A Slightly More Civilized Game Page 2
“Yeah, but the difference this time is that I’m telling the truth. I knew you’d still be here. There’s some kind of emergency and the people I work for need me to contact them from a land line to find out what it is and I need you to fire up your snow ship and help me get around in this wild Snowpacalypse.”
When Paul broke up with Norma he had insisted that even though he really liked her they were just too different. And she had said that he was too secretive, strangely private with most of the details of his life, and that she thought he was a lying serial dater that never really intended to ever get married, just another common bachelor afraid of commitment.
Paul liked Norma a lot, but he was never sure if he loved her. And when she pressured him to agree to a lifelong commitment he ran.
Norma was an incredible mechanic. With her Uncle Chubby, she had converted her truck into a snow taxi, replacing the wheels with a track system. It could drive through any depth of snow. During the winter she made a living taxiing skiers around Spirit Mountain. Paul couldn’t see how carting around a few skiers had allowed her to live as well as she did but it was her business if she had something else going on the side that helped her keep the lights on. He was never one to pry. He couldn’t afford to. Norma had once made the national news for rescuing a pregnant woman in a storm. She had heard over her police scanner that the conditions of the storm were even difficult to handle with snowmobiles so she fired up her machine and challenged it to make the rescue. She found the woman, got her safely into her machine, and half an hour later while she was taking her home they stopped so Norma could deliver the baby. When she saw Paul, after the event had made the national news, all he had to ask was whether she had thoroughly cleaned the back seat in that truck. This was just one more reason of many that the two were no longer dating.
“Hello? Norma? Are you still there?”
“You’d better not be drunk again, Hunter.”
“I’m not drunk. Now hurry up. You’ve got to drive me there.”
“Drive you where? You didn’t say.”
“I did. Bobo’s. But I can’t tell you much over my cell phone.”
“You have been drinking. Or else you’ve been having one of your weird dreams. Either way, go to sleep. I’m not coming over.”
“I haven’t been drinking. I have an assignment, something very serious. I have to be very discreet. And I really need to get out on the road and get moving. Please, Norma. I need your help. I wouldn’t ask if I had another way.”
“Alright. I can’t believe I’m doing this for you. I’m such a sucker. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“That a girl.”
“Don’t say that. You know that I always hated it when you said that.”
“Sorry. Thanks, Norma.” He nearly hung up. “Wait, Norma. You still there?’
“Yeah.”
“Do you still have that big sleigh that you pulled in the Christmas City of the North Parade sitting back behind your house?”
Minutes later he could hear the hum of the Grand Cherokee turned snow machine outside his house. She had the enormous Santa sleigh hooked to the trailer hitch with its red lights blinking off and on. The snow truck even had a mini boom that she used to pull cars free from ravines after they had completely left the road. The snow machine sat on top of the four feet of snow that was piled in the road, two feet having been removed from the roadway on the first day before the county workers had abandoned the task. The white Cherokee practically disappeared in the never-ending sea of white, the blinking red Christmas lights of the trailer creating a beacon to follow. Paul waded through the snow from his building, a canvas bag around his neck, holding his rifle above his head and using it for balance when he had to. It took great effort just to get to the road. He arrived at the side of the machine panting heavily. He saw the smirk on Norma’s face. She had always told him that if he was going to live on doughnuts and cigarettes he might want to spend a little time at the gym. The advice always fell on deaf jelly doughnut-eating ears. He sunk his teeth into the strap of the rifle and grabbed the door. He struggled to step up on to the track, and then he pulled himself in, shutting out the howling wind. The fur collar on his bomber jacket was filled with snow and his jeans were soaked.
“You always make that look so hard,” Norma said.
“It is so hard.”
“You’re not going to have a heart attack again, are you?”
“I didn’t have a heart attack the night your dog licked me…you know where. I’d just gotten out of the shower and I got really startled and lost my breath. That’s what made me fall down. Something like that would’ve startled any normal man. It just took me a minute to come around after I hit my head.”
“You’re such a prude, Hunter.”
Norma had a dozen huskies at her country home that she used to race the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon every year. When it got really cold out she insisted on bringing them into her house at night. This was another reason the two were not a couple anymore.
“I think you had a heart attack that night. You should’ve been checked out at St. Mary’s.”
“I was fine, Norma.”
“You never take care of yourself. You’ve probably had lots of little heart attacks and baby strokes too. One day you’ll only be able to talk out of one side of your mouth like this.” She contorted her face so that her mouth drooped on one side. “Hey, Norma, hey, Norma. Put the dogs outside. Dogs belong outside. Everyone knows that,” she said, slurring her words. “And your leg will drag and you’ll end up walking in circles all the time like a confused mummy.”
“Okay. Thank you for the medical advice. This coming from a woman who lives in a cabin with her dogs and practices witchcraft.”
“Holistic medicine is not witchcraft.” She looked at his rifle. “I see that you’ve brought your biggest gun. Feeling pretty macho tonight? What’s that for?”
“You never know.”
She looked at his soaked pants.
“Are you ever going to buy yourself some pants that are fitting for the weather up here?”
“I’m not going to wear snowpants. They look like clown pants.”
“Someday the skin on your legs is going to freeze and turn black, but at least you won’t look like a clown.”
“Can we just go, please?”
“Where?”
“Bobo’s, so I can call the man back on a payphone. Then I’m going to leave you there and come back for you later after I’ve taken care of business.”
“Not a chance.” She wasn’t putting the machine in gear.
“What? Why not?”
“There is no way that I’m letting you drive my baby off into the storm without me. You don’t know what you’re doing in a storm like this. You’d destroy her transmission.”
“Norma, I can’t argue with you right now. This is serious.”
“So am I. If you want to get where you’re going then you’re going to have to do it my way. End of discussion.”
“He’d always hated it when she said end of discussion because he knew that it was true. She’d never budge on a position after those words had been uttered.
“Fine, Norma! Let’s just go!” She grabbed his rifle from him and tossed it into the back seat forcefully.
“What man?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“What man called you? What is his name?”
“Nelson.”
“Is he like Cher and Prince, or does he have two names like the rest of us?”
“Nelson isn’t really his name. We don’t use real names.”
“They call you by your real name.”
“Just Nelson, he’s the only one. Nobody else uses my full name. Can we please get moving, Norma? I’m really tired. Twenty minutes ago I was sound asleep and suddenly rudely woken up.”
“Seems to be going around.” She put the machine in gear and they plowed along. She pulled a stick of gum from her jacket and tossed it in her mouth.
“Won’t even disclose the name of the man that called you. This really is a top secret mission. Everything’s always got to be so mysterious with you. You sure you want me aboard on this one? You know that I’ve got loose lips.”
“You told my mother that I wore your bra and panties. How could you do that? I put them on to make you laugh because you were depressed that night.”
“And it helped. Far better than the Seasonal Disorder lamp that you bought me. It was hilarious.”
“Mothers don’t find that kind of thing funny. They find it terribly disturbing. She still looks at me strangely once in a while when I go to visit her. Mother’s mind drifts and she looks at me with an expression on her face like she smells something really awful. When I say her name and ask her what she’s thinking about she snaps out of it and insists that she wasn’t thinking of anything. But I know what she’s picturing, what she’s thinking.
“Who cares?”
“I care.”
“I should’ve made you out to be a real sicko, told her that you liked wearing handcuffs and getting spanked with a fresh Musky.”
“Just tone it down a little tonight, will ya?”
They arrived at Bobo’s. Norma drove as close to the payphone as she could but Paul was still going to have to get out and trudge through the snow in order to use it. Paul just shook his head at her as he tried to step out on the track and make his way down. He lost his balance and fell from the machine, disappearing into the snow, leaving a cartoon silhouette. Norma climbed across the seat and leaned out of the passenger window to see what had become of him. The bill