• • •
Maria was on with Heathen and Dag when Heathen suddenly stared out the window. “Oh, hell,” she said. “What are they doing here?”
Dag and Maria both looked. “What?” they both said. Maria didn’t see anything unusual, just the usual boring Whistler crowd out there.
“Jefferoo’s heading in with the rest of his crew,” Heathen said.
This meant nothing to Maria, but she now saw a group of four guys with snowboards right in front of the shop. Dag’s expression changed, too. “Crap,” he said, softly enough that Maria barely heard it.
“I think I’m due for a smoke break,” Heathen said. “You and Maria can cover.”
“Heathen!” Dag said. “What if they hang out for an hour? You can’t stay out that whole time.” He looked like he wanted to bail himself.
“What’s the problem?” Maria asked as Heathen ditched her apron, grabbed her bag and hightailed it out the back way.
“The one in front,” Dag said. “He’s her ex-boyfriend.”
The four guys plowed in, filling the quiet shop with sudden noise and chatter. They were in high spirits and self-congratulatory, totally stoked over something. It looked like they’d been having a blast. Three of them hung around in front, checking out the free papers in the reading rack while the tallest of them made a beeline for the restroom. If they knew Dag, they didn’t seem to notice him, or Maria right away.
“Can I help you guys?” Maria said from the cash. They finally seemed to suddenly realize there were other people around.
“Sorry,” said the one who’d been in front. She assumed he was Jefferoo. “I guess we should get some coffees. Regular?” He looked around at the other two. They were eyeing the price board dubiously and nodded. Maria knew why. Snowboarders were always short of cash. That’s why she didn’t date them.
“For here or to go?”
“Is he going to be quick in there?” Jefferoo asked one of the others, who was missing some front teeth. He shrugged.
“How about I give you to-go cups, but you can drink ’em here all the same if you want,” Maria said.
“EGGsalad!” Jeff said. Maria got it after a second. His version of “Excellent!” “You are a goddess,” he added.
“I do what I can,” Maria said.
Dag was already pouring large coffees and lining them up on the counter. Whatever his under-the-breath comment meant, he seemed to be friendly to them. “Here you go, dudes. No worries, they’re on the house.”
“Dude!” Jefferoo said in surprise. “‘Waaaasabiiii?!! What the great white fuck are you doing in a trendoid situation like this? Dudes!” he said to his friends. “Check it out.” He reached over to tap fists with Dag and caught sight of the apron. “Whoa. Is it Halloween? This your costume?”
“I work here,” Dag said. The other two crowded around. “Hey, Adam. Hey, Kai,” he said.
“Dude,” they chorused in disbelief.
“Oh, man.” Jeff looked sympathetic. “That is so totally wack. You never said. Since when?”
“Like, two months now.” Dag looked over at Maria sort of uncomfortably, but with no customers to serve, Maria was paying attention to every word. She always paid attention to Dag.
“No way! You never said!”
“Way. What are you guys doing here? Why aren’t you at Breadspreads?”
Jeff pointed to the washroom, and presumably, the guy who’d dashed inside. “We just poached ourselves a surgical strike of a huckfest over on the bunny hill for something to do. Jared got a wicked attack of the shits on the way back. Said he couldn’t make it to the other side of the village.”
“We shouldn’t have let him stop, dude,” Adam said.
“If he’d dropped a load in his pants, we could so rag on him for, like, ever.”
“You think he isn’t going to be Pooper Scooper now, anyway?” Jeff said. The three of them had a laugh and high-fived each other some more.
Oh, god. Maria was one of the small minority of people who were actually born in Whistler, and at sixteen, she was intent on getting out of the mountains the instant she finished high school. She usually feigned only enough interest in snowsports to make chitchat with the customers when they came in, exhilarated after their time on the slopes. Goofball snowboarders were one thing she could never get excited about. She’d picked up enough of the slang from being around them to know that these guys had just disrupted a bunch of beginners, no doubt spraying powder and raising hell, there and gone in a couple of minutes, so quick people might not even be sure of what they’d seen. It was all about showboating, of course: making the newbies and little kids gape in wonder at what a real rider could do.
“You knock out another tooth?” Dag said. Kai grinned widely, showing Dag and Maria his jack-o-lantern mouth.
“It’s my trademark,” Kai told Maria, finally looping her into the conversation. Maria sidled over towards the bar to catch this better.
“He still can’t afford to get them fixed,” Adam said.
“I don’t want to any more,” Kai said. “Everybody recognizes me.”
“He did it last week at the Ripzone meet,” Jeff said to Dag. “Everybody saw it. You were there.”
“No, I wasn’t,” Dag said.
“Sure, our whole tribe was,” Jeff said. “That was his face-plant after he corked his switch Alley-Oop 360. He stood up and took a bow with blood all over his face like he’d been eating corpses.”
“I’m hoping someone got a photo to send to Frequency,” Kai said. “Or that I can post on the net.”
Dag shook his head. “I haven’t been at any event this season except that first run in September.”
That confirmed what Maria had thought, that Dag was an ex- snowboarder. That was one of the things she liked about him, that he wasn’t trying to be a snowsports star like everybody else in town.
There was a light of recognition in Jeff’s eyes. “Oh, shit, yeah, was that the day when you punched your tricks all over the half-pipe? That was a fucking yard sale.”
Dag shrugged. “Yeah, well, once you’ve laid down your masterwork, there’s no point in going back out trying to top it.” He wasn’t laughing it off very convincingly. Another foursome came in the door just then, and he quickly ducked behind Maria to go to the cash instead of her. “Gotta serve the trendoids,” he said. “Try not to get rider sweat all over the chairs, willya?”
The guys turned to take their coffees and sit at a table by the window. The fourth cup still sat on the counter, steaming away. “You’re going to need a hazmat team in there when he’s done,” Adam said to Maria, heading off with his cup, jerking his thumb toward the restroom.
Jared emerged a moment later, looking relieved but sheepish. “Sorry,” he mumbled to Maria. “It’s kind of rank back there. Just the reek, though, no skidmarks,” he added hastily. “This mine?” He grabbed his coffee off the counter. “Who do I owe?” He looked over at the other guys.
“Hey, Jared,” Dag said. “It’s a freebie.”
“Hey, thanks,” Jared said, then did a double take. “Hey!” he said again. “I haven’t clapped eyes on you in eons. What’s it been, six months? How’s it hanging? Where you staying?”
“Jared,” Dag said, and to Maria, he was starting to sound kind of irked, “we live in the same goddamn