A Strange Request

This story came from a prompt with a list of words that needed to be included in the story. I decided to up the challenge, making myself use the words in order. The result is a bit rough, and bizarre, but such is life!

It’s my last night working here, so I should have expected some sort of disaster. I kind of did, I just didn’t imagine it would be this weird. I’m sure you’ll think I’m making it up, but truth is usually stranger than fiction.

Things started fine. I was seated at the west piano, my favorite. Jenna was across the room from me at the east piano. Typical Saturday night spent looking across a sea of drunken humans to watch Jenna play. We could have whole conversations like that, reading each other’s lips. Handy when we wanted to point out a cute guy or one to make sure we avoided in the parking lot later.

Tonight it was a little sad. Expected, since it was the last time to do a thing. I’d miss this job. Some of it, anyway.

The weird started to creep in around ten. The early arrivals had enough alcohol in them to feel a little reckless, and the fresh push of latecomers were clearly treading on their turf. We saw this all the time, and usually things settled down within a half hour. But tonight Kenneth had to escort out a group of giggling drunk girls who got a little too handsy with a couple of guys that were clearly together in a way that left no room for the girls.

There was an awkward lull after the girls left, which Jenna tried to fill with some reliable Elton John. A tall girl in the back had another idea.

“Play the one about the carnival!” she yelled, jumping up on her seat to make sure Jenna and I heard her request.

“I listen to the tip jar,” Jenna replied. And I have no idea what song she’s talking about, she mouthed at me.

I didn’t either. I couldn’t think of a single song about a carnival.

The girl finally made her way to the pianos, and crammed a five into my tip mug. Still unsure what she wanted, I played some calliope music. “Is this what you meant?”

“No.” She rolled her eyes, then leaned close. “You know. The one about the carnival.”

“What carnival?”

She stared at me for a moment, then began to reach for her five.

“Maybe you could sing a bit for me?” I suggested, not wanting to lose the tip or any that might follow it.

“You know.”

I still didn’t, so I shook my head.

She gave a huge sigh, then “duh, duh, duh, duh, carnival.”

No additional words, which was not helpful. But the notes and rhythm were. “Do you mean wrecking ball?”

“Yeah. That’s it.” No embarrassment flickered across her face. I would have crawled under the piano and died. She just sauntered back to her friends while I started to play.

The tall girl jumped up on a chair to sway and sing along, screeching the words into the otherwise calm air of the piano bar. She got rowdy enough that Kenneth paid her a visit, guiding her down onto the floor and back to a normal volume.

Jenna began speaking into her mic toward the end of the song. “Tonight is Becca’s last night here at The Duel. She’s moving on to bigger and better things.”

A chorus of “no’s” and other disheartened sounds floated from the audience.

“Who’s buying her a drink?” Jenna shouted to the room.

“Get her an apple martini!”

My head turned at the voice, one my heart thought it recognized, but my brain couldn’t quite figure out. I scanned the crowd, searching through the sea of faces for one that would trigger recognition, match the voice.

Before I could find anything, there was a stirring in the crowd at Jenna’s side of the room. Bodies were bumping into each other, two fighting to get through the chairs and to the bar. Arms began to shove, push at torsos until a body finally tipped over, failing to flow around the obstacles in the way.

A blond man continued to the bar, victorious in his quest to be the one to fetch a martini. Another blond man cried out from his new home on the floor, “Shit. I think I sprained my ankle.”

Another job for Kenneth. Apparently he was going to be a very busy man tonight, dealing with a constant stream of juvenile behavior.

With the broken man picked up off the floor, and an apple martini moving back across the room toward me, I remembered my quest to find the face to match the voice. Again, I scanned the room.

A white mask in the back corner, hiding in the shadows that lurked under the stairs caught my eye. I looked back as soon as my brain processed what it saw, questioned why there was a ghost mask in the room.

“What the hell, man!” A loud shout right next to my piano distracted me from the mask I may or may not have seen.

My apple martini was now spilled on the floor, the victim of another controversy.

“Sorry, dude. You should watch where you’re walking.”

“You tripped me, dog face.”

The man I could only call dog face shrugged. This made martini man very angry. An arm flew through the air, a hand caught an inch in front of dog face’s face by Kenneth. The man was fast. Once he captured martini man’s fist, Kenneth escorted the rest of him out of the building. This was already a record setting night, and it wasn’t over yet.

I looked down at my spilled martini and sighed. I could have used that. Definitely far from my favorite drink, I’d prefer a rum and Dr. Pepper, but at this point, any alcohol would help me get through what was looking to be a very long night.

As if he heard my sigh, the voice yelled out again. “Another martini, lads!”

I wanted to yell out, change the drink order, but Jenna had moved into another song, this one loud and fast. No one would hear me. I settled for looking for the source of the words, the voice I almost recognized.

Again I saw the white mask out of the corner of my eye. This time I stood and stepped down off my mini-stage, determined to find the mask and hopefully the voice.

My mission was stopped by a fist that was too fast for Kenneth to catch. It slammed into a face, splitting the skin above the lip, possibly shattering the teeth underneath. Blood splashed free, dappling my shoes with blood. Against the black leather it looked like oxidation eating away a car panel.

I jumped back, tripping over my own feet and landing hard on my ass right back on my mini-stage. From here I had no chance of seeing the mask or the owner of the voice, but I had a great view of the fight playing out in front of me.

Kenneth struggled to break through the crowd surrounding the two idiots, cheering them on. Jenna played on in the background, but shifted to a gentler song, hoping to use her music to calm a crowd that was teetering out of control.

I wasn’t sure if I should move back to my piano or try to flee the fight zone. Neither seemed like a great solution. I would rather the floor opened up, revealing a trap door and a clear path to freedom. Instead a man slid in front of me, pushing a mask up onto the top of his head as he held out a hand to me.

I almost screamed, the sudden appearance of the thing I’d been looking for right in front of me, between me and flying fists and blood, was a bit much. The face behind the mask stopped my scream. It was a face I knew.

I let the man take my hand, pull me up onto my feet. He tugged my fingers, guiding me into a twirl that ended with me tucked against his chest, swing dancing as if there was no fight, as if we weren’t in the middle of a piano bar, with a 80s metal ballad playing in the background.

Maybe it should have been awkward, being held by a man I had only seen on my phone screen, especially with all the chaos spinning around us. But it felt like home. He shifted, bringing his lips close to my ear.

“When do you get to leave?”

It was the voice that had called out for a martini, the voice I had heard in a single voice mail on my phone, inviting me to run away with him. It was a strange request, to abandon everything I had here to run off to an island with a man I’d never seen in person. I hadn’t responded to him, but I had given notice at work, terminated my lease, sold my furniture. Just in case I decided to go.

In this moment, I decided.

I pulled free from his arms and scrambled back up to my piano and the microphone attached to the music stand.

“Excuse me!”

I waited a moment, for the crowd to still, Jenna to trail off, calm to descend.

“I’m leaving early, have a good night. And kiss my sassafras!”

I jumped from the stage, snagging my tip jar and the hand of my unknown man, headed for who knows where.