“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.”

  “What was the matter with him?”

  “Ah, do you really want me to say? I mean, I know you remember him fondly, or at least I believe you do. I don’t want to tarnish your image.”

  I was ready to blurt out the same words that were becoming a litany, “Tell me,” but quickly—and perhaps wisely—decided against it. All sorts of possibilities ran through my head, but the two most likely were he’d gotten AIDS or that he was a drug addict. Or both. The two often went hand in hand, especially if one was an IV drug user. These days, you don’t hear much about people getting sick from AIDS. There were drug cocktails for it now—things like Truvada and Nevirapine—and they’d made the disease treatable, no longer a death sentence or often even a serious threat. I knew because I’d been positive myself since 1999. Thanks to taking care of myself and a daily regimen of wildly overpriced medications, I’d never been sick and had always tested undetectable. Yet I also knew people sometimes grew resistant or contracted a variation on the HIV virus that didn’t respond well to treatment—or was resistant to it.

  If he was a drug user, or addict, that would and wouldn’t surprise me. His parents were both addicts. He’d grown up around it, seen the good and bad firsthand. Hell, with that mother of his, Jeb may have even come out of the womb addicted. Could he have the propensity for addiction in his genes?

  So, he could just as well be pre-disposed toward drug use and abuse as he was against it.

  But I wondered: do I really want to know these things? Do I really want my last memories of my Jeb to be of disease, addiction, suffering? Or should I simply hold on the images I still retained—that of a handsome young teenage boy with his bright green eyes focused on a future of love, with me?

  “Are you positive he passed? I mean, do you, like, have an obituary or something you can point me toward?”

  Jeb took a sip of his coffee. “I can’t say.” He stared down at the table. I did too, noticing someone had etched a heart on its surface. Inside the heart—EJ + BT.

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Both. Look, his death seems likely. We were in touch up until he vanished six months or so ago. He just wouldn’t up and leave us, me, I mean. He cared. Or at least I thought he did. It sounds sick, but it’s easier for me to think he died than that he just didn’t want to be with us, er, I mean me, anymore.”

  The scenario sounded familiar. I had been more comfortable, I think, when I thought Marc might have been murdered. His letter was both a relief and a hard slap across the face, defeating my sense of self-worth. I was unlovable, I guess.

  But just like that, hope returned. It wasn’t like the sun coming out or anything. In fact, I looked at it as both a good thing and a bad thing—sunshine or storm clouds, depending on how I viewed things.

  Knowing would have at least given me some relief. Not knowing at least gave me some relief.

  There’s a chance. He’s out there, somewhere. Why are the two most significant men in my life doing their best to keep away? And why am I unable to let go?

  I stared out the window for a long time. My tea had gone cold. The chatter in the café, a low roar punctuated by laughter, seemed unreal, the experiences of beings in a world other than my own.

  “Are you okay?”

  “No. Of course I’m not okay. Tell me how you knew Jeb.”

  Hunter stared into my eyes for the longest time. “I’m afraid you won’t believe a word of what I say.”

  “Try me.”

  “You know that old adage?”

  I replied, “Truth is stranger than fiction.”

  That made Hunter laugh and I had maybe warmed to him just a little. His laugh was, I don’t know, innocent and vulnerable. He had a warm smile and the laughter, under other circumstances, would have been infectious. “You hit the nail on the head.” Hunter turned to look at the round black-and-white clock on the wall. “What time does this place close?”

  “Not sure. Probably ten, I’d guess.” I glanced over at the door, where I could see the hours and days open in reverse, painted in bronze below the Nervous Center logo. “Eleven. They close at eleven.”

  Hunter nodded. “Buckle up, then, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

  I tried to relax, but found it impossible to keep my spine from stiffening, to restrain my shoulders from edging up toward my jaw line.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  Chapter 13

  1986—Hunter

  I

  “I think he might be coming awake.” Hunter glanced over at Keith, who was driving the van. Keith’s face was impassive, a sort of silvery-green from the moonlight filtering in through the dirty windshield. It reminded Hunter of the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “Yeah?” Keith turned in his seat to peer toward the darkness at the back of the van. “Looks out to me. Do you know how much chloroform I gave him?”

  Hunter shrugged. “As much as you gave me?”

  “Don’t be a smartass.” He punched in the cigarette lighter and pulled a Marlboro Red from the pack, set it between his lips. When the lighter popped out, he lit the cigarette. The van’s interior filled with an acrid burning stench. A wave of gray smoke rolled throughout the interior.

  Hunter wrinkled his nose and lowered the window a crack.

  “Put that back up.”

  “Oh, come on, we’re in the middle of nowhere.” They were driving west on the Ohio Turnpike. They were about forty miles past Columbus. “On the turnpike, no one can hear you scream. Or smell your smoke.”

  “Funny,” Keith said, the cigarette bouncing between his lips.

  Hunter left the window open a bit and Keith didn’t bother him about it anymore.

  “The answer is yes.”

  “Yes, what?” Hunter asked.

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, I gave him the same amount of chloroform I gave you back on that fateful day, or your lucky day.” He turned to Hunter, grinning. “Depending on your perspective.”

  Hunter sunk back into the black vinyl captain’s chair and closed his eyes. They were veering into a conversational territory he didn’t want to enter. Maybe if he pretended to be asleep as he suspected the kid in the back, Jeb, was also doing, the talk would come to a standstill. Hunter had learned over the past few years that feigning sleep often delayed or rerouted devious plans.

  He’d been with Keith Walker now for seven years, ever since he was nine years old. Walker, who’d called himself Chris Sgro, had dated his mom for a couple of weeks back in Hunter’s hometown of Steubenville, Ohio. One winter night, when Hunter was fast asleep in his twin bed, burrowed down beneath flannel sheets and two quilts, dreaming of sugar-plum fairies, he’d woke to find Sgro standing over him.

  “It’s your mom.”

  Hunter had gotten to a sitting position immediately. The jolt of fear about his mama was like a stab of adrenaline straight to his heart.

  “What’s the matter? Is she okay? Should we call Dad?” Dad was over on the west side of town, in a studio apartment he’d rented when he and Mama had separated back around Halloween.

  “No need to call him. Just get dressed and come with me.” Sgro leaned against Hunter’s bedroom wall, arms crossed over his flannel shirt, watching as Hunter pulled on jeans and a black sweatshirt. He grabbed his Adidas from under the bed and, after putting on socks, pulled them on.

  Sgro eyed him the whole time, and it made his scalp prickle. It wasn’t the first time he felt as though the man were regarding him a little too closely for comfort. Hunter wondered if the glimmer in Sgro’s eyes was just his own imagination or if there was something that went deeper in the man’s glance.

  Downstairs, Mama lay on the couch. Her dress, a black velvet thing she liked to wear with the pearls Gram had given her on her wedding day, was bunched up beneath her. Heat rose to Hunter’s face because part of her black lace panties were exposed. He looked away and asked, “What happened?”

  “I can’t wake her up. I think she mixed too many pain killers with vodka. I’ve told her before that stuff can be dangerous, especially together. I can help her out without getting the cops or doctors involved, which would be better for all concerned, but you gotta come with me.”

  Mama? She didn’t drink much and she certainly hadn’t used pain killers, at least as far as Hunter knew.

  Hunter wished, back then, he’d at least insisted he stay with his mom, who was in such bad shape. His heart ached and his nine-year-old mind immediately went to the worst-case scenario—she was dying. Her chest rising and falling was only a small reassurance.

  “I just need to get out out to the all-night Kroger’s and get some stuff that’ll help get her up. Now you go get in the van.”

  Hunter wanted to, but hadn’t even asked why. He simply went out, climbed in the van, and sat in the passenger’s seat. He even remembered to fasten his seat belt.

  And then he fell for the same thing this kid, Jeb, did.

  Chris said, “I got to get something out of the back. There’s a loose pop bottle rolling around there and it’s driving me insane.”

  “All right.”

  Chris disappeared toward the back of the van. The night pressed in. No lights shined in any of the neighbors’ windows, which upped Hunter’s anxiety even more. It wasn’t a good place to be—all alone in the world with Chris Sgro.

  The next thing Hunter knew, Sgro was behind him, reaching across his left shoulder to place a foul-smelling rag over his mouth and nose.

  Before Hunter could even wonder what it was and why it smelled so foul, everything went dark.

  That was seven years ago, or would be in December. Since then, he’d traveled the country with Walker, and done things his boy brain was too innocent and naïve to have even imagined. He’d been sold, traded, and photographed. He’d been used and abused by too many men to count (and some women, too—that part was even worse, because he’d always believed, based on his relationship with his mama, her friends, and her sisters, that women were kind and nurturing).

  Through all the torture and the degradation, he’d remained numb—an unwilling victim, but a silent one. He seldom said a word, and that was okay with Walker.

  Hunter was pliable and seemed willing, even though when the terrible things were happening, he wasn’t really there. No, he retreated into memories—summers swimming at the lake where Aunt Amy had a little cottage, hiking the foothills of the Appalachians with his daddy and the beagle they used to have, Topper, shopping at the mall in Weirton, going on long, aimless drives through the countryside with Mama and Daddy, which always culminated in his getting a strawberry ice cream cone.

  The stuff that was done to him seemed as though they’d happened to someone else. Even when it hurt, as it often did, Hunter learned to project himself out of the pain and the sickening closeness.

  He found a way to rise above agony.

  He’d become a shell—an empty boy with no thoughts, no spirit, no hope, dejected. Walker had stolen all the good and left an empty black hole in its place.

  And Hunter had never found out if his mom was okay.

  II

  “Why didn’t you fight him?” Sam asked, leaning forward over the café table. “Didn’t you ever try to get away?”

  “Early on, I did. A little. But he was older. He lied to me, so many lies. He told me my mama had died the night we left her on the couch. He said my daddy was so destitute over her passing that he blew his own head off. I was nine years old, man, nine. This guy, Walker, was bigger, stronger, older. Even though he hurt me time after time, I felt like he was all that I had, the only way I could survive. And he threatened me. If I ever did manage to get away from him, he’d track me down. And when he found me, it wouldn’t be pretty. I didn’t doubt him.

  “You might not get it. You had someone you maybe took for granted, but who took care of you, who loved you, who made you the center of their world. I was a kid, not even a teenager yet, when all this shit went down. I couldn’t get away. And, after a while, I just became numb, doing what I was told. I was an accomplice. And I wasn’t even an unwilling one, just one who went through the motions because I didn’t care anymore and because I never had a choice.

  “That all changed, though, when I was sixteen, and he decided he needed another boy, a different one, younger. That’s when he took Jeb.”

  Sam shook his head and leaned back in his seat. He lifted his cup, found it empty, and set it back, clattering in its saucer.

  “I don’t want to scare you or give you nightmares or anything like that, but you might want to know that Jeb wasn’t his original target.” He paused to draw in a deep breath. “You were.”

  Hunter watched as the blood literally drained from Sam’s face. He went as white as the coffee cup in front of him.

  Hunter shrugged. “It was a crime of opportunity. When Jeb went back into those woods to take a piss, it was too easy to resist, to wait.”

  “My god,” Sam marveled. “You’re telling the truth.”

  “Of course I am.” Hunter reached across the table to take Sam’s hand. This time, Sam didn’t pull away. “Look, I know this has all been unreal for you. And what I’m telling you must be hard to take.”

  Just then, the barista stepped out from behind the counter. Hunter looked around. He hadn’t even noticed the place had cleared out and the music had stopped.

  The barista, a middle-aged guy in clear-framed glasses and a long green apron, neared their table. “Sorry guys, but I gotta close up. As the song says, ‘you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.’” He smiled and there was a kind of gentle reluctance in it. “You need to finish up.”

  Sam shook his head, as though waking from a dream. “What time is it?” he asked.

  The barista said, “Going on eleven.” He walked back to the counter and began cleaning up and putting away.

  “How could that be?” Sam asked.

  “Time just sort of slipped away.”

  “And we’re not even having fun.” Sam gave Hunter a half-hearted grin.

  “You probably have work tomorrow, no?”

  “I do, but I wanna know more. If I went home and went to bed now, I know I wouldn’t sleep a wink, anyway.” Sam stood and took both of their cups to the counter. When he came back, he said, “I have to get home to Vito, my dog. He needs to be walked. Would you maybe want to come with us? Tell me more?”

  Hunter stood. “I’d like that.” He followed Sam to the door. “I’d love to see Vito again.”