Event in Progress

Chapter Two

Christine Swan woke with her cell phone alarm playing its horrific pseudo-pop travesty at four in the morning. She stretched on her bed and rolled off to make her way to the bathroom. She was quiet to make sure she didn't wake up her roommates, although they never gave the same courtesy to her.

Swan worked the morning shift at Raven's Tail Café. The Café opened at six in the morning, and the customers who entered expected coffee to already be brewing for their enjoyment.

Because she worked the morning shift, Swan had to go to bed no later than nine o'clock at night. Unfortunately, her roommates—Trisha and Loren—were both night owls and often stayed up until well past midnight watching movies, shouting obscenities to their boyfriends on the phone, or just horsing around. It sometimes made it difficult for Swan to catch enough sleep, but she made do and thus far had avoided strangling the other two women.

Swan showered and dressed in the obligatory black jeans with orange shirt. Christine hated wearing orange, even if she did live in Colorado and it was part of the official Denver Bronco colors. Even the football team had had enough sense to ditch the orange and go with mostly blue for their uniforms. Orange wasn't a color suited for clothing. Road signs, yes. Clothing, no.

Christine Swan put on her orange shirt despite how she felt. Dress codes were dress codes. At least she didn't have to wear formal attire like she would have been required to wear if she worked in an office building.

Swan drove the twelve miles from the small house she rented with Trisha and Loren into the heart of downtown, where Raven's Tail Café was located. She parked her car in the employee's parking lot, which was really just a dirt lot off the alley that ran behind the brick structure. She climbed out and walked through the mud—she hated when it rained at night—and entered the back door of the Café. She stomped her feet a few times and saw that Adam Landover was already there. It was somewhat unusual for Adam to be early. He was more accustomed to arriving ten minutes late.

Christine walked to the front of the store while Landover finished with the coffee grinder. Swan glanced at her watch, then got to work taking down the chairs from the tables and arranging them in proper order around the lobby. It was a wasted effort. As soon as the college rush arrived (and they still showed up even though it was now summer), the students would rearrange everything in the room and she would have to set it all in order again once they left. But what was life without a little repetition?

When the chairs were organized, Swan ran a damp cloth over the tables and cleaned the dust from them. She wanted the Café to sparkle and show the customers that the Café appreciated their business, even though the customers needed more caffeine before they'd begin to give a damn about what the Café appreciated.

To finish her morning prep work, Swan opened the cabinet and pulled out the acoustic guitar that rested there. She strummed it, and although she didn't know how to play any songs she got the guitar in tune with an ease that would have made a blues musician jealous. She set the instrument on the stand in the corner of the room where the college kids would come in and play it, and she made a mental note to tell Robbie to change the strings when his shift began at two that afternoon. Swan may have had to learn how to tune a guitar, but there was a limit to how far she could go and changing the strings of a guitar did not fit into her definition of something a coffee barista should do.

By the time she was finished setting up, Adam Landover had the espresso machine ready for their first customers. Christine checked the refrigerator and noticed they'd have to make a milk run sometime that morning, but probably not before eleven o'clock. She checked the various flavors that they could mix in with the drinks so Raven's Tail could mimic the variegated Starbucks flavors out there, as well as the special Raven's Tail Concoction, which was really just vanilla, caramel, and a hint of brown sugar flavor. Still, it was a favorite among many of the customers who came into the Café.