Let the pawnishment fit the crime

This piece was written for the Six Sentence challenge, with ‘pawn’ as the prompt word.

Bill droned on with a seemingly interminable tale about his grandfather’s prowess at chess and I had reached the point where my eyes had taken on the appearance of glazed doughnuts, so I interrupted with ‘So he was a pawn star.’

Bill exploded with ‘You never listen, really listen, to a damn word I say because you’re too busy working on some sort of pathetic joke or lame pun that you think will make you sound clever and witty and I am absolutely sick of it!’

To annoy him even further, I sat quietly for a while, pretending to be thinking deeply about what he had said, before I quietly offered ‘I’m writing a story about you and I was trying to make you sound more interesting than you actually are and this is the thanks I get, you ungrateful sod.’

Bill’s tone softened considerably as he said ‘Not that you’re famous or widely-read, but what’s the story about and where am I likely to be able to read it when it’s published, just so I can tell my friends and family that the story is based on me?’

‘Well’ I said, with as much as literary ponderousness as I could muster, ‘it will be about a conversation between a boring, pompous old windbag and a writer at the peak of his literary talents who, while pretending to listen to his companion, is quietly composing scathingly witty ripostes, bon mots and puns with which to enrage said companion, who will be known as E. R. Wig.’

Bill’s face had turned puce and his breath had become gale force and I wondered why he was manically opening and closing his fist, and then it hit me.