by Tracy Lane
“Just imagine it, Jakey,” Frank said quietly, as if not to disturb the giant spiders, rats, and other creepy-crawlies that no doubt called the Lido Lounge home. “This whole place, clean as a whistle and lit up like a laboratory, all steaming and humming with cooks, cocktail waitresses, a couple busboys, and every good smell you’ve ever inhaled.”
Frank walked to a long-cold oven covered in dust and waved his hand over it. “Pots bubbling,” he continued as dust bunnies filled the air, “pans sizzling, every flame going, steaks, burgers, fries, pies. You name it, the Lido Lounge served it…”
“You must have really loved this place,” Jake said softly, not wanting to spoil Frank’s fun.
Frank stiffened and turned around, looking uncertain. It was almost as if he’d forgotten Jake was standing there. “Oh, it was heavenly, kid, just heavenly—”
“Hey!” came a voice – a human voice – from over Jake’s shoulder.
Jake spun to find a grizzled old man yanking a bathrobe over some spotty blue pajamas and shuffling his feet as he stumbled out of a spare room just off the kitchen.
“What are you doing in here?”
The old man’s voice was loud despite his frail appearance. He glanced from Jake to the open back door, then back again. His features warped from shocked and angry to quizzical.
“And…how did you get in here?”
The stranger slipped a chain full of keys – at least a dozen of them – from the pocket of his faded maroon robe. “I’m the only one with the keys.”
“Tell him who you are, Jakey,” Frank said, standing right next to him. “Tell him what you need.”
Jake flinched, waiting for the old man to hear Frank and get even more unsettled, but he didn’t. He couldn’t, Jake remembered, and he almost sighed with relief.
The man just stood there, quivering slightly with his keys in hand. Waiting.
“I’m Jake,” Jake said, looking from Frank to the man in the bathrobe. “Jake Weir. I…my parents have a TV show about—”
“Don’t tell him that!” Frank interrupted. “You’ll scare the poor guy. Tell him…tell him…you’re doing a story for your school paper—”
“About what?” urged the old man, and suddenly Jake realized: he was having two conversations – one with a dead man, and one with the living.
“Never mind that,” Jake blurted. “I…I’m doing a story about unsolved crimes for my school paper.”
The old man smirked. “Times sure have changed,” he said, leaning against a metal butcher’s block in the middle of the kitchen. “Back when I went to school, all anyone on the school paper ever wrote about was the sock hop and the lunch menu.”
Frank chuckled. “It’s true,” he said, nudging Jake playfully.
Jake shifted an inch and the old man narrowed his light blue eyes. “And let me tell you, nobody had to break and enter to get those stories.”
Jake said, “Well, that’s just it. I’m wondering if you knew a man by the name of Frank Barrone. He died many years ago, and I’m trying to figure out how.”
The man’s eyes lit up and, suddenly, he stood at attention. “I know Frank Barrone!” he announced. “Hell, he’s the one who got me this job.”
“Job?” Jake and Frank asked in unison.
The man narrowed his eyes at Jake. “I’ll have you know, I’m the caretaker of the Lido Lounge, and have been for the last sixty-odd years.”
Frank leaned close to Jake’s ear and said, “I recognize him now. That’s Murphy. He was the caretaker when the place was still open.”
“Mr. Murphy?” Jake asked.
The old man’s mouth dropped. “How’d you know that?”
Jake improvised quickly. “Like I said, I’m working on a story…”
The man ignored him, eyes growing misty as he recalled, “I’ll never forget the day I first met Frank. Larger than life he was, in this great white suit and black fedora. He loved that fedora. I was bussing tables at the time,” he said, brushing past Jake and heading straight for Frank.
Frank burst into mist just as the old man approached him, but Mr. Murphy hardly noticed. He kept walking, saying, “Here, let me show you…”
He pushed open a door with a cloudy window of broken glass, and they entered what looked like a bar, with dusty bottles long emptied and more barstools, most still standing.
“Joe was the bartender back then,”—he held the door open for Jake. Jake passed through and held it open for Frank—“and Katie, our favorite cocktail waitress. She used to give the band drinks for free. That’s when I met Frank, you see…”
The old man turned, raising both eyebrows to see Jake holding the door open for empty air. Jake quickly let it shut as the man continued: “Katie was busy that night and I was bringing a tray full of drinks up to Frank…”
“I remember that night,” Frank said, suddenly reappearing right next to Jake in a cloud that chilled his left shoulder.
“…I handed Toots and Slim, the other band members, their drinks just fine, but I dropped Frank’s all over his new pair of shoes!” The old man laughed. “I thought he was going to clobber me with his piano bench or something, but he just shrugged it off. I wiped them off for him, offered to polish them after his show. He took me up on it, liked the way I did my job, and said he’d talk to the club manager about giving me more duties.”
The old man’s voice faded a bit. “I was promoted the very next day…”
Jake now stood at the entrance of the Lido Lounge with Frank on his left and Mr. Murphy on his right.
“You said you were the caretaker here?” Jake couldn’t help but ask.
“Carl Murphy’s the name,” the man said instead, extending a hand. “And, well…” he surveyed the peeling wallpaper and dangling lampshades, “…‘caretaker’ may be overstating things a bit.”
“Yeah,” Frank huffed while he walked around, examining the dirt-encrusted floor. “More like ‘squatter.’”
Jake wanted to shush him, but he was already acting crazy, holding the door open for no one.
“Once they shut the joint down a few years ago,” Mr. Murphy continued, “well, they gave me the job of locking the old place up. I did, just…with me on the inside!” He winked conspiratorially at Jake.
“Over here,” Frank called, pulling Jake’s attention away.
Jake spun, facing a large dance floor with many of the wooden tiles missing. The missing tiles revealed rotting floor covered with stucco beneath.
“Mostly, I just try to keep folks out,” said Mr. Murphy, following closely as Jake crept forward toward Frank.
“Look at this, Jakey!” Frank shouted, dancing through the lounge area. “This floor would be packed with bodies every night of the week. There were a dozen tables, but nobody ever sat in them!”
Most of the tables were gone, along with half the chairs, but the red carpet was stained in a half-dozen faded squares from where they must have stood a long time ago.
And then, like magic, wherever Frank walked, the tables lit with flickering candles. And the people! People sat at the tables, stood around them, walked between them; people dressed just like Frank. The men had their floppy hats and smoked fat cigars while the girls wore strikingly red dresses and balanced cigarettes in long, black holders.
Yet even then, they weren’t just like Frank; they were mostly ghostly, somehow. Jake could see the chairs beneath them, the walls behind them; even the drinks in their hands were mere apparitions.
It was then that noises began filtering into Jake’s mind: people talking, the clinking of ice in a glass, a shouted order at the bar, the bartender shaking a shiny silver tumbler full of martinis, Cosmopolitans, and more.
“Jake?” asked a voice, and the laughter died as Jake turned to find Mr. Murphy standing beside him.
“Y— yes?” Jake stammered, tempted to look behind him and watch the nightclub scene come back to life. It was like living in two worlds. Where Mr. Murphy stood, the Lido Lounge was in complete disarray. The
walls were crumbling, Mr. Murphy was in his bathrobe, the bar was lopsided, and there wasn’t a shaker or bartender in sight.
“Are you okay, son? You seem distracted.”
“No, no…you were saying?”
Mr. Murphy gave him the look of a disappointed teacher and said, “I was saying that, if you give me a minute, I’ll find you something that will help your investigation.”
Jake watched Mr. Murphy shuffle past the rotting tables and broken chairs of the “now” Lido Lounge, then looked to find Frank hot-footing it across the “then” Lido Lounge.
“Look, kid!” Frank called from across the room as he approached an elevated stage, still high and wide and black. “This is where it all happened.”
Jake allowed himself to return to the lively, jumping jazz joint that was the Lido Lounge in its prime.
That’s what it has to be, right? Jake thought. The vision Frank was showing him — the world he was being invited to see — was the lounge in the 1950s, just as Frank had enjoyed it.
It felt so strange to hear Mr. Murphy shuffling around the “dead” side of the club, and then listen in on the clinking of glass and decade’s old laughter of ghosts having a fun night out on the side of the “living.”
As for Frank, he didn’t leap so much as float to the stage, and Jake stepped back a few paces to get a better look. There on the stage floor, dusty and sagging, sat a tired old piano and its bench.
At least, that’s what it looked like until Frank got involved. Suddenly, the stage lit up, the piano gleamed, and spotlights turned Frank’s shiny white suit into what looked a lot like a disco ball.
Frank’s enthusiasm seemed to taper a bit as he circled the black piano, uncertain, as if not believing it was still there. Next to it were several music stands and, behind the stands, dusty black chairs with the padding ripped out that seemed to repair themselves in front of Jake’s eyes. Suddenly they, too, gleamed as if they had just been snatched off the showroom floor.
Music started, soft at first and slightly out of tune. Jake brought his attention back to Frank, who was seated at the bench and tumbling out the tune he was always whistling, now as true music.
He fiddled with the keys, then the pedals, and soon the tune came out smoother, bolder. And it wasn’t just the piano. As Jake watched, two more figures appeared onstage with Frank.
A hefty black man in a black suit and a red bowtie fluttered and sprang to life. In his hand was a misty trumpet. Next to him appeared a tall man, taller even than Frank, and bone thin. In his hands – it took two because the beast was so large – sat a massive bass guitar.
“Frankie boy!” they cried in unison, scuffed black shoes hovering slightly above the dusty stage.
“Toots!” Frank said, raising his hand from the keyboard and doffing his hat to the rotund black man.
As if in reply, Toots spat out a rusty belch from his trumpet before a long, low note sang clear.
“Slim,” Frank greeted the tall man, who reached down with long, spidery fingers and coaxed and rumbling thrum-thrum-thrum from his bass.
“It’s the old band, back together,” said Toots, his voice as deep and rich as the tune that had just flowed from his horn.
“How come you never came back to see us before this?” asked Slim.
Both men looked more like the people out in the spectral crowd than Frank himself, with their see-through fingers and wavering images.
Jake looked to the phantom lounge patrons now and saw them talking, laughing, enjoying their “meals” while spectral waitresses ran among them. It was like they were anticipating, waiting for Frank and the band to start up again.
But why were they here? And Toots, and Slim? How? Jake shook his head, looking from the happening half of the club back to the moldy, dank Lido Lounge as Mr. Murphy rooted around behind a rusty metal bus pan, oblivious to the festivities that were, in Jake’s eyes, just inches from his side.
“I never thought to visit the old jaunt until today,” Frank confessed, turning to Jake and giving him a slow, melancholy smile. “You’re right, gang. I should have come sooner, but I just couldn’t force myself to do it. Too many memories, I suppose.”
“It’s okay, Frank,” said Toots, a rich, red stage curtain visible behind his shimmering body. “It’s been a long time. We only came because we heard you playing your tune.”
“You guys performed a lot?” Jake asked, looking from Frank’s very physical body to the other hovering ghosts.
The tall man then looked down on Jake and shot Frank a questioning glance.
“He’s cool, gang,” Frank said. “The kid’s with me.”
“Performed a lot?” asked Toots, waving a filmy white handkerchief across his sweaty forehead. “We were in Frank’s band for years!”
“Dig it, kid,” said Slim, fingering the strings of his bass until they resumed thrumming that familiar sound.
With that, the tune Frank was always whistling, or humming, or tapping out on a random streetlamp, filled the club again.
The tune started slow. Jake guessed he could call it a “ballad,” but this was no mere sappy love song or elevator music. It was jazzier than that. The horn in Toots’ hand sprang to life, spitting out a melody Jake knew his Mom would have called “fantastic,” and Slim’s instrument ushered deep, full chords that filled the dusty lounge from top to bottom.
Frank’s fingers tickled the ivories and added the perfect flavor to join the loud, otherworldly music, but it wasn’t until he opened his mouth and sang that Jake was truly impressed.
His voice was low and dark. If smoke curling from a lit cigarette could speak, or better yet sing, this was the sound Jake imagined it would make. It was his speaking voice, only richer.
Frank closed his eyes while he sang the first few verses:
“Barroom eyes, where have you been?
I want you in my life again.
Barroom eyes, where did you go?
You left me feeling down and low…”
That was it; this was the song the newspaper called Frank’s “signature tune.”
“Barroom eyes,” he crooned, fingers flying expertly across the keys, “so soft and sweet. Your laughter made my life complete…”
Jake stood in awe of his first “ghost concert.” Toots wailed on the horn, wiping his brow with a free hand and sending out riff after riff as Frank played and Slim grooved along with the sound of his bass.
It was a lengthy song, tumbling along with the band, and it seemed to Jake that, steadily, the louder they played, the more “real” Toots and Slim became; as if the power of their beloved song brought them back to life a tone, a note, a strum at a time.
Jake looked away from the stage to the floor of the club, where the crowd was really getting wound up. It was as if they, too, could hear Frank’s song and loved it as much as Jake did. They hooted, they hollered; the cocktail waitresses ran around, winking at Frank, and the drinks flowed.
Jake looked past the otherworldly glow where the spirits drank and sang along to where Mr. Murphy stood motionless, as if transfixed.
“You okay, Mr. Murphy?” Jake asked.
Nothing.
“Mr. Murphy?”
“Oh, sorry, kid,” Mr. Murphy finally grumbled, looking around some more with his back to Jake. “For a minute there, I could have sworn I heard…music.”
Around the crusty caretaker, the club looked worn‑out and sad. Jake much preferred the happening, eerie scene, which was still very much in swing!
“Barroom eyes,” Frank crooned, the whole Lido Lounge under his spell, “so lovely and so cold. I’ll love you ‘til we’ve both grown old…”
Frank sang, and then paused. First, Toots floated forward with his horn blowing, and then Frank sang some more until Slim went wild with his long fingers and even longer guitar.
After all three of them performed together, Frank wound the song down with these final words: “Barroom eyes, barroom eyes; come back and give me a sweet surprise…”
/> Silence followed and Jake found himself clapping in the middle of the lounge. He looked around only to find the club empty, the patrons gone, and the floor half-littered with sagging tables and broken chairs. He looked to the stage where Toots and Slims bowed and, tipping their instruments in Frank’s direction, vanished.
“Hey!” Jake called out, leaping onto the stage and racing after them. “Guys! Wait! We have some questions…”
But there was no mist, no Toots or Slim either. “Where did they go?” Jake asked, turning to Frank, who quietly lowered the lid on the piano keys.
“Wherever they feel…comfortable, I suppose,” Frank sighed, gently caressing the closed lid. His fingers were so real, so solid and present, they actually left smudges in the dust on the black lid.
“Why did you let them go?” Jake snapped. “They were your band, right? They were here that night! They could help us find your killer, Frank!”
Frank merely shook his head, looking up at Jake. “Don’t you think they were the first two I tried to get in touch with after I died? But they couldn’t see me while they were alive, and now that they’re dead, well, they still think they’re alive.”
“But how?” Jake asked.
“It’s complicated, Jake, but…in the spirit world, everyone Toots and Slim knew is already there, jamming away every night.”
“But look at this place,” Jake said, pointing around at the peeling wallpaper and boarded–up windows. Gone were the crowds, the lights and merriment. It was almost as if the minute Frank stopped singing, the “audience” stopped wanting to be there. “Didn’t they wonder why it looks like…crap?”
Frank smiled, leaning back on his piano stool. “To them, Jake, it doesn’t look like crap. To them, this place looks just as it looked in life: overflowing, sold out, everyone smiling with their cocktails in hand. Time has a way of standing still in the spirit world, Jake. A year can go by, ten, and if you don’t dig deeper, if you don’t have a secret or a mystery or tragedy to sort out, it feels like just yesterday. Toots and Slim, well, they’re happy with the way things are. To bring them down, to tell them my sad tale and remind them of what happened to me in real life, would only alter their reality.”