Chatter was turning to the obscenities reported about California and how Emperor Bush's solution for the mess he'd made with the power companies was to review environmental protection laws and pull them back to build more power plants to add to the problem.
I was starting to shiver despite the layers of long underwear and state-of-the-art ski gear and the blasting of Hans' car heater.
We were trying to swallow the staggering stupidity of it all, trying to eke out a secret from the cracks of the horror story to see if perhaps we'd misunderstood.
We were driving at one hundred and fifty kilometers per hour at the time, speeding east on Highway 10. I was staring at the long skinny tracks of cross-country skis that stretched the length of the road. Someone, despite the weight of all the terrors in the entire world, had been awake even before us, and had skied the length of the highway, on the fresh chill.
It was right about then that I noticed the pink tinge to the lightening of the sky ahead of us, and as I pointed out the imminent sunrise, Hans and I watched it grow in slightly less disturbed silence.
We were listening to Verdi's Requiem on the CBC, and then sun was colouring our faces with odd shades of cotton candy.
That was the last relaxing moment of the entire day, spent racing around Bromont screaming at the children (go go go go go! You can do it! Alright, run through the tires, you can do it, let's go! Woohoooo! Yayyyyy...) organizing the obstacle course, taking in a few ski runs to do a bit of PR for the radio station and reminding people that Cancer Research was in the Chalet taking donations...
This year's uniforms are very, very bright. The splash of red along the shoulders would shame a firetruck and make it look drab and chocolate brown. The wild way this clashed so vocally with my hair drew glorious attention from hundreds of screaming kids
As they ran through the obstacle course amidst our whoops and cheers, their parents' happy sighs that they had a moment to relax, and the clinking of change into the Cancer Research jars.
And then they ran right out the finish line and around the fence and right back to the starting line again, and we cheered them the entire length of the way.
We even cheered when the boys from Nova Scotia with the hippie sideburns and ultra-cool headbands did it.
And the newest guy on the team is in no danger of my forgetting his name when I hand out lift tickets and check off their names (somehow I always forget which Julie is which and which JF is Jean-Francois and which one is Karl-Jean-Francois) because the first thing he said to me was "I'm a sarcastic bastard" and I said "oooh, we're going to get along splendidly" and his brilliant smile actually looks good against the tomato red of the jackets. (Hawaiian Pierre just looks ill in the new colours)
Of course, when Alex (the sarcastic bastard) tried to put his muscled arm about my waist (as opposed to the more platonic cuddles that go on with the team) and whispered just loud enough to melt into my ear above the noise of the prize-raffle in the bar, asking if I were staying the night with half the team in the rooms they'd rented so we could ski all Sunday, I made my excuses about how out of shape and stinging my thighs already were, and how I had to be back in town to dye Tia's hair fire engine red first thing in the morning.
He grinned, and I silently wondered at my discomfort that a surprisingly intelligent (and bilingual, the bitch can be sarcastic just as fluently in english as in french) and definitely ripped ski bunny was coming on to me.
And then I wondered some more about David, tho I'd sworn not to think about him on the weekend, wondered why I had this urge towards some form of monogamy even though nothing had ever been discussed and our dealings together were made clear from the start -- this is purely a matter of convenience. Purely a matter of loading up on affection and orgasms and chasing the slight chill of winter away.
Then why did I have sudden faithful urge, and why when I tried to tell him about it that evening, after having driven back through a silent sunset (we were so tired and drained that we discussed pop-culture classical music and opera and theatre and then lapsed into comfortable silence), why did I get all the words wrong and instead of telling a man who is becoming rather dear to me that I felt this loyalty towards him, why did it come out all wrong, as if I was showing off how many men I could flirt with whenever I spend time away from him.
He kissed me as tenderly as ever, but I have the sour taste of having explained things all wrong, and it bothers me that it bothers me.
And I spoke to his little girl on the telephone and made her laugh, and I couldn't even decipher the expression on his face whilst I did it.
But my muscles are screaming that maybe I shouldn't have spent all my breaks on the ski hill dancing wildly to bad 80s music, or running back and forth between the cars making sure everyone knew where they were supposed to be. My muscles are screaming something akin to murder, and I am glorying in every ache and every stretch of injured sinew.