Chapter 24

Hugo was so damn cute tonight! It wasn’t just cute, it was touching, too, and it kind of told me how much I love him.

And dammit I do, more every day, and I think it’s the same for him. It’s got to the point that I can’t imagine my life without him. The sex just gets better and better, but what it does even more is cement a closeness between us that goes beyond sex and into what ought to be the heart of real human relationships but much too often isn’t.

Like tonight. The last two or three days we’ve spent all day talking about economics, how the monetary system works, and it’s been a struggle for him. I still wasn’t completely sure he understood until we’d kind of closed up shop for the day and were in bed again and starting to warm up pretty good. And then he pulled away!

“I must not,” he muttered. “Not right.”

At first I was afraid it was me, I’d done something to upset him. But when I started to ask him, it turned out to be completely unexpected.

“I will give you child,” he said. “Perhaps I have already done this, and that is not good.”

I laughed out loud; was that all? Of course he doesn’t know about modern birth control, it never even occurred to me to tell him. I was about to explain, but then I had kind of a delayed reaction. He’d had other kids, why was this different?

“When I am with M’kamba I am already hunter. I can do for her and child, can bring food and other things, can...”

He was fumbling for a word, and I could see where this was going. “Provide for them?” I said as gently as I could.

“Yes,” he went on. “Can provide for them. Here you tell me of money and how it is needed for all things, and you say one may get this money through work. But I do not work, you tell me I cannot without this ID, and even when I can work I think I have no skill that is useful in this place, I will receive only little money. I cannot provide even for you now, it is you who provide for me, and surely I will not be able to provide for child.”

“Well, there won’t be a child, at least not until we’re ready,” I told him. And then I did explain about birth control. But that wasn’t all he’d said.

“Hugo, I don’t want you to worry about me ‘providing for you, ‘“ I said. “This is my world you’re in, I was born to it and you weren’t, you don’t know about it yet, and until you do it has to be that way. I do have skill in this world, very important skill, and I receive a lot of money for my work.”

He looked puzzled. “What work is it that you do?” he asked. “In the time I am here I do not see you work except for cooking and things of dwelling, and I do not think you receive money for that. And you are always here, we are always together.”

“Well, I’m not working at the moment,” I explained. “I have money put aside, so I don’t have to work right now. But I will again, later.” I firmly suppress the distaste I still feel for the law; there’ll be time to sort that out.

“It is still not right that you will work and I will not,” he said. “You say it must be so for this time, and I understand. But how if this must be always so? You say that Danny will find ID for me so that I may have a place here and I may work, but how if he cannot find?”

He’d put his finger right on what’s been nagging at the back of my mind, of course. I’ve been counting on Danny because, well, that’s what I always did when we were kids. I’d get my tit caught in a wringer, even before I was old enough to have tits, and I’d come to him and he’d find some way to fix things up, take whatever was wrong and make it right. It never failed.

But what if I’ve asked him too much this time? What if he can’t come through? It’s been most of a month, and we talk every two or three days on the phone, and he keeps telling me be patient, he’s working on it. I know he is, but I’m asking a lot and maybe this is the time he can’t get it done.

What do I do then? What do we do, Hugo and I?

But I’ve been worrying about nothing; tonight Danny calls and he’s got news.

“OK, sis, we’re going to get things in motion,” he says. All I can think is thank God.

He tells me to get a pen and paper to make some notes. I do, and when I get back to the phone he starts off by giving me a name. “James L. Tremaine,” he says. He spells out the last name. “The ‘L’ stands for LeRoy, capital ‘R, ‘ you’ll need to know that, too.”

“Who’s that?” I ask.

“That, sweetie, is Hugo, or it’s going to be.”

My mind isn’t working right. “But Danny, how’s it going to look when his ID says James LeRoy and I call him Hugo?”

He sighs in exasperation. “Dammit, Linda, I don’t know and I don’t much give a shit. It’s a pet name, OK? Or start calling him Jim. You work it out, I’m not going to spend a couple of years finding a Hugo, this is what you get.”