Red Light District

It was the strangest thing. I opened the door and the room was awash in red light. A dozen people, some sporting lab coats – others in aprons – stood around two rows of high tables on which sat an army of white porcelain cups. Nobody said a word.

Some of them looked pensively down at their clipboards – others hovered above the cups that were arranged in little groups of five. One guy stood leaning against the wall with a silver spoon sticking out of his mouth like a pipe. One woman stood guard over the cups like a Sergeant Major with a stopwatch raised to eye level – watching the time like a hawk.

Suddenly the hawk gave the command as she abruptly replaced the stopwatch on the table and pulled a silver bouillon style spoon from the pocket of her lab coat. The other coats and aprons all produced spoons from pockets – the one daydreamer yanking his from out of his mouth. And then they all assumed what looked like their pre-assigned positions, each to a set of five cups.

Like clockwork they bent down and brought their noses up to the surface of the first cup – their faces skimming the surface of the brew like pelicans as they all closed their eyes and dipped the large spoons to break through what appeared to be a deep brown crust. From the doorway, it looked to me like they all inhaled as one as they swirled their spoons about the surface of the cup. Then, in unison, they raised their bodies and their spoons and all dipped their spoons into rinse cups beside their set of five.

And then, the whole dance was repeated on cup two. This went on until all five cups of each set had been investigated.

The lab coats and aprons then paraded around their respective table, performing pelican dives over each set of five cups – inhaling deeply as they swooped low. Continually they resurfaced from their tables to write down little things on their clipboards. Still, no one spoke.

I felt like a Peeping Tom from where I stood in the doorway. But nobody seemed to notice me – they were so engrossed in their task at hand. I thought to draw away but I could not. I kept watching.

The hawk once again stood – stopwatch in hand – as a number of the coats and aprons finished skimming off the mousse from the surface of each cup – always carefully rinsing the spoons after each clean. They punctuated each rinse of the spoon by clinking it on the rim of the rinse cup and then gently tapping the spoon on the little folded paper towels that sat beside each cup. The room reverberated with a cacophony of clinks and taps in an eerie melody of the process.

Suddenly, as one of the coats dipped his spoon into the first cup of the first set and brought it back to his lips, something between a whistle and a slurp shot out into the quiet of the room as the man aspirated and took in all the liquid on his spoon. He swirled it about in his mouth before gracefully spitting it out into the funnel-shaped lid of a plastic receptacle he held in his hand. Under his arm, he clutched his clipboard and a pencil protruded from his lab coat breast pocket. No sooner had he spat out the contents of his spoon then he performed an artful juggling of all his tools as he went to jot down something on his clipboard. Just as swiftly and smoothly he re-juggled his tools and, pencil back in pocket, clipboard back under arm, with receptacle in one hand and spoon in the other, he went in for a dip into cup two.

I watched as he danced his way across the cups, punctuating each slurp with a scribble on the clipboard and a rinse of the spoon. Soon an apron followed behind and began her journey at cup one. And soon all the coats and aprons were at it. The slurping symphony crescendoed as all of them joined their instruments to the task at hand.

After five or ten minutes of this, the coats and aprons began to drift back from the tables’ edge. Standing around in the hue of red light, some looked over their clipboards and added things or made changes. Others just read over what they had written.

The guy with the spoon like a pipe in his mouth was once again off to one side, leaning against the wall, with the spoon jutting out of his mouth and a far-off look on his face.

The hawk was once again clutching the stopwatch and I wondered what was coming next. I waited and watched. As it turned out, the hawk was now keeping only herself to some strict timing. Others proceeded to make a second round of all the sets of cups in their own time.

This slurping, scribbling symphony had a third movement to it, before the sonata came to a close. The cuppers, as I called them, gradually moved to the periphery of the room to finish up their note-taking. A hush descended on the group again, with only the occasional spoon punctuating the silence with another slurp. It was the strangest thing.

Sensing that this was nearing the end, I quickly drew away and softly closed the door on this recondite scene in red.