“Anyway,” Dag said abruptly, when she sat there, musing quietly for too long, “it never caught on the way you’d think. Not the way Heathen is going to stick to you.”
By her next shift at work, he had everyone else using it. And it stuck.
Three
Heathen started checking in on the Hero of the Teeming Masses blog after seeing it on Dag’s computer. Back at the beginning, the first one read:
What is important is that the Hero believes in himself. If you do not believe in yourself, feel free to believe in the Hero.
Watch this space.
• • •
Dag was a fucking star at work. Tips were excellent when he was on. And he was “on” all the time. Heathen didn’t know how he did it. Sure, you had to be pleasant to the customers, but Heathen didn’t make a religion out of it. There were a number of times she wanted to tell Dag to cheer down and, since they were now pretty good pals on the job, a couple of times she actually did. But it really worked for him. First, he had the cuteness thing going on. Then, he chatted people up: how was their drive up with all the roadworks, were the kiddies good in the car, how’d their ski run been. He couldn’t possibly have cared, but he made it sound like he did.
Ginette, another barista, told her about a day that Dag spent trying to flip the whipped cream canister around like Tom Cruise flipped the bottles in that bartender movie. He had gotten pretty good by the end of the shift, she said, after dropping it so many times that even Mohammed, who adored him, had threatened to take it away.
Her next Saturday on with Dag, Heathen was looking forward to seeing the flipping thing, but instead he came in and did the whole shift like a normal person, no acrobatics, no insufferable perkiness—except he did it all with a New Zealand accent. Just like that, all damn day. Heathen and Tim, who was on cash, and Mohammed were agape as he “G’day’ed” everyone who came in the door, and when they mistook it for an Australian accent, explained cheerily and repeatedly how it was a subtly different accent, demonstrated the difference, and proceeded to talk about life in Lord-of-the-Rings land.
Heathen had to do a reality check. “You’re not a Kiwi,” she said when they were refilling pastry trays on a lull. She remembered him talking about being from Winnipeg over beers that night. Then she had a sudden doubt. “Are you?”
“No, my folks were from Sweden,” he said, not dropping the accent, even though it was just the two of them alone in the back. “But they did go to New Zealand on their honeymoon. I’m just having some fun.”
“You’re making it all up?” she said. “That’s not right.”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember signing an oath to give customers my real personal information. Is there a javaslinger code of ethics I don’t know about?”
“These people don’t know you’re feeding them lies. I think we’re supposed to deal with them honestly.”
“Are you serious, Heathen?” He stopped arranging loaf slices to turn and look straight at her. “It’s not like I’m deliberately shorting them on change, or watering down the cream, or giving them a hard-luck story to solicit tips. They don’t care who I am so long as I get the stuff in the cups right. This is Saturday. None of the locals come in, because it’s all tourists and day trippers. They’ll never see me again. Don’t think of it as lies, think of it as I’m providing entertainment for the price of a latte. It’s coffeetainment.”
Maybe that was a good excuse for it, and maybe not, but it made Heathen wonder what else he made up, since he could swap identities so apparently easily. Maybe he wasn’t even the Dangler Dag from before, and was just some new guy, pretending.
The next customers came in, and he engaged in more happy chatter about life in NZ, lying the whole time, and plink, plink, plink, more coins landed in the tip jar. By the end of the day, when they divvied up the week’s worth, Heathen half-expected Dag to demand a greater share for being the reason most of the money was in there, and she would have been hard-pressed to argue it. He didn’t, once again, the too-perfect employee.
• • •
The Hero was not always a Hero. The Hero underwent a transformation, both physically and metaphysically. The Hero was once just like you, only more so. The Hero became what he had not been before. But the Hero knows whereof you speak. And speak you may. The Hero has provided a forum. Click here to discuss amongst yourselves. And watch this space.
• • •
In addition to the daily featured coffee blend on the chalkboard, Dag kept trying out his own “specials of the day,” or, as Heathen thought of it, trying to be the special of the day. One day’s amusement: “Do you have a favourite cup?” Heathen watched Dag wave his hand with a flourish over the array of absolutely identical white china cups with the coffee-ringed logos. He’d been doing it all day, asking everybody he served the same question. The reactions he got were mixed. Some people just smiled or chuckled lamely and said nothing. Quite a few looked at him like he was slow-witted and really meant it. There were mumbles of “Any one will do.” A couple of people asked, seemingly seriously, “Is it extra?” Heathen had told him to give his lame question a rest already. Twice. Dag ignored her.
Finally, on his fiftieth go round, late afternoon, someone bit. The woman, a regular business type from the admin office at the convention centre, was there with some coworkers. She looked startled for a moment, then laughed and played along, like she was picking a goldfish at the pet store. “I’ll take that one. No,” as his hand hovered over the tray, “no, not that one…just to the left. Yeah, that one.”
“Not the one I’d pick,” Dag said, feigning skepticism, “but I don’t know, give it a try.” The woman was still smiling a minute later when she sat down with her latte and her friends. Dag bopped around to the next order, clearly thrilled finally to be indulged. Heathen rolled her eyes at them. He looked pretty smug, but the upside at least was, now that someone had played along, he stopped asking everybody else.
Twenty minutes later, he bussed the table as the woman and her co-workers stood up to put their coats on. “I’ll keep this one aside for you,” he said in a conspiratorial stage whisper, with a glance at Heathen.
When he was back at the counter and the woman was gone, Heathen said, “Oh, my god, are you for real?”
“Maybe I am and maybe I’m not. I’m making this up as I go along. Anyway, you heard the lady. It’s her favourite.”
He racked cups into the dishwasher, framing the one with a couple of spoons to keep it apart from the rest of the cuppular masses. Heathen was sure he did it just to irritate her.
Later on, as she unloaded, he whisked it out from under her hands. “I’ll take that.”
She sussed what he was up to immediately and stood there with her hands on her hips. Dag looked around behind the cash area. There was a high shelf in the display area just left of the main cash with