“Sorry,” Tim said. “Just the satisfaction of doing a good deed.” For a minute, it didn’t look like the kid was going to leave the bag, after all, but he looked around, shrugged, and did.
A couple that were regulars finished their coffees, left, and came back about twenty minutes later with a bag of their own.
A few more bags had accumulated on the side counter by lunchtime, when Mohammed and KateLynn came in for the afternoon. “What’s all this?” he said, looking into the bags. “Your grocery shopping?” he said to Tim.
“People keep dropping that stuff off for the food bank.”
“Why?”
“We were going to ask you. Are we doing a food drive?”
“No, anybody call Northside?”
“I did,” said Tim. “They’re not, but they got some cans, too. Hey,” he turned to Heathen, “weren’t you going to look something up?”
She hadn’t had a chance in the Saturday rush. “I might have seen something. It rings a bell. I’ll check it at the Internet café.”
“Take your break then,” Mo said. “And Tim, how about tidying this up at least? Bring out a box to put all this in.”
Heathen took a couple of loonies out of the tip jar and beetled off to the cyber café a couple of doors down. Kaz was outside having a smoke. Heathen flipped a loonie at him on her way in. “I just need, like, five mins—cool?” He nodded and waved her in.
It was very dark inside, with only a couple of people at the terminals like ghosts in the dim.
Heathen took the nearest computer, which was in line with the door, in daylight and therefore never in demand. She fired up the browser and tried her regular sites.
She checked the usual ski news and ski conditions sites, and the Blackcomb site—maybe the resort was running some kind of charitable program, but she crapped out. Since she was here anyway, she decided to do a little personal surfing. Television Without Pity had posted new recaplets of a couple of her favourite TV shows, which she consistently missed now that her VCR wasn’t working and she was always out. As a last indulgence, she punched up the Hero of the Teeming Masses, just because she was still reading that regularly. And there it was, from a couple of days ago:
Well, that was kind of cool. Heathen imagined people going into BlackArts all over the country and dropping off cans. Assuming the Hero had that many readers.
She’d never been to it before herself, but she punched up the BlackArts site to see if there was any acknowledgement or reaction to the Hero’s blog. Nothing. So maybe the Hero didn’t have that many readers. Or maybe it was just too early to expect a corporate reaction. She liked the idea of store managers from all over calling up head office in Seattle to ask why people were dropping food off and why they hadn’t been told about it.
She went back and cleared up the mystery for the guys. By then, Mohammed had received a mass e-mail to all the stores from Seattle saying that a lot of stores were getting unsolicited donations. “Someone’s going to have to take this stuff over to the real food bank,” Mohammed said. “Wherever it is. Do we even have one in town?”
“Yeah,” Heathen said. “They give stuff out from a trailer behind the church on Lorimar Road. But not every day. I’ll find out when and where. I can drop this stuff off in my car.”
Tim smirked. “What’s with you being so goody-two-shoes all of a sudden? Or do you know all this stuff from experience?”
Tim could really be an asshole sometimes. “I know people who’ve needed it, smartass,” she said. She had friends who’d had to resort to the Whistler food bank when they’d used up their summer funds, and the lack of early snow meant their seasonal paycheques were late in starting.
Mohammed jumped in. “I think we should take the tips from the whole day and put them into buying some stuff to put in the box. Show of hands?” Heathen and KateLynn stuck their hand up immediately, and Mohammed did, too.
“Too bad Dag’s still off sick,” Heathen said, looking smugly at Tim. “Tips are always better when he’s on.”
• • •
Heathen wasn’t in on Monday morning, but she got up early and drove over to work. There was no roadway in front of the store, which was on the pedestrian shopping area, so she had to pull around to the loading area for the Village shops. She put her flashers on and walked in to pound on the back door to the store. Dag opened it up for her. “Hey, Heathen.”
“Hey,” she said. “You feeling better? All the regulars were asking for you and were grouchy when you weren’t there. You got that box of food bank stuff?”
“Right here,” he said. There were three now, not just the one that Tim had put up when Mohammed told him to.
“Hey, we did better than I thought. I guess people like that blog.”
“Yeah, weird, isn’t it?” he said. But he didn’t seem his usual bright self. Maybe he wasn’t totally better yet. But she’d thought he’d find this as cool as she did. Dag liked odd things.
He hefted one of the boxes. “Where’s the car?”
“Just over there,” she pointed. “Somebody out front?”
“Mohammed’s holding the fort.” He helped carry them over and load them in. She thumped the trunk shut.
“Hey, Heathen,” Dag said. “Wait a minute.”
She lit up a smoke. “You on a break?” He looked kind of serious, though, not like he just wanted to hang.
“I have to tell you something,” Dag said. He paused. “Don’t think this sounds self-aggrandizing or anything, because it’s not, okay? In fact, I’m kind of freaked out by it.” Another pause. Heathen wished he’d get on with it. “I think I had something to do with this,” he said at last.
Heathen blew smoke up at the sky. “With what?”
He gestured to the trunk. “This.” “What are you talking about?” Heathen said. “It came off the Heroblog.”
“Yeah, I know,” he nodded.
“What? You’re saying the Heroblog is yours? Oh, you are so full of shit.” Heathen blew a smoke ring at him. People always wanted to cop a connection to the next big thing.
“I’m not.” He shook his head. She squinted at him through her smoke. He looked sincere. “It said—”
“I know what it said,” she cut him off.“I read that blog.” As far as she knew, she was the first among all the people she knew who did. She’d even been mentioning it to all the people she knew. And now, here was Dag, claiming to have come up with the damn thing.
“Do you?” he said, looking surprised. “I didn’t think anybody did.”
“Dag,” she said, “everybody I know reads it. It’s like The Smoking Gun or the Onion. It got mentioned on kottke’s ‘sites I’ve enjoyed recently’ last week, for chrissakes.”
Dag looked perturbed. “I’m not sure how I feel about that. See, I don’t even know how that happens,” he said. “I never promoted it, ever. I don’t even think it comes up on Google. How’d you find out about it?”
“I saw it,” she said. “At your place. Don’t you remember? I checked