Pinball, 1973 (9 page)

“It’s a funeral, so we need to say last rites.”

“It hadn’t occurred to me,” I said. “I haven’t got anything prepared.”

“Doesn’t matter, anything’s fine.”

“Just for form’s sake.”

I searched for some appropriate words, meanwhile getting soaked from head to toe.

The twins glanced alternately from me to the switch-panel with a worried look on their faces.

“The obligation of philosophy,” I drew on my Kant, “is to eradicate illusions born of misunderstanding. Oh, switch-panel! Rest ye at the bottom of the reservoir.”

“Toss it.”

“Huh?”

“The switch-panel.”

I went into a windup, and hurled it up at a forty-five degree angle with all my might. The switch panel traced a beautiful arc through the rain, and struck the water. The ripples slowly

spread, finally reaching our feet.

“That was a wonderful prayer.”

“You make it up?”

“But of course,” I said.

Then the three of us, drenched as dogs, huddled together and stared across the reservoir.

“How deep is it?” asked one.

“Very deep,” I answered.

“Are there fish?” asked the other.

“Ponds this size always have fish.”

Seen from a distance, the three of us standing there must have looked like some classy memorial marker.

Thursday morning that same week, I put on my first sweater of autumn. A totally undistinguished gray sweater, slightly frayed under the arms, but still quite comfortable. I shaved myself a sight more neatly than usual, put on heavy cotton slacks, and pulled out my scuffed-up desert boots. They somehow looked like two trained puppies at my feet. The twins buzzed around the room gathering together my cigarettes and lighter and wallet and train pass.

I sat down at my desk in the office, and sharpened six pencils while I sipped the coffee the office girl brought me. The whole room was filled with a sweater-just-out-of-storage and pencil-lead smell.

Lunchtime, I ate out and once again played with the Abyssinians. I stuck the tip of my little finger through a gap in the showcase, and two cats vied with each other to jump up and bite me.

That day someone from the pet shop let me hold one of the cats. Its coat felt like fine cashmere, and it pressed a cold nose to my lips.

“It really cuddles up to people,” the shop attendant said.

I expressed my thanks and returned the cat to the case, then bought a box of cat food I couldn’t use. The attendant wrapped it up nicely, and as I walked out of the pet shop with it under my arm, the two cats stared after me as if trying to recall some fragment of a dream.

When I got back to the office, the girl brushed the cat hairs off my sweater.

“I was playing with a cat,” I offered by way of explanation.

“Your sweater’s all frayed under the arms.”

“I know. It’s been like that since last year. It got caught on the rearview mirror while I was trying to knock over an armored car.”

“Off with it,” she said, unamused.

I took off the sweater, and she sat beside the chair, her long legs crossed, and proceeded to darn it with black yarn. While she was mending the sweater, I returned to my desk, sharpened my pencils for the afternoon, and got back to work. Even if anyone saw fit to comment, you could hardly fault my work habits. I did exactly the work I was asked in exactly the prescribed amount of time, and did it all as conscientiously as possible – that was my method. I surely would have been prized at Auschwitz. The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the times.

But that probably couldn’t be helped. There was no going back to Auschwitz or twin-seater Kamikaze torpedo-planes. Nobody wears miniskirts any more, nobody listens to Jan and Dean. And when was the last time you saw a girl wearing a garter belt?

When the clock struck three, the office girl came to my desk as usual with hot green tea and three cookies. She’d mended my sweater beautifully.

“Say, could I have a little talk with you?”

“Go ahead,” I said, munching on a cookie

“About the trip in November,” she said, “how does Hokkaido sound?” We were planning to take a company trip, just the three of us.

“Not bad,” I said.

“Then it’s settled. Do you think there’ll be any bears?”

“Hmm, I imagine they’ll all be hibernating.”

She nodded, relieved “By the way, could you have dinner with me tonight? There’s a great lobster restaurant nearby.”

“Fine by me,” I said.

The restaurant was a five-minute taxi ride from the office in a quiet residential area. We sat down, and a black-suited waiter floated noiselessly across the woven palm-fiber carpeting to leave us with two menus the size of swimming pool paddle boards.

We ordered two beers before dinner.

“The lobster here is really good. They boil it live.”

I acknowledged this with a grunt and drank my beer. Her slender fingers toyed with the star-shaped pendant around her neck.

“If you’ve got something to say, you might as well come out with it before dinner,” I said. The moment I’d spoken, I regretted it. Happens every time.

She smiled slightly. Then, simply because it was a bother to put that one-tenth-of-an-inch smile back in its proper place, she kept it there on her mouth a while. The restaurant was so empty you could almost hear the lobsters waving their feelers.

“Do you like your present job?” she asked.

“Hmm. You know, I don’t believe I’ve ever thought about work in that way. But I can’t say as I’m dissatisfied.

“Nor me, I can’t say I’m unhappy,” she said, taking a sip of beer. “The pay’s good, you two are both considerate, and I have a free hand at arranging my vacations.”

I didn’t say anything. It’d been a long time since I’d given a serious listen to someone else’s troubles.

“But I’m only twenty,” she continued, “and I don’t want to end up like this.”

Our conversation was temporarily brought to a halt while they arranged our dishes on the table.

“You’re young,” I said, “with everything still ahead of you, love, marriage. Your life’s going to go through 311 kinds of changes.”

“Nothing’s going to change,” she muttered, deftly wielding her knife and fork to crack the lobster shell. “Nobody’s going to take a fancy to the likes of me. I’ll spend my whole life assembling lousy roach traps and darning sweaters.”

I sighed. I felt as if I’d suddenly aged years.

“You’re cute, you’re attractive, you’ve got nice legs and a good head on your shoulders. You crack a mean lobster. Everything’s gonna work out just fine.”

A glum silence fell over her, and she continued eating her lobster. I ate my lobster, too. And all the while I thought about the switch-panel at the bottom of the reservoir.

“What were you doing when you were twenty?”

“I was crazy about a girl.” Back in 1969, our year.

“So what happened to her?”

“Things came between us.”

“Were you happy?”

“If you look at things from a distance,” I said as I swallowed some lobster, “most anything looks beautiful.”

By the time we’d finished our food, the place had begun to fill with customers, the clatter of knives and forks, and the screech of dragging chairs. I ordered a coffee, and she ordered a coffee and a lemon soufflé.

“How about now? You have a girlfriend?”

After thinking it over, I decided to exclude the twins. “No,” I said.

“And you’re not lonely?”

“I’m used to it. I’ve had practice.”

“Practice?”

I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke not half a yard above her head. “I was born under a

strange sign. You see, whatever I’ve wanted I’ve always been able to get. But whenever I get that something, I manage to spoil something else. You know what I mean?”

“Kind of.”

“Nobody believes me, but it’s true. I only realized it myself three years ago. That’s when I thought, better just not want anything any more.”

She nodded. “And so that’s how you plan to spend the rest of your life?”

“Probably. At least I won’t be bothering anybody.”

“If you really feel that way,” she said, “why not live in a shoe box?”

A charming idea.

We walked side by side to the station. The sweater kept me comfortable in the night air.

“Okay, I’ll keep plugging away,” she said.

“Wasn’t much help, was I?”

“No, actually, it took a load off me just to be able to talk.”

We caught trains going in opposite directions from the same platform.

“You’re really not lonely?” she asked one last time. And while I was searching for a good reply, her train came.

On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days, then go back to wherever they came from to darkness. We’re always digging wells in our heads. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.

That autumn Sunday evening it was pinball that claimed my attention. The twins and I were on the golf course watching the sunset from the green of the eighth hole. It was a long par 5 hole with no obstacles and no slope. Only a straight fairway like the corridor of an elementary school. On the seventh hole, a student from the neighborhood was practicing the flute. The sun was setting behind the hills to a heart-rending backup score of two-octave scales. Why, at that very moment, I had to get stuck on pinball machines, I’ll never know.

Not only that, but as one moment followed the next, the pinball images expanded at a frantic pace in my mind. I shut my eyes, and my ears rang with the sounds of bumpers rebounding balls, and the score tallies clicking away.

* * *

In 1970, when the Rat and I still had our bouts of beer drinking at J’s Bar, we were by no means the most earnest pinball players around. The machine in the bar was a rare three-flipper “Spaceship” model. The field was divided into upper and lower sections, the upper with one flipper and the lower with two. A model from the nice, peaceful times before solid-state circuitry inflated the world of pinball. There was a photo of the Rat and the machine, taken at the peak of his infatuation with pinball to commemorate his best score: 92,500. There was the Rat grinning away, leaning up against the pinball machine, also grinning away with the numbers 92,500 still in place. The only heartwarming photo I ever took with my Kodak Instamatic. The Rat looked like a World War II ace. And the pinball machine looked like a veteran fighter plane. The kind of fighter plane whose propeller the mechanic had to spin by hand, and whose canopy the pilot would slam shut once it was off and running. The number 92,500 forged a bond between the Rat and the machine, perhaps even a feeling of kinship.

Once a week, the money-collector-cum-repair-man from the pinball company would pay a call on J’s Bar. He was an abnormally thin man of about thirty who almost never spoke to anyone. He’d come in, and without even so much as a glance over at J, he’d unlock the lid to the compartment under the pinball machine, and let the coins come gushing out into a canvas drawstring pouch. Then for a spot test, he’d take one of those coins, put it back into the machine, check out the plunger action two or three times, and finally let the ball fly with no trace of enjoyment. Next he’d aim balls at the bumpers to observe the condition of the magnets, send balls down all the rails, and into all the targets. Drop targets, kick-out holes, the lotto target. Then, last but not least, he’d hit the bonus light, and with a look of utter relief, drop the ball into the out lane to end the game. That done, he’d turn to J, give him this casual-no problems, eh kind of nod, and leave. All in less time than it takes to smoke half a cigarette.

I’d forget to tap the ash off my cigarette, the Rat’d forget to drink his beer. Just watching that commanding display of technique always took our breath away.

“I must be dreaming,” said the Rat. “With technique like that, you could score a hundred fifty thousand, easy. Nah, more like two hundred thousand.”

“He’s a pro, what d’ya expect,” I consoled the Rat. Even so, there was no salvaging the ace pilot’s pride.

“Compared to that, my game’s about as strong as a little girl’s pinkie,” the Rat pouted, falling into a silent huff that lead to visions of scores soaring to six digits.

“That’s only a job to him,” I continued my spiel. “It might have been fun at first, but just try doing that every day from morning to night. Who wouldn’t be bored out their minds?”

“Not me,” the Rat said, shaking his head. “You’d never see me bored.”

It had been a long time since J’s Bar was this crowded. Most were new faces, but J had no gripes– a customer’s a customer. He had every reason to be in good spirits. For what with the icepick cracking ice, the clinking of ice and tumblers, laughter, the Jackson Five on the jukebox, clouds of white smoke hovering about the ceiling like balloons of dialogue in a comic book, that night seemed like another round of summer.

Nonetheless, there was something “off” about the Rat. He sat by himself at one end of the counter, skimming the same page of his book over and over again before finally giving up and closing it. If at all possible, he would have liked nothing better than to chug down the last of his beer, go home, and simply sleep. If he would have been able to sleep, that is.

For one week now, luck had lost all sight of the Rat. Scant snatches of sleep and beer and cigarettes, and even the weather was starting to give out on him. The rainwater washed down off the hills into the river, then flowed to the sea, turning it a blotchy brown and gray. A disgusting view, an ugly outlook. He felt as if his head was stuffed full of wads of old newspaper. He slept lightly, and never for very long. It was like sleeping in a dentist’s overheated waiting room. Whenever anybody opened the door, you’d wake up. He gazed at the clock.

Half the week he’d been immersing himself in whiskey, he’d decided to freeze all thought for a while. One by one he’d inspected the cracks of his consciousness like a polar bear looking for ice thick enough to cross. And only when he found prospects that might just possibly get him through the rest of the week did he sleep. The trouble was, when he awoke, everything would be just like before. Except maybe his head would ache a little.