The Moment of Everything by Shelly King

French-fry-grease convertible with a wave. I looked over at Hugo’s windows. They were dark and his old Volvo was absent from the driveway. I’d have to wait for him and our chai tea from Trader Joe’s. I was now in the business of waiting.
    *  *  *
    The next day, Hugo stood at the window of the Dragonfly, arms folded, glaring across the street at the sign in front of Apollo Books & Music: ASK US ABOUT OUR USED BOOKS .
    “Fascists,” Hugo muttered, pacing around the reading chairs. He yelped when Grendel swatted at his ankle. Jason scooped up the cat in his arms, scratching him behind his ear, the one with the bite taken out of it. He bent over and whispered to the cat, probably something along the lines of, “Be patient, we’ll get them when they’re sleeping.”
    “It’s not just across the street,” Jason said. “They’re all over.”
    I’d seen them myself. Big beautiful signs in minimalist font announcing Apollo had one other way to sell books on the cheap.
    “Robert, can we sue them?” Hugo asked the man behind the counter. Robert was Hugo’s accountant, a friend from his Berkeley days. He appeared each month to mumble new curse words over Hugo’s bookkeeping. I’d always thought of accountants as hobbits in short-sleeve dress shirts, fat ties, and Buddy Holly glasses. But Robert looked like Shaft in a Hawaiian shirt. He’d been married to the same woman for twenty-five years, had a son starting at MIT in the fall, and had just bought a vacation home in Tahoe. Hugo would never say either way, but there was a lingering suspicion in the Dragonfly that Robert could be a Republican.
    “Sue them? You break your neck on their wet bathroom floor? Sure,” Robert said. “But I think Apollo can sell some damn books.”
    “Can we talk about this again, please?” I tugged on Hugo’s sleeve and held Lady Chatterley’s Lover out to him. “You’re absolutely sure you have no idea where this came from?”
    Hugo looked at me over the rims of his reading glasses.
    “Maggie, I’m old. I have a double-decker pill case. I drink martinis made with pot-infused vodka. It’s Tuesday, right?”
    “Monday.”
    “You see my point.”
    “You’re not old.”
    Hugo grinned and rubbed his belly.
    “I went by Henry for a while,” he said. “In college, I think. A young lady I was seeing at the time thought Hugo sounded like a communist’s name.”
    “She was right,” Jason said.
    I stood in front of Hugo and pointed to Lady Chatterley’s Lover .
    “Comrade, please. Focus,” I said.
    I told him about the e-mails and Facebook posts and the questions on Twitter from people wanting to know what had happened.
    “Everyone wants answers,” I said.
    “Sometimes it’s the questions that are a lot more interesting,” Hugo said, sliding the book from my hands and giving it to Jason. “Jason, what about you? Do you know anything about this?”
    Jason took the book from me, held it to his head, and squeezed his eyes shut. “Yes, I see something. It’s becoming clearer. There it is. It’s a snowball being thrown through the gates of hell.”
    “You’re not helping,” I said, taking the book back.
    “Wasn’t trying to.” He got up and hoisted himself onto the counter to sit next to Robert’s laptop, which Robert then moved away from him with an annoyed sigh. “Look, people write all kinds of crap in books. Doodles, reminder lists, the names of slutty girlfriends crossed out and replaced by the names of other slutty girlfriends.”
    “Negative energy, Jason,” Hugo said.
    Jason reached for a stack of books in front of the counter. He thumbed through the first one, put it aside, and then riffled through a second, Lonely Planet’s Paris , stopping every few pages.
    “Check it out,” he said. “All the best places to kiss underlined with little hearts as a ranking system. It doesn’t mean shit. It’s just people using books for things that they can’t fit on a highway overpass. Go ahead. Pick