She wore faded jeans and a ratty Van Halen T-shirt. Her eyes were bloodshot and a nasty cold sore wept on her lower lip. I asked what she’d been up to. “Just kicking around,” she said. “Where you been?” She sat on a bench and I stood in front of her, one foot on my Z-Flex. I tapped the tail of my board in a jazzy cymbal ride. “Just kicking around,” I said. She laughed in her warm and lackadaisical way and I remembered how cool she was. We went in and ordered a large pizza with sausage and pepperoni and wolfed it down, no plates or napkins. We slurped through a pitcher of root be