LIVE AT R.N.'S HOUSE

Once wormed deep enough into the high, he pitched a game show called Invisible Bodies: a vacant Hollywood Squares set & no one could be sure how to win but there were drug prizes. A long pause followed. "Everyone into the hot tub," he said. "We're going to play a different game -- not Invisible Bodies!"

As the guests piled in, he laughed in sick fits and beat the water around him with quick slaps. Standing with his half-erect penis floating above the small waves, he took something from a house servant near the pool. He revealed three dies in his pruned palm. Tossing them across the water, they had yet to meet the surface when he dove at Adele and forced his head between her legs. Classic Dick antics. How he loved his dice games.

Dick curled a soggy arm around my shoulders. "Let's catch up on our correspondence." Exiting the tub, he took a cigar from a tray and threw it into the suds. He spat at the servant: "Get that thing."

We walked through the grass and the pines to the driveway with his houseboy in tow. Once on the blacktop, the boy placed the handle of a machete into Dick's hand. "Shut off that funk music," he said. The servant left and Dick leaned down to roll a watermelon out from beneath a Rolls Royce.

Holding the blade to the surface of the melon, he turned to the sickle of light in the sky. "Someone put out that light." I was watching the moon when the blade hit the meat. I was still watching when the houseboy returned and Tricky Dick wiped the knife on the his shirt.