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The Hero of the Teeming Masses hears you asking: Who the hell does he think he is?

The Hero asks in return: What the fuck’s so great about *you*?

• • •

A magenta-haired woman of about thirty walked in. Her hair was short and perfectly spiked to stand out exactly two inches all around her head. This was not someone who made it a habit of wearing a hat or helmet. Heathen started an assessment, only halfway under her breath. “No ski wear. Computer case.” She turned to Dag. “She’s going to buy one coffee and nurse it for two hours while she sits here with her laptop.” Officially, the chain didn’t mind, and the baristas didn’t have to rush them out, but Heathen hated campers like that. She never thought they bought enough to offset the space they took up, but she knew she was the only one of the staff who felt that way.

“Hi.” The woman stuck out her hand to Dag at the cash. “Philippa.” She didn’t smile, probably convinced of her own intensity and trying not to compromise it.

Dag smiled and shook her hand. “Dag.”

Her serious look didn’t change. “I’ll be around here kind of regularly.”

“Yeah? Me too.”

She seemed to miss the joke. “I’m staying at a friend’s place in town to get some work done,” Philippa said. “Away from the city.” Every statement she made, she accompanied with a small nod to herself. Interesting tic. Heathen stifled a laugh into a cough behind him. She was going to have a field day with this.

“Is it a problem if I come in for a bit every day? I get a little stir crazy in the house.”

“No sweat,” Dag said. “As you can see, there aren’t exactly fistfights going on over the tables on the weekdays. Weekends, though, you take your chances. It’s a bit of a free-for-all with the tourists and day-trippers.” Everyone who was convinced the après-ski lodges at the resorts were going to gouge them for a hot chocolate came over instead to their loyal, dependable, and truth be told, if anybody actually made the comparison, equally-pricey BlackArts for their beverages.

“Sure,” Philippa nodded. There was a pause. “It’s a screenplay I’m working on,” she said. “I’ll be pitching it at the Whistler Film Festival.”

Well, that was a propos of nothing. Heathen wanted to gag. “Good for you,” Dag said. Philippa waited, like there should be more. Dag took the bait. “What’s it about? The Whistler scene?”

“Man’s inhumanity to man.”

“Sounds like the Whistler scene to me,” Dag said.

Heathen was finally unable to keep herself from breaking into their lovely little chat. “Can we, um, get you something?” She stepped up beside Dag, with the fake’n’cheesy smile she reserved for the times she meant it the least. “We have any number of refreshing beverages.”

Philippa looked a bit startled by Heathen’s sudden and exaggerated obsequiousness. “Triple espresso,” Philippa said. “Thanks.” Heathen turned to repeat the order to Dag, who was now behind the bar.

“I got it,” Dag said to Heathen, in a warning tone before she could mock it.

Philippa plunked a loonie into the tip jar when she paid, took her cup, and stepped away to take a seat, but then she just stood there for a second, hesitating, looking around.

“She’s looking for an outlet,” Heathen whispered to Dag. “Doesn’t want to use up her battery.”

Sure enough, Philippa went over to the only table near an electrical outlet and started unpacking her laptop. She pulled out the adapter cord and looked back at Dag. “Okay if I plug in?”

“Sure.” He turned to Heathen. “Hey, at least she asked.” She had a retort, but he conveniently took off to do the hourly bathroom wipedown.

Two hours later, Heathen watched the woman leave. “Finally!” she said.

“What?” Dag said.

“Laptop lady’s gone.”

Dag sighed. “Haven’t you moved on to something else yet?”

Clearly he’d forgotten how well Heathen could hold over a conversation from hours before. “Fucking hell,” Heathen said, watching the door close. “Did you see that? ‘Hi.’ Nod. Yes, I’m still cool. ‘I’m Philippa.’ Nod, yes, I’m still cool. ‘I’m intense, so I need a very intense triple espresso.’ And you don’t announce you’re going to be a regular. You just, you know, become one. Otherwise, what you are is a poser.”

“What’s your problem?” Dag said. “She was perfectly fine. It was kind of good of her that she asked if it was okay to take up space here every day. Why the heck are you in this job, Heathen, when you don’t actually like serving the public?”

“It was serving the public that made me this way.” But she still wasn’t done about the writer. “And she obviously wanted you to ask about her screenplay. Why did you have to go and do it?”

“Because she wanted me to.”

“Never do that!”

“It’s what I do,” Dag said. “I make conversation. And if she wanted espresso, was I supposed to keep that from her, too?”

“What I’m saying is, don’t feed people’s desperate attempts to aggrandize themselves.”

He just looked at her for a minute.

“What?” she said. “Do you even know what irony is, Heathen?”

“Don’t try and change the subject,” she said.

• • •

If taking photos of celebrities physically damaged them, would anyone stop? Or would they just take more?

The Hero’s take: of course they would. The celebrities would insist on it, for it is only by the attention of the Teeming Masses that they know they are celebrities.

• • •

Philippa was in every weekday. Much to Heathen’s displeasure, Dag started pulling her regular triple espresso as soon as he saw her coming in the door and bringing it to her “regular” table by the outlet. He’d stand there and chat for a minute while Philippa plugged in her laptop and booted up.

“Seriously, Dag,” Heathen said at the end of the week when he came back from a trip to the table. “I’m starting not to be able to tell the difference between you and a lapdog. Except there may be a greater sucking sound around you.”

“Screw off,” Dag said. “I’m just being nice. You should try it sometime.”

“Mmm, no, don’t think so,” Heathen said. “Maybe you should try not being nice sometime. It’s way more fun. So tell me, is she still telling you all about her screenplay? Has she decided to put a tall, blond barista into it now?”

“Shut up.” Dag rang the espresso in. “You’ve also failed to notice,” he said, “we get a bigger tip when I bring it to her table. Her order’s three-fifty. She pays with a five. If she’s here at the counter, she flips a buck into the tip jar. If I bring it to her, she tells me not to make another trip back to the table, and we keep all the change from five bucks. Since we make extra tips out of it every time, I don’t think you have anything to bitch about.”

“Except you trying to lay a guilt trip on me over a fucking buck and a half,” Heathen said.

“And if I succeed,” he said, “then my work here is done.”

Heathen didn’t retort. She was wondering if she’d just heard him admit he was only nice to people for the money.

• • •

All right, since no one else will say it, The Hero will: Didn’t a person used to have to do something to get a public memorial? Like, other than die in a plane crash? Does every victim require a monument because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time? When did the definition of “bravery” become sitting all unawares in your seat with doll-sized food in front of you while unseen wires fry or metal stresses itself to the breaking point? Yes, the Hero is sure that your loved one was extremely special to *you*, but what does it mean when it gets chucked onto a big stone in a public space? Posthumous fifteen minutes of fame? Harken ye to the Hero: Let’s try to keep our big, ugly lawn ornaments in our own damn yards. Here endeth the rant.

• • •

Heathen was just tying her apron on for the opening shift when she heard voices out front. She came out to find Dag starting up the first pots of regular and decaf. The magenta-haired writer lady was leaning on the pastry case, chatting with him. Oh, fuck, Heathen thought. It wasn’t any coincidence this woman was here right at the start of Dag’s shift. There was only one reason she’d be up and about at this ungodly hour.

Heathen could imagine it—writer-lady offering to make breakfast, Dag protesting that just because he had to get up and go to work, there was no reason that she had to get up, too. Writer-lady protesting that no, she wanted to give him a ride in, since it was so dark and so cold at six thirty, and her place being kind of way out of the village, it was only fair she drive him over. And here they were, her hair looking actually dishevelled, rather than perfectly arranged in those perfect spikes. And now, because she’d done him the phenomenal favour of driving him over, he was treating her to a coffee, a little twist on the domesticity. Her fingers trailed on his for a second or two as he passed her the cup. Heathen wanted to barf.

And Dag looked way too damned blissed. As soon as writer-lady left, with a significant-sounding, “See you later,” Heathen pounced.

“First sleepover at her place?” she said, jamming the cash tray loudly into the drawer of the register.

“You’re asking me this why?” He started loading pastry into the display case.

“I don’t actually need to ask,” Heathen said, scooping out the fives in the float to double-check the count. “It’s totally obvious. Just like when you chatted up that woman from Oregon and arranged to meet up later. And then a week later, it was the bank teller.”

“What is your fucking problem?” he said.

Heathen stuffed the fives back in without actually finishing the count and pulled out the tens. “Since you ask, your fucking is my problem.”

He crossed his arms. “I don’t see how. Yeah, Heathen, I pick women up, I let them pick me up. It sure as hell makes work a lot more interesting, considering that clearing away crumpled napkins and dirty cups doesn’t usually make a guy seem very appealing to women.”

“Are you kidding? We love men who clean. But seriously, you can’t go two days without putting the moves on some female in here,” Heathen said, “and it’s making me ill. Get over yourself already. Yes, Dag, it works. You’re cute, you’re blonde, you’ve got the Bambi eyelashes. You’ve proved that you can pick up anybody you want to. How many of them do you have to sleep with? You’re over at the Plaza Suites more times a week than my friend Sandrine, and she’s a goddamned chambermaid there.” She’d completely given up the cash now, assuming for the moment that Mohammed didn’t need double-checking and just slammed the drawer shut.

“So?” Dag had stopped loading pastry too. “If I go back to some tourist’s hotel room with her, so what? Everybody involved, or at least, everybody but you, who isn’t actually involved, knows it’s all just a bit of fun. You act like I’m engaged in serial killing, instead of serial sex. Is it affecting my life-or-death work here? I screw up anyone’s order? Am I giving away too much change?”

“This place is going to get a bad reputation if our most popular après-ski treat is one of the staff.”

He had this annoying smirk. “Or we could get a good reputation for that. It certainly ain’t hurting the tips any. Or is it that you’re jealous?” he added suddenly.

Man, he was full of himself. “No, dear,” Heathen replied. “I’ve already had and done with you, although you may have forgotten me in the crowd. And it was significantly less than wonderful.” So there.

He still looked smug. “Oh, it’s never like that now,” he said. “Ask anybody.”

What irritated Heathen was exactly that. How did this guy become a sex god in a couple of months? Because, though she wouldn’t admit it to him, Heathen saw (and heard from the other staff) that women came on to him just as often as he came on to them. What had she missed? Dag was supposed to be the dork to stay away from, and she’d stuck to that. But now, here he was, in total demand. Someone wasn’t keeping to their proper place in this equation.