Stay Up with Hugo Best

by Erin Somers

  She smiled. Her phoniness was a leash, leading me along.

  “That’s nice of you,” I said. “I will.”

  I knew I’d email her, eventually. But I’d wait until I’d exhausted every possible option. Only when I was desperate, without pride, down to mining my most tenuous contacts, only at the witching hour in the long, dark night of unemployment, would I finally email her. I could already see the subject line: Hi! And she’d help me, too. I believed she would. She’d connect me with whoever, her dear friend who was staffing a show, a producer she knew from way back in need of an assistant. I would be grateful and she would be gracious and we’d treat each other like this weekend never happened.

  Laura walked away toward the house, letting her racket spin loosely in her hand. There was a slight brag in her step. I was tempted by a tennis metaphor. The word ace crossed my mind. But it wasn’t quite right, because I had gotten a piece of it, hadn’t I? I had tried for it anyway.

  * * *

  I texted Julian afterward for everything he knew about Laura. She came from old California money, he told me, Sacramento. The kind of people who called their house the ranch, their father Father, their maid the girl. She’d gone to USC, never married. She and Hugo had met in the seventies at one of the comedy clubs. She wasn’t a groupie exactly. She was too smart for that. She saw there was money to be made and started managing comedians. They were a couple for a while. Hugo was her main client and then her only client. In the early days of the show she’d been famously ruthless. She’d alienated people that way. The network had attempted a coup at one point, but she survived because Hugo backed her up. The two of them were a package deal; he wouldn’t do the show without her. Oh, and she had a loft in Tribeca that had been featured in Architectural Digest. There was a Warhol in her dining room, a big aqua-lipped Mao. Two cute rescue dogs. She rode a bike to work.

  A moment passed. Pulsing ellipses. He was thinking.

  Why? he wrote at last.

  I told him I was at Hugo’s house, long story, I’d just had a run-in with her. Immediately, he called me.

  “For real?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s so unfair. Girls get opportunities that guys just don’t.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “What’s the house like?”

  “Big, bright, a little sterile. Green-tiled pool. It’s got this weird basement. And there’s a son here.”

  “A son?”

  “His son.”

  “Oh, Spencer Best. No shit. You know, you could be describing this better. I’m having trouble seeing it. Can I ask you a favor?”

  “Is it Mates-related?”

  “Okay, fine. Forget it.”

  “I’m not mentioning Mates.”

  “I said forget it.”

  I was sitting on a lounger next to the pool. Inside, Spencer had finished with the pickles and was fixing himself another drink. I didn’t know where Laura and Hugo had gone. Up to Hugo’s room, maybe, to have sex or kill each other.

  I had an idea. “There’s a party here tomorrow. Do you want to come?”

  “You’re allowed to invite people?”

  No one had told me I wasn’t. “Probably?”

  “Are people gonna be like, ‘Who’s this twerp? What’s he doing here?’ ”

  “It’s supposed to be big. I don’t think anyone will notice you.”

  “Well, perfect.”

  “Will you promise me you won’t bring up Mates, though?”

  “I won’t bring it up. But if it comes up organically . . .”

  “Julian,” I said.

  My voice sounded plaintive. Even I could hear it.

  “Wait, is something wrong?”

  “Not really,” I said. “It’s just,” I thought a moment. “You know how things aren’t fun?”

  I didn’t know why I kept coming back to that.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know. How everything that seems like it’s going to be fun ends up being tense and sort of terrible. How nothing really lives up to its promise.”

  “Come on,” he said. “Some things are fun.”

  “Name one fun thing.”

  He considered it. “I don’t know. For me, Groucho Marx. Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, Louis Armstrong’s recording of ‘Potato Head Blues.’ Swedish movies, naturally.” He was quoting from Manhattan. “The crabs at Sam Wo’s. Tracy’s face.”

  “Gross,” I said.

  “Sorry. What about memes? Memes are fun.”

  “All right,” I said. “Memes and nothing else.”

  We were quiet and I listened to the background noise, trying to figure out where he was. In his burrow in the West Village or his parents’ house in New Jersey or outside a restaurant while a friend waited inside. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t hear much over his breathing. I listened to that until it started to seem too intimate.

  Julian and I didn’t hang out outside of work. I’d been to his place only the once, to bring him his laptop when he forgot it at the office, and he’d never been to mine. It was a tacit rule we had. I didn’t know why or how it originated, but it served us. Sometimes we texted, but otherwise we didn’t exist to each other once we left the office. The single context, Monday through Friday, work clothes only, created a curious type of freedom. It limited your personality to a handful of easily managed traits. To Julian I was hardworking and reserved, serious and trustworthy, receptive to jokes. That was about as much as he knew. His coming here would break our rule. Talking on the phone was already breaking it.

  “So you’ll come tomorrow?” I said.

  He hesitated. “I don’t know, man. You ever get the feeling he doesn’t like me?”

  “Hugo?” I said. “No way. He likes you. He definitely likes you.”

  “Wow, you’re a bad liar.”

  “He likes you,” I repeated. “Why does it matter anyway? It’ll be a party. He’ll be distracted. He’ll be drunk. He’ll barely look at us. There will be women there. You know how he is with women.”

  This last statement went too far. Silence swelled between us again. I could tell he wanted to ask what exactly I was doing there. How it had happened, what it was all leading up to. Maybe he wanted to ask about my safety. If he had I would have insisted I was fine. It was a reflex, the I’m fine, honed over years of being one of the only women in the office.

  “Can you just come?” I said. I sounded plaintive again.

  “Okay,” he said at last. “I’ll come. But only because I’m a brazen careerist.”

  I told him what time to show up, guessing. He agonized for another minute about whether he should bring something.

  “Wine?” he said. “Is it a wine kind of party? Beer?”

  “You don’t have to bring something,” I said.

  “June,” he said. “Really.” And we hung up.

  * * *

  Laura left after she had another fight with Hugo, in the driveway this time. I watched them through Spencer’s bedroom window. It was still bright out and the wind had risen. It wrapped Laura’s ponytail around her neck like a platinum scarf. She had put on sunglasses, giant tortoiseshell cat eyes that covered most of her face. He was drinking a Diet Coke again, maybe to annoy her, and the can shone as he gestured with it. I couldn’t hear what they were saying.

  I stood in a hole I’d cleared in the debris on the floor. I’d released a rich, skunky smell carving it out. I felt angry. This wasn’t exactly the romp I’d envisioned. Though what had I envisioned? Something glamorous, intimate. Something exciting, at least. For sure it hadn’t involved kicking a damp UConn sweatshirt and history textbook out of the way the better to spy on two old people fighting.

  Laura sat in the car now. It was an Audi. Tiny and low to the ground. Hugo bent way over to lean into the open window, tennis shirt sticking to the meaty hemispheres of his lower back.

  I sat down on the bed, tired. It hadn’t been made since the night be
fore and the sheets were rumpled. I lay back and smelled Spencer even more strongly. His deodorant, his shampoo. I thought of him lying in the same spot. Sweating faintly, or touching himself, or just thinking. What did Spencer think about when he lay there thinking? I felt turned on and weary, a new combination, and closed my eyes against the feeling.

  * * *

  I woke up to Hugo rubbing the place where my jaw met my ear. It took me a minute to locate myself in Spencer’s room. The model airplane finally tipped me off.

  “You fell asleep,” said Hugo. “In the creature’s lair.”

  He had changed out of his tennis clothes into a thin cashmere sweater. His hair was wet from the shower. I’d thought I might dream about Spencer but I hadn’t. I’d dreamed about Hugo and Laura. White-clothed figures on a dark gray driveway. In the dream they were my parents, arguing over who was going to take me. Take me where? I didn’t know. Neither of them wanted to.

  “Would you like to eat something?” said Hugo. “Noam cooked.”

  Noam again. He’d been there, braised some lamb, and gone. I couldn’t help but picture an actual gnome. A tiny bearded guy sneaking in to perform magic while the mortals slept, then departing without a trace.

  “Does he have a beard?” I asked.

  “What?” said Hugo.

  He was touching my hair now. Holding a curl between his forefinger and thumb. Pulling it straight and watching it spring back.

  “Noam. Like a gnome? Never mind.”

  “I’m sorry about before,” said Hugo.

  He could have been referring to a lot of things. Laura’s surprise arrival, the tennis match, the argument in the driveway. Leaving me stranded for hours with his seventeen-year-old son.

  “We have a history, Laura and me. We’ve known each other longer than you’ve been alive. It makes things complicated.”

  I watched the underside of his chin. The skin was smooth and red. It looked manually tightened. He was only ever clean-shaven—he kept an electric razor in his office, paced around shaving while he talked to Gil—and I wondered how he’d look if he wasn’t. Older, crazier, kinder.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You’re angry.”

  “You left me here with Spencer for most of the day.”

  “It couldn’t be helped.”

  “Should I even ask what that lunch was about?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me Laura was coming over? You made me look stupid.”

  He looked away, out the window, up at the model airplane. I expected him to launch into a story about the plane. How he and Spencer had built it and Spencer had been texting the whole time. How he had built it for Spencer and Spencer had shrugged. How they’d built it together as a part of some scouting experience and it had been their last best bonding moment before everything fell apart. But he didn’t.

  He said, “You’re right. I should have told you.”

  “Were you drunk when you drove us back from Roman’s yesterday?”

  “Now you’re reaching.” He paused. “You’re going to feel better after Noam’s lamb. Do you like sauces? There’s a creamy yogurt sauce that goes with it. Of course you do. Everyone likes sauces.”

  “I don’t think that’s true. I think some people have a textural issue with them.”

  He blinked at me.

  “Were you stabbed?” I said.

  I reached for his side, where Spencer had touched me, and felt for the raised ridge of a scar. He shifted away before I could feel anything under the soft fabric of his sweater.

  “I shouldn’t have left you two alone,” he said.

  “But it happened, right? A lady stabbed you. A fan. On Sunset? The bouncer pulled her off you. You took a cab to the hospital, blood sloshing all over the place.”

  “Spencer’s got an active imagination.”

  “But some version of that happened.”

  He rose and opened the window. Cool air reached in like an arm and the airplane twisted in the breeze. He peeked down at the driveway like Laura might still be out there, glaring up at him, waiting for him to come down for another round.

  “I have one more thing to tell you, in the spirit of openness. I’ve got a tiny obligation tomorrow before the party. An interview.”

  “Oh no,” I said. “TV?”

  “Casey Caruso from E! News.”

  I pictured a crew trampling in with boom mics and gaff tape. The host in a jewel-toned dress. Her huge white veneers that made no pretense of looking like real teeth. The B-roll they’d shoot of Hugo strolling pensively across the lawn, eating a peach in the kitchen, laughing with his son.

  “God,” I said. “Casey Caruso.”

  “She’s hardly the worst of them. Being interviewed by her is less bad than going to the DMV. Marginally. Her cohost now, what’s that moron’s name?”

  “Richie something.”

  “Yeah Richie whatever. That guy is so much worse. We did one of those entertain-the-troops things together during the Iraq War. I did stand-up. I don’t remember what the hell he did. He’s got no actual skills. He’s tiny and his suits are tiny. If you looked at the size on the tag it just says T for tiny. Maybe he was the MC. Oh, and he pronounces Iraq with a long I, all folksy. AYE-raq. I mean I’m not that smart, I’m only celebrity smart. But that guy. He’s stupid for the record books.”

  “Celebrity smart,” I said. “Like I’m normal person attractive.”

  He looked down at me. A little tenderly, I thought. “Hey, I’m the one deprecating here.”

  We had left discussion of Laura behind and I didn’t see us returning to it. We were back in the realm of the antic tale. Richie whatever, the Hollywood asshole. He had apologized and it had been weak, but it would have to be enough. It was the best I was going to get.

  “They told me it’s only a five-minute segment. They’ll be in and out.”

  “All right,” I said.

  He took my hand and helped me sit up. Maybe he sensed that his apology had been inadequate because he said, “You can be in it if you want.” He was still holding my hand. “The segment. Do you want to be in it?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  He laughed. “Actually, I don’t know why I said that. You probably can’t be in it.”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “Obviously I can’t be in it.”

  He looked at me sadly and I felt sad, too. Why this should make us sad I didn’t know. We went downstairs for dinner.

  * * *

  Hugo had an idea, he told us, chewing. Ana materialized to bus our plates as we finished with them. We sat in slim-legged burnt-orange chairs at a dining table the size of a landing strip. They tilted us forward slightly, made the conversation feel intent. Hugo was at the head of the table and Spencer and I sat across from each other. Spencer seemed sober now. He wasn’t ignoring me and he wasn’t making pointed eye contact either. He wasn’t trying to nudge me under the table. He seemed so fully recovered from our encounter that I doubted for a moment that it had even happened. He’d taken off his hat to eat dinner. Maybe his dad had a rule.

  Hugo held up the flyer the pizza guy handed me the day before.

  “Frogger’s,” he said.

  The flyer’s slick surface caught the sun and gleamed like a medal. The light in the dining room had a pink quality that seemed impossible. Students of light called it magic hour. Magically, we were all going to ignore the events of the afternoon and press gallantly onward.

  “Nooo,” said Spencer. “That townie bar?”

  He met my eye, too evenly. I had seen this type of pretending before. I’d engaged in it myself. The whole first six months of dating someone tended to go this way. A contest: Who could care the least. Logan and I had been in that phase and possibly we’d never have left it.

  I looked back at Spencer and saw a flicker that made his face look young. He glanced away. He wasn’t great at it yet, wasn’t practiced, but in time he would be. In time he’d be a monster just like everyone else.
Just like Logan, just like me.

  Ana passed through, setting down a pie in the middle of the table. It was cross-hatched and blueberry, the platonic ideal.

  “You almost don’t want to eat a pie like that,” I said.

  Hugo folded his napkin and tossed it onto the table. “Don’t you think you deserve to consume something aesthetically perfect?”

  “That’s literally a pie,” said Spencer. He was still acting cool. “That’s what they all look like.”

  “It’s what all pies aspire to,” I said.

  Ana ignored us and cut into it, wedged out a slice. “I’ve been to Frogger’s.” She scrunched up her nose. “It’s nasty, but ladies drink for free on Tuesdays.”

  It said something about Frogger’s that people kept citing this as its best quality.

  “Think of how thrilled that pizza guy will be if I actually show up,” said Hugo.

  Hugo hadn’t interacted with the pizza guy. He hadn’t even seen him. How would he know which guy it was? How would he pick him out of the lineup of bad small-town comics? The validation Hugo could possibly get from two minutes of a stranger’s excitement seemed insubstantial. A wisp. But what would we do all night otherwise? Sit around in the living room futzing with the remotes? Let the tension build further toward some sort of eruption? Google each other again?

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  Spencer’s mouth was full of pie. “I’m out. There are limits. I can’t be seen there.”

  “By whom?” said Hugo. “Who would be there to see you?”

  “Any other person,” said Spencer. He had his phone out. He was texting. “Just any other living person.”

  I was relieved he would not be coming. He would stay behind to smoke more weed and play video games. If he felt lonely, if he felt unmoored by what happened in the bunker, he’d text his friend Scotty a GIF, and Scotty would text back the crying-laughing emoji. Or he’d get Colby to come over, look the other way on the chiropractor issue, smoke her up in the basement rec room even though the Wi-Fi sucked down there. Do whatever it was they did together. Either way, the moment would pass.