Hugo nodded. “We must avoid gravitas at all costs.”

  I followed him out through the bar, past the college girls and drunks, back up the six stairs to street level.

  In front of the club, a breeze ruffled my dress and raised goose bumps on my bare legs. It was late May, the eve of Memorial Day weekend, that precarious presummer period in New York when the weather hasn’t fully made up its mind about what it’s going to be.

  “You work on my show, right?” asked Hugo.

  “Worked on the show, yeah. The writers’ assistant. My name is June.”

  “June,” he said. “Right. June. You were good in there, June.”

  A year ago this casual praise from Hugo would have felled me, sent me careening back to the bathroom to puke again in a paroxysm of nervous joy. All that time, my whole life, of waiting for this man’s approval and here it was, too easily, too cheaply won.

  “Thank you,” I said, though. “It means a lot for you to say that.” I paused. “So what brings you here?”

  “This is where I got my start. I guess I was feeling . . .”

  He trailed off and turned to study the entrance of Birds & the Bees, its yellowing marquee. His gray-blond hair lifted boyishly in the wind. It had gotten almost completely dark.

  “What happened to the girl you were with at the oyster bar?”

  “Girl?”

  “On your lap.”

  “Oh. She didn’t want to come. Can’t imagine why.”

  He gestured toward the bar. The smell of stale beer and public toilet was wafting out.

  “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” I asked. “A party or something?”

  It was last night, he told me. There’d been champagne and passed appetizers, those tiny puffed pastries with one bite of crab in them. A band had played. All on the network’s tab.

  “Weren’t you there? I thought we invited the staff.”

  I shook my head. No one had told me about a party. “I guess I missed the e-vite.”

  “It wasn’t that fun. Mostly just executives patting themselves on the back. For what, I don’t know. Anyway, tonight I thought I’d let everyone celebrate without the boss. They deserve to trash me if they want to.”

  He put his hands into his pockets. I braced for an awkward good-bye. But he made no move to end the conversation, no head fake up the street. Was he waiting for me to make my excuses—dinner plans, a dog to walk, a complicated train ride and someone expecting me at home? If I didn’t initiate, it might never end. But did I want it to end? Not exactly. Not unless he did.

  “How did you come to be here?” he asked.

  “N to Eighth, walked the rest of the way.”

  He rolled his eyes.

  “I’m friendly with Susie, sort of. I took her stand-up class like a decade ago.”

  “Ah, Stand-Up Basics. And how would you rate your experience?”

  The class had been a waste of money. The other students were nonserious: retirees trying out a hobby, office workers building their confidence. Susie herself had been bored. She’d taught it for thirty years as a way of supplementing the club’s income and her enthusiasm had expired long before I got there. The only real upside had been her offer, extended on a whim, to let me perform occasionally. I think she kept letting me do it because she’d forgotten how the arrangement had come about. Or because she just didn’t care.

  “Two stars. Once she sent me out to get her an aloe beverage. Another time I helped fix her printer.”

  “Bravo,” he said. “Multitalented.”

  “Hey, I’m no hero. It was a paper jam. I just reached in and yanked it out. Took thirty seconds. People tend to give me an easily accomplished task.”

  “Why do you think that is?”

  “Maybe I seem competent, but just a little.”

  He laughed approvingly. “What did you think of the show today?”

  I thought about what to tell him. The show had had the trappings of a celebration without feeling like one. There were tributes, special guests, a gag reel. Running jokes were reprised. Barbra Streisand sang a song. It was exactly the conclusion you’d expect, only the energy was off. Hugo’s enthusiasm seemed faked. Even so, I was sure the audience felt lucky, as if they’d witnessed a historic moment. This was what I finally landed on.

  “It was historic,” I said. I sounded unconvinced.

  He repeated, “Historic.”

  I tried again, “It was . . . it made me sad.”

  He nodded. “Me, too.”

  A burly guy in all black dragged a stool out of the club. It was late enough now for a bouncer. We watched him take a Sudoku from his back pocket and start filling it out. People began to weave around us and down the stairs into the club, the first arrivals for the early show.

  “Listen, let’s get a drink,” said Hugo. “Somewhere other than this.”

  “I can’t. I’ve got a thing. I’ve got to go stand around on a roof with some young people.”

  “Of course, a roof.”

  “I’m serious. I’m not blowing you off. Another time maybe.”

  He thought for a minute, swaying forward on the balls of his feet. He seemed a little drunk already. “This is going to sound crazy, but you should come spend the holiday weekend with me.”

  He had a house in Connecticut, he said, growing more excited. With a pool, tennis court, everything. I should come hang out, discuss comedy. We could leave right then. He thought I had potential. He wanted to hear me talk.

  I said, “That roof thing I mentioned? I’m meeting a boy there. A man. We’re at the beginning and I’m trying to figure out whether he loves me or hates me.”

  “Love and hate aren’t mutually exclusive,” said Hugo. “Especially at the beginning.”

  He smiled, a dashing enterprise that usurped his entire face. “Come to Connecticut. No funny business.”

  The breeze gusted again, blowing blossoms off a tree just up the street. They came at us in a small white cyclone. One landed on Hugo’s lapel, an accidental boutonniere. It was warm and cool both, and what light was left in the sky looked purple.

  “How can anyone make good decisions in this city?” I asked.

  “They don’t,” said Hugo. “Nor anywhere in the world.”

  * * *

  I directed Hugo’s driver, miles away at the front of the SUV, farther downtown and over the Williamsburg Bridge. Now that we were together in a confined space, Hugo withdrew a little, composed himself after his earlier eagerness. He popped in a piece of spearmint gum and I could smell it over the new-car scent. He smoked for twenty years, twenty years ago, he told me. Unbelievably, he still needed the gum.

  “My generation smoked,” he said. “Today everyone vapes. You don’t vape, do you?”

  “I don’t vape.”

  “Good. It’s a weak simulacrum. If you’re gonna do the thing, do the real thing. Not the PG version. Not the cantaloupe-flavored version. You know?”

  “Sure.”

  The bridge was a string of taillights creeping forward in fits and starts. Below, the dark blue surface of the river reflected back streaky clouds and buildings and cars moving up the FDR.

  “Lived out here long?”

  “Sort of.”

  I’d started in Manhattan over a decade ago and been forced farther and farther east, changing neighborhoods ahead of gentrification. Now I lived in Bushwick with a friend and soon we’d be priced out again. Already the signs were there.

  Hugo nodded. “Tapas bars. Coffee shops.”

  “Craft beer sold in growlers.”

  We lived at the neighborhood’s limit, right between Ridgewood and Bed-Stuy. It wouldn’t be long before we shipwrecked against the hard barrier of Brownsville. Brooklyn was finite. You could only go so far east.

  “And then what?” asked Hugo.

  “I don’t know. Queen
s? Jersey City? Bangor, Maine?”

  “Outer outer outer borough.”

  “I have a twelve-hour commute,” I said. “But you wouldn’t believe how much reading I get done.”

  “It’s a tragedy what this city is doing to our creative class.”

  We stopped in traffic near the foot of the bridge. Bikes streamed by in the last of the dusk. Being in a chauffeured car all of a sudden was a shock to the system akin to jet lag. I felt transported across time zones. I struggled to recall the chain of events that had gotten me there. We’d crossed the street, I could remember that much. He’d held the car door open for me, grasped my elbow while I’d taken the step up. The contact had lit up my nervous system like a strand of Christmas lights.

  “Where do you live,” I said, “when you’re not in Connecticut?”

  “I keep a sleeping bag at the office, unroll it under my desk after everyone leaves. Laura came in early once and caught me. Gave me hell. Apparently there’s something called sleep hygiene.”

  Laura was the self-appointed keeper of his health. I thought of earlier in the bar, her casual hand in his. Their relationship was a popular topic of office gossip, but no one seemed to have all the details. There was a consensus that they had been lovers when they were much younger. Opinions diverged on whether they still were.

  “I’ve heard of it. You’re only supposed to sleep in your bed and only use your bed for sleeping.”

  “What fun is that?” He pointed back toward Manhattan and north. “I live uptown. Stuffy neighborhood, you’d hate it.”

  I turned to look. Manhattan was still there. “I bet it’s got a bad view, too.”

  “Rotten. Too much park.”

  “At least it’s cheap, right?”

  “A steal. It’s a slum around there. Not like this.”

  We were in the land of warehouses, of plywood partitions and artists lofts. Even with gentrification being what it was, it had a bombed-out feel. All that was missing was the rubble in the streets, the holes torn from facades to reveal bathrooms and kitchens, the severed pipes still dripping water. I had considered telling him to skip it and making do without a change of clothes, picking up a toothbrush somewhere along the way. It could have marked the beginning of a life untethered. But there was the matter of clean underwear and my cell phone charger. The crude implements of modern survival.

  On my block, the driver pulled up into the bus lane and punched the flashers. Scaffolding fronted most of the buildings. The bodega on the corner would sell you a hamburger or a loose cigarette. Our joking had acknowledged and dismissed the difference in our lifestyles, but I was still embarrassed to have taken him to such a place. It was a block like so many others I’d lived on: charmless and in flux.

  “I’ll only be a minute,” I said, getting out of the car.

  The street in the evening was as busy as midday. Kids flew by on Razor scooters. The pet store next door—Just Pets—was getting a delivery. Two men hoisted terrariums full of gray mice up on their shoulders. Outside my building, Rocco sat in his striped beach chair, burning incense. His legs were bloated with disease, skin purple, shards of yellow toenail sticking out of his bare toes. He was a painter; he made portraits of neighborhood people and sat there all day trying to sell them.

  He greeted me by name but I waved and kept going. Rocco spent his nights in shelters, smelled like patchouli layered over wet popcorn, loved to talk about his process. You couldn’t engage him without a clear schedule and a heart full of hope. I glanced back at the car to see if Hugo was watching. The windows were tinted and gave nothing away.

  Inside the vestibule, one of our neighbors, a tall guy named Lars, appeared to be waiting for me. He had his collapsible bicycle with him, mint green, so small he had to stoop to hold it steady. His round black helmet framed his sweaty forehead.

  “You guys need to be better about getting your mail,” he said.

  I looked at our mailbox: Bloom/Newton. Corners of letters poked out. More were balanced on the narrow ledge above it.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “First of all, couldn’t some of those letters be important? Are you not paying your electric bill?”

  Once Lars had knocked on our door to give my roommate, Audrey, an Anthony Bourdain book. Another time he asked her on a date. Both occasions she had laughed. Now he was mad about mail and taking his revenge.

  “We do that stuff online. But I’m kind of in a hurry. Could we talk about this another time?”

  He made his voice very calm and leaned down slightly to clutch the bike. “The mail piles up. The postal worker can’t fit it all. He just puts it wherever. It gets on the ground. It gets kicked out the door and onto the street. You don’t want it out there, do you? With all your identifying information on it? Today I got one of your letters in my mailbox.”

  He held it aloft. A credit card offer.

  “You can just throw that away,” I said.

  “That’s not my job! It’s your mail!”

  I took the envelope from him. I worked late, I told him, and sometimes forgot to get the mail. But as of today I was unemployed, so I could give it my full attention. I could watch for the mailman, have him personally hand me my letters. I could camp out with Rocco and preempt him halfway down the block.

  “Oh,” he said. He took his helmet off. His hair was pressed to his skull. “Why doesn’t Audrey get the mail ever?”

  I laughed. He’d managed to bring it around to Audrey. “I have to go.”

  He called after me, “Sorry about your job.”

  I was up the first flight already, the first of five, and didn’t bother to respond.

  Our apartment took up half a floor, each room longer than it was wide. I knocked over a bike as I entered, and the bike knocked over a broom. I lunged for the broom, but didn’t catch it. It clattered as it hit the floor. On the couch, Audrey raised her eyebrows.

  “Well, why was there a broom there?” I said.

  “I was going to sweep,” said Audrey. “One day.”

  We both laughed at the notion of Audrey sweeping.

  “I ran into Lars downstairs.”

  “Oh God,” she said. “The mail?”

  “He wanted to know why you don’t ever get it since you’re here all day.”

  Audrey used to want to be a comedian, too. Now she worked from home freelancing articles for culture websites. Fifty bucks here, one twenty there. Occasionally she’d get a more permanent gig and go to an office for a few months. Then the company would realign, pivot to video, get bought out, disintegrate, and she’d end up back on the couch, sending out invoice reminders.

  “It’s too boring for me to contemplate,” she said. “Did you tell him that?”

  “I didn’t feel up to it.”

  “Tell him that next time. Tell him I think they should discontinue the mail. Why are people still scribbling something down on a piece of paper and paying to have it delivered to another person? It makes no sense. Everywhere there’s a post office they should build a wind turbine instead. Would that make a good essay?”

  “No,” I said. “Come with me for a second.”

  Audrey followed me down the hall to my room. I had a window that looked out on the street, and I beckoned her over to the blinds.

  “That’s my boss down there,” I said.

  She squinted. “You mean a producer or something?” She pulled back and cocked her head. “Or . . . You don’t mean Hugo Best?”

  “It’s him,” I said.

  I told her about our encounter. My set on Bleecker, his invitation outside. How fast it had all happened. How looking back at Manhattan from the Williamsburg Bridge had been like glimpsing the Earth from space. I felt oddly like I was lying. I kept adding details to make it sound more true.

  “The guy on before me had a ukulele,” I said.

  “How is that relevant?”

  “Just painting a picture.”

  We looked through the blinds again. The car’s smoky windows reflected th
e orange streetlight.

  “What’s he doing in there, reading emails?”

  “Just chewing gum, I think.”

  I started jamming clothes at random into a canvas tote bag. I searched my drawers for what to bring. He’d mentioned a pool and a tennis court, but otherwise I was at a loss.

  “What do I pack?”

  Audrey let the blinds fall back into place. “How long are you going for?”

  “I don’t know. I forgot to ask. I guess all weekend?”

  “Don’t you have that thing with Logan tonight?”

  Yesterday I’d been consumed by my relationship with Logan; today I felt barely able to picture him. What had I liked about him again? His modish swoop of hair and carefully considered interests? His tidy shirts buttoned all the way to the top? He thought it was funny that I worked in network television. He had gotten the idea that I was doing it ironically and I hadn’t corrected him.

  “It’s not that important,” I said. “It’s just standing on a roof.”

  She settled onto the striped duvet my mother had gotten me when I’d come to the city for college eleven years ago. She wore sweats and a frayed T-shirt with cutoff sleeves, but crossed her wrists elegantly in her lap.

  She said, “If you’re doing this for the experience, fine. If you’re doing it for your career . . .” She paused. “Also fine.”

  “It’s not like that,” I said.

  “But if this is some hero worship thing . . .”

  “It’s not.”

  “But if you have expectations . . .”

  “I don’t.”

  She exhaled. “Remember when I met that author on the plane?”

  I did, but she told me the story again anyway. She was on her way to California for a wedding and had ended up in business class seated next to the author. He was one of the lesser greats, upper-second-tier, bald and charismatic with a gold Rolex that rattled on his wrist when he motioned to the flight attendant for another round of drinks. His most recent book was being made into a movie, he explained, sipping, and he was headed to LA for a meeting. He was sure it would be a dreadful affair. They always were. The movie or the meeting, Audrey asked, and he smiled. They talked for a couple of hours. He paid for the drinks and they exchanged numbers.