Stay Up with Hugo Best

by Erin Somers

  We were standing at the counter now. The older couple had gone and it was just us in the store. He glanced at the salesgirl to corroborate.

  “He is,” she said. “Grotesquely so. He owns half of Vail.”

  “She means Aspen,” said Hugo. “And she’s exaggerating.”

  I said, “I know you’re rich. I saw the garage. I know about residuals.”

  “So why not?”

  I was afraid I’d like it too much, was why not. I was afraid that it was for me, this life of nice cars, and nice dresses, and nice houses paid for by an older man.

  “I just can’t. It’s against my principles.”

  Hugo looked hurt. He put away his wallet. “You fourth wavers.”

  The salesgirl wrapped the dress in tissue, slid it into a white bag with silver satin handles. She and Hugo exchanged an air kiss.

  “You take care of our Booboo,” she said to me, slipping the bag over my arm.

  * * *

  We were driving again. We listened to Nichols and May, the telephone sketch, where Mike Nichols is the caller, down to his last dime, and Elaine May the recalcitrant operator. The adapter wasn’t working well and fragments of rap music kept jangling in, breaking up the chatter. Between that and the engine noise, I could barely make out what they were saying.

  Hugo shook his head. “Gadgets,” he said, and switched it off.

  We rode in silence. I tried to think of what to say and I could see him thinking, too. I wanted to ask him if the guy in the store was right, if he’d been fired. The version the writing staff had been told was that it was mutual all around. The ratings had gotten bad, sure, but Hugo had wanted out for a while.

  “It’s no one’s fault,” Gil told us when he broke the news. It was the first week back after New Year’s. His face looked puffy from whatever he’d done over the holiday, strained from the careful containment of his misery. He had a new plum sweater on that seemed like a Christmas gift. His beard had been freshly trimmed. “This is part of it. Shows end, shows begin. Shows begin, shows end. Turn, turn, turn. We all knew it was coming anyway, right? It was just a matter of when.”

  But we hadn’t. I hadn’t. Or I had, in the remote part of my mind where I stored sensible, unappealing information. So I was surprised, and I wasn’t the only one. We were in the conference room, some standing, some in chairs. We’d been gathered informally. Julian stood up abruptly and left the room. Layla, another writer I was friendly with, put her head down on the table. Others were joking about it already, revving up the irony machine for the long haul. We’d finish at the end of May, Gil told us. He hoped we’d all stay and see it through, but he understood if we didn’t want to.

  “Do what you have to do,” he said. “Take care of yourselves. And don’t hold it against Hugo. Hold it against the network or hold it against nobody or, I don’t care, hold it against me. We can put names in a hat later and all choose someone to hold it against. Just don’t hold it against Hugo. None of us would even be in this room if it wasn’t for him.”

  I didn’t hold it against Hugo, but I did wonder. What if he had been funnier? What if he had gotten better ratings? What if he’d tried, really tried, to improve the show in its last months? A good faith effort, that’s what had been missing. Probably it wouldn’t have changed anything and the show would have ended just the same. But it would have been heartening to see him fighting, even futilely, instead of how he’d gone out: irritable and tired, exasperated but mostly acquiescent.

  We came to our turnoff, and Hugo kept going.

  “I have an idea,” he said. “Let’s drop in on Roman. He’s got a house in Westport. Big place, right on the water. You’ll like it.”

  Roman Doyle was a shock jock who sometimes came on the show. That he hadn’t been at the wrap party the day before was unusual. He had a talent for sniffing out show-related activities, attaching himself to the staff, staying too long. If he hadn’t been invited to the party, it was probably deliberate, someone doing all of us a favor. Personally, I’d looked forward to never seeing him again. I told Hugo so.

  “Roman’s great,” he said. “What do you have against Roman?”

  It wasn’t just me. The whole staff dreaded his appearances. He wasn’t funny, not in the way we valued. He wasn’t clever or goofy or dry. He had no finesse, no mastery beyond provocation. He would do one thing in rehearsal and a completely different thing during taping. He’d even managed to offend Gil once. Gil, who was consummately laid-back, who made an effort to be that way. Something Roman said about all female tennis players having penises. All of them? Gil had gone around shouting. All of them?

  “He’s unpredictable,” I said. “And he’s . . .”

  “What?”

  We got on the highway. Everything in this area, all the green-and-white townships and fine brick schools, existed in relation to the highway. It laid out two stark options: back to the city or far away.

  “Nothing,” I said. “Let’s go see Roman.”

  * * *

  Roman lived in a groomed and gabled house on the water. Hugo buzzed and the gate slid open on a manicured lawn with mulch around every tree. I was disappointed by the gray restraint of the place. Where were the garish classical touches, the marble nymphs and cherubs in repose? Even shock jocks had taste these days. You had to go to Los Angeles to see anything truly vulgar anymore.

  A handful of cars were parked in the driveway. A BMW, a pickup truck so big and round it looked inflated. Roman was waiting for us on his front steps, drinking a Budweiser out of a bottle. He was stocky with reddish brown hair and a waxed handlebar mustache that curled up at the ends. He wore a Knicks jersey, tux pants, and soccer sandals. To my knowledge he always dressed like this, even to go on television. He liked to sit on the blue couch wagging his hairy toes at the audience, while the cameramen rolled their eyes.

  “Great car,” he said as we climbed out, and Hugo looked at me pointedly.

  They shook hands. Roman shook my hand, too, saying, “I remember you. You’re the girl writer who sits there judging.”

  Days he came on the show, Roman hung out with the writers. Gil tolerated it because he was a friend of Hugo’s and because he got the show good ratings. Somewhere out in America, whole towns split their sides over Roman Doyle. Where those towns were was a mystery to me. Once, he’d horned in on our staff lunch, taking a seat at the conference table to eat his falafel and listen to people punch up monologue jokes. I shrank from this kind of working lunch. I couldn’t bear the pell-mell of it, the giddy, crumb-spraying laughter. Roman must have noticed.

  I shrugged. “I don’t participate. I’m the writers’ assistant. I help out. Take notes. Sort out releases. Go where I’m needed. Was, I guess. Was the writers’ assistant.”

  “Can I give you some advice?” he said.

  I knew what his advice would be. That I should speak up and make myself heard. That this business was no place for the circumspect. I had the kind of face that invited advice: youthful, impressed, faintly humiliated. I’d heard the lecture before.

  “If you have to.”

  Hugo pointed at Roman’s beer. “Can we have one of those before you start dispensing wisdom?”

  Roman led us inside. The living room was wide open, with exposed beams and a second-floor landing that wrapped around three sides. The centerpiece was a grandly rugged stone fireplace. Someone had decorated the house like a ski lodge. Navajo textiles were mounted on the walls, antlers above the mantel. It was another grown-up theme park. Impeccable, sterile, and well staffed.

  In the kitchen, a housekeeper got us drinks.

  “Do you want something other than a beer?” Roman asked me. “You seem like the fancy type.”

  “Do I?” I said.

  “Actually, you seem like you fancy yourself the fancy type, but really aren’t,” said Roman.

  I looked at Hugo. He smiled like I was receiving a lighthearted ribbing. I couldn’t tell, maybe I was.

  “We’ve never spoken before,”
I said.

  “I’m perceptive,” said Roman. “You have an expensive education, don’t you?”

  I wondered what about my appearance or my bearing made him think that. In reality the class divide swung far the other way. The housekeeper had poured my beer into a tall tapered glass and handed me a coaster cut from a geode.

  “I went to college,” I said. “It cost the usual amount.”

  “I knew it. Gender studies?”

  I had been an English major, which embarrassed me. Telling people only ever elicited a snide remark about Jane Austen. That or they’d lecture me about liberal arts as a waste of money. How I should have learned a trade instead, or skipped college altogether. The founder of Facebook didn’t finish college, they liked to say. As if I should go back and do that.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Gender’s a construct. How’d you know?”

  “I can spot a castrating bitch a mile away.”

  It was all so hackneyed, so tired. I wondered if Roman was smarter than he seemed, if he was doing some kind of knowing self-parody. How could he be serious? He couldn’t be serious. I glanced at Hugo again to see if he planned to do anything. He leaned back against the countertop, enjoying himself.

  “Is he joking?” I said finally. “I honestly can’t tell.”

  “He is and he isn’t,” said Hugo.

  Roman rattled his mostly empty bottle. “This guy gets it.”

  I found the bathroom and stared at six mounted arrowheads as I peed. The bathroom was always where I asked myself what I was doing there. Maybe because I had to look at myself in the mirror. My hair was wild from the convertible ride and my eyes tired. This time I did look in the medicine cabinet and found a huge translucent container of generic-brand Tums. That cheered me up a little.

  Hugo and Roman had gone out to the deck and joined a small gathering. Hugo sat on a rattan couch with maybe ten people clustered around him. They held foam koozies that said I’m the Asshole, the name of Roman’s Sirius Radio show. I noticed a lot of them were wearing hats. Trucker hats or camouflage hats or those straw cowboy hats that curl up at the sides.

  A woman about my age with long dyed black hair and a sleeve of tattoos came over and introduced herself. Her leather leggings made her walk stiff and squeaky.

  “Gypsy,” she said. “Roman’s wife.”

  She shifted the toddler on her hip, a little girl with pretty copper curls, and we shook hands. I hadn’t known Roman was married, or that he had a kid. The thought that someone could stand him intrigued me.

  “You have a nice house,” I said, and she said thanks, it was a bitch to keep clean.

  The people around Hugo found seats and it turned into a Q and A.

  A woman in a straw cowboy hat asked, “I’ve always wondered: Where do you get your jokes?”

  Hugo caught my eye and gave the same hammy shrug he had given Bony in the bar the day before. Only now it was for me.

  “Well, they begin as ideas,” he said. “Notions, I guess.”

  The woman in the hat shook her head impatiently. “But what I mean is, where do you get the notions?”

  “I’m confused by the word notions,” said another woman. “How are they different than ideas?”

  “Forget notions,” said Hugo. “Notions isn’t right. I mean you just have impressions, perceptions. And you train your brain over a number of years to process them a certain way. To structure them as jokes. Or filter them through your outlook.”

  I went to the railing and looked out on the yard. Dense blue-green sod unrolled to the water’s edge. There was a weeping willow kneeling so its skirts touched the water, and a dark wooden swing set with a yellow slide. A motorboat rocked gently against a floating dock. Far across the Sound, too far to see, Long Island stuck out like a finger. Good views were wasted on the rich.

  “So how is he doing?”

  Roman had appeared, passing me a joint. I took a drag and coughed for a long time, until he thumped me on the back with his palm.

  “He’s fine,” I said finally. “Why?”

  “He doesn’t seem down?”

  I tried to think. So far we’d eaten crackers and watched his TV show, ridden in a car and bought a dress. All of it fell within the scope of normal behavior. I thought of him on the street in front of Birds & the Bees, listing on his heels, inviting me out to his house after a ten-minute set in a hostile room.

  “Maybe he seemed a little wistful yesterday, back in the city.”

  “Wistful?”

  “Yeah, sweetly regretful. With twinges of longing. Like a Frenchman or something.” I became aware of how high I was. “Missing a woman he lost, a lover, but he was the one to drive her away in the first place.”

  Roman frowned at me doubtfully. “But has he said anything to indicate that he’s taking it hard? The show ending?”

  “We watched it together last night and he seemed okay. Calm.”

  “Regular calm or eerie calm?”

  I didn’t know. In person, I could barely read his true feelings better than when I had watched him on TV. He was basically the same slick product as always. A cereal box, a MacBook Air. His fame stood between us and I couldn’t see around it. It occluded him from view. I felt proud of myself for locating the word occluded.

  “You know we’re the only species that has fame,” I said. “Think about it. Dogs don’t have it. Rabbits don’t have it. Even dolphins don’t have it, and they’re supposed to be really smart. You won’t find dolphins idolizing one specific dolphin. Going around imitating one dolphin who can swim in a particularly compelling way. So why does fame even exist? It must serve an evolutionary purpose. Some advantage it gives us as a species. It helps us self-select or something. I think about that a lot.”

  Roman took a drag of the joint. His cheeks collapsed inward as he sucked. I saw lines on his face, the slight sag of jawline that would one day become jowl. I pictured him old, sitting on one of the rattan couches with a blanket over his legs, hooked up to an IV, unable to stand without the help of a nurse. Maybe he’s not so bad, I thought.

  “Is he putting it in your ass?” he asked me, his voice pinched from the weed.

  There was the Roman I recognized. My dad listened to his show sometimes in the car, never remembering the station, spinning the dial until he found it. It was always the same brand of bigotry lite. Roman and his sidekicks snickering about a woman athlete, a woman politician, a woman pop star. Every three years or so he said something to cause a mainstream controversy, but mostly he failed to astonish. You couldn’t shock the American populace anymore. Not in the perpetual eleventh hour. Too much had already happened.

  I took another hit and coughed mightily. Everyone there, the whole cluster of hat people, swiveled to watch.

  “Is she okay?” asked a man near Hugo wearing shorts made to look like the American flag. One leg stars, one leg stripes.

  “She’s just being dramatic,” said Roman.

  They all turned back around. “So what’s next?” a woman asked Hugo. A streaky, bright orange tan made her age impossible to guess. “Now that you can do absolutely anything you want?”

  “A nice long vacation,” said Hugo. “Maybe Florence. Or Macau.”

  “But there must be something you wanted to do that you never got to.”

  Hugo shook his head. “I truly haven’t thought about it. There was nothing else I wanted to do. Ever. Stay Up was it.”

  “You know what you should do,” said the guy in the flag shorts. “One of those shows where you’re you but a bunch of actors play your friends. And a more beautiful woman plays your wife.” He glanced over at me. “More beautiful than your real wife I mean. I love those shows.”

  Everyone murmured in agreement. Those shows were good.

  Roman tried to pass me the joint again but I shook my head.

  “Do you want that advice I was going to give you before?” he asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Go home,” said Roman. “Don’t get invo
lved. Find another way to get what you want. Whatever it is you want.”

  “I don’t want anything,” I said.

  “What are you doing then?”

  That question again. I thought about it, looking out on the Sound. There was Hugo’s magnetism, his charisma. But it wasn’t just that. I’d spent my childhood yearning for him, the last however many years working for him. I needed to find out what all that time meant, and what it meant now that it was over. I thought Hugo might reveal it to me, or the weekend might. Because surely it hadn’t meant nothing.

  This wasn’t a sentiment I could express to Roman Doyle. What had Roman ever yearned for? Floor seats for the NBA play-offs? A pair of real-life hot twins to make out in front of him? An endless supply of Monster Energy drink?

  “You know how all your life you’ve wanted a whole lot of Monster Energy drink?” I said.

  “What?” said Roman.

  I gave up and told him basically the same thing I’d told Audrey: I was spending the weekend at someone’s country house. I was enjoying the use of a swimming pool. Or at least the proximity of a swimming pool. I didn’t have any motives. I just wanted to see what would happen next.

  “And what do you think will happen?” he said.

  “Probably nothing. Nothing is what usually happens.”

  “Nothing is not going to happen,” he said quietly. “Not with Hugo.”

  We stared at each other while I tried to sort out the negatives. Even high I could tell that this time he wasn’t joking. I thanked him for the warning, but really I was annoyed. He was what? Concerned about my safety? He licked his fingers and used them to extinguish the joint, then turned back to face the party.

  “Who wants to go in the hot tub?” he said.

  * * *

  It was not strictly true that there was nothing else Hugo wanted to do. He’d wanted his show to move up an hour to 11:30, the Tonight Show slot. He had almost gotten it, too. Ten years earlier, the host who was on at 11:30 announced he was retiring early, after a coronary. He’d had his chest sawed open, he told the audience, and he’d glimpsed the saw. Well if not the saw, the towel covering the saw. Well if not the towel, a towel.