Dance Away with Me - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,12

forced her out of bed and reminded her to take a shower and comb her hair. She didn’t love her job, but she didn’t really hate it, either. Working at the Broken Chimney helped fill the hours, and Phish’s laid-back nature, combined with his marijuana habit, made him a genial boss.

One day when there was a lag between customers, Tess used the Broken Chimney’s intermittent WiFi to check out Bianca’s husband.

Ian Hamilton North IV, known by his street tag, IHN4, is the most well known of American street artists. The last member of the powerful North family, he is the only son of the deceased financier Ian Hamilton North III and socialite Celeste Brinkman North. Although graffiti artists customarily hide their identity, North has flaunted his by using his real initials in his tags—a practice generally ascribed to his troubled relationship with his parents. He gained notoriety as he abandoned street graffiti for more thoughtful work beginning—

She closed the computer as Mr. Felter banged on the counter, demanding an extra pump of hazelnut syrup in his coffee.

* * *

Phish’s pregnant niece Savannah was only slightly less rude to the customers than she was to Tess, and it became evident that Phish only kept her on out of loyalty to her father, his brother Dave. “Savannah didn’t use to be this bad,” Phish confided to Tess, “but then her ex-boyfriend knocked her up and left town. I knew he was a loser first time I met him. He never even heard of The Dead!”

In Phish’s eyes, no sin was greater than lack of reverence for the Grateful Dead.

Phish’s other employee was Savannah’s mother, Michelle, a deep-bosomed blonde who, at forty-two, also happened to be pregnant. “I thought it was perimenopause,” she announced to anyone who’d listen. “Ha!”

Michelle was just as difficult to work with as her daughter. Her grudge against Tess had its roots in Phish hiring Tess instead of Michelle’s younger sister. “All that money you spent to go to college, and you end up working for Phish.” Michelle had smirked the first time she’d seen Tess in Trav’s Wisconsin sweatshirt.

Savannah and Michelle had their own problems, and after three weeks on the job, Tess had learned not to get in the middle of them. “It’s like she did it to get back at me,” Savannah hissed at Tess. “Having her pregnant at the same time as me makes me feel like a freak.” She took a swipe at cleaning off the steamer wand from the latte she’d made. “She’s like always doing things like this.”

“Getting pregnant?” Tess tipped the used coffee grounds from the dump box into the trash.

“No. Like trying to show me up.”

Tess was happy when two of the bartenders from The Rooster appeared at the counter. They chatted with her longer than was absolutely necessary, but they were more pleasant to talk to than either of her co-workers.

Eventually Tess made her way to the back room where she could continue the argument she’d been having with Phish for the past week. She was right. She knew she was right. “Just a small, out-of-the-way display,” she said. “So customers know they’re there.”

He pulled a burlap bag of coffee beans from the shelf. “Hey-ll, Tess, how many times have I gotta tell you I’m not puttin’ out rubbers. People who need ’em know I keep ’em in the back room.”

It felt good to try to do something positive, instead of being a drain on humanity, and she pressed him. “The men in hard hats might know, but what about the women who come in here wanting condoms? What about the teenagers who really need them?”

“And there you go. I put out rubbers for teenagers, and there’ll be a rumpus kicked up in this town like you never seen.”

“Give people a little more credit than that.”

“You’re an outsider, Tess. Rubbers stay in the back room, and that’s all there is to it.”

Instead of arguing, she waited until Phish wasn’t around and sneaked a small display of condoms onto a stand near the unisex bathroom. She set them between a stack of handmade soap, emery boards imprinted with Bible verses, and a two-page pamphlet aimed at teens that she’d driven fifteen miles to have printed out. At the end of her shift, she hid the condoms and pamphlets in the storeroom. Taking action, however small, felt like a small step forward, and what Phish didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

* * *

Ian hadn’t been to town since Tess Hartsong had started