We entered the bar and, as my sight adjusted to the haze, I saw neon signs advertising cheap beer brands I've never heard of, dotting the faux wood-grain walls. The signage lent a carnival sensibility to the place. I felt drunk just walking in.
"We're here on a missing persons report," Charlie told the Bartender.
Without looking up from the glass he was washing, the Bartender answered. "That's gonna be tough. Almost everyone here is missing in some way or another. And most don't want to be found."
"So does that mean you won't be helping us?" I assumed.
"Guess it depends on who's doing the looking."
"Hey, you guys are looking for someone? Me too!"
A voice came from the only occupied stool in the place, in the shadows at the end of the bar. I hadn't seen
the old manwhen we first came in, and his voice now startled me.
"Didn't mean to scare you there. I'm searching for someone too, just like you fine folks," he said,
his tongue, like a pink eel hiding in the rocks, slipping through the gaps made by his missing teeth.
"I'm Leopold," he said, moving towards us with an extended hand. "Perhaps you can help me find my son."
"We sure can," Charlie said, giving me that confident smirk he got when he was right.