Speakeasy
Keltie Zubko
His words, messaged on the dating app, showed up on her phone as she checked her location and stopped abruptly at the unmarked entrance. A man who’d been following at about six feet behind swerved to avoid running into her and snapped, “Watch the distancing!” then stomped around and past her through the rain. She paused, trying to catch her breath through her mask and examined the inhospitable building, then read their last exchange again before he’d sent the address of the place now before her.
“You said you wanted to talk face to face.”
“There?”
“Just a coffee shop.”
“But so small.”
She’d almost missed it. No windows let in the chilled gaze of passers-by. Tightly fastened shutters hoarded and protected whatever waited inside for her. No sign out front marked it, just the building number from earlier, more optimistic days, and some graffiti she couldn’t decipher except for the words “or die.” She glanced behind to make sure she wasn’t stepping in front of anyone else and tried the door anyway. It gave, so she pulled it open, then peered into the dim vestibule. A man stood like a guard, alert behind his clear plastic shield with a mask covering his lower face. This looked like the right place. She stepped inside.
She felt him watching her fasten the door against the rainy wind. She suspected some errant draft may have slipped in with her, hiding in her rain gear or tucked discreetly behind her own mask and she shivered, looking into the eyes of the man protecting the rest of the place from her view. His bulky figure couldn’t prevent the blast of heat and noise seething up from behind him, greeting and enticing her. In previous times this very place would have been a cozy retreat from the damp weather, but now the prospect of going inside made her shiver again, this time not from the cold. The man’s eyes narrowed as she approached, and his voice cut through the muffling of the mask.
“What do you want?”
“I’m supposed to meet someone here. Named Carl.” She stopped, not getting too close, hearing the outside door open and shut again while the host glanced up and then back to his computer screen.
“He’s here already. And he’s vouched for you. Emma, right? But you still have to read and sign the waiver. He couldn’t do that for you.”
At odds with his mask and elaborate plastic shield, he pushed a tablet at her, not bothering to sanitize it or take pains over the proper distance. She backed off a bit from reflex, then looked up into his skeptical eyes.
“Not used to it, you know.”
“Well, maybe you shouldn’t come in, then. No one’s making you.”
“Oh, no, I want to!” She reached out and took the tablet, looking at the long list on the screen before her.
“You can’t enter until you’ve signed the waiver. You’d better read all the fine print.” Another couple fidgeted behind her now at the prescribed distance, and she felt them invisibly urge her to hurry.
“You realize masks are optional? And we don’t control who breathes on you, right? Or where people stand or sit, where you stand or sit, who approaches you or not, and what traces they or you might leave or bring with you? Or the consequences.”
His eyebrows rose and fell with emphasis as he recited the conditions of the waiver she’d have to sign, all the time watching her eyes. Despite the mask securing the lower part of her face, he seemed to read her doubt. They never used to have bouncers in coffee shops but that’s what he resembled. Indoors with no fresh-air patio, this place was supposed to be heavily regulated. She had to get by him to enter and meet the guy from the app. There were always squealers, she knew, imagining the trouble they could make for her, or this small business, struggling on the edge to survive. It was not like the old days when they openly lured crowds of people to stream freely in and out, and crammed in as many people as they could.
She knew the dangers of going into the modest little coffee shop. The operative word, of course, was “little.” Many places had been shut down a long time ago, near the beginning of the pandemic, never to open again. She remembered all those hangouts they had taken for granted, redolent of coffee and warm with companionship. They were tiny, tight spaces efficiently paring down expensive square footage to serve office workers, hurried workmen or students huddled laptop to laptop renting wifi and a spot to study with the price of a coffee.
Such small shops now operated with wide distances between the few patrons, or allowed no one inside, doing take-out instead. The host was supposed to police traffic, letting only a certain number of people in at a time, supervising proper single-file spacing, checking for masks and refusing business to those who didn’t comply. But this place operated outside those rules. The host, pugnacious and ready to turn her away, seemed like he’d stepped out of some forgotten history. She felt sweat accumulate on her upper lip behind her mask and her breath was hot and suffocating.
He blocked the view behind him, down the few steps where she imagined a dangerous array of rebels mingled in a soup of sweat and odor, taunting the capricious virus. In such close quarters she supposed it could jump person to person, from the careless or the bold, to the lonely or the jaded. Desperate people, like her. It was everything she’d been told to avoid, and had avoided, until this point, swiping her sanitized phone right or left on the app, carrying on long disembodied text conversations with fingertips instead of intimate words you’d have to lean in to hear. She’d even had a few distanced dates, too remote for any spark to leap that divide. But this was another chance. Their banter back and forth was fun and easy. She wanted to meet him, see his face, hear his voice unstifled by mask, shield, or that new kind of trepidation she’d found and tried to bury in herself.
“Just read.”
The host brought her attention back to the tablet. His scrutiny groped her face and body, intruding on the skin bordering her mask. Her face burned underneath it. Breathing her own recycled breath oppressed her and made her feel she might swoon one of these days if she didn’t get fresh air instead. She wanted to meet this guy named Carl, but why here of all places, she wondered. She re-read the long list of dangers he was exposing her to, that she would defy if she stepped past the roped-off threshold and down the few steps into the place called the Speakeasy.
“Okay, so you gonna sign?” She checked the tablet one last time, scrolling to make sure she’d read it all, then holding her thumb above the space indicated, hesitated before pressing it down on the touchscreen. As if this was a defense in any court these days, she thought, but did it anyway. He checked to see that it registered and scanned her i.d. Watching what she could see of his face, she figured that finally he smiled. His eyes had tender little crinkles at the edges and narrowed again, but in a friendlier sort of way. Just how much had she misjudged him, and whether his lips were thin or full, and if he showed his teeth when he smiled, she wondered as he beckoned her to step past him and unclasped the heavy velvet rope. She stopped just beyond him on the top step, preparing for her descent down to the coffee shop itself.
“Oh, and . . . ” he spoke gentler to her now. She stopped, looking up at him. “You will want to . . . ” He gestured at his mask and she hesitated, but then understood and turned away, as if now she had to strip naked before going any further. She reached up and slid the straps of her own mask off her head, then stowed it in her bag.
The noise implied that there were many more than the ten or less allowed into any venue of this size, public or private. The sound rose up to draw her toward the gathering of people. She remembered how it felt entering a crowded bar, meeting the mysterious men that inhabited the world of the past.
In the dim light of those bars or clubs you’d never know who was getting close enough to press against your body, exhale their steamy breath on your neck or attempt to whisper provocative words to you while watching your lips for a clue. They might be the worst loser or greatest possibility, but those were the chances you’d take—that you wanted to take—back then. She remembered the auburn beard of her last boyfriend in that other time. He had shaved it off so he could wear a tight-fitting respirator, and she still mourned those crisp little hairs tickling her skin.
With the mask off her face now, she flushed as the heat rolled up to engulf her in the sudden pleasure of being open and unrestrained. Her cheeks tingled and the back of her neck felt like some breeze nestled in her hair.
She made her way down the few steps, studying the small area, then stopped again, leaning on a bannister to orient herself. The couple who’d arrived after her hurried past, veering too close.
The wave of smells greeting her began to have nuances, and she almost took a deep breath, then froze and cautiously let herself inhale slow dribbles of air rich with a variety of vape flavors, something fragrant like her grandfather’s pungent pipe tobacco, and all the odors her mask would have blunted. The combination of aromas and noise from people together in the tight space gripped and pulled her like a firm, warm hand she could not resist.
Underlying the dark scent of fresh coffee, tea, and the earthy perfume of so many bodies closer together than normal, there was something else, undefinable and elusive. It wafted across the boundaries between people, pushing her into the invisible maelstrom toward the long counter with the busy baristas. She hadn’t located him yet, the guy named Carl. She’d get her drink first, then go find him. The aroma of the coffee made her once again breathe deeper than she meant to until she pictured that spiky little juggernaut of a virus, infiltrating and latching onto the careless and unwary.
Around her a buffet of faces talked and laughed. Their expressions blossomed in the heat and attention, smiling or frowning, not noticing her as they focused on each other. Lips in luscious colors surrounded her with marvelous, disconcerting variety. Her own felt pale and uncertain. Jawlines and mouths, some framed by emerging whiskers or full-out beards, presented her with a range of unsettling possibilities. They were within reach. She could have extended her awkward, inhibited fingers and touched them.
Meanwhile, laughter spewed germs into the air. They hovered everywhere, targeting her and the heedless crowd. Invisible enemies rose from their hot bodies, hitch-hiking on their confidence, sweat and pheromones. As she stepped closer, still waiting to order her coffee, she couldn’t stop visualizing miniscule sprays of the most virulent kind, escaping each person to fly through the confined space. You didn’t know what was let loose from those unhindered mouths. But she did know every admonition. The contagion could travel farther than you thought possible on the most ordinary human function: a yawn, a giggle, a smile, a word spoken too enthusiastically, a cough or worse, a sneeze. Somewhere deeper in the room, the man who’d lured her there, watched. She peered around, looking for him. She checked her phone but there was no message. She told herself she could still leave.
Four people sat at a table just large enough to hold their mugs, their heads drifting too close together. She pictured the virus jumping like opportunistic fleas from one bent head to another. In a tiny booth a couple faced each other, their hands on the table, his resting on top of hers. She imagined their sweat mingling and with it the virus, crossing from one to the other, sweet, deceiving and perhaps deadly.
Something nuzzled her again, like an insidious idea, carrying unknown threats or promise. It played with her, brushed her skin, making her tremble and look around the room again. The press of warm bodies moved closer to the till in contrast to the isolated people outside, slogging their separate ways through the cold and wet streets. Even if the guy named Carl turned out to be all wrong, at least she could still have just the simple pleasure of sitting close enough to eavesdrop on strangers again.
The miasma of smells enveloped her, pressuring her to almost bump against the person in front of her. The straps of her mask had left marks that she still felt, clinging to her face, impressing upon her the rules of proper pandemic behavior. She always donned it first thing in the morning before leaving her place. The marks made a border around the usually censored part of her face.
She inched closer to the counter. Just as her phone vibrated in her pocket with a message, she glanced up at the wall behind the counter and noticed an old bumper sticker pinned there amid a few other haphazard decorations. Puzzled, she saw that once it had read “Live Free or Die.” Now the first two words were crossed out. Handwritten in big black letters above them was one other word, the name of the coffee shop so that the sticker read, “Speakeasy or Die!” Her eyes opened wide, and startled, she took in a deep breath as her hand rose in reflex to her own once familiar cheek. But that was taboo. She pulled her hand back down and glanced around.
That’s when she caught him, phone in his hand, but watching her. His look reached out from across the room as palpable as a touch about to soothe her cheek. His own face was unmasked, and the promise of a smile rested there.
She blushed. His smile spread, a hybrid of two emotions, she thought. Which would win, humour or desire? With that question, she hesitated, wondering if she could tip the response on his face one way or the other. She turned away from the counter then and slipped out of the lineup.
She walked toward him, cheeks burning, and smiled at him the way people used to do. Of course, she thought, the virus still lurked somewhere nearby—hiding, cajoling, bargaining and tricking them all. She checked his smile again, and let her fears fly up into the air like confetti, a bit like the virus disguised in the droplets of a sneeze. That mysterious small draft—a wish or a hope—blew through the confined hot atmosphere of the tiny shop so they could speak, face to face. Easily.
Keltie Zubko is a Western Canadian writer, born in Alberta and now based on Vancouver Island, BC. She has an extensive background doing research and writing legal arguments, as well as writing about free speech and Western Canadian politics. She now prefers to explore in fiction our human relationships with each other and with technology. Her work has appeared in Canada, the U.S. and internationally.