The Desperate Job-Seeker
Who: Rosa and Aimee Where: The Mudhouse When: Morning
Business was dead. With the sudden rash of murders people were either staying put in their homes or going straight to work and back without stopping for anything but essentials. As much as Rosa hated to admit it, a latte or a mocha wasn’t exactly an essential for most people.
The werewolf sat at one of the tables in the nearly empty Mudhouse with her sketchpad in front of her, working on a still life of the coffeehouse counter for lack of anything better to do. It wasn’t anything special as far as counters went, but it was hers and she’d been working behind it since she’d needed a box to see over the top.
Outside, the rain and wind had turned Aimee’s curls into a squirrel’s nest. She closed her flimsy umbrella and stood beneath an awning to work her fingers through it, coaxing the brown locks to stay put. She saw her reflection in the plate-glass window: jeans with a rip at the knee, a blue blouse, an oval of turquoise hanging from a leather cord around her neck. It was the best she had.
Aimee’s fingers drifted to her hairline, which hid a surgical scar. She rubbed her lips together. I can get this job. I can take orders and pour coffee. I can run a till.
Pivoting on her heel, she approached the door and entered the coffee shop, leaving her umbrella to drip on the sidewalk. It was quiet inside. The fragrances of coffee beans and spicy teas filled her nostrils and she breathed deep. If hired, would she stop noticing those smells? Would her clothes absorb it, the way her little sister Jeannie’s soaked up bacon grease?
There was a dark-haired woman at a table. Aimee’s fingers fidgeted down by her pant legs. “Hey,” she said. “Yesterday, they told me to ask for Rosa. Are you her?”
Rosa looked up at the question and gave the other woman a quick once over. Don’t judge, Rosa. No, you never wore that kind of outfit to a job interview but you’ve got worse than that in the closet. Besides, the lighter shaded brunette seemed nervous enough as it was.
She nodded and closed the sketchpad, then gestured toward the seat across from her. “That’s me. You must be Aimee, right? Noah told me you’d asked about the job opening.” She smiled politely at the other woman hoping to put her at ease a little.
Aimee felt that downward glance, as solid as being struck, not because it was mean, but because she knew her best wasn’t good. “Uh, yeah,” she said, flexing her shoulders back and coming closer. She stuck out her hand. The nails were short and unpolished but clean. “Aimee Barrow. It’s nice to meet you.” She had a low voice, a little raw around the edges. She made herself meet the owner’s eyes directly; the thing about being scrutinized was that, after about five seconds of self-doubt, defiance kicked in and her spine turned to steel.
She was confident, good. Rosa had no use for employees who had no spine, and the other woman’s scent was changing to something less fearful. “A pleasure to meet you as well Aimee.” Rosa shook the offered hand, careful to keep her own strength controlled as always when dealing with non-weres. “How long have you been in Scarlet Oak?”
Opposite her, Aimee sat down. She scooted her chair closer and the scrape of bare wood on the floor was loud. “Only a few days,” she said. It was tempting to leave her answer brief, but she wouldn’t earn a job by making Rosa milk her for information. Nobody hired a mute. “I came up from Tennessee. I have friends here. Well, a friend, but he said, umm...”
Aimee swallowed and gestured in the air, frowning as she willed the proper words to come. “He said it was growing fast, so I thought there might be opportunities.”
Rosa pursed her lips and nodded, though a bit reluctantly. “If the police can get a handle on the violence, then your friend is probably right. If they don’t...” Her voice trailed off, and the werewolf shrugged. If they didn’t get the violence under control then Scarlet Oak would slowly waste away, a Detroit in miniature.
“What sort of work have you done in the past? Do you have any experience in the coffee business?” If she didn’t it wasn’t a deal breaker, but it would help.
“Do you mean like Starbucks or something?” Aimee caught herself rubbing the knees of her jeans, another fidget, though a mild one. She brought her hands onto the tabletop instead and clasped them where where Rosa could see them. Probably Starbucks was a bad chain to mention to the owner of an independent coffee shop, but it didn’t matter, since she hadn’t been employed by them, anyway.
“I never worked anyplace that was just coffee,” she said. “But I’ve been a waitress before. It was in a restaurant, a family place. They served Italian food. Real big parties came in all the time and I had to remember the orders. The owner didn’t like it if you wrote it down. He said it looked like you didn’t know the menu. I um... I tended bar, too, back in Knoxville. I have--”
God, what was that word? The one that meant you had similar experiences, just not identical ones. Aimee had seen it on a job search website.
“Transferable skills,” she said. “And I’m a fast learner. And I’m not going anywhere for a while, so...” Aimee trailed off and looked at the table. Wow. The scent of desperation wasn’t going to impress. What else had the website said? Right, look confident, look like you didn’t need the job. Except that seemed retarded to Aimee, because why else would she be there?
“You tended bar?” That got Rosa’s attention more than the rest of the qualities Aimee had mentioned, just about everyone who had some experience in restaurant or service work said they had them. Rosa could smell both the confidence and the anxiety underlying it, the other woman was at the end of her rope. “We’re kind of a unique place, we operate as a bar in the evenings. How long did you work at the place in Knoxville?”
“A year and a half,” Aimee said. “I started out doing ID checks at the door and they moved me to the bar. I only left because they brought in a new manager and he was a creep. You know, he was one of those really ’hands-on’ kinds of bosses.” The upward lift of an eyebrow conveyed the physical sense of what she meant. “But the first one one, Tony, he’s one of my references.”
Aimee took a break from talking to look up at the ceiling, then around the room. She saw the little stage for open-mics, the mixture of latte ingredients and liquor bottles on the shelves. The reason she liked it was how it felt old instead of trendy, like a mom and pop place that managed to keep up with time instead of hanging onto things that didn’t work.
Rosa nodded, taking note of how Aimee looked around the room. So far the other brunette was looking like a strong candidate to fill the job, and lord knew that people were going to be skittish about working nights with the rash of killings that had taken place lately. “You don’t have to worry about anybody being ‘hands-on’ here,” she said firmly. “Half the employees have been around here since I was in pigtails. I took over from my grandmother when she wanted to retire. We all look out for each other, especially on the night shift. Anybody who tries getting handsy will lose more than their jobs.”
The night shift. Aimee realized the owner wasn’t talking about employees so much as outsiders. It was strange, because Rosa was a small woman, but the hair on Aimee’s arms raised when she asserted herself. Aimee nodded and broke eye contact, asking herself, what was that?
Instead, she studied her hands, where her fingers slipped inside her leather bracelet. Aimee had seen the local news and a flyer on CJ’s door about a curfew change. That frequency of crime was unexpected in Scarlet Oak. She thought about the handgun she had bought at an auction after those psychics slashed her tires. It was kept, loaded, in a lockbox under her luggage. She wasn’t trigger happy or anything, but if somebody threatened her, Aimee wouldn’t second-guess it. Hesitation got you caught by quick hands. Angry hands. You had to stay ahead in a fight.
“I’m not afraid to work nights,” she said, raising her head. She shrugged. “I don’t care what happened in May. They were here all along. We just know about ‘em now.”
“So you don’t have a problem working with or serving supernaturals?” Rosa was a little surprised at the other woman’s blasé attitude toward the Light of May, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth aside from making sure she understood the other woman correctly. “I know we don’t have any vampires working here, but aside from that I don’t know who’s what, and frankly I don’t care.”
That wasn’t exactly what Aimee meant. More like she wasn’t going to become a shut-in, or get freaked into altering her lifestyle, just because a supernatural thing threw its weight around. But yeah, she guessed she could work with them, with one caveat, which she couldn’t exactly spell out for Rosa in a job interview. Aimee raised her shoulders. “Long as they don’t try anything, I don’t care, either,” she said.
“Fair enough.” Rosa thought that made excellent sense, and nodded with her lips curled upward in a light smile. “I haven’t heard any complaints from any of the employees so it seems to be a non-issue for now.” Supernatural beings had money just like everyone else, mostly anyway, and it spent just the same. She wasn’t going to toss away money just because it came from someone who wasn’t a mundane.
It would be hypocritical for one thing, considering her own nature.
“It’s quite a change, moving up here from Tennessee. Have you ever experienced a northern winter?” She didn’t want someone who would pack up and move south as soon as the weather changed for the worse.
Aimee bit her lip and then shook her head. “Not yet.” Was lack of weather experience a deal-breaker in the coffee business? As she looked at her potential boss, Aimee considered her options: lie and claim she had an uncle who lived in the mountains and invited her up for regular skiing trips, or stay blatantly honest and let the chips fall wherever.
“I know I have to learn some things,” she hedged. “Like how to drive in it, and what to wear so I don’t get hypothermia.”
Rosa couldn’t help the smile that crossed her face at the other woman’s comments. “Just be careful. You’re definitely going to want to bundle up in the winter time, but hypothermia shouldn’t be a problem unless you decide to go for a dip in the lake through an ice fishing hole.” Not that she could really see the southerner doing such a thing, but crazier things had happened. “You give me your word that if I hire you you’re not going to go running back to Knoxville at the first real snowfall we get and we’re good on that score.”
“Tennessee’s got nothing for me,” Aimee said.
She looked past Rosa. Rain streaked down the windows, painting the landscape into a dreary watercolor of grays, blues, and blacks. It looked more welcoming than the sight of Gainesboro over the hood of her chevy. Better than Knoxville, too, with its roving gangs of psychic assholes. “I’m staying,” she said, “Whether you give me a job or not. But it’d be great if you did, since the other job I’m looking at is desk receptionist at the Budget Lodge. You ever stay at a Budget Lodge?”
“Unfortunately yes.” Rosa couldn’t help the small shudder that passed through her at the memory. “Hopefully never again.”
She studied the other woman thoughtfully, measuring what she’d learned against what she needed and the other employees in the business, and what was the right thing to do. Eventually she nodded to herself, and held out a hand. “I’ll have to check your references, but if they pan out like I expect them to, you’ve got a job here, Aimee. Welcome aboard.”
Aimee’s eyes widened. “I do?” Funny, she hadn’t expected it to pan out. For a job -- a respectable job -- to land in her lap so quickly was almost too good to be true. “Um... great. I can start whenever.” She took Rosa’s hand and shook it. “I mean, after you talk to them.” But she wasn’t worried about the reference check, because she was savvy enough to choose former supervisors who’d represent her well. And she wanted to do well, to like it so much she kept the job for a while and put down some roots.
Mentally, she began to estimate the number of weeks until her first paycheck, and whether she could get her own place right off or would have to keep squatting for a few months. Nothing fancy. Just a studio maybe... Who cares if you can see the toilet from the kitchen sink?
“Don’t look so surprised!” Rosa’s smile turned into a full fledged grin. Getting the job obviously meant a lot, so she was glad that she could help the other woman out. She wondered what it was like, moving to a new city cold without having a job lined up. Exciting and terrifying all at once she’d bet.
“I’ll check the references today. If you don’t hear back from me why don’t you just plan on coming in tomorrow afternoon and you can start learning the ropes and we’ll figure out your schedule.”
“Okay.” Aimee stood up. “I’ll come by after lunchtime.” She pushed her chair back under the table, almost stupidly grateful that one thing was settled. Not having a paycheck worried her more than she admitted, not wanting to repeat the hand-to-mouth experiences of her childhood. “Thanks.” She smiled at the brunette and looked around the Mudhouse again, thinking of how familiar it would get to be. One day she might dread the idea of getting out of bed and going to work, but for right now, the job was a lifeline.
Out in the rain, Aimee picked up her umbrella and opened it before heading to her car.
Rosa watched as the other woman headed out into the rain, her grin having settled back into a small smile. Hopefully Aimee would work out and become another long term member of the Mudhouse crew. She just hoped there would be a Mudhouse long term.