WHITE SPRUCE Chapter 2
Trey and I were a team, one of five pairs of perimeter guards. Our work followed a set schedule: three twelve-hour night shifts, then a day off, followed by three day shifts and another day off.
There were ten clubhouse guards, and thirty more security personnel for the Members' Residence and Guest Accommodations, plus their facilities. They never did perimeter work, but every so often, we would be called on to provide additional security for special events, which always resulted in an additional shift for whoever was left on perimeter patrol. That meant that I couldn't necessarily guarantee which days or nights I would have off.
Claire's schedule was more consistent: she worked six days a week. The laundry was closed on Tuesdays. That meant, unfortunately, that my days off didn't always coincide with hers.
We managed to share at least one meal a day, either breakfast or dinner. Sometimes I'd prepare something for her evening meal during the day, if I was on night shift. We also had three or four nights a week together.
She would most often invite me to her apartment, mainly so that she could remove her 'hiding' gear - the fake eyebrows, the dark circles under her eyes, the extra padding and the pillows - without having to worry about going home from my place. We could watch a video together, and have a quiet night. Claire had a healthy sexual appetite - one more thing to love about her.
I loved her face. She looked... I don't know quite how to explain it, but she looked like someone who would have been important, way back in the day. Like an aristocrat, or something. She had class, and intelligence, and a certain grace. That doesn't do her justice, but it's probably the closest I was going to get.
I loved her neck, her heavy breasts, her oh-so responsive nipples, her waist, her navel... just about everything about her. Yeah, I had it bad. But Claire had a knack of making me feel like
she
was the one who'd won the lottery.
Sometimes we went down to the pub together, to have a few drinks with our friends. You could order booze through the staff store, but it wasn't much more expensive at the Sand Trap. Most people preferred to drink in company. For the singles, it was the best opportunity to get laid.
But even now that Claire and I were a couple, we still liked to got to the pub, to spend time with our friends. Well, mostly her friends, but I felt that they were becoming mine, too.
Honestly? I didn't socialize much with the other perimeter guards. Conversations with them always seemed so stilted. Alan and Deron only talked sports. Strictly sports. Trey could talk sports, but he much preferred to talk about women. Actually, that's not how he phrased it.
- "Let's talk pussy." he would say. He liked to play a game he called 'Would, Couldn't, Guilty'. He would mention a woman's name, and then expect us to answer with one of those three words, meaning 'I would fuck her', 'I couldn't, even if you put a gun to my head', or 'Guilty', as in, 'You caught me'.
Yeah. You can see why I didn't spend much of my off-duty time with Trey. I didn't want to make it awkward, but I really didn't want anything to do with him outside of work. And even then, there were limits to my patience.
Claire's friends, on the other hand, were girls I'd known for a while. Not ex-girlfriends, or anything like that. Friends, I would have said, except that I was learning how little I really knew about them.
Nicole worked with Claire at the laundry. She was tiny, and with her scraggly hair, big nose and lack of a chin, she looked a bit like a... like a caricature of a witch's apprentice. Yet she was one of the nicest people you could ever hang out with.
- "I'm so lucky that I met her early." said Claire. "I love her."
Well, any friend of Claire's... you know what they say.
Anne still made me a little uncomfortable. It might have been her nervous smile, or the slightly manic look in her eyes. I could forget those things, for a while at least, if I wasn't looking directly at her. But every so often, she would respond to something another person had said with a barking laugh. Seriously, she was expelling way more air than necessary. It kind of made the hair on my arms stand up.
She was bright, though. Anne was a medical technician. You have to be smart to do that, right? And both Claire and Nicole thought the world of her. That had to mean something, too.
Celine was... well, there's no nice way to say it: Celine was truly homely. Her mouth was a little big for her face, and she had horribly crooked teeth, so that she only smiled with her mouth closed. She wasn't a hider: she had no hips to speak of, and her ass was almost non-existent.
I'm sorry. That's superficial. I caught myself talking (or thinking) like Trey sometimes. Celine was sweet, and also very bright: she was the staff bookkeeper, doing the accounts for the pub, the laundry, the medical centre, the school and daycare - you name it.
And never mind how they looked: these girls were all good people. They didn't run everybody else down, or make fun of others. I enjoyed their conversations, even when I didn't quite know what they were talking about. There were certain parts of the golf club that might well have been on the far side of the moon, for all I knew about them.
- "It's getting worse all the time." said Anne. "The winters have been shorter, three of the past four years. Milder, too. More rain, less snow. Less spring runoff."
- "It's not that bad, is it?" I said. "I mean, it's cyclical, isn't it? Like with the Ice Ages?" That was what I'd heard, anyway.
Anne shook her head. "Mike, did you know what Churchill was famous for, years ago? Tourists used to come to see the polar bears. There was ice on the Churchill river all through the winter - which lasted from November to March. Or even April."
- "Come on."
- "We had two more flights this year that brought nothing but bottled water." said Celine.
This wasn't news to me. Well... it sort of was? I'd registered the water shortage when they told us that showers would be limited to every second day - and then only ten minutes. I know: that's not the greatest of restrictions. But when you've never faced these sorts of limitations before?
- "Wyoming has been declared a disaster area." said Nicole. "And Colorado is requesting aid."
- "Again." said Anne. "Did you hear about Boise?"
I hadn't. "Boise, Idaho? What happened there?"
- "ETs." said Celine.
ETs. Environmental terrorists. I knew the term.
Claire put a hand on my harm. "They attacked the grid, sweetie. Cut off power to the hospital. Lots of people died. Innocent people."
- "They're active in Winnipeg, now." said Nicole.
Now, Winnipeg, I knew about. It was a thriving city of some eight million souls, in southern Manitoba. It was only about 950 km south of us. I'd been there once, on my way up to White Spruce to take up my new job.
- "What are these ETs worried about in Winnipeg?" I asked. "There's plenty of water there."
- "It's not just about water, Mike." said Claire. "Maybe it's just because I'm new to it, but doesn't it seem odd to you guys that the golf season runs from March to December? This far north?"
- "I don't know if the season is all that different." said Anne, who had grown up here. "The golfers who went out in early March or late December used to be called 'diehards', or 'fanatics'. Nobody says that anymore. But Celine's right about water: that situation
has
changed. They used to send wheeled tankers by road, until Outsider attacks became too common. Then they started flying in water tankers. I remember when it was only two a year."
Claire looked confused.
- "Now it's six." said Nicole.
- "So many?" Claire looked to me. "Didn't you say that we drew water from the lakes around here?"
- "We do. But it's mainly for the golf course. It takes an awful lot to keep it green. And we're always worried about what the Outsiders might be putting into the lakes. So your drinking water comes out of a bottle, or from the reservoirs."
As usual, Claire and I left long before last call. I walked her home, and she invited me in, as she always did. Claire removed all of her 'gear'. We made love on her narrow bed.
Afterwards, she held me close.
- "Mike? Do you want to live together?"
***
The Club discouraged monogamy. It was never officially stated, but it wasn't hard to figure out. Birth control was compulsory for women. A 2-person apartment was more than twice as expensive as a single, even if it wasn't quite twice as big. There would be room for a larger bed, but the kitchen and bathroom were no larger than in a bachelor.
- "Are you sure?" I asked her.
- "I love you, Mike. I want to wake up next to you in the morning as often as possible."
Couldn't argue with that. Didn't
want
