“I think it’s on Mimi’s list of places to see.”

“Near the entrance to Golden Lane,” says Oz, and he closes his eyes for a moment as though he is trying to look at something inside his head, “there is a statue of a naked boy. Tourists rub his penis, and now it is golden.”

“And that’s why it’s called Golden Lane?”

“No,” says Oz. “Of course not. Golden Lane was the street where goldsmiths used to live. The boy has a golden penis because the tourists will not leave him alone.”

I try to imagine people taking time out of their vacation to rub a statue’s penis.

“The saints on the bridge and the men peeing in the pond are symbolic,” says Oz. “But with the boy, the rubbing is for fun.”

I wonder if more women than men rub the boy’s penis.

“Blackbird Mavrias.” The little man wags a finger at me. “You are famous. I find you on the Internet. Yesterday, I read many of your stories. My favourite is ‘Words on Rock.’”

“Writing-on-Stone,” I say. “It’s a provincial park in Alberta.”

“We have such camps in the Czech Republic. Weekends and the summer.”

I turn the handle of my coffee cup to the right.

“But in our Indian camps,” says Oz, “there are no Indians.”

And then I turn it to the left.

“Littlechild.” Oz bows his head. “A sad story. Story after story you write. Then, there is nothing. Why is this? Will there be a book?”

“So, you design games?”

Oz cuts a piece of pineapple into triangles. “Justice. Always you write about the need for justice.”

I’ve never been much for games. In a past life, I made the mistake of getting a PlayStation. Tally and Nathan had loved insanities such as Uncharted and Gran Turismo. For me, being lost in a computergenerated jungle and shooting at anything that moved, or sitting in front of a monitor for hours, crashing cars into one another, had been a mind-numbing, soul-sucking experience I never want to repeat.

“Did you stop writing because you could not find justice in words?”

Not that board games were any better. Roll the dice. Spin the wheel. Leave everything to chance. No skill required.

“When you look at the world, what do you see?” Oz closes his eyes. “A peaceable kingdom? A calamity of the absurd?”

I ignore Oz and his mutterings and concentrate on my fruit bowl. The strawberries look fresh. The pear is from a can.

“Corporations, governments, profit, and war. The planet as commodity.”

“Video game? Board game?” I poke at the blueberries. “Does it have a name?”

“My friend’s game,” says Oz. “He may call it ‘Bees and Bears.’”

I stop poking. “Bees?”