Rose exhaled. This is so stupid.
A banging sounded from behind the building. A slam clatter. Plastic against metal.
Rose lifted her eyes to it. And there he was.
Hugo.
“No,” she said. Aloud.
Not Hugo but still … Him.
The Man Who Was Not Hugo.
He was behind the restaurant. Pushing bags of trash into a Dumpster.
Rose stopped breathing.
He wore a blue windbreaker over his uniform.
He had very little of Hugo’s beauty. None of his swagger.
And yet the way he moved his body—it was the same.
He jumped with Hugo’s knees, threw garbage bags with Hugo’s wrists. The muscles of his back, straining to push the lid of the Dumpster over the top—they were Hugo’s trapezius, Hugo’s latissimus dorsi, Hugo’s iliac crest—but moving with a weariness Rose had never ascribed to him at all.
The man did indeed have very little of Hugo’s grace … but there was something. A ghost of some kind. Like the remnants of a drink left on the sides of a glass.
Rose watched as he swung closed the gate of the fence surrounding the Dumpster. He locked its chain with a key on his ring and walked to a tired blue car in the parking lot, then swung himself inside. Rose watched his silhouette pull the shoulder belt. The running lights of the car flared to life.
* * *
She followed him to a small matchbox house in a neighborhood north of the soccer fields. The homes here suffered a little from the stink of eau de white trash, weeds peppering the sidewalks, ratty garbage bins in front of the houses.
The Man Who Was Not Hugo pulled into the driveway of a house nearly identical to the rest. It was, Rose noticed, a little better kept than the others. Its grass was freshly cut, its garden hose in a neat coil by the front step.
Rose parked just down the street, killing her lights as he got out of his car.
She squinted, leaning forward toward her windshield. Trying to make out as much as possible in the sodium glare of the street lamp.
Her phone rang, startling her. Josh.
It could be an emergency.
But the Man Who Was Not Hugo was suddenly on the steps of his house. If she took the call, she could miss something. Some clue. She let it go to voice mail.
A cat ran out of the darkness, leaping onto the stoop. A white-and-orange tabby. The kind Penny called “sun kitties.” The Man Who Was Not Hugo knelt to greet it, stroking under its chin.
He unlocked the door and let himself and the cat inside. Behind the shaded windows, Rose saw the lights of the house switch on. A flickering blue indicating he had turned on the television.
The phone rang again. She picked up.
Josh wanted to know where the sheets were. Adam had wet the bed. He’d let him have too much milk before bedtime. When would she be home?
seven
They were on the beach when they heard the rumbling. A growing thunder from beyond the saw grass. Rose’s eyes tripped over the waves of green, searching for the source.
“That can’t be good.”
She turned to Hugo and he flashed her a grin. Tall gorgeous tan toothy Hugo. Rose’s Hugo.
The rumbling grew louder. Closer.
“We should get moving.”
He shrugged, smile still on his lips.
The tops of the most distant grass began to bend and shift, cutting a wide swath toward them. The thunder broke into its distinct components, the sound of a thousand hooves beating the ground.
“Oh God.” Rose began to run just as the antlers of the first Bucks burst from the grass.
A stampede.
Hugo was closer to the edge of the shore. His feet bit into the sand, seeking traction as he sprinted farther up the beach, the shifting grit slowing his pace.
But despite this, he was in less danger than Rose, who had been on firmer ground but yards closer to the point where the Bucks had emerged from the grass.
The animals were panicking. Their eyes wide, revealing the recessed whites. They were gnashing their teeth at one another, lips curled, exposing ruminant incisors.
But more dangerous were the antlers. There were no females in the island’s herds, no gentle does, only thousands of horned males. Their antlers grew to enormous proportions, points sharpened against the trees in the forest or in combat against one another.
Rose’s bare feet carried her closer to the loose soil that banked the saw grass; she could move faster here than she could closer to Hugo on the open reaches of the shore. Behind her she could hear the clattering of antlers striking one another. The Bucks were running close, preferring the safety of the stampeding herd to the less treacherous exposure of solitude.
The Spider leaped out of the saw grass, landing on the beach, its diamond-shaped metatarsals sending a spray of pink sand into the air. It was a large one, even by the standards of the island, its thorax hovering ten feet above the ground.
“Rose!” Hugo was still moving, making the best of his head start, but his neck was turned toward the monster behind the oncoming horde. He needed her to know of the real danger.
She knew.
The Bucks were gaining on her, their panic rising now the hunter was in the open.
Rose angled closer to the blades of grass, reaching out toward them. Every step that didn’t push her farther away from the Bucks and their clamoring hooves and their clattering racks was a risk. But she needed a weapon.
The first two plants slid from her grasp. She was moving too fast to catch hold. But she was able to wrap her palm around the third, using the momentum from her body to pull it from the ground.
In her hand the blade transformed, growing a handle to fit her grip, pulling into itself, its sides sharpening. A sword. As strong as steel, but still as green as the plant it had come from.
She had what she needed, but they were running out of space. Up ahead the saw grass gave way to a rocky outcropping … the herd was going to get pushed onto the beach.
It was then that they overtook her.
She was lucky she wasn’t speared in those first moments. The lead Bucks were less close together than their brothers farther back. Rose pulled as close as she could to the body of the nearest animal, her free hand trying to catch hold of the lowest prong of its antlers. Maybe if she could swing onto its back …
Behind her and yet somehow above came an inhuman scream. The Spider had plucked one of the animals from the rear of the herd, seizing it with its enormous palpae. Rose turned her head in time to see the Buck’s spine crunch between the monster’s dark mandibles. The Buck screamed again before folding in half and slipping farther into the Spider’s maw.
The herd turned onto the beach. Rose tried to keep apace, but she had two legs to their four. Ahead of her the end of a Buck’s antler caught the eye of a second, blinding it. The creature tumbled, its front legs folding.
Rose leaped over its body just in time to miss the second animal that collided with it.
Where was Hugo?
The sword felt sweaty, slippery in her hand. Her thighs burned. She could barely breathe.
Where was he?
Movement to her right. A dark shape. Brown hair studded with sand. Striking from above.
Rose veered left and the Spider’s palpae seized the Buck next to her, yanking it from the ground. She looked up; its hooves tread air, still running, going nowhere but into the beast’s mouth. A spray of blood hit the back of her neck as the Spider consumed its latest morsel.
Where the hell was Hugo?
A stream of sunlight bored a hole through the clouds. It threaded through the air, making its way to the surface of the island. The thread grew, prying the clouds from the sun, until the whole of the far end of the beach was alight with a magic shimmer.
There he was. Standing in the shadow, watching the edge of the newly glowing sand. His face was calm. Waiting.
Behind him the line of sunlight raced forward, moving toward Hugo and th
e galloping herd.
He turned as beams struck the sand just inches from his feet and began running toward Rose. The vanguard of a pure line of light.
The Spider was now among them, keeping pace above the charging Bucks. Rose looked up. Its abdomen loomed above her, its pelt sticky with gore and sand. A metatarsus pierced through the air, punching the ground next to Rose. Large hairs jutted from the shell of its mottled leg.
Rose hacked at it with the blade, piercing its carapace. There was a wet snap as the sword cracked into its exoskeleton, a brittle break into the meat of its leg.
The Spider reared up with a shriek, its lower abdomen dropping, knocking the bodies of the Bucks in its path forward. The deer, wild-eyed, broke through its legs, scattering onto the beach.
Rose pulled on the blade. It was wedged in the ugly shell of its leg. She wrapped both hands around it—
Something whisker soft brushed the underside of her arms.
And then suddenly she was in the air, sword in her hand, pulled out like a splinter—and she the tweezers. The hairs of the Spider’s pedipalps jutted through the soft cotton of her blouse, a secure hold about her waist.
The beast was still shrieking, a river of blue-green blood gushing from the rent in its leg. It shook Rose, whipping her about—
* * *
—giving her a view of Hugo, running toward them. A blinding edge of light in his wake.
And then the beams hit the area beneath his feet … and he was flying. Forward motion launching him from the glowing sand directly into the Spider’s thorax, driving it backward. Rose was thrown from its grip, the sword flying from her sweat-drenched palm.
Hugo clung to the beast’s carapace, his hands catching hold of its piebald layer of hair. The creature shrieked as he braced himself on the edges of its joints. Out of reach and climbing.
Rose hit the sand solid on her back, all the air in her lungs rushing out at once. She gasped, stunned by the impact.
“Rose! The sword!”
Hugo had crested the Spider’s back and was clinging as it whipped around wildly, trying to throw him off.
Rose rolled to her knees. She felt like she could barely see. Still, she had been holding the sword only a minute ago. Where had it gone?
The Spider’s shrieking rocketed up an octave as Hugo saddled himself on the bony ridge above its eye.
A glint under the sand. A few feet away. Rose crawled to it, frantic, her hands sweeping …
A pair of bright cartoon eyes winked up at her beneath the pink silt.
Rose felt her brows crease.
It was the Orange Tastee. The sun-faded fiberglass speaker from the drive-through. She brushed at the sand, pink particles escaping into the battered grille of its mouth. What is this doing here?
“Rose! There.”
She looked up. The Spider was thrashing, its legs unable to reach the pest on its back. Its motion had carried them farther down the shoreline. Hugo was pointing away from Rose. Her eyes followed the line of his hand.
The sword gleamed bare in a mound of coral sand. Like Excalibur, only waiting to be pulled.
Rose raced toward it, the mystery of the Orange forgotten. She wrapped her hand around its handle and winged it, throwing it end over end toward Hugo.
He caught it in the air and drove it two-handed into the beast’s flat black eye. The Spider collapsed to the ground, a pulsing hemorrhage of oily blood spilling down its body.
Atop its corpse, Hugo laughed and brushed his hair out of his eyes. He smiled down at Rose on the sand.
* * *
His car had not been at the Orange Tastee when she arrived, an hour and fifteen minutes after kissing the boys good-bye and watching them find their seats on the school bus.
Maybe it was his day off.
She searched for his house by instinct, lefts and rights by feel, not remembering the dark path she had followed him on that night. Though the town was small, daylight revealed a sad sameness to the dwellings of its citizens. Each street was identical in its shabbiness. She drove through its tired little neighborhoods, turning onto streets labeled “Oak” and “Sycamore” that showed no growth of either of those noble species. Her heart raced, convinced she would never find the place where the Man Who Was Not Hugo lived.
It was the coil of garden hose that finally let her know she had found it. Its neatness, a tidy stack, unique in this ugly, fallow place. And then she saw his car in the driveway, two cement strips separated by a patch of dying grass.
Rose noticed that the Man Who Was Not Hugo’s license plate read 349SXY. She presumed it wasn’t intentional and was instead one of those accidental DMV abbreviations people were sometimes saddled with: 47GYN0, L3BTW7, 57ROTF.
She parked opposite. A few houses down. Close enough to see … not close enough to draw notice.
He exited about fifteen minutes later, wearing the same blue jacket she had seen on him before. On his head was a battered Broncos cap, its cloth-over-plastic bill frayed on the edge. Rose could almost see him as good-looking. The kind of attraction that increased as you got to know someone. He was older, paler, and at least ten to twenty pounds overweight, but certainly not repulsive in any way.
At least no more repulsive than she was in comparison with the woman she was in her dreams.
I guess we have that in common, Rose thought … and then she shook off the ridiculousness of her supposing this actually was Hugo.
He bounded down the stairs and into the car without looking up, without looking over, without noticing the minivan parked across the street or the watching woman behind its wheel.
The Walmart she followed him to was three towns away.
The Man Who Was Not Hugo found a parking space and locked his car just as Nemo was reunited with Marlin. Synchronicity.
From the back of the car, Penny’s voice said, “Mama? We go in now?”
Rose turned to her daughter. Penny grinned at her from the car seat. She kicked her legs, little feet ending in the scalloped white sandals she had insisted on wearing that morning.
Through the windshield, Rose could see the Man Who Was Not Hugo pull a cart from the row and head toward the automatic doors.
“Yes. We go in now, honey.”
* * *
Rose knew this wasn’t healthy. She knew people had a name for this behavior. She knew that following anyone, much less a complete stranger, was generally the first part of those real-crime television shows that ran constantly on the higher reaches of her cable box … and that after the commercial break the story always took a turn for the worse.
But she assured herself that she wasn’t doing anything that wrong.
She was just looking.
And Penny had been perfectly happy to watch videos in the car. As far as she was concerned, today was no different from any other day she ran around town doing chores with Mama.
Rose figured it wasn’t even a complete ruse, as long as she got a few things here. If they happened to pass something the family needed, she would just drop it in her cart.
Besides, they would look less suspicious that way.
Rose shook her head. People who are just shopping at Walmart don’t worry that their empty carts look suspicious.
But it did not stop her from circling the store until she caught sight of the faded orange of his hat. Perusing the shelves in the automotive aisle.
Rose paused by a display of paper goods. Rolls of Bounty paper towels. Walmart was rolling back the price to $8.99 for thirteen. Rose took note that this was a good deal even as she cheated her body behind the display so she could see him.
The Man Who Was Not Hugo was crouching by the motor oils. He had pulled two from the shelves and was comparing them, reading their backs. Judging the various weights. The advantages one brought over the other for a few dollars more.
Rose studied him.
The subtle arc of the beds of his fingernails. The way his dark hair curled under the plastic joining of the cap. The way the bone of his wr
ist met and twisted beneath the meat of his hand.
Rose could almost see those hands as she had last night. Plucking a shining green blade out of the sky, driving it down into the brain of a monster. Strong hands.
It was impossible. Everything about this man was impossible. How could this stranger look so like the man who lived in her mind?
“Mama!”
He looked up, his attention drawn by Penny’s shout.
Rose quick-stepped behind the display, her heart racing.
“Mama. We look at toys now?”
Rose shook her head and fled. Trying to catch her breath as she pushed Penny and the empty cart toward the front of the store and escape.
* * *
Rose’s surveillance of the Man Who Was Not Hugo went on for weeks.
It became routine. Put boys on bus, pack snacks for Penny, drive to Hemsford, follow him.
She became an expert in the pattern of his life. That he did his errands during the week told her that his days off were Tuesdays and Thursdays—from which Rose extrapolated that he must work on weekends. His visits to the Laundromat told her that he didn’t own a washer or a dryer. Rose would watch him as he sat outside reading, waiting for his clothes to finish; he favored cheap science fiction, the kind with aliens and large-breasted women on the covers. He ate lunch out a few times at a local pizza joint, ordering the salad. Through the windows Rose had noticed the way he stabbed at the iceberg shreds, dousing them in ranch dressing.
That’s exactly how Hugo would eat salad, she thought. I mean, if I ever saw him eat salad.
The nearest grocery store was twenty miles away, a trip he dutifully took once a week. He always stopped at one of the larger towns’ chain restaurants before heading to the store. Olive Garden. Chili’s. Applebee’s. Rose’s heart sank whenever he pulled into one of these places … she knew she had no chance of watching him from the windows, their darkened interiors protecting him from her scrutiny.
After the close call in the Walmart, Rose never again followed him inside the places where he ran his errands. She knew she could very easily slip inside one of these restaurants, just another customer. Order the kid’s meal for Penny. Watch him from the darkness of an upholstered booth.
Hugo & Rose Page 7