Howard Shrier: Boston Cream

Loosely threaded trance music drifted through the air. Along most walls were framed concert posters of the Grateful Dead, Phish and the Dave Matthews Band.

Metallica need not apply.

A man with dark hair past his shoulders and a braided beard down to his sternum was leaning on the bar, testing a vaporizer the size of a cappuccino maker. It had a large clear bag fixed to a nozzle. He took a deep drag on a straw. The bag collapsed just a little. When he exhaled, there was no smoke, just a faintly visible cloud, as if Tinkerbell had just taken flight.

Half the tables were empty. At the others were groups of men and women, mostly in their twenties and thirties-if not somewhere back in the sixties-talking, nodding, staring, inhaling, exhaling. The strangest thing about it was the lack of smoke. The air should have been blue with it, but the dust in the air was more prominent.

“Are you a member?” the girl behind the bar asked me. Her hair was short, dyed platinum blonde, and she had piercings in both eyebrows, one nostril, her lower lip and her tongue.

“No.”

“Five dollars, please.”

“I’m just here to see Micah Fine,” I said. “I won’t be vaporizing.”

“It’s still five dollars. You have to be a member just to come in. Something to do with the law. Micah can explain it. After you pay.”

I gave her a five and she walked over to a table where four young men sat drinking coffee. The ones facing me had eyes that looked glassy and red. If your commanding officer told you not to fire until you saw the whites of their eyes, they’d be all over you. The girl spoke to one of them and pointed at me. He stood, gave the guy closest to him a pat on the shoulder and came to the bar with his coffee in hand.

Micah was about as different from my image of David as could be while still coming from the same parents. Tall and lanky with dark brown hair down to his shoulders. A few days’ worth of stubble. A leather band around one wrist, two cotton bracelets around the other. His T-shirt had a light pink screened image of the young Che Guevara against a blood red star. I guess all his tie-dyed shirts were in the wash.

“You need to speak to me?” he asked.

“I’m the investigator your parents hired to find David.”

A smile crossed his face. Amused, but just barely, at what his parents had done. “You want me to set you up?”

“I’ll just inhale what everyone’s breathing out.”

“You want a coffee?”

“Wouldn’t say no.”

He asked the blonde girl for an Americano for himself. I said I’d have one too. We took a table near the back. On the rear wall were posters from the last few Toronto International Film Festivals, along with a series denouncing recent G8 and G20 gatherings around the globe. Another showed a flotilla of boats in the open sea, with BREAK THE BLOCKADE above it in red block letters and below it the logo of BREAKOUT, a far-left group of gay Jewish activists against anything Israeli. Left or right, I don’t like the far fringes. And I found BREAKOUT stunningly hypocritical, given that Israel was the only country in the region where gays could live openly.

“I knew my parents were fucked up about David,” Micah said, “but hiring a private detective, that’s kind of far-fetched even for them.” His eyes weren’t heavy-lidded or red like those of the other patrons. He didn’t appear to be using the product, just providing the facilities.

“You and David close?”

He shrugged. “Growing up with him was pretty hard. Everything he did made Mom and Dad proud and everything I did drove them crazy.”

I thought of my own brother, Daniel-the rich, successful lawyer with the wife, the house, the kids, the thriving practice-and how I always felt his shadow over me, big enough, dark enough to blot out any sun. I thought about how Ron had skirted around what Micah did for a living; my own mother has been known to do that too. I ran into a friend of hers recently who thought I was in advertising because my mother had said I owned an agency, without ever saying what kind.

We were the second sons, Micah and I, and always would be.

“What about now?” I asked.

“He’s my brother, man, my only sibling. I love him. He’s a good guy and I respect what he does. We lead pretty different lifestyles, as you can see. The whole Jewish thing never really worked for me. I just don’t get religion. But he takes that shit way serious. There isn’t much we agree on politically either.”

“I’m guessing he doesn’t have a Breakout poster on his wall.”

“I’m guessing you don’t either.”

“No.”

“Big Israel supporter?”

“I lived there for a time.” I didn’t mention that I had served in the army there. That I had lost my first love and killed my first man. “When’s the last time you spoke to David?”

Micah gave it a few seconds’ thought. “A couple of weeks before he took off.”

“Took off. Is that your impression-that he left of his own accord?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure no one would kidnap him for ransom. My parents couldn’t pay a hundred bucks. All their money went to his education.”

You didn’t need a psych degree to parse that. “Nothing left for you?” I asked.

“Dude, I don’t need anything from anyone. I make a living running this place and I play gigs around town.”

“You’re a musician?”

“I suppose my dad didn’t mention that?”

“He said you were musical.”

“Ouch. Hope he didn’t knock himself out. Yeah, I’m a musician. Singer-songwriter guitar player sort of thing. I play at Graffiti’s a lot, Holy Joe’s, a few other places around Kensington Market. Right now I mostly open for other people but I’m headlining a show at the Tranzac next month. And I’m on the bill at Hugh’s Room in June.”

“Would David confide in you if he were in trouble?”

“But enough about me,” he said dryly. “First of all, my brother isn’t prone to trouble. I know he’s never toked in his life, and he doesn’t really drink. Everything is about the work. I’d ask him if he ever goes to clubs in Boston, ever catches any of the music scene there, and he’d say no, he’s too busy. The work. As to whether he’d confide in me, all I can say is he never has.”

“What about depression? Did he ever seem down to you?”

“What do you mean-you think he killed himself? Are you nuts? No way my brother would do that.”

“How can you be so sure? You said yourself you’re not very close.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice rising with his temper. “He would never do that. Killing himself would be like killing my parents too. You know what they have given up for him? You know why they still live in that shitty house when everyone else moved or renovated? Because Harvard cost forty-five thousand U.S. dollars a year and he went a lot of years to become this great surgeon. They’ve mortgaged themselves to the hilt. I probably have more saved up than they do. He would not leave them holding the bag, not when he’s so close to paying them back. That’s not the kind of guy he is. He doesn’t create problems, he solves them. He’s the guy who’s going to save the world. I’m the fuck-up in the family, I told you that. That’s why I’m worried about him too, because this is totally not him. I’m supposed to be the undependable one.”

A guy at the table Micah had vacated called over to ask if he was all right.

“Fine, bro, everything’s fine. Just family business.” Then he asked me if we were done. “Because you see that guy at the bar? I think I can sell him that CloudBurst 300, which is so overpriced, even an old deadhead should know better.”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks for the coffee.”