one of Jeff’s snowboarding buds, though, they were the only ones who called her Heathen, which she didn’t like, instead of Heather. That was why Jeff had encouraged it. No wonder they hadn’t lasted as a couple. Heather was a freestyle skier, moving in different circles, so she couldn’t necessarily be expected to remember all of Jeff’s boarder buds. But she thought she would have remembered one of Jeff’s friends being such a nice-looking guy. Most snowboarders were kind of goofy.
“Yeah, a year and a half,” she said. “My sponsorship pays the rent, but this keeps me in groceries, lift tickets and weed. And I can flex my shifts around my skiing.”
“You do moguls, right?”
“Aerials,” she said. “I’m off to a training camp in Calgary in a couple of days. So, anyway,” she added, “I’m due back in there. You want something or not?”
“No. Too yupscale for me,” he said. Yeah, Heather knew too well that no bucks totally went with being an amateur athlete.
She nodded sympathetically. “Me, too. That’s why I only work here. I couldn’t afford to actually drink here otherwise.”
“How is it? Working here, I mean?”
“Oh, come on, don’t ask to be polite. Half this fucking job is spent with a damp rag in your hand, wiping coffee machines, tables, windows and toilets down for the greater glory of BlackArts.”
“I’m not being polite. I barely have my share of the next phone bill in the bank,” he said. “Just been sitting here trying to figure out what to do about finances. I need a job, like now. I was working at the golf course all summer, but that finished last week. Any openings here?”
She gave him her are-you-insane look. “Dag, this is BlackArts, in Whistler, at the start of ski season. Of course we have openings. Fill out an application, but it’ll just be a formality.”
“Any full-time?”
“Only the manager is full-time. Everybody else is part-time so that they don’t have to pay benefits. But we all only want part-time, because, you know—” She gestured at the mountains. “But so many of the staff are going to be cutting down their time to get out on the hills again, you could pick up enough shifts that it’d be like full-time. Mohammed will be grateful someone’s applying. We’ve left him pretty desperate.” Maria, another barista, had just started her last year at high school and cut her shifts back from the extra summer hours she’d been doing, and Heather would be cutting her own to spend more time on her skiing. But something struck her as odd about this. “Why do you want full-time when the season’s just starting? Supplementing the sponsorship?”
“I’d have to have some before I could supplement it,” Dag said.
“No sponsorship? You’re kidding!”
“No,” he said, “I’m not. It happens to some of us.”
“What’s your ranking?”
“I don’t have national ranking.”
“How’d you do in the summer training camps?”
“I didn’t do the camps,” he said. “I was working at the golf club. Look, I’d really appreciate that application form, and if the manager’s in, maybe I can talk to him, too.” He got up, wincing again.
“Like, now?” Heather asked. “You sure you’re in shape for a job interview?”
“I busted some wack air,” he said and shrugged. “I can deal.”
Heather handed him a BlackArts napkin from her apron pocket and the dregs of her bottle of water. “De-goof yourself,” she said. “There’s still some blood around your nose.”
“Thanks,” he said, doing it.
She pointed to a spot on the table. “That, too,” she said. “Because, dude, if that’s blood, I’m not cleaning it up.”
Dag cleaned off the table. “Now?”
Heather smiled. She’d already successfully downloaded scutwork onto him. “Oh, you’re going to be just fine.”
• • •
Heather’s next shift was a week later, after returning from her training camp.
She sailed into the shop, straight off the bus from the Vancouver airport, on a high at how well it had gone, and started regaling Maria and Mohammed about her week away.
Even with Saturday afternoon customers flowing in, she barely slowed down. BlackArts baristas were pro at maintaining personal conversations around and over serving a steady stream of customers. After a year and a half there, Heather had excellent radar for when it was starting to bug Mohammed and could switch it on and off, picking up a half-finished sentence as much as half a shift later when it was really busy. Mohammed was thirty and pretty cool, but also grown-up serious about his role as manager. Heather knew he was saving up to break away from BlackArts someday and open up his own shop, a Middle Eastern-style coffee place like he knew from back home, all couches and cushions, as she understood it. It sounded really nice. Today, though, he seemed unusually happy to listen. Heather finally had to interrupt herself.
“What?” she said to him. “What are you looking so pleased about?”
He shrugged. “It’s nice to have you back. We missed you.” Heather could never be sure that he didn’t mean these things in a personal way. But he never followed up on them. She didn’t know why not. He was fit, and had longish black hair, the interesting accent—every time she thought about it, she decided it was the manager thing; Mohammed was ultimately too serious about his career in coffee to ask out someone on staff. “Why? Didn’t New Guy work out? You missed my sterling service around here?”
Maria snorted. “Are you kidding?”
Mohammed spoke almost reverently “Dag’s great with customers, good attitude, doesn’t slack off, pitches right in, even the crappy jobs.”
Ah, so it was Dag he was taken with. “My god, Mohammed,” Heather said, “your wet dream.” She could tease him; she’d been around the longest of all the baristas. “I’ll bet you’ve been smiling like that all week, haven’t you?” She turned to Maria. “What do you think of New Guy?”
“Thumbs up,” she said. “Good butt, too.”
“So where is Wonder Boy?” Heather looked around.
“I sent him to the Northside store to pick up some Kenyan dark. We’re out.”
When Dag came back, Heather got to see for herself. He was good, especially on the bar, efficiently filling the orders she and Maria called out as if he’d been there months instead of days.
Heather invited him out for a beer after their shift, since she had some per diem money from her sponsors left over from her trip. She had an ulterior motive, too, though.
“You still hang with Jeff?” she asked as soon as their butts hit the chairs in Tapley’s pub. Before he could answer, she cut in with, “Wait, what’s your beer?”
“Winter
