Billie Mae Harper hit a wall when the pandemic hit everyone else. It’s not easy to lose money as a saloonkeeper in a drinking town which is where Billie Mae kept her saloon. But she did. The rednecks just squeezed out the white necks and the college kids and even the neighborhood hangers-on.
So while she was closed down, she sprang
into action. She was going to reopen when permitted but with the rightness of
the stopped clock, she had a Big Idea. Social distancing. Jack and cokes
with a twist.
That long oval bar was perfect.
So Billie Mae built partitions of acrylic and inserted them between the stools.
When the indoor restrictions relaxed, Billie Mae was ready with the World’s
Only Social Distancing Bar.
You could sit there and drink yourself
stupid, but without fear of catching that nasty disease. She put a full
page ad in the Pennysaver, put notice on Craigslist. Put a big sign in the
window. Got on the radio to be interviewed about The World’s One And Only
Social Distancing Bar. Bought a lot of pretzels and peanuts and some tiny
bowls which she placed in each cubicle.
Opening day comes and Slick James, once
a regular, was first in the door. Takes a stool in the middle. Orders “the
usual,” which means dumping endlessly varying contents of near-empty bottles
with less than a shot left into an Old Fashioned glass of ice.
James is on his second when the second
customer comes in. Johnsie. Johnsie is a woman and no one knows her
real name. She’s not of carding age. She orders a vodka and cranberry
juice. Next in was Mac. Mac also is a woman. This town likes to
give its girls the names of boys. Mac orders a Jack and Coke.
Slick James is now on his third “usual”
and he is surrounded by two lovely women, known to be social. But they are
behind Billie Mae’s walls of acrylic and can’t hear each other.
There will be no pickups here tonight. How do you pick up a girl at a bar
if both you and she are in a 1960s TV quiz show “isolation booth?”
This gives Billie Mae her second Greatest Idea of the Century: Install
intercoms so patrons can hold conversations. After all, it is well-known
that it’s much harder for one person to pick up another if they can’t converse.
After a brief conversation, Johnsie
leaves her isolation booth, steps into Slick James’ and slaps him square in the
face. Mac, also isolated notices. Not because she is a nosey body
but because Johnsie the Slapper is blocking her view of the LMT Movie of the
Night playing on the TV set over the bar mirror.
Mac orders a steak.
“How do you want your steak, Mac?” asks
Billie Mae.
“Raw, please.”
Mac takes the raw steak off the plate
and takes it to Slick James’ isolation booth. She places it on James’
developing black eye and swollen cheek. She writes her address on a bar
napkin and slips it to the dry space in front of Slick James. Then she goes
back to her cubicle, pushes the intercom button and says “Don’t be long. I have
to be at work at 9 tomorrow morning and I don’t have all night.”
Any
Questions? wesrichards@gmail.com
If it’s not
working, wesrichards@protonmail.com
© WIR 2020
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