It turns out that they had lost my girlfriend’s bag. The airline toyed with us for a few days, but, no... it was gone. Along with her favourite clothes and the Oilers jersey I’d had emblazoned with her musical but lengthy surname, which rhymed with “Winkenpoker.” It had taken the jittery sales girl two tries to get all the letters to fit.
I didn’t yet know about the lost bag or the many forms that had to be filled out. All I knew was that it was taking my girlfriend a hell of a long time to come out of the International Airport’s customs area.
And because this was in the early ’90s, before shoes and hair gel became threats to liberty, monitors let me watch her not coming out before she actually failed to come out. I watched dozens of freshly deplaned blobs collecting luggage and then being waved on to joyous reunions or steered towards polite but firm Canadian interrogations. The luckier blobs passed through the doors and turned into people, first in a trickle, then in a rush, then again in a trickle, carrying off all the greeters who’d massed at the door with me.
Eventually, I was alone. Conspicuously alone. Nothing makes solitude more embarrassing than a deserted arrivals area. And if the monitors were to be trusted, no one lingered behind the stubbornly closed doors.
Should I stay, I wondered, or should I go now? The door to the customs office was locked. No one answered the phone hanging outside. My girlfriend hadn’t called my cell, the airport’s public address system didn’t summon me for consultation. Had she been kidnapped? Was she even now having her cavities spelunked? Had she callously dumped me and made me pay for parking? Perhaps she had gotten on the wrong plane...
At last there was activity on the monitor. Fresh blobs appeared. Ah, I thought, perhaps her plane has been waiting for a gate. Surely this was her flight. (Mind you, the arrivals area was still empty: apparently my girlfriend was the only passenger who wasn’t a friendless orphan.) I took up my position in front of the doors, the better to express my vast relief.
Judging by the first passengers to emerge, however, the first class cabin had been occupied entirely by exceptionally tall and improbably well-dressed lawyers. Perhaps Edmonton was hosting some sort of convention; for, lo, it turned out that gigantic, rugged-looking, snappily attired barristers had also filled economy class.
It wasn’t until I saw the coach, a former star defenceman, that I finally figured it out: these were the Los Angeles Kings. And if these were the Los Angeles Kings, then He was on the plane.
I had enjoyed an equivocal, asymmetrical relationship with Him. For His part, He had failed to apprise Himself of my existence. For my part, I had appreciated His contribution to bringing four Stanley Cups to the city. I also respected His above-average skills as a hockey player. On the other hand, He’d always seemed charmless to me. (I understand that charm plays no part in setting scoring records.) Nevertheless, like everyone else, I felt wounded when He left town for the brighter lights of America, the ultimate slight to the fragile prairie psyche.
A steady procession of Kings filed past me. Some glanced at me as they walked by. “Imagine him driving all this way to meet us, and he’s just standing there like a dumbass...”
He was the last to come out.
The human condition comprises a small number of visceral impulses, amongst them hunger, lust, anger, and the desire to speak to celebrities. We can’t seem to help ourselves. “Hello, I’m here and I know who you are... and, uh... I think you’re great...” Multiply by dozens daily. It’s a wonder eminent persons don’t more frequently wind up in rehab, hairless and gibbering. 
I knew who He was. He knew I knew. As He passed, I looked at Him impassively. He watched me warily, with uncomfortable anticipation. Which was His greater fear: that I’d attack Him, or that I’d try to engage Him in conversation?
He walked by, the moment passed. There, I thought, that’s a small good deed done.
But, honestly, the smallest part of me was thinking, “Screw you, pal.”