"What?" My heart drops to my stomach, and I start to tremble. It almost begins to seem that the more I think of everything that could go wrong, the more often it actually happens. Was it all really just luck, dice that the universe plays? Or was it something greater, something that metes out punishments to anyone who deserves them?
I shake my head and force myself to stay with reality. "Do you mean he hasn't shown up at all?" I ask, trying to keep the frantic look out of my eyes.
"I've already said that, Hon," she replies, twirling a piece of her poorly-done extensions with a manicured finger. Looking blankly at me, her eyes are heavy with mascara and eye liner. Her expression appears indifferent and almost bored. I can picture her in the bar, serving drunkards, selling herself to lechers, and growing more contemptible day after day. I shiver. If worst came to worst, would I ever end up like her?
"Who was he with the last time you saw him?" I press on, hoping to get some sort of an inkling of where he might have ended up. He seemed to always be with one of his bar-mates.
"I'd be the last person to remember. Go down there yourself and ask around before my boss decides to come here himself. If you want, I'll give you a ride before my next shift."
I nod at her gratefully and shove the house keys in my pocket before slamming the front door behind me. My father had taken our Chevy and our spare car was a wreck, with only a few thousand miles left to go and a obnoxious, sputtering motor.
She drops me off at the front of the bar and pulls of a bag of clothes from her glove compartment. I quickly turn around and enter the building before a pang of pity envelops me.
The place is really alive. It's lit in a way that gives it a slightly hippie, beatnik artist club feel, with warm purples and blues mixing with the flat yellow of incandescent light bulbs. A few tables sit in the center of the place, filled with people drinking, chatting, or playing cards. There's a dance floor on the end, and the music is upbeat and kind of catchy. I'm definitely surprised. The atmosphere definitely defied my expectations. It was much less vulgar and base than I had braced myself to face.
I start to look for one of my father's friends but instead, out of the corner of my eye, I notice a bartender walking in my direction and realize that I don't have an ID of any sort to justify my presence. My eyes catch glimpse of a hallway extending inside from a corner close to me, and I find myself walking through it, safe from any unwanted people.
I was wrong. I was really wrong. I wasn't in a bar. I was in two bars, and I had definitely needed to brace myself for this one. The floors were filthy. Booze and dirt were spilt and stained upon every crack of the tile. Articles of clothing lay strewn in corners and covered in grime as a few decrepit men actually started smelling them and putting them into knapsacks. On the opposite side of that wall, a man has pushed a woman up against a counter and proceeds to grope her, and right beside them, a group of people fumble with pills and powders, passing them around and exchanging cash.
I stay frozen for a few moments, much too overwhelmed to actually do anything. But when one of the men at the center table sees me and gives me a toothy smile, I walk as fast as I can back through the hallway leading to the other barroom. I fight back tears as well as the enormous pit of darkness ready to suck me in.
It all comes crashing down onto me. I really am helpless. I couldn't fool myself any longer. The grades, the violin, the excuses, Meg, they were all lies, all only fooling myself. I had absolutely nothing under control. I was futilely scrambling to put together pieces of of a life that just toppled over a few seconds after it had been set right. My father had been reduced to this. I had never thought it to be this bad. My final fear of losing him had just been thrown back into my face. It had already happened a long time ago.
I bump into someone and glass shatters onto the floor. I whip around, ready to pour out a profuse apology, but instead, I find myself face to face with my violin teacher.
"Kim?" he says in disbelief. He's young, in his early twenties or somewhere around there. They had called him a child prodigy, a rising musician back where he grew up in London but a couple of years ago, he had given up the pursuit of fame so that he could "live his life".
"Oh," I stammer, "I-I didn't know that you came here." I mentally slap myself as soon as the worlds leave my mouth. That was pretty much the stupidest thing that I could have said.
"Often, actually. I didn't know thatyou came here." The noise around me seems muted to my ear as I fumble through my mind for an excuse that didn't involve my father. Just as I am about to account a far-fetched story involving a cousin and plane tickets, I notice that he is laughing.
I crack him a tentative smile. Our relationship at the studio had always been strictly that of a teacher and a pupil despite the small age difference. Anything other than that had been curtailed after a few moments. But now, I was lost.