The bar at the Palace Hotel was called the Pied Piper. A Maxfield Parrish painting hung across the back bar and gave the place its name—ninety-six square feet of light and shadow and menace, the children leaving the safety of the walled city of Hamelin to follow a monster with a face as old and as cruel as a rock.
It wasn’t the first time Caleb had taken shelter in a painting, giving himself over to the canvas until both the room and the world holding it went black and silent. Some paintings were made for it, maybe. When he found them, and sat close enough to see the individual brush strokes, the room would eventually tilt toward their frames, as if the mass of the earth had recentered itself. Drawing him closer, drawing him to the world hidden beyond the veneer of paint.
He blinked and looked at his watch. It was a Saturday afternoon, not quite two o’clock.
There were three people in the bar, total, counting the bartender. Caleb pulled out a stool and sat, elbows on the glowing mahogany. The only real light in the place was aimed at the painting, and the bartender gave him time to study it again before he finally came over.
“You like it?”
“Always have.”
The bartender had been studying The Pied Piper of Hamelin too, but now he turned back to Caleb.
“Hotel commissioned it,” he said. “Paid six grand, in 1908. Parrish knew it’d hang in a barroom. He wanted men to sit where you are, to look up and maybe recognize a kid—to think of their own kids, waiting at home. And then not buy that second drink.”
“Does it work?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. You know what you want?”
“Jameson, neat. And a pint of Guinness.”
“Look at a menu?”
Caleb shook his head, then looked down at the bar. Someone had left the local section of the morning’s Chronicle. It had been folded twice so that only one headline was visible:
CHARLES CRANE MISSING 10 WEEKS
POLICE: “WE NEED LEADS”
Underneath the headline was a picture of a heavyset man wearing a dress shirt and a tie. Caleb studied the photograph, then flipped the newspaper and pushed it away. He knew what it was like, having your picture run under a headline like that. Being missing wasn’t always so hard. Sometimes the hard part didn’t start until they found you. If you couldn’t give the right answers, people looked at you sideways for the rest of your life.
He looked back at Maxfield Parrish’s painting. In the foreground, the Piper led a group of children under a dark, spreading tree. Rough ground. To keep up, the youngest children were scrambling on all fours over broken rocks. The Piper, his back stooped and his hair hanging in stringy ropes, strode in the middle of them.
The bartender put a tumbler on the wooden plank in front of Caleb and poured two fingers of Jameson.
“Thanks.”
“You got it.”
Caleb drank the whiskey in one long swallow and set the glass down when the bartender came back with the pint of Guinness.
“I’ll have one more of those.”
“Now we know,” the bartender said.
“What’s that?”
“The painting doesn’t work.”
Caleb shook his head.
“No kids at home, or anywhere. So it wouldn’t work on me.”
The bartender took the bottle of Jameson from its shelf on the back wall. He poured the drink and pushed it back to Caleb.
“Car accident?”
“Huh?”
“Your forehead. Car accident?”
“No. Girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend, I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” He paused and picked up the pint glass. “I mean, it’s not okay. It’s not. But it’s okay you asked. The rest, no.”
“That one’s on the house, then.” The man was pointing at the fresh whiskey.
“Thanks.”
The bartender bent down and came up a moment later with a clean towel wrapped around a handful of ice.
“Thanks.”
“Looked like you needed it, is all.”
“Is it bleeding?”
“No.”
Caleb took the towel and held it against his forehead until the heat of the wound drew the melting ice water through the cloth. It felt cool on his skin. He held it awhile and then set it down.
A woman in a black satin dress walked into the bar and looked the place over. Her hair was as dark as her dress, falling just past her shoulders so that it half obscured the choker of pearls she wore. She looked at each man in the room, her lips pressed lightly together as if in concentration.
Then she turned and left.
Her dress had no back to it at all, and her skin looked as soft as a white oleander petal. Caleb watched her leave, and then there was a silence between him and the bartender like a cloud passing by. When it broke, the bartender held out his hand.
“I’m Will, by the way,” the bartender said. They shook.
“Caleb.”
“What’s the ex-girl’s name?”
“Bridget.”
“She’s got good aim.”
Caleb took a long drink of his beer.
“I’m not sure if she meant to hit me or not.”
“Steer clear till you figure that out.”
“Yeah,” Caleb said.