The ravages of good times were catching up with Richard. He would show up at society functions on his squeaky folding bike, still handsome but bandaged like a fighter pilot shot down, hobbling like a man twice his age. A collector made a joke in bad taste that soon Richard would be gone, and our collections would shoot up in price. I admonished him not to be so sure; Richard had been dangling over this abyss for ages and was liable to bury us all. Alas the small bandage on his nose would be swapped for a face mask as the condition spread, and soon large portions of his face went missing like the Sphinx. It was terrible to see, especially when you cared for him, and yet his courage and joie de vivre never wavered. He took the degeneration of his physical form as a matter of course; he was evolving into the fearsome Shadow of his fantasies. Collectors began to clamor for his Eighties catalogue, but he was still churning out work to his last moments on earth, every bit as vital, in spite of mounting adversity.

Just when I thought he must be sitting pretty once again, he called to report he was being evicted from his apartment. Surely it was some ploy to hustle another five hundred bucks from me, but this time he was in earnest. All was lost. He and Gigi crashed on my couch for three days, smoking, laughing at cartoons, concocting funky delicacies with cans of tuna, Campbells soup and cartons of vitamin D milk, their every belonging spilling out of suitcases on my living room floor. Thank God pops arranged a long term hotel for the lovers in Soho and it was there he mounted his brave last stand. But before leaving me on that intolerable sojourn, so sweet in retrospect, he left a shadow man on the inside of my front door, a sentinel with the built-in peephole standing in for a single cyclops eye.