"Convicted? Never convicted."

Offered without comment:

"If there's one thing I know how to do," a friend once told me, after one of those long, grappa-fueled nights of ping-pong that make the rest of life seem like such an enigma, "It's how to have a good time."

Over the years, this friend has explained to me many things: what different drugs are like ("if you must choose just one: mushrooms"), how to bake a chicken (salt, pepper, nothing else), the only way to actually finish writing a book (feverishly, in a remote cabin), and how good family life could be (his toddler-age children fetch beers from the fridge).