Hi. It’s Sam Singer again.
Not far from my place in Habitsville, there’s a piano bar. It’s literally called The Piano Bar, one of those places with the ironically obvious name. I’d never been there before. I know, yet another place in my own hometown that I’ve never visited. I don’t get out much.
I had heard about The Piano Bar from our new intern at the Habitsville Gazette, Luke. Luke is a young, goofy kid in his second year of college. And if I had to guess, I wouldn’t say he was particularly socially skilled, or especially popular. He wore those really large, square, wire-framed glasses that made him look far too intellectual, even though in reality he wasn’t at all.
So I immediately thought it was odd that he frequented a high-end piano bar in downtown Habitsville. The music that drifted out of it was always either classical or jazz, and the people I saw entering and leaving were always dressed up.
But still, Luke continually vouched for the place, saying that it had even become a nightly routine of his to finish up his work at the paper then head down to The Piano Bar. And at first, I didn’t think too much about his newfound passion.
But then, I noticed the holes in his mouth.
I hadn’t seen them initially. I believe this was because it was the back molars that went missing first. But after a few days, the gaps began creeping in towards the center, until I couldn’t not see them. So, even though it seemed sort of rude, and I didn’t know Luke all that well, I decided to ask.
“Luke,” I had started, as we were about to leave for the night. “Do you mind if I ask you an... odd question?”
He smiled at me, that bright smile of the young and disillusioned, minus a few teeth. “Go for it,” he answered. I tried to keep my gaze from drifting to the peeks of thrashing tongue I could see through the dark spaces in his gums, and instead strove to maintain eye contact.
I cleared my throat. “What’s happened to your teeth?”
To my great surprise, he didn’t seem offended or even taken aback by my sudden inquiry. Instead, his broken grin only widened. “I told you. I’ve been going to that piano bar every night.”
I waited for more details to come, but none did.
“And that... took your teeth?”
He laughed, a wet, soft sound. “I know it sounds weird, but trust me, it’s worth it.” And then he said something, something that for the life of me I couldn’t wrap my head around.
“If you give the Piano Man a tooth, he’ll play you a memory.”
I opened my mouth to ask a follow-up question, but Luke’s bag was already on his shoulder. “I’ve really got to get going,” he said hurriedly, “You’ve kind of got to get there early if you want him to play you a song. Or else... you know,” he finished, but of course, I did not know.
Luke seemed really anxious to leave, so I bid him good night. We both left, heading in opposite directions—he to the Piano Bar, and me to my home, to sit and stew over what I had been told.
And then, the next day, Luke didn’t show up for work.
We thought he might have been ill, and like the kid that he is, forgotten to call in and let us know he wouldn’t be coming in that day. But then the next day came, and still, there was no Luke. We sent someone to go around his apartment and knock on the door, but there was no answer.
I knew it was quite a leap in logic to make, but the investigative reporter inside of me couldn’t seem to shake the idea that The Piano Bar had something to do with Luke’s disappearance.
So that’s why, on a Thursday night, I found myself severely underdressed and seated on a stool in the darkest corner of the mysterious piano bar.
There were all sorts in the crowd that night, people I had never seen on the streets or in the shops around Habitsville. I wondered if they had from out of town just to come there.
But the main sight was in the very center of the room.
It was a huge piano, grand in every sense of the word. Although the bar itself was dimly lit and a tad smoky, every ounce of light in the space was reflected against the jet black sheen of the great instrument.
On top of the piano, in an odd sort of display, were an assortment of objects. There was an elaborate hair pin with a metal bumblebee on the end, a few assorted rings, a pair of gloves—but there was one item in particular that caught my eye, because they were so familiar.
Large, square, wire-framed glasses.
I could hear bits and pieces of ambient music coming from the keys, stroked by the fingers of one of the most striking human beings I had ever seen.
The Piano Man. His hair was perfectly sculpted, and his suit was dark green velvet with a silky black bowtie. His hands moved steadily across the keys, but his eyes weren’t watching them. Instead, his irises, nearly the same green as his suit, wandered over the chattering crowd, a content smile on his closed lips.
RING
I jumped as a loud bell tolled throughout the room, though no one else seemed to share my reaction. Immediately, all of the patrons fell silent, and there was a great shift as each of them turned their attention and their bodies towards the Piano Man, like planets orbiting some bright Sun.
He had stopped playing, the final notes echoing in the air as he pulled his hands back and gracefully stood up from his bench. He took a moment, in the silence, to gaze over the crowd, turning a full circle around the room. There was a moment when I felt as though he met my eyes, and a shiver ran down my spine.
Then, suddenly, he reached out his arm and pointed.
The woman at the end of his finger immediately turned red, and uneasily gestured to herself. “Me?” I heard her say.
“Yes, of course you,” The Piano Man answered, in a voice as smooth as silk and warm as summer.
The woman clasped her hands together, the look on her face that of pure joy. She stepped forward, separating herself from the rest of the crowd. The Piano Man stared at her for another moment, before sitting back down to his bench.
There was a breath, a second of ringing silence. And then, he played the most beautiful music I had ever heard in my life.
I am not a big music person. I don’t know composers besides the basics, and even less actual pieces. I’m more of a podcasts guy, to be sure. But there was something about this that was different. It was hypnotic, almost. There was no way to tell how long the actual song was, because from the moment it began to the second it ended, it was as though I was suspended in a trance of joyful derealization.
But, eventually the last note was played. My eyes refocused, and I saw that although the song had quite an impact on myself, it was even more transformative to the woman the Piano Man had chosen. She was sobbing, large tears rolling down her cheeks, her shoulders shaking with emotion. When the Piano Man stood up again, she immediately wrapped her arms around him. Although it was muffled, I could hear her say “Thank you, thank you,” over and over, as the crowd began to applaud enthusiastically.
The Piano Man waited a moment, then gently pushed the woman back. The applause died down. The Piano Man looked the woman in the eyes, and then, he grinned.
And I could see, even from the corner where I was sitting, that he was missing teeth.
There were three open spaces in his mouth, two on the bottom, and one the left of his very front teeth. He smiled at the woman, who was still wracked with the emotions the performance had brought on. Then, he spoke.
“Time for your payment.”
There was a flash of something like fear on the woman’s face. But then, she nodded, and she did something incredibly strange, something that I did not expect at all: she opened her mouth.
The Piano Man raised his hand, the same one that had played the keys so beautifully and elegantly. He slowly brought it forwards, until the majority of it was in the woman’s mouth. I could hear her breathing, fast and wheezy with the obstruction. Her eyes watered even more than they had before, and she let out a few high pitched squeaks of pain. The Piano Man’s arm began to vibrate with effort. The woman’s face turned a violent shade of red, and then—
CRACK
The Piano Man’s hand reemerged, and I could see it between his fingertips—pink with blood, but shining all the same, was one large tooth, pulled out to the root.
A line of blood dripped from the woman’s open mouth as she brought a comforting hand to the side of her jaw. She stepped backwards to her spot in the crowd. A few patted her on the shoulder, but most had their attention still turned to the man in the green suit in the center of the room.
He stared at the tooth, and held it aloft to the light, as though admiring a pearl he’d just pulled from a clam. And then, he did something that’s so odd, I doubted I had seen it correctly.
He threw it directly up in the air, like tossing a coin, and as it fell down, he opened his jaw wide and caught it in his mouth. Then, with one heavy, wet sound, he swallowed it.
But he wasn’t done. He brought one of his hands to his face, the thumb and pointer finger pressed into a crescent. He stuck his fingers into his mouth, breathed in hard, and then exhaled—
There was a high pitched whistle, and then an audible snap resonated in the room.
The Piano Man paused. Then, he smiled for his audience, and I could see that which was impossible. One of the spaces in his bottom teeth had filled in, as though nothing had ever been missing to begin with.
It was incredible. Of course, it was incredible. He did it one more time that night, nearly the same start to finish. Only it was a man the second time, and the melody he played was a bit different, sadder somehow, but still absolutely riveting. He pulled the tooth, swallowed it, whistled, and the other spot on his bottom row was filled in.
And then, as the room watched in silence, he walked away from the piano and out the front door of the bar.
In a few minutes, the patrons too left The Piano Bar. They milled about on the street outside, chatting and smoking. There was no sign of the Piano Man, so I tried to glean some more information from the conversations of the various groups.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” the woman who was chosen for the first song was saying. “I saw her, I mean I really saw her. I saw my mother.”
“It’s truly remarkable,” the man she was speaking to replied. “A pity about the tooth though.” I must have been standing a bit too close to them, because soon he seemed to notice that I was lurking nearby. “Can we help you?” he asked, with an unsubtle glance at my lackluster wardrobe.
“I was just wondering—I mean, I wanted to know—” It’s hard, when your questions are so big, to put them into the confines of words. “What was that? In there?”
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Have you never been to The Piano Bar, dear?” she asked, then winced, placing her hand back onto her cheek, which was starting to swell. I shook my head. “Oh, well what a treat for you!” She attempted a smile, then dropped it once she felt the pain. “It’s really quite simple. The Piano Man takes a single tooth from you, and in exchange, he’ll let you relive a memory you’ve forgotten.”
I shook my head. “What do you mean a memory you’ve forgotten?”
The man gave an impatient huff. “Well it’s exactly as it sounds, boy.”
“Be patient with him, Rupert,” the woman scolded. She looked back to me kindly. “To be honest, no one’s quite sure how he does it. But if the Piano Man chooses you, he’s able to play you a song that will help you remember something you don’t know you’ve forgotten. Something you don’t know is important.” Her voice grew soft and misty, and her eyes glimmered. “I saw an afternoon with my mother when I was four. We had tomato sandwiches by the lake. She braided my hair. I was too young to remember. But now my mother’s gone, and I want every piece of her that I can get.”
I tried to understand what she was saying. “But... your tooth.”
She shook her head, once again fighting a smile back down. “For the chance to have a bit more time with someone you’ve lost? What would you not be willing to give up, for something like that?”
I nodded, though the entire thing was difficult to believe. But there had been something about that music, something in the air—and the fact that people were so willing to pay in pain for each performance. “Thank you. I think... I think I’ll come back tomorrow night.”
There was a falter in the woman’s expression. “Oh, I---“
The man put his hand on her shoulder, and she stopped speaking. “You do that, son. Come on Bonnie, we’ve got to be getting home.”
The woman, Bonnie, looked at me for another moment, as though she wanted to say something. Then, she turned, and the two of them walked back down the street.
Despite the odd feeling that Bonnie had given me, I did come back the next night. I sat in the same seat, a stool near the back, and the rest of The Piano Bar was almost identical to what it had been the first night. Except for a few things.
For one, the crowd was much smaller. It was thinned out considerably since the previous performance, and those that were here had an odd atmosphere to them. It seemed nervous almost.
A certain apprehension that hadn’t been there before.
Secondly, The Piano Man himself wasn’t playing idling little melodies in the center of the room. Instead, he was playing with gusto, at full volume. There was an energy to him that evening, an eagerness, and it was coming out in some of the most elaborate piano playing I had ever seen. Still, his eyes didn’t watch his hands, and instead scanned the room. I could see the one remaining gap in his teeth, black and hollow through the thin sneer of his lips.
There was a man sitting next to me that night. And, like me, he didn’t quite seem like he belonged there. He wore a collared shirt and worn khakis, and I got the impression that those were probably the nicest clothes he had, something he wore to church on Sunday’s. Despite this, he was wearing a faded blue baseball cap that was ripped around the brim, nearly falling apart.
He was in his late forties, though his face was lined far more than his years would suggest. His hands were rough and cracked, and he picked at his fingers. He watched The Piano Man closely, and his leg shook restlessly.
“Are you looking forward to the show?” I asked him tentatively.
He gave me a sideways glance, and his leg stopped moving. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” He paused for a moment, and I thought perhaps that was all he was going to say. “I just hope he picks me.”
“Really?” I asked, trying to remain casually curious. “What are you hoping to see?”
He gave me another sideways look, and I thought for a moment that I had overstepped. This was a personal thing, after all. But then, he answered. “My son.”
“Oh,” I said, surprised. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well,” he said dismissively. “He was so young when he—you know—and I wasn’t much of a father, then. I wasn’t around like I was supposed to be, and when I was...” he trailed off, and I could tell how much it pained him to even speak on the topic. He reached up, his fingertips brushing gently against the torn brim of his hat. “This is the hat I got at the first baseball game we went to. First and only,” he finished with a sigh. He brought his hand back down to his lap.“I just want to see what I was missing. No matter the cost.”
I nodded, a brief pang of sadness resonating in my chest for this stranger. “Well, it seems like the cost is only one tooth. So that’s not so bad, right?”
The man raised his eyebrows at me, and I immediately got the sense that I was missing something. “The price is a bit steeper tonight, pal.”
Before I could ask any more questions, there it was again—
RING
The bell tolled, and all attention turned to the center of the room. The Piano Man finished his song with a flourish, and quite literally jumped up from his bench. He surveyed the crowd with excitement, his tongue peeking out of his mouth and licking his lips as he swiveled his head around. Again, I thought for a moment that he had caught my eye, and I fought to look away. Then, he raised his arm, and pointed.
The man next to me, who’s name I never caught, got up from his stool and made his way to the center of The Piano Bar.
“Hello, Sir,” The Piano Man said with a disarming relish. “Thank you so much for volunteering.”
The man hadn’t made any sound or gesture, as far as I could tell. Somehow, The Piano Man could tell that he wanted to be chosen.
The man didn’t say anything. The Piano Man stepped back around to his piano, sat at his bench, and began to play.
I couldn’t see the memory that The Piano Man’s song played, but I could certainly feel it. I was like a deep, aching nostalgia deep in my stomach, for something I had never experienced. Not just never experienced—something that I desperately yearned for. I felt that pure sensation of want so terribly, it made my eyes water.
And then, it was over. It was the shortest song yet.
I looked to the man. He was still standing straight, but his hands were clenched into fists at his sides. His hat was low over his eyes, but there were tears rolling down his cheeks, and though he tried to contain it, a great cough of a sob came from his throat, strangled and sad.
The Piano Man gave him a moment. Then, he stood, grinning ear to ear. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Time for your payment.”
The man hesitated, but only for a moment. Then, his jaw fell open, and he let The Piano Man reach inside. He didn’t stick his hand in far, and in fact only grabbed hold of one of the man’s front teeth. Then, he began to pull. The man let out a long groan as they struggled. And then—
CRACK
The Piano Man held the tooth aloft, an expression of sheer delight on his face. The man looked at it, his face stony. Then, just as he had the night before, The Piano Man tossed the tooth high up in the air, threw his head back, and caught it in his mouth.
He swallowed it. Then, he brought his fingers to his mouth. The whistle was so loud and shrill, the members of the audience had to cover their ears. A trickle of blood ran down from my eardrums to my neck as I uncovered them, but I could still hear it when—
SNAP
The Piano Man smiled, a full, complete smile. His teeth—if I can truly call them his teeth, shone like jewels in the light of The Piano Bar. Then, he opened his jaw wide. Then he opened it wider. And wider, and wider. The man who had given him his final tooth hadn’t stepped back to join the crowd. Instead he stood, his head down, his shoulder’s tensed—
GULP.
The Piano Man wiped his mouth and adjusted his velvet green suit. He bent down, and picked up the worn blue baseball cap that had landed on the floor of The Piano Bar. He glided back to his instrument, and placed the hat on the gleaming surface of his piano, right next to the large, square, wire-framed glasses.
Then, he smiled, a toothless, gummy grin.
---
Credits
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