Chapter 14

I guess last night kind of put the seal on it. Jesus, what a stud! And what a caring, considerate... loving lover! He learns sex even quicker than English, makes everything I ever had before seem like just the warm-up.

And my God does he smell good!

I took him in the shower with me this morning, and the shower got so long the hot water ran out. I didn’t care, and Hugo didn’t seem to either, we just stood there under the cold spray until we both started to shiver and then we scrambled out and dried off some and got giggling under the covers again and made our own heat for what seemed like hours.

Breakfast was very late.

I haven’t a clue where we go from here, but I do know a couple of things. Number one is that we need to go shopping, the food supply is getting a little low—hell, I’m running out of just about everything—and he needs clothes that fit him.

And number two is that I am for damn sure not letting this go. Not letting him go, not if I can help it.

Which means, by extension, that we’re going to hole up here for a very long time while I try to give him at least the rudiments of what he needs to know to get along in the world. And that means there’s no way in hell that I’m going back to the firm.

I need to make a call. Several calls.

It’s pushing at three weeks that I’ve been here, and I didn’t tell anybody where I was going so by now I think I must be close to a missing person. Let’s get that out of the way.

The first call is to my old boss, the senior partner. He said take as long as I need, but I think he meant days, not weeks, and certainly not the months I’m going to need with Hugo. Janet answers, and she almost shrieks at me when I tell her who it is.

“Girl, where have you been?” she says. “We’ve been worried silly, all this time and not a single word—”

I cut her off. “I’m safe, Janet. I’ll call again later and tell you some more, but right now I think I’d better speak to Irving.”

“You sure had,” she says. “Wait till I tell him who’s calling!”

He’s on the line in seconds, which is another first; usually you have to about make an appointment to get him to the phone.

“Where are you, Linda?” he asks almost peremptorily. “Are you in town? Ready to come back? I know I said take all the time you need, but we were about to get the dogs out.”

I laugh. “I’m glad you didn’t, I’m not ready to be hunted down quite yet. But no, I’m still out of the city. And Irving, uh, I meant what I said that last day, I’m not coming back.”

“Is that still eating you?” he says. “Look, Linda, if you’re still worried about putting that asshole back on the street you can forget it. If you’re away I guess you don’t know, but he was only on the street about four hours. He went straight after some smack, got it and managed to o.d. himself all in one day.”

“You’re kidding!” I exclaim. God, what a relief!

“He’s dead, dead, dead,” Irving says. “What goes around comes around, though not often quite so rapidly, I admit. So the only practical consequences of what you did are that you saved the people a great deal of money trying to get him through all the appeals to execution, and that jerk Peterson isn’t getting any nomination to the Assembly, where he wouldn’t have been worth a damn anyhow. Plus, the bright side is you won your very first case. So how about it, this change your mind?”

“Thank God he won’t be going after any other little girls,” I say. “But no, Irving, it doesn’t change things. I’m still not sure I want to practice law where what I do and how I do it can be the difference between life and death to perfect strangers, complete innocents. And anyway something, well, something’s come up. Something else.”

“Another firm?” he demands. “Dammit, Linda—”

“No, no, not another firm,” I interrupt him. “Not law at all, at least for a while I’m not going to be practicing.”

He goes on at me for the next ten minutes, first badgering me to return and then trying to press me about the “something else.” But I hold fast and don’t tell him anything except no. If I talk about Hugo he’ll be all over me for details and want to run a background check—Irving’s very fatherly—and, well, Hugo’s background is just a touch old to show up on any records he’ll be able to find.

I do tell him where I am; with caller ID he’ll be able to track it by the phone number anyway, and besides it seems a little cloak-and-daggerish not to. But I say I’m planning an extended vacation, and that he shouldn’t count on me.

He finally gives up, just telling me that whenever I’m ready to get back to the law I should talk to him first, and we end it gracefully.

Still some more calls, a couple of girlfriends—just a couple, a junior associate doesn’t have a whole lot of time for a social life. And Danny. My brother and I aren’t that close any more, he’s five years older so we weren’t ever best pals or anything as kids—besides, he was a boy—but I usually talk to him once a week or so. He’s probably tried to call and got no answer.

I deal with the girlfriends first. I tell them I’ve met a guy and I’m staying here with him for a rest, and they both just about ooze envy. They try to push me for details but I get coy about it. I do tell one how great it is in bed, but when she wants a name all I say is Hugo and go on some more about bed, in more detail than she wants to hear, and she gets uncomfortable enough that she drops it.

Danny’s different. He did call, repeatedly, and when all he got was my service with no callback he was getting worried. He’d phoned work, and when they told him they didn’t know where I was either he tells me he was ready to put me out as an m.p. with the cops if he hadn’t heard from me pretty soon.

I tell him where I am (there’s that damn caller ID again, I can’t really hide it), and then he asks a bunch of questions, and I tell him about Hugo, too, hoping that’ll quiet him down, but instead he gets pushy.

“Hugo what?” he demands. Shit, I don’t know. I guess I’m going to have to know sometime, I’ve got to find him an identity if he’s going to live here, but it’s too soon for that.

“Smith?” I say. I guess he hears the question mark, because he jibes me.

“Smith?” he repeats. “You sure, sis?”

“Smith,” I say again, this time more positively. He buys into it now.

“So who is this Hugo Smith?” he asks. “Some ski bum?”

“Absolutely not,” I tell him. “He’s a hunter. Damn good one, too.” Christ, he must be if he was going after an aurochs with nothing more than spears.

Danny keeps pushing for more, and I keep stalling. Finally he says he’s going to come up to meet “this Hugo Smith of yours.”

“No!” I say sharply. Maybe too sharply, I realize belatedly, but too late now, it’s out. I try to soften it. “Danny, don’t come. Please. Give us a little time together first, OK? I promise you’ll meet him, you’re all the family I’ve got left and I’m not going to shut you out, but this is private time for now. Our time, OK?”

At last he backs off. We talk a bit more, and I promise to call again in a week or so, and I’m done at last.

Hugo’s simply been sitting all the time I’ve been on the phone. I told him what it is before I started, that it lets me talk to people far away, He took it the way he’s taken everything here, simple acceptance. How does he do it? I know I couldn’t.

Well, maybe today we’ll find out how far acceptance goes. I’m going shopping, and I’m taking him with me; I’m not sure how much trouble he might get into here if I left him, and besides he needs to see a little of the world, and besides that, more practically, if I’m going to get him clothes he has to be there to try them on.

First I lay out some ground-rules. He should just act like nothing is that strange to him. He should stay with me and only talk to me; if anybody speaks to him he should just nod at them and smile. If he has questions he should ask them quietly, and only when there’s nobody within hearing distance.

“And no touching or anything,” I add. “That’s just for us in private, not in front of other people.”

I should have realized it wasn’t going to be anything like that simple. But what actually happens is over the top.

First there’s the car. I treated myself to a little sports job when I graduated law school, and it’s a bit of work to show him how to fold himself up and get in. He asks me why do we get in at all, of course he doesn’t know, and I tell him the car moves and will take us where we’re going. He looks ahead and it’s downhill and he just nods and then asks will we walk back?

I guess he thinks it’s a sled or something. I say the car will bring us back, too, it moves with power. He clearly doesn’t understand, but it’s like everything else, he just accepts. He’s a little uncomfortable when I strap him in, but even that he tolerates in silence.

When we’re finally in and I crank the engine he jumps a little at the noise, but it’s nothing to what he does as we get moving. I’m holding it down pretty slow, there’s still a lot of ice and packed snow, but I see out of the corner of my eye that he’s gripping anything he can reach as hard as he can.

“Relax,” I tell him, reaching over with one hand to touch him with what I hope is reassurance. “I’m a good driver, we’ll be OK.”

“So fast!” he says, loosening his grip on the dash and the edge of his seat only a little.

“It goes a lot faster,” I tell him. “It’s slippery here, I have to drive slow.”

He looks at me in utter disbelief, but he doesn’t do anything drastic like wrench open the door and jump out. Come to think of it, he doesn’t know how to open the door, does he? Or undo the seatbelt. Maybe it’s best I wait until after we get there to show him.

When we hit the main road it’s been completely cleared and I’m able to get up to seventy. I think he’s going to be petrified, but no, he starts to really relax. There’s a lot of traffic and it’s all going the same speed more or less, I guess he sees that. After a while he seems to be real­ly enjoying himself.

“I never go this fast,” he tells me, rather unnecessarily. “It is wonderful!”

I laugh, completely at ease. The man is a damn marvel.

We’re headed to a small strip mall where there’s both a decent grocery and one of those big discount stores. Clothes first, I figure, then food.

When we get to the parking lot I’m a little preoccupied finding a space—damn, I hate parking lots—so it isn’t until we’re parked that I see him looking around with a shocked expression on his face. “What is it?” I ask.