Muriel Gray - The Trickster

‘Sure, I know. Looks like it’s going to be a great second half. Long time since I’ve seen snow conditions this good. I guess the powder in the back bowls is like spun sugar right now.’

He smiled, crinkling two ice-blue eyes in a face so pale Pasqual figured the guy had never been near a ski trail in his life. She was used to dealing with people with mahogany tans that stopped where their turtlenecks started, but the easy charm of this man was making up for the fact that he was obviously no ski bum. Nor was he dressed like anyone who wanted to be near snow. A long black wool coat hung over what Pasqual noted was a powerful frame. She wasn’t looking at a potential ski instructor, but maybe he’d be some use in the PR office.

‘You a skier, Moses?’

‘Sure. I can get down most things.’

‘So where have you worked before? And what as exactly?’

The man looked into her eyes very deeply indeed.

Pasqual was aware of an acute sexual stirring beginning around her nipples that shifted down over her belly to an area she didn’t have much time to explore these days. He was turning her on with those eyes, and she was ashamed. Why this encounter should have such an effect was a mystery, and made her squirm beneath her fleece with discomfort and irritation. After all, she was surrounded all day by pieces of meat on skis that she could have just by looking sideways at them. If she chose to, she could fuck any instructor on the resort, but sex was never high on Pasqual Weaver’s agenda. Right now, however, it was standing at the front door ringing the bell.

‘Tamarack. Two seasons. Manual grooming mainly.’

She looked at him suspiciously. How could he have worked out doors all day as a manual groomer and still have stayed as white as a baby’s ass? She wasn’t going to be bullshitted. Tamarack just happened to be Silver’s biggest rival right now. So much so, even the name got on her tits.

‘And who was the big white chief at Tamarack? Just in case I want to call him up?’

The man who called himself Moses smiled widely, revealing milky white teeth behind his pink lips. ‘I’d be glad if you called him up, Miss Weaver. His name is William Cole. We called him Hill Billy.’

She knew damned well it was Bill fucking Cole that ran the show over there. Same as she knew that Tamarack had stolen nearly a fifth of Silver’s day trip custom with three new high speed quads. She would drink piss before she would phone up Cole for a reference. The fact that the guy knew his name and his slang name, was enough proof for her he was telling the truth. Plus he would be useful in the office if he knew exactly what was going on with the competition.

‘So are you hoping for manual work again or does something with a desk and a fan heater blowing hot air up your fanny all day interest you?’

‘Anything you got really. I understand you lost a couple of your ski patrol.’

She frowned. ‘Yeah, well we’re on that one thanks. The rest of the guys are still cut up about it and I don’t think they’d take too kindly to me sticking a sits vac. ad in the local newspaper before they’ve got their two buddies in the ground.’

‘A real tragedy.’

‘It’s a dangerous job.’

His eyes were boring through her skull. She looked away, pretending to study the blackboard for tomorrow’s ski class rota. ‘Okay Moses, why don’t you come see me tomorrow at eight thirty and we’ll fix something up. Can’t promise ski patrol, but I’ll be honest and tell you we can use some extra help right now. Things are going to get real busy when the snow reports hit the cities.’

Moses stuck his hand out again and she took it without thinking. This time he held on to it a little longer than she would have liked.

‘Well that’s just great, Miss Weaver. I look forward to that.’

She withdrew her hand as the door threw open to admit five laughing instructors clopping in like carthorses.

‘Robbed the public blind today I hope guys?’ she said in a tone higher than she had planned.

‘Yo, you bet,’ laughed the biggest and brownest of the pack, unzipping his suit with a baroque flourish.

Pasqual smiled once at them, once at Moses, and left.

The tall pale man watched the flimsy wooden door close behind Pasqual and then glanced across at the five faces eyeballing him.

‘Hi,’ he smiled.

Only one nodded back.

Moses Sitconski put his hands back into his pockets without dissolving his smile, then followed Pasqual out into the night.

The ploughs went past with the invincibility of a fleet of Newfoundland trawlers putting to sea; lights flashing, funnels blowing out plumes of snow, their metal bows pushing back the ocean of white in huge, semi-solid waves.

Snaking behind these yellow leviathans was a line of nineteen cars, two trucks and a bus, and right in the middle Sam Hunt sat behind the wheel of the company pick-up.

As he drove slowly behind a big shiny Ford, Sam’s eyes were narrow slits of dismay. Not because his progress home was painfully slow, but because last night, alone on the bench in the ticket office at Stoke, he’d had another dream.

So far, it was the worst. Since his blackout three days ago, every night had furnished him with dreams so distressing and unendurable he was beginning to dread sleep. But last night was the pits. It was almost real.

It had been different in detail of course, but the creature was still there. Still fixing him with its unholy, vindictive, glacial gaze as it set about its grisly business. Always the business with the heart. That was the bit he couldn’t take.

There was more last night though. A lot more. Sam made a dry swallow as he remembered.

The office that smelled of wet floorboards and hot dogs during the day was a different place at night. Fierce heating dried the wood after the last customer had left, slowly evaporating the puddles caused by skiers dragging the snow in on their moonboots. For a while it made the room steamy and sour. But once it had dried, and the cleaners had done their stuff sweeping up discarded sticky backs from the lift passes, the office was a pleasant and inhabitable room, and when Sam had called Katie he was comfortable. There was, after all, something soothing about seeking refuge from the storm in a commercial rather than a domestic setting, appealing to that childish excitement of bedding down somewhere alien and forbidden.

The first time Sam had been in a church in Calgary he felt that way. He was fifteen years old and the luxury of the interior, the cool but ornate splendour, had astounded him. There had been no sense of God to the young Sam Hunt, just a million opportunities for making tiny living spaces in the dozens of marble and oak corners the building boasted. He sat on the hard pew, imagining creeping into that fabulous building when everyone was gone and unfurling his sleeping mat beneath the high, carved wooden pulpit. It was like a palace. What would it be like to run barefoot on that marble floor in front of the minister? Think of the feasts that could be laid out on those huge stone steps, and the dancing that could go wildly out of control in the vast empty space between pews and altar. The pragmatist in him figured that cooking could be accomplished quite safely on the stone-flagged floors, since the smoke would have ample space to rise and dissipate high above, amongst the barrel-vaulting. Sam knew he could live there like a king.

The Reverend and Mrs Jenkins were delighted by Sam’s expression of wonder and awe as he sat between them that day, his black-button eyes roving over the architecture like a blind man seeing for the first time.

They were not to know his thoughts were on a flight of fancy as to how he would live secretively in such a place, instead of an awakening to the glory and love of their God: but they often misinterpreted their young charge. They never really knew him at all.