Last Man Standing (Lost)

Last Man Standing

"Comics World" read the sign above the tiny shop wedged in between a dry cleaners and a Western Union office. The comic store sat in the middle of a long block, which usually made parking a problem, but Hugo Reyes's luck held and he slid the yellow Humvee right into a spot by the door.

Outside in the mid-afternoon sun, a fat man named Manuelo leaned back on a rickety folding chair that looked just about to collapse under his weight. "Yo," he said as Hugo approached the storefront. "Haven't seen you around in a long time." His strongly-accented Spanish hearkened back to his Zapotec roots.

"Yeah, well, I've, uh, been away," Hugo stammered back, not wanting to tell Manuelo right here on the street that barely three days earlier, he had broken out of the Santa Rosa Mental Health facility with a wild-man of an Iraqi, thrown a Hot Pocket at the scariest person in the world, then gotten arrested for some murders he didn't commit and taken to the LA County lockup. And how just this morning, after the judge told him he was free to go, he'd had that weird encounter with the man in the taxicab. The man who was sending him back to the Island.

But Hugo's flight didn't leave till tomorrow afternoon, and he wanted some reading material. So here he was at Comics World for what might well be the last time.

"Away, huh. It's good to see you anyway, friend," the rotund older man said. "Take a look around. We got a lot of new stuff."

The inside of the small store was as dark, crowded, and cluttered as Hugo remembered it. Glass counters overflowed with toys, some new, some older than Hugo himself. Anime posters lined the walls, some mounted on top of one another, as if someone had put up a new one without bothering to take down the old. Three wide, battered wooden tables filled the center of the store, and cardboard boxes full of comic books covered each of them. A prominent sign on the table closest to the door said, "Dollar Comics," and that's where Hugo headed.

Behind the checkout counter stood a young woman almost half-hidden by a pile of unsorted comics, graphic novels, and office clutter. Plump, curly-haired, wearing a Wonder Woman t-shirt, she smiled at Hugo as he walked by.

Hugo gave a shy smile back and started to browse through the boxes on the dollar table. Some of the stuff was categorized behind cardboard alphabetical dividers, but a lot of it wasn't. He waded patiently through, every now and then glancing up at the girl behind the counter, but only when he was really sure she wasn't looking.

Manuelo lumbered in. "Hey Mia," he said to the girl. "Lunch is on your old uncle today. I'm going down to Barreiro's on the corner for subs. You want one, sweetheart?"

"Sure," Mia said. "Chicken with BBQ sauce. Hot."

"What about you?" Manuelo said to Hugo. "Just for old time's sake. Frequent customer and all, even though you been away."

Hugo wanted to. He really wanted to, and not just because Barreiro's made the best hoagies in East LA. It would be awesome to have a sub and a couple cans of Dr. Pepper from the old soda machine in the back of the store, to chat with Manuelo and the girl, and then spend the rest of the afternoon rummaging through the collection. And Mia looked up at him with a flash in her eyes which looked a lot like expectation.

But not this time. He had to pack. He needed to talk to Dad, especially, because Mom was pretty mad at him. She wasn't doing so well right now with his getting on a plane for Guam tomorrow (Guam, right, as if they were really going to Guam.) Especially after that wild story he had told her. A wild story which happened to be God's honest truth.

So with real regret Hugo said, "Man, I can't. Maybe next time."

"Next time, you got it," Manuelo said. The old wooden floor creaked under the weight of his step as he went out into the bright clear sunlight. Before he closed the door, he said, "Me and Ricky at Barreiro's got some catching up to do. So Mia, hope you're not starving. We might be a while."