waitress, then was back to the matter at hand. “So, do you? Hang with him?”
“No,” he said, “I don’t ride any more.”
“But you’d just come off the slopes when I saw you on the patio, like, a week ago.”
“I did ride, but I don’t ride any more,” Dag said. “I’m right out of that scene.”
“You mean you gave it up to work at BlackArts?” Heather was incredulous.
“No, I gave it up. Then I stumbled onto BlackArts.”
Stumble was right. Heather remembered him limping onto the patio. “So, you made this momentous decision in the space of five minutes between Blackcomb and the store?”
“No,” he said, “I made this momentous decision while I was still in the air on my last crappy trick. It’s hard to explain.” He shrugged. “Basically, I lost all my tricks, and it’d take another season to get my chops back, which I can’t afford. And because I have rent to pay and food to buy…there was BlackArts.”
“But, how could you just give it up?” Heather couldn’t even imagine giving up her skiing. Fortunately, she’d been doing better and better lately and didn’t have to worry about it.
Dag sighed. “Would this story play better with you if I said I moped and wallowed at home about it for a week first? Sorry, but I didn’t have the option of wallowing. When I got off Blackcomb, it was die or do something.”
“But—” Heather started.
“Tell you what, Heathen,” Dag said. “I’ll cut to the chase. I’ve spent two years here, tried real hard, worked the part-time jobs, shared a house with other riders to save money, and haven’t made any headway in the circuit. It was worth a try, because snowboarding was my best thing during high school. When we sat down and talked about what I’d do after, even my mom agreed it was worth a shot, if I could support myself trying, since she couldn’t. I’m good—” he paused and corrected himself “—I was good till recently, but a lot of guys here are pure prodigies. Not everybody makes a go of it.”
Heather didn’t know what to say to that, but then two beers landed in front of them. “How’d you do that?” Dag asked. “We didn’t even order.”
Heather laughed. “I’ve trained half the bar staff in town on a few sign language letters so I can order from all the way across a crowded, noisy bar and not have to wait as long for my beer. Two-W-A,” she demonstrated, flashing him signs, “is Winter Ale. P-K,” she did another, “is a pitcher of Kokanee. And so on.” She was thankful for the chance to change the subject. “So, about Jeff...”
“Jefferoo and that tribe are good heads,” Dag said. “But I need to be out of the whole scene. Maybe it’s just for now, maybe forever.” He shrugged.
Heather laughed. “I’m not on you any more, dude. I meant, how’s Jeff doing?” She pumped him for what she’d been dying to know, and Dag gave it up. He told her how many girlfriends Jeff had had (none, just casual encounters) since their breakup. Heather wasn’t all lovesick or stalker, she just wanted to measure up whether she was doing better than him romantically, especially since she wasn’t with anybody at the moment. She’d had somebody steady for a while last year, but she’d been kind of waiting to see what was going on with Mohammed. It seemed like he liked her, but he never made an overture. She hoped it wasn’t the ethnic thing. Skiing was full of white North Americans. Mohammed’s accent and dark looks appealed to Heather as a refreshing change. Getting on so well with Mohammed was one of the few reasons she kept working at BlackArts, because god knew the work wasn’t all that inspiring.
Dag felt like a bud right away. As in, he let her monopolize the conversation, which Heather knew she kind of tended to do anyway. She sprang for a pitcher for their second round.
Dag initiated one conversational thread. “I’d have known you were still skiing just by your hair,” he said. “You have serious skier hair, Heather. Girl skiers all have the same hair. About this long—” He gestured between his jaw and shoulder.
“Yeah, I know,” she said, flipping her dirty-blonde hair self-consciously. He knew what he was talking about. “No-maintenance, because it’s always under a hat or helmet, getting sweaty and showered a couple of times a day. Just long enough to tie back.”
“And you guys never chop it off super-short,” he said. “Even though that would be easiest of all.”
“Because we desperately want to hang onto some femininity.” Especially Heather, who knew she wasn’t a major babe or anything, just a classic girl-jock. A little taller than average, no curves, but at least she was a hardbody, if a little broad. She also had a plain, open face and wore her dirty-blonde hair straight, cut just below her jaw.
“I think short-short hair is sexy,” he said, “but none of the athletic girls I’ve known would go for it. I went out a couple of times over the summer with one of the waitresses at the country club, who wasn’t an athlete. Her hair was dyed super-black and just down to the nape of her neck. That was cool.” He sounded wistful.
“I cut my hair that short, and I’d look like a boy,” Heather said. “I think I’ve seen that girl around the village. You aren’t still with her?”
“She went back to UBC. It wasn’t serious.”
Heather doubted it would take him long to find someone else to go out with. He had those nice blue eyes with the long Bambi eyelashes going for him. Funny how she still couldn’t place him from before, though.
After they’d shared a second pitcher, he invited her back to his place. Heather had no delusions as to what it meant. Sexual recreation, snowboarder-style. It meant he thought she was a bud, too.
• • •
The sex was okay, not great. He kept asking how’s this, how’s that, when Heather would have preferred to just get on with it, cut the gabbing. For a guy on the snowboard scene, where the casual sex flew around like fresh powder, to Heather he still seemed to be working on his moves. Nice job on the oral, though, she had to give him that. Otherwise, they bashed knees and elbows a lot. Maybe the bruises on him, now turning Technicolor, weren’t from wack air at all, just ungainly sex.
It was a kind of relief when they finished and she could untangle herself to go down the hall and use the john. He shared the house with a bunch of other guys, so she slipped on her underwear and sweatshirt to leave the room. When she came back, since she was half-dressed already, she resisted sliding back into the bed and perched on the rickety wooden chair in front of his computer. “Can I use this?” she said, firing up his browser.
“Whatcha doing?” he asked.
“Checking tomorrow’s weather.”
“Hoping it’s crap for training?” he said. “So you can skip it with the hangover you’re going to have?”
“I don’t skip training,” Heather said, reading. “Sometimes I’m late, but I don’t skip.” His homepage was set to a minimalist page. Blank background, with a single line of text:
“You
