10. “Sisters of the Moon” #2
Tex made a puh noise and rocked back on his heels. “Went last night and looked at that shit. It wasn’t even a two on the scale of one being normal, five being the wreck made of Evie’s place, ten being Stella’s apartment getting grenaded, and twelve being Ally’s apartment turning into a fireball.”
“Evie?” Willow asked.
“One of my girls up in Denver,” Tex answered.
“Is she a Rock Chick?” Shanti queried.
“No, she’s on the Dream Team,” Tex told her.
Wait.
This was new.
“Who are the Dream Team?” I muttered to no one and everyone.
“How many girls do you have?” Raye inquired of Tex.
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Six too many if you don’t haul your asses in there and get to work.”
He was right, there were customers that needed to be served, and tips that needed to be made.
We all trundled through the door to the kitchen with Luna grumbling in an undertone, “Tito wouldn’t boss like that.”
“I’m not Tito,” Tex said, not in an undertone.
By the time we made it through Lucia’s kitchen to The Surf Club proper, it became clear why Tex hustled us in.
First, Byron, a daily regular, was standing at the bar, looking frenzied.
Byron drank dirty chais, and Tex didn’t make tea even if that tea also had a shot of espresso in it.
Thus, Tex needed us in there to deal with Byron, when Tex could have dealt with him if he didn’t have his strange aversion to tea.
More to the point, Dream was there with her newborn, Harmony, strapped to her chest.
“Oh shit,” Shanti whispered upon spying Dream.
“Oh boy,” Willow whispered upon doing the same.
“Fuck,” Jessie didn’t whisper.
I slapped on a bright smile and called, “Hi, Dream!”
Dream looked at me and did a kind of side eye/eye roll that wasn’t very nice because it was wholly dismissive.
It was also oh-so-totally Dream.
She then fixed in on Luna because Luna was her sister, and for some reason, Dream made a habit of coming by SC to give Luna grief and be mean, even though Luna was my sister too (not of the blood, still), and she was the bomb at being a great sister.
No one understood what Dream’s damage was, but the results of it were that Raye and Jessie couldn’t stand her.
Shanti was right then sticking close to Luna so she could take her back.
And Willow grabbed two pitchers of water and said, “I got all the tables,” which freed up Luna to focus on the always onerous effort of dealing with Dream.
On his way back to the coffee cubby, Tex gave Dream such a wide berth, I was shocked.
It said he was either scared of her (impossible, though Dream was just that much of a pill, maybe not) or he didn’t want to get too close to her if she did something ugly to Luna so he wouldn’t feel the need to knock her into next week.
I did my bit by ignoring the side eye/eye roll and walking right up to her.
“Do you want a coffee or something?” I offered cheerily.
“I’m breastfeeding,” she snapped. “I can’t have coffee.”
She wasn’t only mean to Luna.
Just saying.
“Oh,” I mumbled.
Luna sidled up to me asking her sister, “Everything okay?”
“Can we talk privately?” Dream requested.
“No!” Tex boomed from the coffee cubby (yeesh, he had good ears). “Servers serve!”
Dream glared toward the coffee cubby then turned back to Luna. “Or, you know, can we, uh…meet after work or something?”
“Is everything okay?” Luna repeated.
“Fine, I just…” She turned to look at Tito sitting in his corner table “office.”
Tito was bent over, scribbling something in a notebook.
Dream returned her attention to Luna, leaned in and said quietly, “I’m in a bind and I was hoping maybe you could get me some shifts here so I can make some tips.”
“No!” Tex boomed again (wowzers, he really had good ears). “Servers serve and they do it nice!”
I wanted to laugh because Tex wasn’t nice to anybody, most especially the customers, but I didn’t laugh because Dream looked crushed.
I also didn’t want Dream to work there, because she had some issue no one understood with Luna, and as noted, she wasn’t very nice to anyone.
We had a good thing going, and it wasn’t that new blood would mess it up.
It was that Dream messed everything up. Case in point, she had three children by three different guys, the oldest was barely three years old, and I wasn’t throwing shade.
Do you. Live your life. Make your babies. Find your joy.
But she wasn’t prepared financially for any of them, and she kept having them. And in the beginning, she did that while continuing to go to her reflexology appointments and tarot card readings.
At first, she mooched all she could off her parents and Luna, but “all she could” was a lot of time and money, so they eventually got sick of it and that got nipped in the bud.
Now, she got child support and took a couple of kids in at her house for extra cash, as well as ran an Etsy store, selling hippie totes and candles she made, but with three kids at home, I suspected ends weren’t exactly meeting.
I suspected Tito suspected this too, because he was shuffling on his slides over tube-socked feet toward the coffee cubby.
I saw all the girls watch him do this in varying shades of abject horror at the thought he might be going to talk Tex into hiring Dream, because Tito was that guy. If he could help, he did. The end.
“Can you tell him I can only do weekends?” Dream requested of her sister.
Luna looked from Dream, to the coffee cubby, which was probably only twenty feet away, and a direct shot for Dream since Luna was behind the bar, then back at Dream.
“If you give me a recommendation, maybe that crazy guy up front will help me out,” Dream explained.
“That crazy guy’s name is Tex,” Luna shared. “And he’s part-owner. So if you want a job, it’s you who needs to convince him to hire you.”
“I don’t think he likes me,” Dream stated the obvious.
“I wonder why,” Byron piped up.
In surprise, I turned to him.
“Do I know you? ” Dream asked Byron scathingly.
“Can’t say why you don’t, since you’re in here all the time, being bitchy, and I’m in here every time you are, sitting at the back,” Byron returned. “But I reckon, the world revolves around you like you think it does, I’m just a blur in the periphery.”
Now in shock, I stared at him.
So did Dream.
And Luna.
Also, Shanti.
I mean, he was right. He was in here all the time. And as such, he couldn’t miss some of the scenes Dream caused (she was a dab hand at that).
Still, him piping up was out of the blue.
“You know,”—he jabbed a finger at Luna—“she’s a cool chick. I don’t get why you’ve got so much attitude.”
“I don’t get why it’s your business,” Dream retorted.
“Because I’m in here every day ,” Byron returned. “I don’t know how many times I’ve seen you come in here, dump your kids on her, bum money off her, all while acting like she was patient zero with Covid. It’s not fun to watch, especially since she’s like my kid sister or something.”
Aw!
“You’re just a customer,” Dream dismissed him too.
“The big guy can hear a mouse fart three blocks away, and he’s a huge grouch, but he’s made it clear he cares a lot about these women, so you think you’re winning him over right now?” Byron inquired.
Dream made a face.
“He’s right! I can!” Tex shouted. “And you’re not!”
Dream made a bigger face.
I beat back a smile.
“I’ll get your dirty chai, Byron,” I offered, moving to the espresso machine. “You can go back to your table. I’ll bring it.”
“And I’ll talk to Tex and Tito, Dream,” Luna said (man, she was such a pushover, but then again, that was part of being a fab sister).
“But just so you know, Tito has all the patience in the world, though on that spectrum, Tex is the exact opposite. If they let you take some shifts, you’ve got to be cool. ”
Dream assumed a wildly offended expression. “I have mouths to feed, of course I can be cool.”
“I’m not convinced!” Tex boomed.
Dream grimaced.
I shot some hot water onto the tea bags.
“Let me work on it, and maybe go out the back so Tito can do his thing out front?” Luna suggested.
Dream hesitated a beat.
We all hesitated with her, for my part, hoping she’d express some gratitude to her sister for being so nice.
But then she just said, “Whatever. I’ll go out the back. Later.”
Then she and the dozing Harmony swanned toward the doors to the kitchen.
Luna sighed.
I dumped the shot of espresso into the tea and started to steam milk.
Tito silently shuffled back to his corner “office,” but he did this looking at Luna, shaking his head, and waving his hand palm down. I didn’t know what that meant, but I assumed it meant that Tex was still a no on Dream. But Tito was going to work on him.
Since she was asking for weekends, and I didn’t work weekends, and Luna seemed unscathed by Dream’s most recent visit to The Surf Club, I finished up Byron’s dirty chai and walked it to him.
“Thanks,” he muttered, nabbed the mug from the saucer and drank a quarter of it.
I flinched in camaraderie with his mouth, which he had to have just burned to all heck.
Then he put the cup back into the saucer and declared, “You’re kind of like my little sister too.”
“Thanks, Byron, that’s sweet.”
“Do you have a bitchy older sister?” he asked.
“No, I have a golden boy older brother,” I told him. “You?”
“None to speak of,” he said evasively.
What a weird answer.
Then again, none of us knew what Byron did. Like he said, he came in every day. He drank multiple dirty chais every day as well, so I suspected he got about .425 hours of sleep a night. And he just threw down for Luna.
Other than that, we knew nothing about him.
Raye thought he was an international hacker wanted by Interpol, and he was on his computer when he wasn’t sucking back caffeine, so she might be right.
The rest of us had no clue.
“If you need anything else, just yell,” I said.
He picked his cup back up and saluted me with it, not taking his eyes from his computer.
Well then.
It was time to make some tips.
So, belatedly, I set about doing that.