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“At our farm!” he exclaims.
“Farm?” I ask curiously.
“Yes! Our farm!”
He sits back and crosses his arms over his concave, hairless chest.
“We know we may have to lose money when the new CBA comes. This is sad to me and to my brother
Henrik too. We won’t let it stop us though - from being rich I mean. From being rich and living like kings,
but not showing it because that’s how we do. So we came up with a plan.”
Daniel, at this point, has lit up like an Amsterdam customer.
“We invested our money into a stor (stor is the Swedish word for “big”) carrot farm! We love carrots. I
think, and my brother Henrik thinks, that all the people in the world will always eat carrots. It feels very
safe to us, and so we invested money, along with our good friend, Ryan Kesler, into very nice carrot
farms in California!” Daniel pounds his fist into the massively thick wooden table we sit at and stares at
me in a sort of defiant “we did it” type gaze. At this point I feel like I’ve lost an argument to my younger
sister over something she doesn’t even understand.
“You did this with Ryan Kesler?” I ask.
“Yes. Our teammate, Ryan Kesler. Since he didn’t want to share so many
goals with me last year, we thought it would be nice to learn sharing and
have his money, my money and my brother Henrik’s money invested all
in one place!”
Daniel puts his hands to his temples and makes a low gurgling sound.
“Daniel?” I ask.
“Yeesss?” Daniel hisses through gritted teeth.
“Are you O.K.?”
At this point, Daniel stands up, shakes his head slightly and shuffles off to the kitchen muttering
something about a headache. Realizing I wasn’t about to get any more from Daniel today, if ever, I figure
that the best way to continue would be to find Ryan Kesler and talk a bit with him about his business
endeavours, relationship with the carrot-farming twins and how he’s spent his summer.
So I’m in California. And I’m on a beach. Not really what I expected, but I guess Ryan Kesler did just have
surgery – again.
“Hi, Ryan Kesler.”
“Hi,” Ryan grins, lying on a giant towel depicting Jesus taking a wrist shot on Dan Cloutier from center
ice. His body is taut, and glistens from a half-bottle of Coppertone tanning lotion that lies, cap open,
beside him.
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