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Once again in his arms, I was carried back to the bed and tucked in under the heavy duvet. Keeping a hand on me at all times, Hugo went around to the other side and climbed in beside me, my body instinctively rolling toward him. He took me in a warm embrace and held me until I fell asleep.
Chapter Seven - Vega
It wasn’t what I expected. Though often, the part you don’t expect was the good stuff. I wasn’t sure what it spoke to more, but I really had expected the two weeks with Hugo to be a continuous sexual escapade.
My initial virginity in no way dampening my enthusiasm for the prospect. He seemed to know that. And what the likely result would be. My ravenous desire for sex leveling off, at least to more manageable levels. The final release of years of pent up frustration, as satisfying as it was edifying.
I was certainly up for more, but also understood the importance of interludes. For the sake of my health and comfort if nothing else. I’d only just started learning what could be done. Probably best to take it easy at first. Until my body had time to adjust to the new reality.
Pages rolled in a steady rhythm. Like the tide on the beach, slow and measured. The powerful, visceral sentences coming together to punch me in the heart. This manuscript was curb-stomping my feelings until I wanted to cry out in pain. But despite the agony the book put me through, I also couldn’t stop, an undeniable drive compelling me to continue, as though it would hurt more to stop.
It was all there. The poetry, the humor. The glorious, glorious historical references. Woven together into a tapestry worthy of the Vatican. Yet, struck through with an aching agony I could feel pressing in my chest as the narrative unwound. Each page, each paragraph bursting a new wealth-spring of tears I refused to let flow.
I stole a look at Hugo as he busied himself on his computer, waiting for my notes on the first few chapters. The book was broken into smaller sections to make the editing process easier. I wondered how much of it was true. It was difficult to imagine such authentic anguish coming out of nowhere.
There must have been something. An event, small or large, that gave him some insight. Most likely in the past five years, because his earlier writing had no such elements. I couldn’t see the cracks, but could sense something had broken. Most likely his heart.
“What do you think?
He might as well have asked how many licks to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop. How the fuck was I supposed to answer that question? I couldn’t without the risk of hurting him even more.
“Luminous,” I hedged, going for the nicest descriptor to hand, “like your earlier work but also stands alone. There is a new - maturity.
I did my best not to make it sound like a question. There was maturity to be sure. As well as the stinging, lashing wages of hard experience. One came more readily to mind than the other. It took some quick thinking to come up with a compromise, ‘maturity’ not the first descriptor that came to mind.
“Thank you. I really wasn’t sure it was, you know, any good. I only started working on it again a couple years ago. Perhaps I’d lost my touch.
I wanted to reassure him. Quote what Harlan Ellison said about how writers get to a level below which they did not sink. It seemed inappropriate, considering all the new blood, metaphorical and apparently literal, that had gone into the new manuscript. If the foreshadowing was anything to go by. He would hate the comparison but Hugo really did have a mystery writer’s sense of structure. Nothing came out of nowhere. Each element present, sometimes very subtly, to the end. It was unlikely he’d have read Sherlock Holmes as a boy, but there was more than one French-language equivalent.
The beast grumbled, Hugo’s joining in chorus. Their urgency clear as it was undeniable. Hunger was becoming of paramount focus.
We had already eaten lunch, some kind soul leaving a tray outside the office door. Predicting we wouldn’t be making it to the dining room. I thought of the woman who’d taken me to him and wondered how much staff he still had that I hadn’t seen, especially for the actual vineyard. There were no grapes on the plants that I could see, alhough that could have been a seasonal thing, unless he specialized in ice wine. In which case things had gone very badly indeed.
Stuck in the void between lunchtime and dinner, which was always served at eight, we were left to our own devices.
“I’m not sure what to make but –
“I do.”
“Oh?”
“Show me to the pans and cutlery and then stand back,” I told him confidently.
