It had only been a little over two months since Delilah and I arrived in Flint. We'd held up in a slightly better motel than the last. She was a good girl in a bad setting, or something like that. The point is, some engines aren't meant to idle. We’d figured each other out, about like a conjugal visit trying to condense a whole year into a single night. She packed up and showed me the tail lights heading for I-69. Said something about going back to Bloomington to stay with her sister until she got back on her feet again.
I'd spent a week or two, doing a bit of nothin. The motel had been asking for the tab for a few days already. And the blood bank was getting tired of keeping track of me. I knew not to press my luck by going back to stay another night. Besides that, Delilah's scent was still inhaled into the sheets. So I decided to pack my bag and I spent most of the morning on the tracks before I could hitch a train. I thought I'd go towards the Jersey coast for the rest of the summer, but I hadn't gotten far before realizing I was heading west, so I bailed and found myself in a small town named Durand about 30 minutes southwest of Flint. I could have walked here faster.
There I was in a smokey bowling alley in the old railroad town. Looked like the most lively place in the hole other than a sports bar in some strip mall that had all the outside signs of trying too hard but without the effort. All I had was two tens and a five. So I found myself here, where lost pins and young Friday night lovers came to get stuck in the gutter or get sent home with blue balls.
I sparked up a lane with the house without paying in advance and I knew right then it'd be a good night for me. I picked a house ball off the rack and named her Lucille. It was the kind of girl I had become most attracted to, three holes and a lightweight. I whispered sweet nothings to her holding her close to the side of my face as I walked up to the glow of lane eleven with a jukebox strut. Now, Lucille didn't have sparkle, she'd seen her fair share of pins, ten frames at a time but together we shined like a new diamond on the slick floor.
Over in the next lane, some high-rollers of their own minds. One of them leaned sitting on the plastic ball return, cutting up with his group laughing “Look at that black ball scatter all those self-righteous white pins,”
Now the truth is, I did think was kind of funny, a bit childish, but it had some humor in it. I leaned over with nothing better to do than to drop a little cold water right on his hot skillet just for some smoke.
"Whats so funny? They just keep sending the black ball back in line and resetting the same damn pins."
The whole group turned and looked at me. They all looked at me like someone who just bit into a bread tie from a bowl of soup I'd just served.
“That ain’t funny,” one of them growled with a serious look.
But I didn't blink. I stayed right there in the pocket.
"I see ya pal, but you can paint the pins midnight, paint the ball like a ghost, roll it down the grease, it don’t care about the complexion of the lumber. The gravity’s the same. The sweep’s the same. The machine resets 'em all the same at the end of the frame. The only boogeyman in this joint is the one living upstairs in his own hat."
I turned back to my game but they all looked looked at each other and then back at me confused that I even had the balls to inject into a conversation with them.
"Listen, all's I'm saying is it ain't a carnival, it's just dirt with a canvas for a top hat and a man who feeds on tickets. He'll pickup and find another town when he stops getting tickets"
I set myself on the approach ready to throw the outside line.
But the house man had laid the oil down thick, a regular swamp of grease past the foul line. My foot found that treacherous ice and my pride took a spectacular dive, bringing me down hard with a thud against the hardwood. Lucille went clunking aimlessly into the gutter, leaving me flat on my back, staring up at the neon beer signs.
Half the alley around me went dead quiet, save for the low rumble of the pinsetters and the chuckles and huffs from the high roller lane next to me. I didn't scramble up to save face. I just lay there in the haze ignoring the palletized ache in my head as everything came to light again. I leaned up and pulled a smoke from my shirt pocket, and struck a match after I hauled myself up. Through the first drag, I caught her looking. Two lanes over, a woman who had paused mid swing, watching the wreckage with a slow, dark amusement as she leaned back into her friends staring and whispering. I gave her a lazy glance, but my true devotion belonged to the lady in the ditch.
I walked over to the line and fished Lucille out of the gutter, then used the sleeve of my jacket to wipe the grease off her with a spin as I exhaled smoke from my nostrils. It wasn't the first mishap she’d seen, and it wouldn’t be the last. After all, the first attempt at intimacy with someone new often start with a mishap and a laugh, Lucille was a good sport about it.
Holding her close to my chin, I leaned into her whispering through my cigarette where this mystery woman who made eye contact stood.
"Look over there at lane 13. She's watching us now. Help me out here, baby. Get her over here."
I didn't bother to reset on the approach, I just floored her down the boards with a vengeance. Lucille skated through the grease, but she knew what to do, she found the dry wood, and hooked like a bad habit hitting the wood pins with a crack.
An absolute, pin-crushing explosion that rattled the plastic chairs and probably woke up a dog on the porch in the trailer park next door. The wood shattered, but it wasn't clean. A single pin stood in defiance for half a second until a stray piece of wreckage spun out of the pit and took it down from behind. I didn't even bother watching the deck clear. I just spun around on my heels as I pulled my cigarette from my mouth blowing a slow ring of nicotine haze toward her lane, and waited to see if she was ready to talk terms yet.
She didn't clap. Women like that never did.
The ball return rattled behind her as she stood there with one hand resting on a chipped scoring console, studying me through the drifting smoke. She was probably in her early thirties, she had on a white t-shirt with some sort of writing and denim shorts. It didn't beg, I'm guessing it only made the men around her beg for a little more. From my lane, I could see light green painted on her fingernails. Her hair was dark enough to swallow the neon, and her smile looked borrowed from somebody with worse intentions.
She hesitated at first but then she picked up her own ball.
Now, a bowling alley will tell you more about a person than a church ever could. You learn who blames the lane, who blames the oil, who curses the pins, and who futilely stomps the floor in desperation.
This woman didn't waste a motion.
She stepped up smooth as a homecoming slow dance. No swagger. No theatrics. Just business and her generous form on display.
She knew I was watching like I was her only audience. The ball rolled out quiet.
Too quiet.
It drifted down the lane like it had just ran out on the rent. Halfway there it found its edge and turned sharp.
CRACK.
Ten pins disappeared in a white cyclone.
Not a strike. A response. A warning.
She pulled back the start of a smile and turned and set her eyes on me.
"That your ball?" she asked.
I looked down at Lucille tucked under my arm.
"She's her own woman." I grinned.
The corner of her mouth twitched.
"You think it's a she huh? Sounds dangerous."
"I've had dangerous evenings before."
"You just fell on your back in front of like forty people."
"That wasn't danger." I said. "That was gravity showing off."
For a second I thought she might laugh. Instead she walked over, bowling heels clicking against the floorboards like a countdown.
Up close she smelled faintly of cigarette smoke and rain that hadn't happened yet.
She nodded toward Lucille seemingly amused.
"Does she have a name?"
"Lucille."
"Of course it is." she rolls her eyes.
"You got a name?" I shot back quick
She glanced at the glowing lane numbers overhead leaving a small pause.
"Tonight?"
That was the kind of answer that came with baggage and maybe a warrant.
I liked it immediately.
The pinsetters growled overhead, resetting another battlefield.
She leaned against the return rack and looked at the scars gouged into Lucille's surface
"So how long you two been together?"
"Long enough to know she always comes back."
Her eyes drifted toward the gutter where Lucille had taken her little detour.
"Even when she ends up in the ditch?"
"Especially then, she's been quite a little trooper tonight. What about you?"
The smile finally arrived. Not big. Not warm. Just enough. The kind of smile that gets a man into trouble and then charges him lane fees for the privilege.
She reached over and spun Lucille gently with her fingertips.
"Maybe," she said, "you ought to buy this girl a drink."
I glanced toward the bar.
"You mean the ball?"
"I mean me." She chuckled as she glanced back at her group and slowly walked towards the bar expecting me to follow before turning back to see if I would.
The jukebox chose that moment to bleed some old heartbreak song. Somewhere in the back, pins exploded like a distant cap gun malfunctioning.
I tucked Lucille under my arm and offered the mysterious woman my crookedest grin.
"Well," I said, "far be it from me to disappoint either of the ladies in my life."
And together we walked toward the bar in the alley. Lucille rested quietly against my ribs like she knew she'd done her job.
As we pulled up a bar stool she looked at me with big brown eyes. It was a plea that I silently acknowledged as we sat down. The bartender looked at me like I'd walked up to serve him court papers.
"Hey, what's wrong with you? You can't smoke in here, put it out or take it out."
"Christ, I feel like I'm at my grandmothers" I said as I took one last drag from my cigarette and dropped the butt into what looked like a flat sprite that had been left from a kids birthday party earlier that afternoon.
"What else you gotta do to get a drink in here? Spin around and wag a tail?"
I looked at the mystery woman who'd just propositioned me to buy her a drink.
"What do you drink?"
"Vodka sour"
I ordered her vodka sour and something amber for myself. While we waited for our drinks, she began to to play with a phantom ring on her finger nervously. Just then I had started to put it together and imagined she'd been off the market for a while and hadn't accepted her own return yet. Maybe unsure how to price herself again. But this woman wasn't for no clearance rack.
She kept looking back at her lane where her friends were now taking their own initiative to bowl for her. She must have been noticing the world would keep spinning in her absence and the game would continue without her. Or maybe she was afraid the lane would disappear if she stopped checking on it while she was sitting beside me.
Nah, I knew what was taking place, the signs were now there. It was the look where she wasn't quite sure anymore. I was an upset in a routine that she didn't quite trust anymore or she'd forgotten how it went again. It was a stark contrast from her opening lines and confidence just moments ago.
I looked at her realizing now she may actually be out of her depth but she certainly wasn't naive with what was going on judging by how she handled herself a few minutes ago. It occurred to me I could play this however I wanted in that moment. I slid her drink to her with a softer voice.
"Hey, stay with me for a spell, just a drink, don't make me walk back out there yet, I'm not ready. I got a bruised ego paired with a bad heart and my doctor keeps telling me not to live too fast" I say with a smirk as I meet her eyes to gauge her.
She took a breath and looked back to me then she looked down at the bowling ball I'd placed under my stool and cracked just enough of a smile to show me she'd stay for a bit.
"Oh my god, you brought that thing back here" She chuckled turning back to the bar, settling into her stool, her hand clutching her glass. "What did you name her again? Lucille right?"
Her voice bubbled sweet as sky blue rock candy that could melt on your tongue and disappear at any moment leaving you wishing there was still more.
"That's right"
"You know, She doesn't really look like a Lucille to me"
"Well you don't look like someone who changes their name each night either, but here we are."
She glanced up at me, her eyes searching mine as if for something that wouldn't be found as she subtly nodded her head and then peered into her glass.
"I don't know what I'm doing." She paused "My friends took me out tonight. They said, I needed it" she ran her fingertip over the rim of her glass.
"Well that's a surprise" I said as I took a sip from my glass "It sounded like you knew exactly what you're doing. Could have fooled me. But I can keep a secret if you still want to play it off."
"I don't know about that. Thanks though." She glances up again "I don't usually bowl, that was my only strike all night"
"I think someone just told me something about it being dangerous to make assumptions like that. Who says you won't get another tonight?"
She softly grinned as she shook her head and took a sip.
The silence between us stretched out as we nursed our drinks, but it wasn't the heavy kind. It was the sort of quiet that settles in right after the lightning flashes, when you’re just waiting for the thunder to catch up.