by Mike Roberts
We waited for fifteen minutes at the rental counter before wandering in and spotting them, at the scorer’s table, smoking cigarettes. Forget the fact that New York State had had a smoking ban in place for almost two and a half years. It simply was not enforced here. Worse than that, though, was the fact that my friends had brought their own balls and shoes. There was no punch line to all of this. Louis and Cullen were not being ironic. They were really here to bowl.
I wasn’t sure how to feel about any of this until Louis stepped up and rolled the first ball of the night. A dead-center smash. “Steeeeee-rike one!” Louis announced, with his arm cocked maniacally like a baseball umpire.
“Good, great, terrific,” Cullen said indifferently. And, all at once, I was happy I was here. Watching Louis and Cullen perform bowling-as-psychodrama was about as good as it got for a Friday night in Lockport. I knew enough to know that none of this was for my benefit, either. This was really just the way they acted.
Bowling itself had almost everything to do with drinking for me. I spent the first pitcher of beer just trying to work out the kinks. It was hard enough to find a ball where your fingers felt natural in the holes. Then there was the question of weight. Each next turn saw me picking out a new board on the floor to aim at. Every shot was its own surprise. The rhythm, however, was familiar. I was calling up ancient muscle memories of birthday parties, and Cub Scout meets, and snowbound Saturdays gone by. And, when all else failed, I was just whipping the damn thing as hard as I could.
Everyone’s game seemed to peak around the second pitcher of beer. This was the golden rule of bowling. The nerves had settled out and we were filled with the strange sensation that we knew what we were doing here. I forgot all about the mechanics and just started grooving the ball. When it was right, it was a thing you could feel in your fingertips. I knew each next strike the moment it left my hand. Crrrrrrrsssssshhh!
By the third game, Peter and I were done, though. We were useless. I was leaving pins all over the floor in inconceivable combinations. I would smile and slide the ball into the gutter, so that I could sit back down. “Mark it zero,” I’d announce blithely.
But Louis and Cullen were a different breed completely. Athletes. The alcohol didn’t seem to faze them. They were up there bending shots left and right, on command, well into their third pitcher of beer. I marveled, as the ball seemed to stop—spinning on its axis for a beat—before snapping forward into the pins like a rubber band. Bang! This was the stuff of magic tricks.
If anything, the beer just made them mouthier. Bowling was a game of intimidation the way that my friends played it. It was a head game; it was a war game. But there was a limit to how much they could actually talk about bowling. There was a threshold, even, in their energy for going after each other. And soon enough they started in on me. Or, more to the point, they wanted to talk about Kerry. They were baffled by the fact that they had not been invited to my sister’s wedding. They kept bringing it up throughout the night, playing scorned.
I just laughed and told them I had nothing to do with it. I told them I didn’t particularly want to go myself, but they didn’t care. Their feelings were hurt, they said. It didn’t matter that Kerry hated their guts, and had never liked them, going all the way back to grade school. Even now, as an adult, she seemed to go out of her way to be rude and unwelcoming toward them. They loved this about her, of course. Louis and Cullen felt like part of the family. They honestly thought that they deserved to be there.
But this was just another crude end-around for them to keep talking about Kerry. Objectifying my poor sister. They wanted to know why we had not thought to bring Kerry out with us on her “last night of freedom.” This is what they kept calling it.
Peter glowered as he split the uprights on his spare. My brother had lost all interest in keeping the company of Louis and Cullen, and his bowling was suffering.
“Skip the rest of my turns,” Peter said flatly, as he gathered up our pitchers and disappeared into the bar. Perfect, I thought, there goes my designated driver.
Cullen was in the middle of a confession now, anyway. This secret that he and Kerry had kept for the better part of a decade.
“Bullshit!” Louis said loudly.
“I swear to god,” Cullen answered. “When I was sixteen.”
“You fucked her?”
“I didn’t say I fucked her. I said she gave me a blow job.”
“Where?”
“On my dick.” Cullen gestured down to his crotch.
“Where on the earth, retard?”
“In the attic of Mikey’s house.” Cullen shrugged and took his turn.
“Bullshit,” Louis said again, though he was grinning wildly now. I was pretty sure that he was telling us the truth.
Cullen turned around to face me, looking suddenly concerned. “She’s not wearing white, is she?”
Louis practically fell off his chair, he was laughing so hard. “Fuck off,” I said, trying not to smile, as I sent another gutter ball hobbling off the dance floor.
* * *
Cullen had recently begun to let go of some of these secrets. He had a lot of them, too. For years Cullen didn’t have to tell us anything. He didn’t need to brag or make things up. There was nothing to be gained in that—he was getting laid like crazy. Cullen knew better than anyone not to go around spoiling young girls’ reputations. All that could come of that was drama. Besides, it’s a lot harder to fuck two best friends, at the same time, if they find out you’ve been talking about it. Or sisters, even. Sisters don’t want to have sex with the same guy. Although some do, of course. And Cullen was just as happy to keep those secrets as well.
Sadly, the time in Cullen’s life for coyness had already passed. At twenty-five years old, he was entering, irrefutably, into a period of physical decline. Frankly, I found the whole thing startling. Cullen had always been our golden boy. At sixteen he was prettier than the girls. That’s what made it so strange to see his skin go sallow and his hair fall out. He was paunchy and blotchy in ways I’d never noticed before. Cullen’s youth and vitality were fleeing him now. Unfortunately, you don’t get to skate on your reputation as a high school lady-killer when it comes to adult fucking.
Ironically, it was Louis who seemed to be coming into his own at the exact same moment. He was having more sex now than he’d ever had in his entire life. It made him jubilant to find himself coming up at the very moment that Cullen was falling down.
“Shut up and bowl,” Cullen said, trying to head him off.
But Louis found it very hard to just shut up. Unlike Cullen, he was ready to talk about his exploits at the drop of a hat. He was telling us now about some girl who had given him mono.
“It’s because of the way she kisses,” Louis said.
“How does she kiss?” I asked innocently.
“Like a whore, I’m guessing,” Cullen said, losing patience.
“Well, I mean, she’s got this really long tongue, right?” Cullen made an audible sound of disgust. “And as soon as she sticks it in my mouth, it’s practically down my throat. It’s like she can’t even help herself.”
Louis leered at Cullen as he licked his lips and wiped the sweat off his brow, before finally taking his turn. Another dead-center strike.
Cullen stood up hastily and rushed his own shot. A terrible-looking ball that was lucky to clip two pins. He whipped back around on Louis. “That’s not how you get mono, either, you know. Kissing? That’s just an old wives’ tale.”
“It’s called the kissing disease, Cullen,” Louis said pedantically. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that.”
“You don’t have mono!”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re too old.”
“Says who?”
“Says facts. Mono is for fourteen-year-old girls.”
Louis smiled. “She might actually be a teenager, now that—”
“Be serious!”
“Adults get mono all the tim
e. Tell him, Mike.” Louis turned to me, wanting me to settle this.
“I dunno. It would be sort of unusual, I think.”
“Great. So you’re both fucking doctors now.” Louis frowned. “Fantastic.”
“You’re just out of shape, dude,” Cullen said, patting him on the shoulder. “You’re lazy. You have poor moral character. You don’t need a doctor to tell you that.”
“Shut up and bowl,” Louis said.
Cullen smiled and cleaned up his spare, which had been sitting there yawning at us. He turned back around, slapping his hands clean. “Spic-and-span,” he said.
* * *
We were at the end of our final game now. Long after Peter had returned with the extra pitchers of Genny. Cullen had a comfortable lead, and he wanted Louis to appreciate this. Louis would need three strikes in the tenth frame to win.
“Uh-oh,” Cullen said, working through the math. “Looks like you need a clean sweep, little guy.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Louis said, as he stepped up and rolled the first one without hesitation. A stone-cold strike. Louis stood there with his hand dangling over the air dryer, as he stared at Cullen, waiting for his ball to pop back up. And Cullen stared right back. My two oldest friends; these grown men who hated each other’s guts. I hadn’t had this much fun in weeks.
Louis’s second strike was a real wobbler, which he seemed to topple over with a thrust of his hips alone. This lurid gesticulation that sent the pins scattering. Louis allowed himself a cackle then, but Cullen stayed stone-faced. Staring up at the scoreboard, and double-checking his math. Always the professional accountant.
“This is only going to make it that much better when you miss the next one, Repo Man.” Cullen smiled.
Louis said nothing as he tucked the ball into his chest and made the sign of the cross, a florid gesture that was for Cullen’s benefit alone. And, with that, Louis turned on his heel and crouched down into his approach. Rearing back and letting it rip. Before the ball was even halfway down the alley, Louis turned his back to the pins. He stared at us and raised his arms over his head in a vee. Waiting for the unmistakable sound of it: Crrrrrrrsssssshhh! A dead-center strike.
I was in tears, I was laughing so hard. But Cullen was pissed off. Only then did Louis allow himself the hint of a smile. He wanted to shake hands, of course, but Cullen was already walking away. I stood up and shook Louis’s hand instead.
“Bad teams lose these games,” he said with a shrug.
* * *
It was only as we got away from the clatter of pins that I recognized the music coming from the back. Not live music, exactly, but something else. Something damaged and in-between-sounding. As we got closer I realized that the bowling alley bar had transformed itself into an after-hours karaoke club. The stage was hung with paper lanterns now. A mirror ball floated across the ceiling.
My brother took me by the elbow as I began to walk into the room. It was obvious enough that we were too drunk to drive the car home. I told him not to worry about that; I told him I would figure something out. Peter nodded dimly and disappeared.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the stage. There was a tremendously fat young woman, in a billowing polka-dot dress, singing “November Rain” with the voice of an angel. I was not expecting this at all. We stood there at the back of the room, feeling helpless. Completely transfixed by this zaftig blonde and her beautiful singing voice.
Louis leaned in and whispered, almost reverently, “God’s a real sonovabitch for giving fat girls such beautiful voices.” I turned to him with a smile and saw that he was serious. Shaking his head in astonishment. “It must be like a goddamn concert hall inside that body.”
As the song ended, Louis left us and approached the stage.
“A hundred bucks says he tells that little fatty that she’s right up his alley,” Cullen said with a sneer. And as we watched the girl lean down, we could practically read Louis’s lips. “Ugh, what an idiot,” Cullen said, leaving me there at the back of the bar.
I watched him walk past the tables strewn with blue plastic binders, to the DJ booth, where he wrote down a call number on a slip of paper, from memory. There was something perfect about this image of Cullen singing the same song, week after week. What choice did I have now but to stick around and find out what it was?
And, all at once, I was happy I was here. It felt good to be out with my friends again, my real friends. No matter how much energy I spent fighting it, I knew we were the same. And besides, I was starting to have fun here. Fuck it, I thought. There’d be plenty of time to sober up before the wedding. The only thing in the world I wanted right then was to sing a song in this ugly little room.
But before I could get my hands on the songbook, a girl reached out and grabbed my wrist. This pretty face that I was sure I’d never seen before in my life.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” I answered, cluelessly.
“I’m about to sing ‘Let’s Hear It for the Boy’ for you.”
“For me?” I asked, almost laughing. The absurdity of this pickup line had me swooning. She must say this every single week.
The girl nodded, smiling right back like she got the joke. So, okay, sure, let’s go with this. We were two drunk strangers, encountering each other beyond the point of inhibition. It was all pretty simple, really. Clearly we were biding our time before we slipped into a back booth, or a bathroom stall, and started making out sloppily.
“That’s so funny,” I said, grinning stupidly. “Because I was just about to go sing ‘Fat Bottomed Girls’ for you.”
“Oh, wow,” she said, laughing. “What a coincidence.” And for the first time all week I didn’t miss Lauren Pinkerton at all. I was glad she hadn’t come with me.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything,” she answered.
“What are you doing tomorrow?”
“What’s going on tomorrow?”
“I need a date for a wedding.”
“Oh, yeah?” she smirked. “Who’s getting married? You and me?”
“No. My sister,” I said simply.
“Oh, good. I was hoping I would get to meet your family soon.”
“Perfect, then. It’s settled.” We were both laughing now, having fun with this game. We wanted to see who would blink first.
“There’s one condition, though.”
“Tell me,” she said.
“You have to pretend that your name is Lauren.”
“My name is Lauren? At the wedding?”
“Yes. Tomorrow your name is Lauren Pinkerton.”
“Okay.” She nodded, taking it all in stride. This girl didn’t seem to know how to flinch. And for the first time since I met her five minutes before, I understood that she was really going to come with me to my sister’s wedding.
“But you can’t break character.”
“I’m Lauren Pinkerton,” she said, seeming to enjoy the name.
“Not under any circumstances,” I said, trying to convey my seriousness.
“Right,” she answered, and I could tell that she was serious, too. She was calling my bluff now. This was a bet we were making, and it was clear that she intended to win.
“It’s really important, Lauren.”
“I understand completely.”
“You don’t have to worry, though. It’s just a bunch of aunts and uncles who are going to be asking for you. I already know for a fact that they’re going to love you. And besides, they’re all going to be drunk tomorrow anyway.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m going to be drunk, too.”
“Honestly, you can say whatever you want. Tell them stories. Make things up. Just make sure that you’re charming.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“You have to be sweet to my grandmother, though. That’s the second rule.”
“Oh, yeah? Grandma’s gonna be there?”
“Yeah, but it’s no joke. You have to be nice to her. You have to make her l
ove you.”
“I understand completely,” Lauren said, clearly understanding nothing.
“She’s eighty-five years old. She’s not gonna get many more of these things. Okay? You can’t fuck this up for her.”
“I love old people,” Lauren said, laughing blithely.
“If you do anything to upset her I’ll have to kill you,” I said, laughing without her.
“What?” she asked, not sure that she’d heard me.
“I said, if you upset my grandmother at the wedding I’ll have to murder you.” I was leaning in to be heard over the din of the karaoke. “Just so you know. It’s that important to me.”
I watched her face go slack. I could practically hear the record skipping in her brain. I knew I’d gone and spoiled the whole thing.
“What did you just say?” she asked unkindly.
“Which part?” I said stupidly. I was holding on to my smile. I’d meant it all as a joke, of course. Or did I? As I watched her face darken now, I wondered where I’d ended up. I wasn’t really going to take this stranger to my sister’s wedding. Or, at least, I didn’t think I was. This girl was a sure thing. I just wanted us to sing our songs and go back home to her place.
“I just called Mom,” my brother said, appearing at my side.
“Okay,” I answered, not understanding this.
“She’s on her way,” he said blankly. “She’s coming to pick us up.”
I turned to Lauren as I answered him. “I don’t think I’m coming home.”
“Yes, you are,” she said with a scowl. And with that she walked away, leaving Peter and me standing in the dark. My brother didn’t say a word, staring down at the thin red carpet. There was a kindness in his silence now, I knew. I could hear Louis’s voice coming through the speakers as he took the microphone off the stand. And, all at once, I knew that it was time for me to go. There was no sense in even saying goodbye.
* * *
As we left the bowling alley I chastised Peter for waking up our mother. “Why would you do that?”
“She told me to. She doesn’t want us driving drunk.”
“Nobody’s drunk,” I said, stumbling through the doors and out into the parking lot. We sat down on a warped metal bike rack and waited in silence. We stopped speaking entirely then, as we stared out into the distance. I knew that Peter was not going to mention the ugly incident with the girl inside the bar, and I loved him for that.