Gretzky

On the 11th of March of 2022, a grey morning, I was at the Lulu Island pizzeria, as three vendors, two South Asians and the Filipina, Rose, were busy making orders behind the counter. I had a Hawaiian slice and iced tea. Then, I went to the grocery store looking for dried anchovies, but there was none, according to the two Filipina workers there, so I bought instead five packets of frozen crab-flavoured wild pollock, or kamaboko, and a bag of frozen sole fillets. Then, I went to the cafe, where there was a long line. In front of me was a big boy in shorts, his meaty legs showing. A stocky man in a grey T-shirt and black track pants came in and out. An old man was reading an old book about the ice-hockey player Wayne Gretzky. Drinking my black iced tea, I sat near a table of a Bosnian couple, speaking Bosnian. The cafe music was multilingual, and I could hear Mexican lyrics,"Llorando, llorando, llorando": "Crying, crying, crying." An old man who was a regular before and had moved to White Rock gave me a little KitKat chocolate bar, wrapped in red paper. In the afternoon, I returned to the packed pizzeria to enjoy a pesto cheese slice and iced black diet cola. I could not sit in my usual corner. There were multiracial girl students, with expensive bubble teas. Outside near the greengrocery, white students walked by, saying, "We rather have salvation from suffering." It was drizzling.

Fantasy camp is where would-be Gretzkies can skate with members of professional teams.