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 Ale,” he said. That was a Granville Island microbrew popular with a lot of the snowsport types. Heather figured it was for the specific seasonal connection as much as the surprising vanilla flavours in it.
She waved at a harried 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