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Pavement | Sep 21 2004

Richard knocks over my soldiers. Maybe he doesn’t mean to, but his foot hits the board and all the pieces go flying. I run after him with my tennis racket. I told him to cut it out, I said this over and over, but he wouldn’t listen. First he threw grass on the board—”To make it more realistic,” he said—and then he pretended he was a kamikaze headed for my headquarters. That’s when his foot hit the board. In three years, Lisa Rothman will agree to kiss him during Seven Minutes in Heaven, after refusing to kiss me. Thankfully this hasn’t happened yet, or else I would run even faster. When I catch him, I smash him with my racket, right in the middle of his back. It makes an awful sound, like wood cracking. I hadn’t expected this. I don’t know what I expected. Later he will die—from heroin, says my sister—but I won’t know him anymore. He’s my best friend and always has been. Now he’s lying on the pavement and I’m afraid I’ve really hurt him.