Field Notes on Love(53)

For some reason, he’s finding this all fairly amusing, and though he knows she’s serious, he can’t seem to wipe the grin from his face.

“Hugo,” she says, leaning forward and putting a hand on each of his knees, “I’m not kidding. If you don’t believe this, why should they?”

“All right.” He holds up his hands. “All right. I’ll give it a go.”

Mae looks enormously satisfied. She stands up and thrusts her laptop at him. “Good. I’m gonna go up and take a shower. You stay here and get to work.”

And then she’s gone. Hugo stares at the computer, wondering if she’s right. The email from the university seemed fairly final, but it couldn’t hurt to try explaining himself a bit better. He closes the window with the clip of Ida’s interview, his head already buzzing with his arguments. But just as he’s about to open a blank document, he notices a folder called rejects.

    He freezes, remembering their conversation the other day. It’s almost certainly in there, the film she submitted to USC, the one she never wants to talk about. And now that it’s only a couple of clicks away, Hugo is burning to see it.

He lets the mouse hover over it a second, his curiosity overwhelming.

But at the last minute, he sits back again. It would be too big a betrayal of trust.

Instead he opens a new document, staring at the white screen for a few seconds.

He thinks: Why I can’t go home just yet.

He thinks: Please just let me do this.

He thinks: Maybe a few seconds wouldn’t hurt.

And then he clicks over to the rejects folder and opens it.

There are easily two dozen files there, all with cryptic names like that one tuesday or typical weekend or snow day. There’s one called for dad and another for pop. One called groceries and another called you are here. He wants to watch them all, wants to dive straight into her head. But then he spots the one called usc and goes straight to that.

When he opens it, the window is black, with a small title card that says mae day productions. He takes his earbuds out of his pocket and slips them in, glancing around the lobby to make sure nobody is watching. Then he presses Play.

There’s a shot of clouds and some music, and then the camera pans down from above in an impressive sweeping shot and zooms in on a girl about their age walking toward a small yellow house.

    Hugo thinks: I should stop watching.

But he doesn’t.

She starts to reach for the doorknob, then changes her mind and sits down on the porch steps as two male voices drift out the window, arguing about whose turn it is to fold the laundry. The camera pulls in close to her face as she listens.

The camera work is impressive, and the shots all look stylized in a way that’s truly distinctive, bright and glossy and uniquely heightened. But he can’t help noticing there’s something a bit hollow about it, too, something a little detached.

Though maybe that’s how it’s supposed to feel. Hugo honestly isn’t sure.

Someone walks up behind him, and he slams the computer shut so fast it almost goes sliding off his lap. When he turns to look, it’s just a middle-aged woman with a glass of wine. She gives him a funny look as she squeezes past his chair, walking over to a group of couples assembled near the harpist. His heart is pounding as he opens the computer again, exits the window, and closes the folder, covering his tracks.

He looks once more at the blank document and decides he’ll work on the letter later.

As he steps out of the elevator on the eighth floor, Hugo tries to compose his face in a way that doesn’t make him look as guilty as he feels. But his hands are sweaty, and his stomach is doing flips, and he thinks maybe he should tell her before he gives himself away.

When he walks in the door, she leans out of the bathroom and smiles at him. She’s in her pajamas, and her hair is wet, and the whole room feels steamy.

    “Did you do it?” she asks, and he looks at her, startled, before realizing she’s talking about the letter.

“I started,” he says. “But I’ll finish tomorrow.”

She sets down her hairbrush and appears in the doorway again. “So that means you think it’s a good idea?”

“I do,” he says, and her face brightens. She walks over to him smelling like soap and something else, something clean and lemony, and he’s about to confess it all, feeling powerless in the face of so much citrus. But then she circles her arms around his waist and stands on her toes and kisses him, and just like that, he forgets about everything else.





The next morning, Hugo is still acting weird.

Their train is delayed, so they’ve parked themselves on a couch at the station, which is clean and bright and filled with comfortable chairs and beautiful lamps and low wooden tables, making it feel more like a living room than anything else.

Mae’s got her computer out, taking notes as she flips through the various interviews they’ve recorded so far. Hugo is sitting beside her, knee jangling. Outside, they can see the trains coming and going, and people keep streaming into the station, their voices bouncing around the cavernous space.

“I’m gonna get a coffee,” she says. “Want one?”

Hugo shoots to his feet with a suddenness that startles her. “I’ll get it,” he says, then promptly trips over the table in front of them, his long legs tangled. He barely manages to right himself before crashing into her laptop.