Machu Piccu Gold

I had just begun my shift at the Lodestone Cafe when the pandemic hit. We'd just rolled out a new drink, Machu Picchu Pumpkin, for the fall season. I wasn't aware they grew pumpkin in Peru, but we've got smoothies made of stuff I didn't know existed, from places you could only reach on the back of a mountain goat, if you believed the advertising. 

Pretty average stuff, if you ask me. Other than an extra purplish tint, it tasted just like the regular pumpkin pie drinks we and our competitors often bring out this time of year.

Before that day the world went topsy turvy, I thought I would die from boredom. I was sick of the job, the clientele. As a customer, the place probably smells great, but I've worked in the place long enough to get sickened by the odors of roasted coffee beans, bacon and hot scones. I got tired of the interior as well. I'm not a fan of beat poetry, and the place, with its red brick walls, velvet curtains, faux gas lamps and framed but gaudy attempts at abstract impressionism harkened back to the time of bongo drums, goatees and French berets. And then there's the girl with the acoustic guitar we had for our 'special entertainment.' If you could get past the squeaky chalk voice, the lyrics had about zero social relevance and half the talent.

We didn't have a TV on the walls, so I didn't find out about the meteorite right away. A business suited Korean man had his laptop open, watching something about it, but I thought it was just another Cloverfield type movie that had come out. 

Then other people were looking at it, and I got a phone alert telling me to stay indoors and not go outside without facial protection. People started coming in with dust masks on their faces.

"Do you know what's going on?" I asked a portly black woman in a lab coat. Her name was Liz, I learned from the order and drug testing company badge.

She shrugged. "They said on TV there's a...comet breaking up in the air. Something about space bacteria turning into poison gas? It's killing birds, the ones that live end up looking damn weird..."

I served Liz a chai latte and a Machu Picchu, which she probably would have enjoyed, had a muscular buzz cut white cop not walked right into her, splashing drinks on her, himself, the carpet.

"Great. You got it all over me," the cop complained.

Liz was livid. "Why don't you watch where you're going! I know that I'm black, but that doesn't mean I'm invisible!"

"You saw me coming through the door, ma'am."

"Only a second before you hit me!"

And on the argument went. Yes, the cop was being a rude insensitive prick, but I also disliked it when people employed the race card at the drop of a hat. I wished for them both to leave.

Other people came in, walking around them. A doctor in a blazer and slacks, hawk like features reminding me somewhat of Donald Sutherland, a couple young men who put their arms around each other so often that it made me wish I worked at McDonald's, especially when I noticed the skirt one of them was wearing.

Everybody, I discovered, had white flakes on their shoulders. "Is it snowing out there?" I asked the cop when he at last stopped arguing and stood at the register.

"Dunno. I wasn't listening to the weather report." It seemed this officer's powers of observation were as keen as a nearsighted mole, hence the run-in. I sincerely hoped they kept him on parking meter detail long term. 

As I mixed the drinks, Liz gave me a withering look. I nonverbally indicated that he was a cop, what else could I do.

She marched up to the mixing machine, crossing her arms.

"Ma'am," I said. "Liz, I saw what happened. I can get you another or a refund if you'd like."

"What I'd like you to do is take his drink and dump it on his head."

I smirked. "Okay, barring things that could potentially get me arrested, what would you like?"

"Uh..." She stared at the menu board. "Get me..."

Give some people an inch, they'll take you a mile. Her order was three times the expense of the original. I felt sorry for her, yes, but not that damn sorry. I gave my manager a 'help me' look, but before she could answer, Officer Friendly butted in. "Are you done with that latte yet?"

I groaned, completed the mixture, topping it with nutmeg and what have you. He grumpily took it to a table near a window, where it did, in fact, appear to be snowing.

It seems that, as a manager, you acquire the abilities of invisibility and teleportation, because now that I needed her, Jerrica had made herself scarce. I gave up and filled Liz's ridiculous order.

She sipped one of her many mochas, declared it bitter, asked me to remake it and give her a refund.

Assuming the position is my job description, but I was already working on her next drink. "Hold on."

What I saw next surprised me so much that I myself gave Liz a shower of Machu Picchu gold.

The cop had shrank, his skin coloration turning a mottled red-purple, and as I stared, his face appeared to melt.

"What the hell!" Liz shouted. "If this is how you treat all your black customers, I will never set foot in this establishment again, and I will let the whole world know how dirty and uncivilized this miserable excuse for a coffee shop really is! Mark my words: I'll have your doors closed within a week!"

I pointed at the cop's table, incoherently stammering as I watched a pair of pig like ears emerge from the man's skull, his front incisors lengthening. He raised a hand, now just a flipper, knocking his brimming cup to the floor. The carpet, and my sanity, would never be the same.

Liz, failing to notice my absolute shock and horror, continued to browbeat, giving me enough angry huffing and puffing to rival a steam train. "I know you and that white cop are buddies, but I refuse to move from this spot until you turn in your nametag and apron and I get an official apology, in writing, from your company president!"

I still couldn't form words. The cop was now a cyclops.

"Let me speak to your supervisor."

"S-sorry." I wasn't even trying to sound sincere. The freak in the sagging police uniform had my full terrified attention.

"Manager!" Liz hollered in a sing song voice, then in a near scream. "Manager!"

Deciding I probably didn't want to be around the weird looking cop mutant anyway, I took some backwards jerking strides to the employees only area.

Jerrica liked to smoke, even if it were snowing out. I therefore got an idea where to look when I saw a crate propping open the rear fire exit.

It turns out the cop wasn't the only one having a bad skin day. I spotted a red purple thing clad in my boss's clothing out by the dumpster.

The thing whimpered at me, giving me a sad look with the solitary yellow eye in the middle of its face. Its beaver teeth chomped on a lit cigarette. In place of limbs, it had octopus tentacles.

"J-Jerrica?" I cried.

The thing only wiggled its pig ears in response, making squirrel noises. As if summoned, two more creatures like her slithered around the corner.

I retreated back into the building, arming myself with a broom. My eyes nervously searched the cafe as I crept back to my post.

My customers had disappeared, my counter trashed, cups, mounds of coffee beans and drink additives scattered all over the floor.

"Hello?" I called. "Liz?"

A churring sound answered me.

I looked down and saw another one of those purple things, this one wrapped in a baggy lab coat.

It seemed it and the cop thing had been talking in my absence, for now the cop thing slithered off its chair, churring to the lab coat wearing thing.

I guess the churring was agreeable, for they soon had their tentacles joined at the suction cup, and both became unclothed.

I couldn't tell who was black or white anymore, and apparently neither could they. I saw them slither out the door together.

So that took care of the racial divide, and, now that things had quieted a bit, I noticed that even the live entertainment had improved somewhat.

I was left with only one dilemma, actually: What was I going to do with six scones, three mochas, two Machu Picchus, a double chai latte and this strawberry banana mango smoothie?