A spotlight. The white light the whole of her vision. It was better that way – Kelly didn’t want to see the other patrons in the bar. Didn’t want to be able to make out their expressions as she sang. She couldn’t believe she was here, standing on a stage, singing to piano accompaniment. Who was she?

No one really. Not of any importance, at least. Just a girl, working in the city. The word “average” might have been coined just for her. No kind of singer, either. She didn’t even remember where she saw the sign about Karaoke Night at the Land’s End, just that since she did, she hadn’t been able to get the thought of it out of her mind.

Going to a hotel in the middle of the week without a suitcase felt like something crazy, reckless, out of character, but when she pulled into the parking lot and saw the circus truck, she was unspeakably reassured. Yes, it was crazy, but crazy things happened all the time. Just never to her.

The bar itself was like something out of a movie, but it felt familiar, somehow. Like something out of a dream… well, someone else’s dream, actually, since Kelly never had especially vivid dreams, except that one time after a party in college, when someone had offered her some kind of green drink, and she’d envisioned talking imps and fairies filling the nighttime hours. Since then… not so much. The bar sported a pressed tin ceiling and gleaming long mahogany bar, separating a towering display of bottles, both recognizable and very, very strange, from a scattering of tables with mismatched chairs, and booths cocooned between bookshelves, lit by sputtering candles in the breeze that wafted in whenever someone opened the door.

Not to the outside. The bar was reached only through a maze of corridors from the main entrance of the hotel, and though Kelly could see a field, and some trees through a window, the only doors in the bar lead to other rooms, nooks and crannies. An old man sat over an unfinished game of chess in one curtained room, while Kelly interrupted a kissing couple in another when she went to search for the bathroom. She finally settled down at a table near the stage – a simple platform with a black velvet curtain behind it, next to a grand piano.

A young man with wild curls, incongruously dressed in a tuxedo and tails, sat at the piano bench with a flourish, and immediately started playing. His voice was rough, but soft, and Kelly strained to hear him. She didn’t recognize the song, but tried to remember the words of the chorus, to have something to ask after the next time she went to the music store in the mall. When he finished, another man stepped onto the stage, leaned down to talk to the pianist, and began singing. Kelly looked for a monitor with words, but there was nothing. This wasn’t traditional karaoke, she guessed.

She listened to several songs, impressed at the talent on the stage. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t know why she’d thought – she thought it would be like in the movies, cheesy, lighthearted, fun. Her heart was heavy. A waiter brought her another drink, and she asked him, quietly, “Is it always like this?”

He shrugged. “Wouldn’t know. First time here.” As he turned to the next table, he raised his brow at the pianist, who caught his eye, and glanced at Kelly, then nodded.

She sipped at her drink, which reminded her of that night in college. Funny that – she didn’t remember ordering another round, and didn’t think this was the same as she’d had before. She closed her eyes as the singer on stage growled a love song, and wondered if anyone would ever sing those words to her. Not even sing. Say. It seemed unlikely. Where was she going to meet someone?

When the song ended, Kelly stepped up to the stage. She didn’t know what she would sing a second before she laid her hand on the pianist’s shoulder, but the moment she said it, it was right. His hands came down on the keys, and the spotlight flooded her vision.

She knew all the words. Knew the feeling behind every word, though it wasn’t what most people thought the song was about. There were two kinds of loneliness – when you had someone then lost them, and when you never had anyone to begin with.

Somewhere, in the music, and the dazzling light that blinded and drew her in, she found a voice.

A voice, and a way to express the shattered dreams she’d bottled up inside herself.

Years alone, unloved. Unconnected to anyone else.

Her voice broke, and tears filled her vision, but she closed her eyes and continued in a whisper.

It was strange, in the midst of a hotel, a gateway for innumerable souls, a stop on the road, that she should feel such a draw, a connection.

She didn’t want to stop, but she couldn’t go on. The song was ending.

The light dimmed as she finished, and she saw her way back to her lonely table as another patron stepped up to the microphone.

She picked up her bag and left a generous tip for the waiter, finding the door back to the hallway, back to the lobby. At the reception desk, she smiled at the woman behind the desk, and slipped a pink flyer in her pocket.

“Karaoke Night Tonight, and Every Wednesday.”

By ktbuffy