Chapter Text
“Will that be all, your majesty?” Jessica asked in her typical drawl, handing Karen two drinks. One tap water. One whiskey neat.
“I’ll be expecting a masseuse and a bottle of Cristal chilling in the green room.” Karen shot back.
“Too bad this dump doesn’t have a green room. You’re outta luck, sweetheart.”
“Well then, it looks like I’m all set,” Karen raised both drink filled hands in a double cheers to Jessica’s back as she sauntered away. She took a quick sip of water and deposited her drinks on the small riser she was getting situated on.
Karen hummed to herself, warming up her voice and allowing her mind and body to ease into that comfy, relaxed place she thrived in when she had a gig like this. Two hours of playing guitar, singing a few original songs but mostly covers. She had no set list, no plan, only reading the room and playing whatever bubbled up to the surface of her mind. To Karen, nights like this were therapy and she hoped her fellow New Yorkers who found their way to this dark little bar with their dark little secrets felt the same way.
“I’m so glad we started doing this,” Malcolm said as he adjusted Karen’s microphone stand and made sure the sound system was good to go.
Karen smiled up at him from where she was bent low over her guitar, tuning. It had actually been Malcolm’s idea to get Karen to play here. The bar was always slow on Wednesday nights and he hoped adding some live music would create ambiance and draw people in. Jessica was a pretty easy sell when he’d pitched the idea. It probably helped that she and Karen were best friends. So, Malcolm hung a some lights, set up a few speakers, nailed a wonderfully tacky red velvet curtain to the wall in the far corner, and instituted ‘Wednesday’s Nights with Karen Page’ every Wednesday from 9-11pm.
“Me too,” Karen said, straightening up and running a hand through her long blonde hair, tossing it all to one side. “I’m ready as soon as you kill the house music.”
Malcolm hurried back behind the bar and gave her a big thumbs-up as soon as he hit the control that muted the house music. The bar fell awkwardly silent.
“All right, Karen. If your singing drives all my customers away- you’re fired!” Jessica all but shouted, as she did every week the moment before Karen started singing. A few chuckles sounded around the room and Karen shook her head smiling.
“Thanks, Jess. Hello everyone, I’m Karen Page.”
From there, Karen just let it flow. She started upbeat with a few tunes everyone would know and had moved into a number of slow and sweet love songs when she felt her skin prickle. The dark shape in the corner booth was a man, and he was staring at her. It wasn’t strange to have people watching her- she was on stage singing after all- but his attention was intense. She could feel it.
Oh. Hello.
She hadn’t noticed him, though he must have been sitting there since before she arrived. She couldn’t see his face with his hoodie pulled so far down over his eyes. He sat sideways in his booth, back to the wall, one foot up on the seat, a beer on the table that looked as if he hadn’t yet taken his first sip.
Jess’s bar was a dive. There were lots of people there who seemed value their solitude as they drank. This loner in the dim light blended right into the background and hadn’t really caught Karen’s attention. Until now.
He leaned in and froze, like an animal catching a scent in the breeze. His movement pulled his hood slightly back so Karen could see his eyes, riveted on her, tracking the movement of her hands on her guitar, scanning her face. Often, this kind of attention from a random guy in an audience could creep Karen out. She’d avoid eye contact and make sure to keep a wary lookout for him when she headed to her car once the show was over. But this guy felt different. He wasn’t leering at her or trying to get her attention… he was listening. The music moved him. This was resonation. This was connection. Karen felt a tug in her stomach.
Quiet applause rippled through the room as she sang the last few melancholy notes of the song and seemed to snap the guy out of his trance. He looked down immediately and though he didn’t clap, he picked up his beer and tipped it in her direction before taking a long drink.
He didn’t clap for her the entire night but he was incredibly responsive in his own way. He would nod at the end of every song, his head bobbing up and down as if saying ‘yes and amen’ to the music. When she sang something particularly beautiful he would shake his head slowly in appreciation. He didn’t watch her any more though. It seemed that once he’d caught himself staring he could now barely even look at her, preferring to listen with his eyes closed.
Karen was distracted, totally aware of his presence in the room. She was singing for the whole bar, but felt like it was a private show between her and this stranger. She found herself trying to figure out what he would like, what songs would make him react, connect… what she could do to get him to look at her again. Once she ran out of her go-to list of songs most people would recognize, she started pulling from her bag of tricks. Obscure indie rock? That didn’t feel right. Jazz standards weren’t him either. 90s anthems got him nodding a long a bit- but it wasn’t enough. Her two hour set melted away and Karen was already down to her last song. She really wanted to get it right.
Hmmm… maybe be was an old fashioned kind of guy?
She let her fingers start meandering over the guitar strings, summoning up the familiar melody of Townes Van Zandt’s ‘If I Needed You’ and… there… she got him. Once again, that animal instinct. He leaned in and froze, eyes locked on Karen.
“If I needed you, would you come to me?
Would you come to me and ease my pain?
If you needed me, I would come to you
I’d swim the seas to ease your pain…”
She sang those simple lovely lyrics not really knowing what she hoped to get out of this, but wanting a connection with him. Why? No idea. Karen was about to start the third verse when he wiped his eyes breaking his stare. Leaning his head back against the wall, he spent the rest of the song with his eyes closed. His face was tilted up Karen could finally really see him. He was handsome. Masculine. His face was all angles and a pouty mouth. His nose looked like it had been broken a few times and… did he have a black eye? Instant attraction was followed by instant guilt. He looked exhausted, slumped there in that booth. He looked like the saddest man in the world. Having been so aware of his all night... how had she not noticed this endless echoing loneliness hanging on him? Absorbing the sight of him, Karen was gutted. Shit- are those tears? Why had she been trying to get a reaction, to play with his emotions? She had no idea what his story is, what he’s going through… She choked up. Thank God this song is easy to sing. Karen croaked out the last few bars of the song feeling raw and ready for the show to be over.
“Thank you all so much for listening. I’m Karen Page and I hope to see you again next week!” Karen signaled Jess to turn the house music back on as she spun around to take off her guitar and knock back the last of her whiskey, hoping the alcohol would burn away the lump in her throat. On nights like this she was supposed to give music as a gift- to bring joy to people. It wasn’t supposed to be about feeding her ego... getting handsome strangers to stare at her… she felt like an asshole.
Shaking her head, Karen looked up surprised to find the man in the hoodie suddenly right in front of her, dropping a $10 bill into her tip jar.
“Oh, hey- thank you!” her voice came like a squeak.
Hoodie Guy had already started to retreat, but he turned and let his eyes flicker over her.
“Thank you, ma’am.” His voice was hoarse, like it was the first time he’d talked all day.
Karen waited a moment because he seemed like he would say something else. She could see the words building up in his chest trying to fight their way out, but they got trapped before they could reach his lips. He snapped his eyes away from her to the floor, nodded once, twice, then turned away before Karen could think of any thing to say.
Frank needed some air. He needed some space. He could feel his vision starting to tunnel and the ringing that was always in his ears was growing louder by the second. He wove his way between the tables and he focused on the glowing red exit sign as if it was going to save him somehow and burst through the bar doors out into the relative calm of Hell’s Kitchen at night. He gulped down his breaths, drinking in the darkness.
What was wrong with him?
Tonight had been fine. Listening to that girl’s sweet voice… It was relief. Audible comfort.
Every day was a struggle. Every night was a war. Most days he could deal, but tonight for some reason he could feel himself buzzing, coming out of his skin. After work he just couldn’t get himself to go to his apartment. He couldn’t bear the screaming silence waiting for him there. So instead he’d walked right passed his building and into the bar around the corner. He just wanted a damn beer, and some distraction from his thoughts that were getting more desperate by the minute. He wasn’t looking for excitement. He didn’t want conversation. He just wanted… no, needed distraction.
And then she started to sing.
Frank was always a sucker for a girl playing guitar, but her singing… God damn. It was beautiful. It was perfect. It was just what he needed and he could sit in it and soak it up and forget that his life had completely gone to shit. He felt good.
But then, of course, it had to end. The pretty girl with the pretty voice had to play that song. One of Maria’s favorites. Fuck. This was why he’d just wanted some distraction. He shouldn’t have been so greedy to allow himself to feel good. It didn’t feel good to feel good. Feeling good led to this; gut-wrenching reminders of what feeling good used to be. Feeling good led to fighting off panic attacks on the sidewalk in the middle of the night because he couldn’t handle one single remembrance of how good he’d had it.
Get it together, asshole.
“Hey, I hoped you’d still be here.”
Frank whipped around fast, his blood was up. The pretty blonde singer was smiling at him and walking his way with her guitar case on her back and a sway in her step. She looked so friendly and genuinely happy to see him that if he hadn’t been 100% sure he was the only person on the sidewalk he would have looked around to see if she was talking to someone else. But no- that smile was for him. He felt electricity zip up his spine, but blamed it on the near panic attack he’d just been wrestling with.
Karen kept approaching until she was right in front of him. Frank fought the urge to take a step back. What? Was he afraid of this skinny woman in her skinny jeans or something? Karen’s smile waivered the tiniest bit as her eyes scanned his face. Frank knew he looked like hell and it was awkward watching her take stock of him. He currently had pretty bad shiner, as well as some stitches in his eyebrow that he hoped weren’t to obviously stitched by himself. He was glad he was wearing long sleeves and his hands were in his pockets otherwise she’d see more bandages and how gnarly his knuckles were at the moment. The longer she assessed him the more uncomfortable he got until he finally shifted his weight from one foot to the other and cleared his throat.
“Ma’am?”
“Oh yeah- sorry!” She laughed lightly, cheeks pinking up, a little embarrassed at letting herself get caught staring.
“I… I just wanted to thank you again for the tip. And for listening. I could really tell that you were listening and that… “ She closed her eyes- searching for the right words. “It means a lot. To be singing and giving out and knowing that someone is really connecting to you… it means a lot.”
Frank had no idea what to say. He just stared at her and then off to the side.
“So…,” she said, her voice getting weaker, her confidence evaporating. Karen ran her hand through her hair, piling it over one shoulder- a nervous habit. “Yea, just… thanks.”
Frank felt helpless, watching this woman shrink in the shadow of his silence. Had he forgotten how to talk to a pretty lady? He had been married to one for fuck’s sake. Say something.
“It was beautiful.” Frank said looking at the concrete, then straight into her eyes. “Beautiful. Thank you, ma’am.”
That put the smile back on her face and the pink back in her cheeks.
“All this, ma’am-ing, “ she said with a tilt of her head. “Are you in the military?”
Frank let out a puff of air that could have been a laugh. “What gave me away?”
Karen again gave Frank a once over, taking in his combat boots, his stance, his clean shave and buzz cut visible beneath his hood, and just the sheer size of him.
“Pretty much everything.”
And this time, when Frank’s discomfort at her staring made him shift and look away bashfully, Karen just laughed in a teasing way that made him crack a half smile.
“Well, you can call me Karen. Ma’am, is a little too formal for me,” she said, full of warmth offering her hand for a shake.
Without thinking Frank offered his hand as well and didn’t realize his mistake until he saw Karen’s eyes widen a bit at his swollen and cut up knuckles.
Shit.
Frank almost pulled his hand back, but Karen grasped it lightly.
“Nice to meet you…?”
“…Frank.” He said, feeling like he just got some sort of get out of jail free card.
“Frank.” She said, smiling again. She made his name sound nice. They released hands slowly. Again, he had no idea what to say.
“Well Frank, hopefully I’ll see you around sometime. I sing here every Wednesday,” She said, adjusting her guitar case on her back.
“…Yeah. Maybe,” was the best he could come up with. He was about to nod and make his escape when he noticed how dark and quiet the it was on the street… His gut twisted.
“Hey uh… Karen,” Frank’s voice was gravel. She raised her eyebrows in curiosity. “Do you have a safe way to get home?”
“Yea- this is my car right here.” She pat her hand on the hood of the car parked right in front of the bar. “Thanks for asking.”
Her voice was soft. Empathetic. Like she already knew everything about him. He couldn’t look at her.
“Ok… take care.” Frank exhaled and turned, heading back to the place where he lived but never called home.