Talking in Loud Bars

Darcy Williams steps off the tube into the cool autumn air of the city and lights a cigarette. Her metal flip lighter is engraved with the name of the man she is on her way to meet; her father had never been a smoker but always kept the lighter on him. She is still in her work clothes, having only taken the time to drop her briefcase before dashing out the door again, although, in most ways, this was work. Her boss had pitched her the article about childhood, about elderly parents, about distance. She knew she could do it, of course she could, she was the best of the best, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to. It was the magazine that had booked her father’s flight here, no matter how she objected.

Nerves bristle inside her coat as her heels hurry over familiar pavements. The glowing sign comes into view, and she checks her gleaming watch. One minute past seven. Not so late it would matter: besides, her usual table was already booked. This is where she would bring her interviewees when she thought them likely to be nervous; the last thing she needed was for them to close like a clamshell, and her quiet table in the back of the jazz bar put them at ease. The music was loud enough to conceal any private matters but gentle enough that it would not disrupt the flow of conversation, and teary eyes could be blamed on the cigarette smoke rising from each table. She greets the hostess by name. She does this all the time. There is no need to be nervous.

A grey-haired man is sitting at the bar. She is barely at his side before he is speaking:

“You’re late.” His voice is the same smooth baritone of her childhood, and it seems to pick up the notes of the piano as it floats towards her.

“The tube was late.”

“Bullshit.” He isn’t angry - “You stopped for a cigarette.” - at least, not about her being late. She waves him off and accepts the chilled glass of something citrus that the bartender offers her. A martini, she hopes, she could do with a drink, but alas, she is working, and the twist of lemon lies clean in a glass of gently sparkling water. She sets it on the glossy wooden bar.

In her purse there is a tiny notepad, and on it, the dozens of questions she spent hours gathering ahead of this moment. But none of them seem right now it has come to it. It is much too impersonal to ask him what it was like when she was a child, she was there, of course, living it. But then again, she has no idea, not what it was like for him, she’s not even sure he knows this is an interview. If he doesn’t, after all these years it seems cruel that this is the only reason they should see each other. She doesn’t mention it. Instead, they sit in the wake of the last solo and sip their drinks. She does not know how to talk to him, she realises, as the vocalist hums the next tune into the microphone. Darcy, for the first time since the beginning of her career, doesn’t know how to get her target to say what she wants him to. What does she want him to say?

“You got a boyfriend?” Not that. Definitely, absolutely not that.

“The city has been good.” By good, she means nothing like their old town in the middle of nowhere, where nobody does anything or is anyone. She is glad that she clawed her way out, but she is not sure the rest of them are. “I’ve been focussing on my work; I’ve written forty articles in the last quarter alone and made the front page more than once. This is good for me, dad.” The title catches in her throat, and she takes a sip of her drink. Definitely not strong enough.

“So I’ve heard. I’ve not read the articles, mind, but people say they’re good.” She figures this is the highest praise she will get from him all evening, but he turns to look at her and drops his voice low, “I’m proud of you, Cece.” She feels like a little girl again; it has been so long since he has called her that. Not since she would bring him every scrap of writing she could churn out after school, and he read every single one in his office, ignoring phone calls and projects to find out what was happening next. Why doesn’t he read them anymore? When she first started her new job in the big city, they let her send any copy of the magazine that she had written in to family and friends. Her father’s address had been the only one she hastily scrawled down, and he had never even read them? Something is wrong, she can feel it in the fizz of her flattening water, in the heat of the lingering smell of tobacco. The music swells to fill the silence, and Darcy is sure they have played this one before. Something is wrong. He’s not even talking about the house, his work, the kids he taught – is he even working anymore? He looks the same in the warm light of the evening as she remembers him from her teen years, but he feels older, like he’d been waiting a long, long time. She stands up and brings him to her little table, but she isn’t as comfortable as normal in the hot seat, and he’s too busy watching the band.

She doesn’t ask him any of her questions. This feeling is enough, and she is sure she could write about it for years and never be able to tell anyone what she means. She just wants to stay here, now, and not think about what came before or the meeting she has to be up for tomorrow. Forget anything that happened between them, that made them like this. But something did happen. She’s sure of it by the time she finishes her drink, and his face is fixed in its tender, pitiful expression, like she’s been through something awful, and everyone knows it but her. Her father stands up to fetch another round from the bar, and she raises the lighter to the cigarette poised between her lips. It glints in the candlelight, and suddenly, she can’t remember how she came to have it. He would have never given that lighter up, as long as he lived.

Panicked by the flood of grief that hits her at last, she turns just in time to see him stepping out the door back into the maze of the city. She dashes after him, but he does not look back as she calls and begs, until she places a trembling, manicured hand on his shoulder.

“Oh Cece,” He smiles with such pride she almost chokes “It will all be okay, sweetheart. You just have to do it without me, that’s all” The music hasn’t stopped, and now spills out of every streetlight in the city. She knows this is not real but refuses to think too hard about it, at risk of him deteriorating in front of her eyes all over again, not before she says what she has come here to.

“I’m sorry I never wrote about it. I’m sorry I never wrote about you.” The music boils over and weeps with her as her waterline blurs. Her father takes her hand, which still clings desperately to his lighter.

“My girl, even when you did not write about me, I was there. The very lack of something tells you so much more than its presence. Maybe you did not have the words yet, maybe you never will.” He leaves the rest unspoken, partially because the music has reached its deafening height, mostly because she already knows it. There is a long way still to go, she has plenty of time.

She drops his hand, and when she opens her eyes, she is still on the tube home from work. There are things that nobody is talking about. She has seen her father and needed a graveyard to love him. His lighter sits heavy in her pocket, and it is always there, even when she does not speak about it. She gets off the tube and heads to the bar. She smiles at the waitress, makes small talk with the bartender, calls old friends. The music plays, and she lets herself remember. She writes down everything she can, finds words in every corner of her mind. There is a long way still to go, but she has plenty of time.