Page 1 of Daddy's Game

1

GRACE

The lights snapped off all at once, leaving me in darkness.

“Oh great.”

I heaved a long sigh and pushed away from my desk. The chair rolled a minuscule amount before slamming into the overstuffed shelf behind me. One of my binders, dislodged by the impact, slipped from the shelf and flopped onto the floor.

I didn’t bother trying to pick it up, as my eyes hadn’t yet adjusted to the newfound gloom. My office at the Performing Arts Center ostensibly had a window, through which the early morning sunlight could have streamed through. Again, ostensibly.

But said window sat near the ceiling, a tiny square barely a foot in diameter. Between the wire mesh webbing running through the glass and a layer of grime no amount of washing seemed able to remove, not much light filtered in.

I bumped my knee against the desk as I made my way to the exit. Once I pushed the heavy oaken door and found myself in the hallway, I could see. A big window at the end of the hallway let in the morning sunlight, and showed the busy street outside.

The old brownstone certainly had its quirks. One of them was the fact it still had fuses instead of a circuit breaker. Only its status as a historical building kept me from having to upgrade.

The hallway was lined with doors. One of them opened and a woman a couple years younger than my twenty-four years stepped out into the hallway. She used a painted nail to push her glasses further up on her face and gave me a questioning look.

“Did we blow a fuse again?” she asked.

“Most likely, Selma.” I continued on and she fell in beside me. “I’m headed down to the basement to check.”

“I’ll go with you.”

“Aren’t you teaching a painting class right now?”

She shrugged.

“My students are all doing fine without me for the moment. Besides, I know how much you hate going into the basement by yourself.”

“I do hate going down there,” I admitted as we continued down the hallway. On our way, we passed by a dozen things screaming out for repair or replacement. The doorframe to our music room had rotted away, so the heavy door leaned beside the darkened portal. I could dimly see the white and black piano keys lit by a single, narrow sunbeam which made it through the slats in the roof.

“If we don’t fix the ceiling soon, we’re going to have bats. Or worse.”

“It gets worse than bats?” I shuddered. “I’d love to fix it, Selma, but…”

I let my voice trail off and rubbed my fingers together pointedly.

“I know, I know. We don’t have the money.”

Selma’s voice held a note of disgruntlement and despair. I couldn’t blame her. The performing arts center was struggling…badly. Part of the problem was how ugly our building was. It just looked old and decrepit, foreboding, really. Not a place where people wanted to send their urban youth…or a place they wanted to invest their charity donations in.

We reached the end of the hallway and turned a corner. This portion of the building faced toward the West, so darkness cloaked it heavier than the hallway we’d just left. I put my hand out and felt along the glazed brick walls until I found the doorknob I sought.

“Here.”

Selma activated the flashlight function on her cellphone. I had left my own back in the office.

“Thanks,” I said as I tried to open the door. Locked. I grumbled as I fished the keyring out of my pocket. “I don’t remember locking it.”

“I think Mitch did it after he finished the other night.”

I bit back a retort. Mitch worked for free, after all. He was a former high school janitor who volunteered his time to do what little he could with a shoestring budget to keep the center open and looking halfway decent. I could put up with his penchant for locking. Every. Fucking. Door. Even those he’d been told time and time again to leave open.

“Old habits die hard,” I said as I thrust the key in the lock and opened the door at last.

“Too true. Which is why you haven’t dated anyone in what, six months?”

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