August 12, 2023:
My friend is experimenting with shoplifting. "Five finger discount," he calls it. He speaks of it openly, including with merchants who come to falsely assume my own involvement.
He's a scrawny thing with prominent mouse ears. On Schwinn Stingrays peddling down Balboa with a transistor ducktaped to the handlebars, blasting tinny "Rocket Man" or "Crocodile Rock" to the winds. Visiting drug stores and hobby stores where he's apprehended practicing his art. I am, at least of this, entirely innocent.
Our eventual and inevitable falling-out involves me throwing him on the ground and deftly applying some deliberately pulled punches which make my point without actually hurting. His response comes months later, when with an ad-hoc crew of neighborhood delinquents he and they crawl through my bedroom window to steal odds and ends including a diving knife and panty hose from my mother's bedroom dresser. Twice.
Whatever happened to he and they?
Nothing good.