This morning, when I hear Hugo’s voice in my ear, along with the peacocks’ voices, I’m not as annoyed as I was a couple of days ago with his incessant back-to-back calls on my landline and cell phone. I turn to him under the window’s hazy yellow light.
We kiss with slow, burning abandon, and make love.
The dark, heavy feeling of the last few days seems to lift.
Even my thoughts of Charlie are fond, without fear or ghostly chiding.
It’s obvious that neither of us wants to lose these sweet, delicious sensations, and although it’s not the first night we’ve spent together (it’s the second), our way with each other—the smooth, eager yield of my flesh against his; our breathing in deep, passionate synchronicity—seems to have reached a different, higher level. There’s an acceptance of each other. A melding of respect and ebullience. So even when the clock reads nine, and we know this is Thursday, a workday, we both procrastinate, pulling our heads under the covers, facing each other, smiling, almost conspiratorially.
Maybe we can hide … here.
And, we do, for another thirty minutes.
Finally, we get up and shower, together.
This time, Hugo doesn’t put on so many sickly faces when I scramble the tofu in front of him. I can tell he’s working hard to tolerate it. But when I take the soy bacon and lay it flat in the oven, he turns away.
I smile.
I guess good sex only goes so far.
Still, when I put a heaping plate of breakfast before him, he eats it with zest.
We’re sitting at a small wicker table on my salt-and-sea-worn porch that faces the wild grasses of the sloping backyard. We look beyond the ongoing second-bedroom construction, out to the seemingly endless expanse of Pacific Ocean. This is one of those rare mornings when the water is as smooth as glass, and when we’ve finished our meal, we’re both silent, immersing ourselves in the beauty of this shimmering aqua-and-silver tableau.
Nature’s gift.
We grin at each other, not talking, no questions, no need for sexually frustrated banter; life feels good.
Full, peaceful.
Stable.
At least internally.
But life, being what it is, particularly in the twenty-first century, is an exercise in adaptive skill, even prowess …
And there comes a knock on my door.
We hear it through the wide sliders that lead to the living room and the front hallway.
Hugo’s eyes hold mine, and we both unconsciously reach for each other’s hands, our fingers intertwined and lingering, as if the phalanges have minds of their own, in this tiny, cherished moment.
The knock is loud. Insistent.
Then, a voice: I recognize the intermittent grunts.
It’s the cop from the DVI office building, in the black-and-white cruiser: Lieutenant Brady.
Hugo grabs my hand tighter.
I stand to answer the door.
Hugo’s still got my fingers.
He’s not releasing me.
Brady knocks on the door—louder.
Hugo’s palm turns wet against my own. He’s working to say something, but my heart feels as if it’s thumping in my head, keeping time with Brady’s fist at the door, and I realize, in an instinctive, trapped-animal kind of way, that Hugo may have had an ulterior motive in coming up this hill last night.
A motive beyond the sex. Even if it was good, was great, was hot as hell, it may have been just a perk—because there could be a story in this.
A news story.
“Mierda, Hugo!” I almost spit. “Let me go.”
“It’s not what you think, Ez,” he says, standing, still gripping my hand. “Don’t worry, mi amor. It’s just a few questions—”
“You mean an interrogation?” I shriek, incredulous. “What in this polluted shambles of a world would I need to be interrogated about?”
Hugo draws me to him, holding me tight.
I break free and stomp on his foot.
Not too hard, but enough for him to know he’s no longer welcome near me, or in my home, or …
“Esmeralda Green?” Lieutenant Brady shouts.
“Just a minute,” I finally shout back.
Hugo pleads, “Let me drive you, Ez. It’s no big deal.”
I turn away from him, go to the kitchen, grab my keys off the recycled counter, and my small hemp wallet that fits in my jeans pocket. I reach for my smartphone but remember that the detective took it.
Is that what this is about?
I open the door, shooing Hugo out of my house. He skulks to the driveway like the coyote of the night before, except I’ve got no sympathy for this dog.
Brady offers to drive, and I let him.
Not because I want to ride with him but because Hugo’s car is blocking mine, and I don’t want to ask him to move it. It’s also at this moment that I make a silent vow never to speak to him again.
In no small part because he’s still driving that same old … Hummer.
I ride in the backseat of Brady’s black-and-white and look out the back window as Hugo follows right behind, motioning with his hands to me in a gesture of prayer, which I suppose from his corrupted perspective also passes for apology.
I turn to face forward, and Brady mumbles, “Thanks for comin’ in. Detective Whitney wants to talk to you is all …”
Hmmm.
Talk to me about what?
Abigail’s phone call?
Did she learn something more about it?
And why?
Why did Abigail call me?