He went kind of red at that. “I was mostly looking at the photos. You asked whether the photos looked dorky.”
She let him get away with that for now, because this other thing was just so bizarre. “The Heroblog couldn’t be you,” she said. “It doesn’t even sound like you.”
He shrugged in response. Which made her wonder, in light of the roles he put on in the store, what “he” really sounded like. And if she’d even seen the real him yet.
“How the hell did you come up with it?” He shrugged again. “You are a weird, weird boy,” Heathen said. “But that was a nice thing you, the Hero, whichever one of you, did— about the food donations.”
“It wasn’t really thought out,” Dag said. “It could have been better. I wanted to run a sort of controlled test—something that people could only have read about in the blog, and I figured someone who needs it should benefit. I don’t know if I expected nothing, or truckloads of food to show up and see a big story in the news about all the BlackArts being inundated.”
“Wait a minute,” Heathen said. “You called in sick on Saturday. You don’t do sick days unless Mohammed makes you. Which means, you ditched so you wouldn’t be there. If you ran this thing, why wouldn’t you want to be around to see the payoff?”
“Because I felt weird about it. I didn’t know if I was going to like knowing that people were reading the Hero or not. I still don’t know how I like it.” He seemed rather troubled. “I’m not in it for fame, you know,” he said. “I don’t need to see my name in lights, or on stone tablets.”
“You going to keep writing it?” Heathen asked.
“Are you going to keep reading it?” he replied. “It’s not always about charity and stuff.”
“No shit,” she said. “There’s some creepy stuff on there, too.” It threw a real wrench into her monkeyworks. She wasn’t sure she was ready to believe him. “I still think you’re shitting me.”
“Fair enough,” Dag said. “Maybe I am.”
When he said stuff like that, someone like Heathen had no hope of pinning down who he thought he was. “Prove it,” Heathen said suddenly.
“How?” he asked.
Good question. She didn’t know how. Ask him what was on the blog? Anybody who read it would be able to answer.
Then she had a thought. “Put my name in it tomorrow,” she said.
• • •
• • •
Holy shit. Heathen gaped at her screen. First because of what the Hero was daring people to do, and second, because there was her name staring right out at her from the middle of it. She didn’t know whether to be jazzed or appalled, but it was the proof she’d asked for. Or maybe it wasn’t. It could simply prove that maybe Dag knew the guy who was writing the blog and asked him to put it in. As far as she was concerned, telling people to behave that way with little kids was more proof that Dag, everybody’s super-duper, good-guy, ever-friendly barista, wasn’t behind this thing. The darkest thing Heathen knew for sure he had done was trade insults with her. On the other hand, if by some stretch of the imagination it was him, Heathen didn’t like the way he thought. At all.
The next time they were on together, she confronted him at the lockers in the back. “That was appalling,” she said, “the Hero of the Teeming Masses using my name as an excuse to encourage perverted behaviour.”
“Maybe it wasn’t an excuse,” Dag said, putting his jacket away. “Maybe the Hero was going to write about that anyway.”
“Well, it totally sucks.”
He clanged his locker door shut. “What were you expecting when you asked to see your name in there? That the Hero would talk up your skiing? Aren’t you the one who said not to feed people’s attempts to aggrandize themselves?”
She stomped off into the store and barely spoke to him for the entire shift.
Seven
Q. Confirm or deny: suggested by the canned goods commandment, the Hero of the Teeming Masses is a barista.
A. Java is the elixir of modern life. What better way for one to be a Hero to the Teeming Masses? However, the Hero prefers the term “javaslinger.”
Q. Confirm or deny: The Hero so slings at the lame and ubiquitous BlackArts Coffee chain.
A. If he did not, how could he know his Teeming Masses? For that is where the multitudes may be found.
Q. Confirm: Which BlackArts?
A. The Hero will not divulge which BlackArts. The Hero may therefore be at any BlackArts, and is therefore, you guessed it, at all BlackArts. Hence, the Hero knows all and sees all.
The Hero is with you wherever two or more of you gather for latte under a beige sign with fake coffee rings on it.
Q. Does the Hero not care that BlackArts exploits, oppresses and generally behaves suckily toward humanity? Why does the Hero support it?
A. It is BlackArts that supports the Hero, in bestowing a necessary paycheck. Judge not the Hero and his brethren in servitude lest ye Teeming Masses, who insist on worshipping at this behemoth of beans anyway, be left without a buffer at the feet of the corporate entity. For it is they who render unto the Masses the extra squirt of whipped cream, or the free shot of syrup, which is rightfully BlackArts’.
Q. What is the Hero’s real identity?
A. Wouldn’t you like to know?
Here endeth the FAQ. Watch this space.
• • •
The Georgia Straight, Vancouver’s weekly alternative newspaper, arrived every Thursday a.m. to go in a rack between the inner and outer front doors. Consequently, every shift in the store on Thursdays spent all its non-serving time paging through it. This particular Thursday, Heathen was not only on time for work, but early, to catch the paper as soon as it landed in the rack. One of their culture reporters had been up to interview some of the skiers about the Whistler scene, and she had got to join him and a bunch of others when they went out beering. She was hoping for her second bit of media mention. This would be local, but it was mainstream, rather than a specialty publication. And more importantly, it was a free paper, so she could snag as many copies as she wanted to hand out back in Calgary when she flew home for Christmas.
Two bundles of papers whomped down into the foyer. Heathen abandoned setup and was already hurrying over as the delivery guy cut the plastic ties on the bundles and racked the copies. He gave her a wave and was off before she had the inner door open. Which was just as well, because she didn’t know if she could stand and make idle morning chitchat when she was so antsy to dive into the issue.
Tim came in while she was studying the table of contents. “Have I mentioned how much I hate opening?” he said.
Heathen nodded absently. “Every time you do it.” She glanced up briefly,