Hugo & Rose by Bridget Foley

weariness Rose had never ascribed to him at all.
    The man did indeed have very little of Hugo’s grace … but there was something. A ghost of some kind. Like the remnants of a drink left on the sides of a glass.
    Rose watched as he swung closed the gate of the fence surrounding the Dumpster. He locked its chain with a key on his ring and walked to a tired blue car in the parking lot, then swung himself inside. Rose watched his silhouette pull the shoulder belt. The running lights of the car flared to life.
    *   *   *
    She followed him to a small matchbox house in a neighborhood north of the soccer fields. The homes here suffered a little from the stink of eau de white trash, weeds peppering the sidewalks, ratty garbage bins in front of the houses.
    The Man Who Was Not Hugo pulled into the driveway of a house nearly identical to the rest. It was, Rose noticed, a little better kept than the others. Its grass was freshly cut, its garden hose in a neat coil by the front step.
    Rose parked just down the street, killing her lights as he got out of his car.
    She squinted, leaning forward toward her windshield. Trying to make out as much as possible in the sodium glare of the street lamp.
    Her phone rang, startling her. Josh.
    It could be an emergency.
    But the Man Who Was Not Hugo was suddenly on the steps of his house. If she took the call, she could miss something. Some clue. She let it go to voice mail.
    A cat ran out of the darkness, leaping onto the stoop. A white-and-orange tabby. The kind Penny called “sun kitties.” The Man Who Was Not Hugo knelt to greet it, stroking under its chin.
    He unlocked the door and let himself and the cat inside. Behind the shaded windows, Rose saw the lights of the house switch on. A flickering blue indicating he had turned on the television.
    The phone rang again. She picked up.
    Josh wanted to know where the sheets were. Adam had wet the bed. He’d let him have too much milk before bedtime. When would she be home?

 
    seven
    They were on the beach when they heard the rumbling. A growing thunder from beyond the saw grass. Rose’s eyes tripped over the waves of green, searching for the source.
    â€œThat can’t be good.”
    She turned to Hugo and he flashed her a grin. Tall gorgeous tan toothy Hugo. Rose’s Hugo.
    The rumbling grew louder. Closer.
    â€œWe should get moving.”
    He shrugged, smile still on his lips.
    The tops of the most distant grass began to bend and shift, cutting a wide swath toward them. The thunder broke into its distinct components, the sound of a thousand hooves beating the ground.
    â€œOh God.” Rose began to run just as the antlers of the first Bucks burst from the grass.
    A stampede.
    Hugo was closer to the edge of the shore. His feet bit into the sand, seeking traction as he sprinted farther up the beach, the shifting grit slowing his pace.
    But despite this, he was in less danger than Rose, who had been on firmer ground but yards closer to the point where the Bucks had emerged from the grass.
    The animals were panicking. Their eyes wide, revealing the recessed whites. They were gnashing their teeth at one another, lips curled, exposing ruminant incisors.
    But more dangerous were the antlers. There were no females in the island’s herds, no gentle does, only thousands of horned males. Their antlers grew to enormous proportions, points sharpened against the trees in the forest or in combat against one another.
    Rose’s bare feet carried her closer to the loose soil that banked the saw grass; she could move faster here than she could closer to Hugo on the open reaches of the shore. Behind her she could hear the clattering of antlers striking one another. The Bucks were running close, preferring the safety of the stampeding herd to the less treacherous exposure of solitude.
    The Spider leaped out of the saw grass, landing on the beach, its diamond-shaped metatarsals sending a spray of pink sand