From: Wes
I am bowling. Bored.
Mar 20 19:39
“Wes! Your turn!”
Wes looked up from his phone and blinked at the three expectant faces: Calvin and the two Alans.
“We need a strike,” said Calvin. Wes and Calvin were teamed up against Alan Hurd and Alan Schwartz. They were on the seventh frame, ten dollars riding on the outcome. Wes pocketed his phone, picked up his bowling ball, and faced the pins. On either side of him, balls were rolling, pins were crashing, lights were blinking.
What am I doing? he wondered. How did I get here? The sixteen-pound black, battered sphere felt utterly foreign, as if he had never held such a thing in his entire life.
He slipped his fingers into the holes.
“Don’t choke,” said Alan Hurd as he stuffed a pretzel into his mouth.
“Shut up!” Calvin said. Then, to Wes, “Focus, dude.”
Wes tried to focus. He held the ball up to his chin and stared past it down the narrow wooden lane at the ten pins. He imagined the ball sliding into the pocket, the pins exploding, the satisfying clatter of a perfect strike.
“Choke!” Alan yelled.
Wes leaned toward the alley and let the momentum carry him forward. His right arm swung back, then swung forward, releasing the ball.
His thumb stuck in the hole. The ball came off with an audible pop, arced through the air, and landed hard about ten feet down the alley.
Calvin moaned. “Dude!”
The ball rolled lazily toward the pins, curved to the left, dropped into the gutter.
Wes turned back to his friends. Alan Hurd was laughing, spraying pulverized pretzel all over the scoring screen. Alan Schwartz shoved him off his chair. Still laughing, Alan Hurd inhaled some pretzel and started coughing. Calvin handed him his Coke; Alan took a huge swig, then gasped and clutched his throat.
“What is that stuff?” he asked.
“Half whiskrumka, half Coke,” said Calvin. He had raided his dad’s liquor cabinet and brought a flask containing what he called a “medley of spirits”: whiskey, rum, and vodka. “Nectar of the gods,” he said.
“More like crotch sweat of the gods,” Alan Hurd said.
“Crotch nectar!” said Calvin.
Alan Schwartz wiped the spit and crumbs off the screen with his sleeve and said to Wes, “You need a spare.”
Wes regarded his friends curiously. The bright fluorescent lights made them look pale and two-dimensional. He wondered if he looked the same to them. He picked up his ball and turned to the long, narrow lane. The ten pins, a toothy V-shaped smile, mocked him. Oh, well, he thought, the sooner I get this over with, the sooner it will be over.
The ball left his hand and kissed the polished wood surface, describing a shallow, precise curve as it spun down the lane to cut into the sweet spot between the one and the three. Pins flew. For a moment he thought he’d knocked them all down, but the two corner pins — the seven and the ten — remained standing on opposite sides of the lane. After a couple of seconds, the metal arm clunked down and swept them both away.
Sometimes June pretended that Wes was her imaginary boyfriend. She would turn off her phone and put it in her purse, shut down her computer, and tell herself that she had lived her whole entire life in Omaha, and all the other places she remembered were dreams, or delusions from a psychotic past. Her dad might have called it “living in the present.” Except he would be more likely to tell her that the present was an illusion, and that only the future was real.
For Christmas her dad had given her a ceiling alarm clock, so she could lie in the dark, staring at the wiggly red numbers projected onto the textured ceiling.
10:16
10:17
10:18
It made for some long nights. But it perfectly suited her father’s philosophy: The past is gone. Tempus fugit. Next!
She tried to imagine her imaginary boyfriend Wes in a bowling alley. Were there girls there? Of course there were girls. It was a bowling alley — skank heaven. But, if there were girls, would her imaginary boyfriend have texted her?
10:22
She really needed to hear his voice. Too bad it would only be an imaginary voice. She’d maxed out the minutes on her cell, and only two-thirds of the way through the month. Good thing she had unlimited texting.
Good thing he’s “imaginary,” said Sarcastic June. Or maybe that was Scornful June. Or some other June.
10:25
10:25
10:25
Some minutes lasted longer than others.