Hugo & Rose (10 page)

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 wrist 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.

But if she did, he might see
her
.

The thought of this terrified Rose.

Rose didn't know what she thought would happen if the Man Who Was Not Hugo saw her.… Something … something not
bad,
but also not
good
.

The idea of it made her stomach feel hard. He couldn't see her. Shouldn't see her.

So she stayed outside the restaurants and the Laundromat. Hidden in the safety of her minivan.

In all this time she saw him take only one phone call. He had stepped outside the Orange Tastee, cell to his ear. Paced back and forth in the shadow of the restaurant's eaves. As he talked, he squinted at the bright cars passing on the street. And for a brief moment, his eyes had passed over her car, parked on the opposite side.

For an instant Rose felt as though he had seen her. Caught.

Adrenaline flooded her body, causing her muscles to tense, her breath to quicken, pupils to dilate, the delicate hair on her skin to lift at the root.

But he looked away quickly, seeing only the reflection of the street on her windshield. Rose knew she was safe.

But her body still roiled with the aftereffects of the flight impulse. It took minutes for her heart to steady. The hairs on the back of her neck and beneath her panties shifted, settling back to their unalerted positions.

His phone call was short. Eight minutes, Rose noted, before he headed back inside.

The Man Who Was Not Hugo led a life of quiet routine. He seemed happy enough, though Rose had seen an existence that looked lonely.
Probably single,
she thought. There was little evidence of anyone in his life.

But Rose supposed she could be missing things: things that happened on the weekend, when she could not get away to watch; things that happened in the evenings, when she was required at home.

It was during these times that she thought of him most, extracting meaning from the details she had observed. She made dinner and tended to the kids and Josh with the same parts of her mind that had driven her to Hemsford in the first place. She ran on automatic, all the while allowing her higher functions to fill with the life of the Man Who Was Not Hugo.

*   *   *

Penny, compliant baby, happy girl, was witness to all of this—though “witness” is a hard word to use for the way a two-year-old observes the world.

The little girl settled easily into Rose's new routine, soothed with the electronic crack of Disney's oeuvre playing on repeat over the minivan's entertainment system. She napped in her car seat. Ate lunch in her car seat. Lived in her car seat.

After a spectacularly messy accident, Rose had started to bring Penny's potty seat on these trips. This she would set up in the aisle of the car, where Pen would sit, straining her neck to keep her eyes on the still running movie.

Rose would empty the leavings in a gas station on the way back home. All the driving was certainly having an effect on how many times she needed to fill up during the week. Thankfully, Josh never looked too closely at the credit card bill.

So Rose limited Penny's fluids. Less in meant less out.

When the car was finally too much and her little girl started whining and pulling at her seat belt straps, and even Elsa and Anna couldn't convince her to settle, Rose would drive to the flat, grassy park on the edge of town. There she would watch Penny romp through the playground for an hour, hanging from the swings, digging in the sand. And when time was up, Penny would easily climb back into her seat, ready for another “wideo,” as she would say it. Rose would then drive back to the Orange Tastee, hoping to get one last look before heading back in time to meet the boys as they disembarked from the bus.

Penny's mother knew none of this was good for her. Penny had a full life back home, filled with music class and pre-preschool, swimming lessons and enrichment. Penny had playdates, scheduled weeks in advance.

She deserved better than this, Rose knew.

But Penny's willingness to go along with whatever Mommy said made it easy for Rose to think that this “thing” she was doing wasn't all that bad. Pen wasn't unhappy. For her, all these videos were like a vacation.

And there was the added benefit that she couldn't yet tell anyone what Mommy was doing all day.

*   *   *

Rose canceled three appointments before Naomi called to ask if she was terminating therapy.

“Oh no,” Rose had said. “No. I think that would … I think that would be a bad idea.” At the moment she said this she had been on the highway, driving back from Hemsford.

When Naomi finally had her, guilted into the gloom of her office, Rose confessed only to following the Man Who Was Not Hugo
once
.

She told her the tale of Walmart.

Naomi's reaction made her glad she had not let on to the deeper truth. Her therapist's body shifted as she spoke, alerting to the danger in Rose's words.

“This was just one time?”

“Uh-hm.” Rose was afraid a full “yes” might reveal the lie.

But leaking this smaller truth allowed Rose to finally give voice to the thoughts that had occupied her for the past weeks.

“I feel like … like, he's hijacked my brain. It's becoming a problem. I'm always thinking about him. Obsessing.”

Naomi was quiet.

“I know he's not Hugo.” Said Rose firmly, “I do.”

Naomi relaxed a little in her chair. The danger had passed, her patient had a grip on reality. “Okay. Let's try another tack. Let's
indulge
this fantasy that this is the man of your dreams.”

“In,” Rose responded.

“Pardon?”

“He is the man
in
my dreams. Not
of.”

Naomi pursed her lips at the distinction. Moved on. “What would happen if you introduced yourself?”

A granite hardness landed in Rose's stomach.

“Rose, you're asking me for the quickest way to detach yourself from this fixation. This man
isn't
Hugo. Hugo doesn't exist. But some part of you—the part that is obsessing over him—isn't quite convinced. The quickest way for you to convince that part of yourself that this man isn't who you think he is is to introduce yourself to him.”

Introduce yourself?
Rose couldn't really wrap her brain around the idea. One introduces oneself to people at weddings, to insurance salesmen, to neighbors. One doesn't just walk up to strangers and hold out one's hand. “Hi, my name is Rose and I've been stalking you for weeks.”

And this man
was
a stranger. Though she knew details about him, the schedule of his life, he was no more to her than any other person in the world.
She didn't even know his name.
He was just some
guy,
who through some trick of the genetic lottery looked an awful lot like someone she had made up in her mind.

“If I do this … then what? What happens?”

“You will confirm that he is just a man. That he is not Hugo. You will be able to detach from these obsessive thoughts and go back to your normal life.”

And my normal thoughts,
thought Rose.

She had been so occupied with this man, the project of following him, that it had been weeks since she had thought about what a disappointment she was. What a failure she was. What a waste of sad flesh she was.

It had been nice, obsessing about someone else instead of her own failings.

A holiday from herself.

But still, it had to stop.

Rose just wasn't sure that letting
him
see her was the way. It felt perilous—though what the danger was, she had no idea.

Her stomach was still hard as stone when she drove away from Naomi's office.

*   *   *

Isaac was giving the hard sales pitch as Rose got them ready for school. Talking a mile a minute: “Ben Winters said if I had a bike, then this summer we could ride on the trails by the river. And Teddy Kosar said
he
got a bike when he was five. And Ben said he got his when he was
three,
but I don't believe him.”