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The Nervous Center was just a little south on Sheridan Road. I liked the café precisely because it was nothing like a Starbucks or a Peet’s. A small storefront, it felt more like someone’s living room. There were a few broken down couches, covered with bright quilts, scattered across the scuffed and dark hardwood floors. In front of each was a different thrift-store coffee table, piled with old magazines, board games, and decks of cards. A display case near the serving area held oddities—plastic shrunken heads, programs to plays downtown, the most recent of which was a road production ofWickedfrom the early oughts, a lightbulb, a rusty pair of pliers, a signed photograph of Tura Satana from Russ Meyer’s classic,Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill.The ephemera seemed to have no rhyme or reason, but it constantly changed and was never boring.
Jazz played—Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and other icons. The music, soft, competed with the growl of the espresso machine and the coffee foamer.
Another glass case displayed home-made chocolate chip cookies, lemon bars, brownies, and an assortment of Danish.
I had no appetite.
We’d taken a table near the front window. Traffic flowed by, a bright-eyed endless train on Sheridan Road. I brought a mug of Earl Grey to the table and whatever-his-name-was had an Americano.
We sat in silence, sipping, although I suspect neither of us was thirsty or hungry.
At last, I repeated the words I’d used in my hallway. “Tell me.”
He cocked his head. “Where do I start?”
“Your name would be a good place. But I don’t want bullshit. I don’t want some aka, you know.”
“Fair enough.” He leaned forward and, from his back pocket, withdrew a slim army-green leather wallet. He flipped it open to the part where there was a plastic shield over a driver’s license and positioned it toward me.
I didn’t touch it. I don’t know why. But I did move closer so I could read the name and see the picture. The picture was him, no doubt about it. And the name? Hunter Graves. It sounded fake, like the hero or the villain of a horror novel. He was a year younger than I.
“I know, I know. It’s my real name,” he said. “If you need to see a passport—”
I cut him off by flicking the wallet back toward him. “That’s okay, Hunter.”
He picked up the wallet and put it back in his pocket. I wished I’d thought to verify the stats and, even more importantly, check his address. “Listen, there’s a lot to this story. I can give you the CliffsNotes, but I think you deserve to know more. I mean, I know you loved Jebediah Kleber.” He glanced my way, measuring my reaction to his use of Jeb’s full name and his knowledge of my feelings about him. I won’t saymy feelings back thenbecause I think, in my own way, I’d never stopped loving Jeb. That adolescent passion had frozen the night he vanished, almost as if it were preserved in ambergris. Long ago, I’d looked up the meaning of Jeb’s name, assuming it was of some hillbilly origin, but it was actually Hebrew and meant ‘beloved friend.’Yes.
“How did you know that?”
“He told me. Many times. I heard all about you over the years we were together. See, we had little to do other than talk.” He moved his head from side to side, stretching. “We were close—for a long time.”
“So you were, what, a friend?” My heart edged up near my throat. The past tense and just the overall feeling told me Jeb, my Jeb, was more than likely no longer alive.
“We were close,” Hunter repeated. The traffic whizzed by. He took a sip of his Americano. “I loved him too.” The words, simple, came out with no real import or emotion and I wondered what kind of love, although I didn’t ask. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
Yet I couldn’t stand the suspense. I wanted to know. And I didn’t. But I blurted, “Where is he? Is he still alive?”
Hunter’s eyes filling with tears, becoming shiny, and told me my worst fears were about to be realized. His gaze, moving from my eyes to the laminate surface of our table, sealed the deal. I wasn’t sure what I should feel. See, I’d kind of accepted Jeb was gone from our mortal realm—the realization had come a long time ago. But my dread was accompanied by its oft-undying companion, hope—that thing with feathers that could take flight with the slightest provocation.
“Do you really want to know?”
I slammed my hand on the table, causing the liquid in our cups to leap and scatter on the table. “Yes. Goddamn it.” I sucked in a breath, feeling on the verge of tears myself. “Please.”
Hunter reached across the table to cover my hand with his own. I snatched it away. “Tell me.”
Hunter closed his eyes. He was regulating his breathing. Slowly in, slowly out. Finally, he met my stare with his own green eyes, so much like Jeb’s. “You know already, but I can tell you need confirmation. Sometimes not knowing is easier—”
I cut him off again. “Just fuckin’ tell me.”
He reached into his back pocket once more and brought out his wallet. From the currency compartment, he extracted a small photograph, like the school portrait size one traded with friends, and slid it across the table toward me.
I stared at it for a moment before picking it up. I finally did. There was no doubt. This was my Jeb. In the photo, he looked to be about the same age I was now, maybe a few years younger—or older. It was hard to say. The portrait was small because it had been cut—jaggedly—with a pair of scissors. A mystery person had been snipped out the picture because there remained a disembodied hand on Jeb’s shoulder.
He didn’t look healthy. His skin was an ashy pallor, just a shade above white—a few purplish sores marred his once-handsome face even more. His eyes were rheumy, yellowish with broken blood vessels. His hair was dirty and even in this face portrait, I could see he was painfully thin. The bones in his face were prominent, the skin stretched over a skull.
I turned it face-down. The image broke my heart.
Hunter said softly, “That was taken last year sometime. He disappeared about a week after. Yes, sweetie, I think he went away, like a cat will hide, to die on his own.”
