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No one at the Two Star Bar & Grill (But Mostly Bar) was really sure of Hager’s age, though it was rumored to be anywhere between 57, like the steak sauce, and 73, the year The Exorcist was released. Hager never gave a straight answer to that particular question, and of course his actual age would have varied throughout the period in question even if his apparent age did not. Speculation surrounded other details as well. For two consecutive weekends Hager’s given name became a minor topic of debate, with ‘Steven’ and ‘Jeff’ being the top contenders, and naturally there were side bets as to whether these involved a ph or a G. Hager himself made no effort to resolve these controversies, offering only a shy smile in response to unexpectedly becoming the center of attention. To say that Hager was a fixture at the Two Star Bar & Grill (But Mostly Bar) would not be accurate, however, as few could recall his presence outside of Saturday Trivia.

For the price of one or two cans of hipster beer, you could recruit him to your team, and as a result, your chances of finishing on the podium would instantly improve. Hager didn’t know the answers to everything, not nearly, but the breadth of his knowledge across pop culture, history, and the sciences (both hard and soft) was formidable. More than once he led a mediocre team of twentysomethings to outright victory. Unassuming but confident, he was functionally part mascot and part sage; in terms of team dynamics, though, he was more akin to a favorite co-worker. Didn’t talk much, but wasn’t aloof either. Had a decent sense of humor, but wasn’t loud about it. He just did his job, and you felt honored to be pulling in the same direction. If lauded, Hager would demur by explaining that he wasn’t ‘good at trivia,’ but rather was ‘just old.’ No one knew what he did for a living—retired schoolteacher, perhaps?—and he politely declined to hang out and continue drinking post-trivia beyond finishing that second can of now-warm beer.

Over time Hager’s communication skills noticeably began to diminish. He wasn’t trusted with writing answers on those little sheets of lined paper for his penmanship had become illegible even to himself. After some weeks or months, this development was followed by the discovery that he couldn’t always explain his reasoning nor fully understand that of others. And so his teammates had to listen carefully to a kind of mumbling stream of consciousness after each question, filtering it for nuggets of value like prospectors in the murk. He was pure memory retrieval now, Hager was, and little else.

Then, one Saturday around 10 pm, after the scores were tallied and the winners declared, a young woman with a vibrant hairstyle observed that she hadn’t seen Hager in quite a while, and this generated a shared murmur of consensus. Nowadays, of those who still remember him, many believe Hager slunk away to die in privacy, as some old cats are said to do. However, this is just one more area in which information is limited, recollections are clouded by the swirl of the new, and the past retreats inexorably into the vastness of itself.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Peter Gutiérrez is a poet and writer, and his books include the story collection From Bad to Worse and the novella The Trees Melt Like Candles. He lives and works–both terms used loosely–in New Jersey.