In Princeton, New Jersey, if you're looking for a dive, the pub on thirty-second is the place to be.

At nine o'clock each night, Robert's the first one at the bar. A real-estate novelist, he calls himself; hates his job, but he's stuck there. He got the firm from his dad - died of lung cancer, you know - and stays there out of obligation. Robert had a very privileged childhood. He orders a gin and tonic from the barman and waits for...something.

Eric was in the navy. He joined just out of high school; he was from the "'hood," and couldn't afford college. He spends his evenings talking women and music and sports and work with Robert. It's interesting; the poor little rich boy and the hood rat, sitting together enjoying a drink. Eric's waiting for a place. A place to be. He still works for the Naval Academy, doing paperwork, that sort of thing. He wants to get out, but doesn't know where to go.

The barman himself - that's Jim - he's got a schoolboy smile and puppydog eyes to go with it. Any woman who finds herself unaccompanied in the bar usually goes home with him eventually. He'd rather be anywhere else, but this is where he's been for the past ten years, and they say Jim spoils you; makes the best mixed drinks anywhere in Princeton, a prodigy of sorts. Besides which, the thing he cares most about in the world is here. And so he waits, too.

Lisa, the manager. She looks like a madam, the way she dresses. She says she's not anymore, but from the look of her waitresses, you'd think something different. She spends the night helping other people have a good time, but her own apartment over the bar is strangely quiet. She's happy here, she tells herself; she'll find someone. She just has to wait.

Allie. Her husband died. She doesn't talk about it much. She's got a cute smile and is a good conversationalist; she can persuade a man to buy just about anything. She's a little clumsy; she spills things occasionally. She spends too much time musing on what she can't have and to little time focusing on what she does: a decent job with good tips. She's wants someone to fill the hole her husband left. She'll wait as long as she has to.

Stacy. She looks too old to be a waitress, but this is where she ended up. She used to be involved with one of the regulars; he sits off by himself in Allie's section now, getting stoned most nights. They say she's cold, and she argues politics far too much with the customers. Sometimes she irritates them enough that they leave. Lisa's talked to her about it. She's working on it. Stacy? She's waiting for answers. She just isn't sure what the questions are.

 

And then there's him.

He comes in every night.

No one quite knows what his day job is - they all assume he has one; his tips are good, but they sure as hell couldn't pay for the corvette outside.

As soon as he enters, the room goes silent. So silent you can clearly hear him get a bourbon, no ice, from Jim. They have an interesting relationship, people say, though no one quite knows the connotations of "interesting."

He sits down on the scarred wooden bench, withdrawing a prescription bottle from his pocket, downing pills with liquor, and then the music starts.

What they've all waited for.

And when he plays, he forgets about the cane propped against the side of the piano.

He forgets about the empty house.

And the broken heart.

And the shattered soul.

Because he never dwells on those anyway.

And he's not waiting for anything.

Because everything he needs is right here.
These people.

This bar.

This piano, and the microphone (even though it reeks like booze and smoke), and the music.

And he plays a song for each of them (the Eagles and Stones and Zeppelin and others;) and sometimes he plays one for himself.

And at the end of the evening, when he stands up, stiff from sitting so long, and lurches unsteadily toward the door, no one notices that this whole night, the only time he smiled was when his hands were on the keys.

And when he's gone, in the silence between the closing of the door and the start of the conversation, you can almost hear that voice, lingering after its corporeal body has left.

 

"Sing us a song, you're the piano man; sing us a song tonight; for we're all in the mood for a melody, and you've got us feelin' all right."