Field Notes on Love(32)

Dad: I just figured it must be broken, since I hadn’t heard from you AT ALL today.

Mae: Bravo. Well played.

Dad: Thanks. Was the miracle thing too over the top?

Mae: Nope. You really sold it.



And:


Pop: I just emailed you an article about the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Mae: Great, thanks!

Pop: Are you still there?

Mae: Like…on the phone?

Pop: No, in Pennsylvania.

Mae: We’re actually in Ohio now.

Pop: Okay, then I have another article for you, about the steel industry in Cleveland.

Mae: Can’t wait.



But now that she’s in Chicago, Mae knows she owes them a call.

Eventually, she and Hugo get tired of wandering and find a narrow pizza restaurant with steamy windows. Inside, there’s a line to be seated, and they wait behind a family of three—a mom, a dad, and a girl of about twelve, all of them black. When they step up to the hostess, who is white, she grabs four menus.

“Actually,” the father says, “we’re just three.”

The hostess glances around him at Hugo, then at Mae, and it takes a long moment for her to register the kind of mistake she’s just made. A look of embarrassment passes over her face, and she hastily returns one of the menus.

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “Right this way.”

The mother gives Hugo a rueful look before following her husband and daughter, and he smiles back at her, but the moment they’re gone, it falls away.

“I’m sure she didn’t mean anything by it,” Mae says, trying to catch his eye. But he won’t look at her.

“Yeah,” he says, his jaw tight. “I’m sure.”

    At the table, they both study their menus, but Mae finds she can’t concentrate on food, not when Hugo is so clearly out of sorts.

“Hey,” she says, her voice gentle. “Does that kind of thing happen a lot?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes.”

“I’m sorry,” she says, thinking about all the waiters and flight attendants and hotel clerks who have looked from her to Pop to Dad over the years, their foreheads wrinkled like they’re trying to work out a particularly hard puzzle. This is different, of course. But she can still recognize the oddly blank expression on his face, a calm surface to hide all that’s churning underneath. “I should’ve been more—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says, snapping the menu shut. But when he looks up at Mae, his face softens a little. “It’s just…I’m used to having people around who get it. You should see Alfie when stuff like that happens. Even Margaret. So without them…I don’t know. I guess it just made me feel a bit lonely.”

Mae’s heart twists at this, and she feels such a pang of regret that she wishes she could reach across the table and take his hand. But instead, she just nods. “I get that,” she says, her throat a little tight, and they both sit there quietly for a moment, watching each other across the table. Then Hugo’s stomach lets out a loud growl.

“And hungry,” he says with a sheepish smile. “Apparently.”

“Apparently,” she says, and they pick up the menus again.

When they get to the hotel later, the storm has picked up, and they stand at the window and watch as scribbles of lightning flash over the lake. Every few minutes, thunder rattles the glass, but neither of them moves, mesmerized by the fireworks.

Mae looks sideways at Hugo, realizing just how aware of him she is: the dimples when he smiles and the shape of his nose and the way his shirt rises slightly as he stretches, revealing a stripe of brown skin above his jeans. They’re standing only inches apart, and the space between them feels important right now, like it’s the only thing that might keep this whole situation afloat.

    “It’s like magic, isn’t it?” he says, his eyes still on the window.

“The lightning?”

“Just…all of it.”

Mae isn’t entirely sure what he means, but she likes watching his face, the way his eyes flicker in the light, the way every inch of him seems so alive right now.

“We hardly ever get storms like this at home,” he says as a flare of lightning splits the darkness wide open. For a second, it looks like the world has been turned inside out, then it rights itself again. “Do you ever feel like what’s happening at this moment will never happen again? Like you could never repeat it, no matter how hard you tried?”

Mae smiles, but the question doesn’t seem to require a response. There’s another crack of thunder, and the space between them mysteriously shrinks until his arm brushes against hers.

Her stomach does a little jig, and the reminders go ticking through her head: He just broke up with someone, and technically so did she.

They won’t see each other again after this week.

He lives on the other side of an ocean.

This whole thing is strictly business.

She has more important things to think about.

(It’s just that right now it’s hard to remember what they are.) “So,” she says, trying and failing to sound casual, “any word about your wallet?”

    Hugo slips his phone from his back pocket, tearing his gaze from the window to look. His shoulders sag. “Nothing.”