rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_39232742-3bb6-54ae-88fd-6dceadde930f.jpg" alt="Image"/> Question for the Masses: Why does society think that any tragedy that involves a child is infinitely more terrible than something that involves real people who’ve actually accomplished something? Car Crash Kills Three never disturbs people as much as Car Crash Kills Two and Baby. And where does a hunk of protoplasm the size of a loaf of bread get off taking up the space of three people in an elevator? Baby buggies and strollers do not have to double as parade floats.
• • •
“I think there might be a health code against that.”
Mohammed heard KateLynn’s voice drift back to him in the office. She must have been bussing the back tables. Mohammed put down the time cards and headed for the front. He paused just before the doorway, just in time to see Dag put down the stainless steel whipped cream container he’d been holding against his forehead.
“You don’t look so great,” KateLynn said. Exactly what Mohammed was thinking, even from where he was standing. “You’re really pale. Are you sick or something?”
“I’m not pale,” he said. “I’m Swedish. And sick is, like, throwing up. If I can get out of bed, I can work.”
“Where’d you get that rule?” KateLynn asked.
“My mom’s a nurse. I know. I went to school with sore throats, colds, everything that wasn’t life-threatening. It never killed me.”
“Whatever your mom says,” KateLynn replied, “I think you look sick.”
Mohammed stepped out into the seating area, and picked up some crumpled straw wrappers that KateLynn had missed. “What have you got?”
“What have you got, Mo, radar? How did you hear that way back there?”
Mohammed looked him over. “KateLynn’s right, you look like hell.”
“Okay, I have a sore throat,” Dag said. “Look, I’m drinking tea.” He held up his cup. “With honey.”
“Do you have a fever?” Mohammed asked.
Dag shrugged. “Hell if I know.”
“KateLynn,” Mo said, “feel his head, see if he has a fever.”
“I don’t think that’s in my job description,” she said. “Why don’t you do it?”
“Because it’s a girly thing to do,” Dag said. “And he doesn’t want to be caught dead, right?”
“Correct,” Mohammed said. He gestured to KateLynn. “Go on.”
KateLynn sighed as she stepped over to Dag. “Lean over here.”
“This is a lot of fuss over nothing,” Dag said. But he bent down for KateLynn to reach him. She wiped her hand off on her apron before putting it on his forehead.
“He’s hot.” KateLynn nodded over to Mohammed.
“We all know that, but am I sick?” Dag said with a grin.
“Clock out and go home,” Mohammed said.
“I’ve been standing over a cappuccino machine all morning!” Dag said. “Of course I’m hot! Aren’t you supposed to be some kind of Dickensian taskmaster? Doesn’t the chain insist that you exploit the staff cruelly and force labor out of us regardless of fatigue, illness or personal emergency? Am I going to have to report you to Corporate on one of the comment cards for being all wussy and caring?”
“You want to make all the customers sick?” Mohammed said. “This isn’t the only coffee shop in the village. This isn’t even the only BlackArts in the village—they could all go over to Northside.”
“It’s not like I’m spitting in the coffees, Mo.”
“Say that a little louder, won’t you?” Mohammed said. “I don’t think the people on Blackcomb heard you.”
“No fair,” KateLynn said. “I’ll have to be out here all on my own.”
“No, I’ll come out and help you,” Mohammed told her. “Let me just grab an apron and put the time cards away first.”
Dag followed him to the back. “Look, I can’t afford to lose my hours,” he said when no one else could hear. “It costs me paid days to be off sick. I’m not like these high school kids living at home. I’ve got rent to make.”
Mohammed thought about it for a moment. “I’ll swap some shifts around so you can make up some of the hours you’ll miss. Oh, and before you go, can you write down whose favourite mug is whose? Nobody else here has them memorized.”
Dag grinned. “Mo,” he said. “I think it’s time we talked about moving me up on the pay grid.”
• • •
Heathen and Tim were on first thing Saturday morning when a woman came in, and instead of placing an order, she plunked a heavy plastic grocery bag on the counter. “Where do you want these?”
“What are they?” Tim asked.
“Cans for the food bank,” she said.
“This isn’t the food bank,” Tim said.
The woman rolled her eyes. “No, really? I was told you could take them here. So here they are. And I’ll take a half-caff cappuccino to go.”
Tim turned to Heathen. “Do you know anything about a food drive? Mohammed say something to you?”
She shook her head. “Maybe some new promotion from corporate they forgot to tell us about.”
“It was on the web,” the woman said. “My kid told me. We’ve got the car full of ski gear, about to beat the traffic out of the city, and suddenly he has to run back and raid the cupboards because he wants to be a hero.”
Heathen and Tim shrugged at each other. But something tweaked in Heathen’s brain. “I think there was something on the web,” she said. “A few days ago. I’ll check it on my break.” She usually surfed the web late at night after coming back from bars or parties, when she was blasted or exhausted or both, and it didn’t all necessarily imprint reliably. The only reason that “food bank” stuck in her head at all was because of a “there but for the grace of God” thought that flashed through her head when she read it.
“Well, you guys can sort it out amongst yourselves,” the woman said, taking her cup from Tim. “But I’m leaving them here. We have lift tickets.”
Tim moved the bag to the side counter. A half an hour later, a young guy came in with another bag. “Do I get a free coffee for this?” he said.
“Sorry,” Tim said. “Just the satisfaction of doing a good deed.” For a minute, it didn’t look like the kid was going to leave the bag, after all, but he looked around, shrugged, and did.
A couple that were regulars finished their coffees, left, and came back about twenty minutes later with a bag of their
