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So this lady walks into a bar, right?
And I'm talkin' one of those old-timey east coast bars, with the hardwood floors, the fancy hand-carved door trimmings and an ancient cast-iron steam radiator downstairs that whistles, thunks, and gurgles all winter long. This place is old as your great-grandma, but with a little metallic gold paint and a neon sign in the window, it's a bonafide hipster paradise where all the cool kids hang out.
...well, y'know, not KID-kids, but you get the picture.
So anyway, this lady - let's call her Fancypants - walks into the bar and takes a seat on a freshly-polished chrome stool with a red leather cushion. She's a high society lady, dressed up for an office job, but stuck a couple of decades in the past. Her milk-white blouse is trimmed with gold, and her blue denim skirt goes far past her knees. She's somewhere between "comely" and "homely", stuck in a fashion sensibility from an era where those two words might actually have been used in conversation. She slides a matching denim jacket off her shoulders, lays her pearl-lined clutch on the counter, tosses her curly auburn hair back over her shoulders, and politely clears her throat to order a drink.
Now the bartender, a strapping young lad named Abundio with short, thick hair and a pencil mustache, polishes his knuckles on his clean white apron, gives her a firm, brown-eyed stare, and asks coolly, "...what'll you have?"
And Fancypants answers, in her pleasant, call-center voice, "I'll have a Spokane Lite, on the rocks, please."
Abundio takes a breath and nods curtly, as if disappointed, and heads back to the little sliding-door fridge behind the counter, full to bursting with bright blue plastic bottles. He grabs one with a picture of a quaint little valley town at the foot of a mountain on the label, cracks open the plastic seal, and pours its chilly crystalline contents into a fancy glass full of pristine ice cubes. Any idiot with half a brain could pour this kind of drink, but as his position implies, our bartender friend here likes to at least pride himself on his presentation.
He carefully slides the drink to Fancypants, who nods and takes a graceful sip, as if ice-cold water in a glass full of ice-cold ice is the pinnacle of fine beverage cuisine. Easy to see where she puts her allegiances, isn't it?
And then, from behind her, the front door swings lazily open again as a second lady sashays in. Nearly everything about her is small and dark. A short black satin top hat sits atop her dark pixie cut hair, her short chubby legs are strapped into thigh-high leather boots, and her white button-up shirt is covered by a charcoal tuxedo vest. The rest of the outfit seems to disappear about halfway down, her undershirt tucks into a pair of charcoal briefs in the front and the only thing covering her legs are tight fishnet stockings.
For all the dark colors though, she's hard to miss. Her skin is covered head to toe in reflective stage makeup and body glitter, and up top she's sporting faded red eyeshadow and lipstick black as night, like she's just blown in from some raunchy cabaret show in a saucy nightclub across town - amusingly enough, that's exactly what she just did. It's a wonder she didn't freeze to death on the way over. She struts across the room like she owns the place and takes the seat beside the wall.
Now Fancypants clearly saw her walk in, but she's ignoring her. You know, in the same way people ignore their ex when they perchance cross paths in the wild a year after their breakup. Fancypants isn't fooling anybody. She stares ahead a little too blankly, holds her fancy glass a little too tightly, and gulps her ice-water a little too loudly. Something about an aggressive cabaret gal like our friend over here is making her mighty uncomfortable. But Fancypants is far too polite to say anything, and pretends that drinking her glass of water on the rocks is the only thing she's gonna be paying any attention to tonight.
So Abundio makes his way over toward the newcomer, like she's a completely normal person in a completely normal place. "And what'll you have...ma'am?"
And the cabaret gal - whose stage name is Nina Darling - knowingly, impishly, raises one thin, delicate hand, and raps her knuckles twice against the wall. And as if by magic, from somewhere within the wall panel emerges a sliding drawer, tall as a water pitcher. With a flick of her wrist and a sleight of her hand, a few dollar bills appear between her fingers, and she drops them ceremoniously into the drawer before sliding it back into its wooden camouflage.
She then announces, partly to the bartender, and maybe partly to Fancypants as well, in that ridiculous baby voice she uses up on the stage, "...just gimme the usual today, hon."
And Abundio can't hold back a little half-smile as he nods and disappears behind the counter. He can be heard whistling a snappy, jazzy tune to himself as some strange machine whirs to life in another room. "Ah, the old radiator's acting up again. Gimme just a moment here ladies, and I'll get that damned thing under control."
Nina just giggles and pulls her feet up to sit cross-legged on her stool. She catches Fancypants trying to sneak a peek at her stockings, stretched so tight that the seams might burst any minute, and seeing the redness in her cheeks only makes Nina all the giddier. She hasn't even had a drink yet, she's just a natural-born giggler.
A sudden grinding noise from the other room makes Fancypants jump in her seat. The poor lady is already frazzled and unnerved by her company, but now there's something else going through her head. You can see it on her face. She's got this tight-lipped, nervous expression, like she's put her hand in the cookie jar and just realized mom's coming up the driveway. She takes a hard, forced swig of her drink, like she's suddenly very keen on getting out of the bar as quickly as she can, but can't be excused from the table until she's finished. She almost chokes. Ice-cold water isn't meant to go down a person's throat that quickly.
All the while, Nina is just having herself a ball watching her squirm. She's obviously quite the regular around here, and loves watching newcomers fidget when they realize just what kind of establishment they may have stumbled into. She leans comfortably against the bar as Fancypants tries hard to maintain her composure. Nina thinks manners are for square eggs.
Finally, the awful grinding noise comes to a stop and the sound of water being poured can be heard instead. For a brief moment, Fancypants's nervous expression goes sour as her brain pictures the sort of thing you might think of when you hear a stream of water filling up a porcelain container, but it quickly reverts when she puts two and two together and her worst fears are confirmed. Her breath quickens, burning cold in her throat. This really is one of THOSE places, isn't it?
As she raises the glass to her lips to try and finish her drink, she hasn't noticed Nina slither up beside her. "You okay, sweetheart?"
And Fancypants gets so startled that she inhales the remains of her drink, cubes and all, and chokes them all down as she snatches her pearl clutch off the counter, threads her arms through the sleeves of her fancy denim jacket, and hops to her feet.
"I'm fine," she wheezes through the ice cubes.
Nina pouts and puts a hand on her shoulder. "You sure, hon?"
"Just leaving," she gasps, slipping a bill beneath the edge of her glass.
"I know the Heimlich if you need it," Nina offers, with extra sugar.
"All good thanks," she croaks, and then Fancypants power-walks out the front door, praying to whatever holy figure she thinks is upstairs that nobody will ever know she set foot in such a place.
The moment the door clicks to close behind her, Nina collapses against the bar and unleashes her shrill baby laugh with unbridled glee. Abundio reappears from around the corner, and he's in stitches. You don't get many chances in life to let out a big old belly laugh, so take it wherever you can get it.
As their moment of joy comes to its inevitable close, however, reality sinks its way back in and Abundio's face slowly settles back into sobriety once more. "...you don't think she'll tell anybody, do you?"
"And risk gettin' busted herself?" Nina replies, brushing the thought away like dust off her collar. "I mean, if she up and spills to the Blues and Twos, then she'll have to explain what SHE was doin' in here, too. And the Blues are ruthless. Soon as they got done baggin' us, they'd toss HER keister right into the Booze Bus alongside us, faster than you can say flapjacks!"
Abundio chews his tongue for a moment, then adds, "And you don't think she was a snoop, either?"
Nina shakes her head. "Too sweaty to be a snoop. First rule of snoop school is to blend in and act like you belong, and that gal was itchin' like chicken pox to skedaddle!"
At that, Abundio's eyes narrow suspiciously. "You sure know an awful lot about snoopin'."
Nina flutters her painted lashes back at him. "Aww, what'sa matter sweetie? You don't trust me?"
"No."
"Good!" Nina fires back with a giggle. "You got no reason to trust me far as you can throw me. You've heard what they all say about me. I'm just a no-good troublemakin' hussie who drinks and don't respect her authorities!"
It takes another moment, but Abundio finally cracks and gives her a smile. "...and that's exactly why you're welcome here, ain't it?"
Nina places her hands over her heart and wiggles her shoulders at him. It's some kind of universal move she does up on the stage that can mean any number of lovey-dovey phrases without getting too specific. A flirty, noncommittal gesture that may as well just mean "aww, you!".
Her shoulder shuffle is interrupted by the muted sound of knuckles rapping exactly twice from the other side of the wall. She sits up straight and claps her hands excitedly as the drawer mysteriously emerges once more from the wall. She reaches her hand inside and carefully pulls out her prize.
There's nothing quite like a fresh, steaming mug of coffee...freshly roasted, ground, poured, and mixed to perfection with a playful variety of creams, sugars, and syrups. It's the kind of drink you can't get anywhere else in town but here, at the Blind Tiger Cafe.
Now I know what you're thinking. Your mom, your dad, your pastor, and your congressman all tell you that coffee is an "impure" drink, full of chemicals and pollutants that stunt your growth, increase the risk of cancer, and contribute to every bodily malady on medical record. It un-quenches your thirst, makes you have to tinkle, and that little energy boost you get is followed by a hard crash. And worst of all, if you drink just one sip too much, you get addicted to the stuff, and addiction's the slippery slope that leads you straight to sin and ruin...
...but, on the other hand, when the only other drink they sell you is "pure", "all-natural", bottled water, you can't really fault people for wanting an alternative. Legal or not, somebody out there had to take matters into their own hands. After all, heroes are not born, but made. And it's only thanks to these law-breaking "heroes" that you can go out and find yourself a damn fine cup of coffee, as long as you know where to look and how to ask.
Two raps for coffee, three for espresso. You drop your money in the drawer and slide it back, call out your order and wait. When you open the drawer again, there it is, exactly as you'd have it. Nobody is heard or seen, and the blind tiger, apparently without any keeper, works like a charm...