TAKE PINBALL, FOR EXAMPLE. Especially on a wood-rail Gottlieb Cyclone or Harbor Lites table. Night after night, Lit’s reflexes allowed him to play a single quarter on and on until he got bored. His touch against the spring to launch the chrome ball into play was art. After that, carefully judged nudges and checks with hands and hips and knees guided the ball in regard to bumpers and kickers and chutes without tilting the table. Flipper work too subtle to comprehend. You could go to college and study mechanical engineering and physics for ten years and not understand it.
Psychic and saintly was the way Bud viewed it. The air disturbed by a leaf falling to the parking lot played a role in how Lit’s fingers twitched. Each second, Lit did two dozen different things at once, attending fully to the present moment but with a disinterested look on his face. Every machine in the county displayed his high score.
Tonight went the usual way. Lights flashing behind the backglass, bells ringing, numbers in their hundreds of thousands and free games spinning the wheels until Lit wanted beer. Usually that was when he collected his money. Instead, he handed the table over to Bud. Said, Keep it warm for me, I’m coming back.
Before Lit finished his second can, Bud had burned through all the accumulated credits. Every penny of a thirty-five-dollar cash-out thrown away.
Before the machine finished dying its loud sad death, Lit was out the door.
Bud caught him in the parking lot. Lit already in the cruiser with the engine rumbling and the lights on.
—You leaving? Bud said.
—Not leaving, I’m gone.
Lit sprayed gravel, and soon his two red taillights faded to nothing down the road. Leaving Bud standing alone.
No big deal. By tomorrow everything would be fine. And no long dark walk home, either. A man in Bud’s position had many new friends to count on. He went back to the bar and started talking up a ride to town. Acting cheerful, though pissed inside.
But it was a slow night, and late. The few drinkers were pros, planning to stay put until closing time. Bud held up a ten, dollar a mile. But no takers. Finally, the offer of a twenty, more than any of these idiots had ever made in a day, got him a ride in a panel van full of cabbages. The driver, drunk and mute, rarely drove faster than fifteen or twenty, but it was white-knuckle anyway. Lake close on the passenger side and the wheels dropping off the pavement over and over. Bud rolled his window down in case they fell over the edge and sank to the bottom. Swim through the window and up the black water. Rise into moonlight.
He rode holding the armrest and bracing his feet against the firewall, wondering with considerable bitterness why this was the best he could do. Bootlegging had made Bud a man of consequence. An eminence, much to his amazement. But there was no glamour to it. He was just a delivery boy, and it was making him soft. His lost money swirled constantly, bright and desirable, in his head. Brooding, too, about the injustice of being taken for a sidekick, even though Bud liked Lit an awful lot, even when he was high-strung. For Bud, the relationship felt part like brethren on a football team without all the ass patting and showering together, and part like boy crushes where you don’t so much want to be in love with the other boy as to be him.
But apart from that, just sticking to the practicalities, getting close to the law was not bad strategy in case complications arose in regard to Bud’s new profession. And possibly helpful if he got caught prowling up at the Lodge.
On Main Street, Bud climbed out of the van, thanking the spirits of commerce that he hadn’t been foolish enough to pay in advance. He stretched a five through the window, and the driver was too far gone to notice the difference. Bud walked the dark streets home trying, all at once, to focus his mind on his money and the lessons of the teenager-prison counselor. Be patient. Defer gratification and wait for rewards to pour down. Not part of the lesson, though, was how long you were supposed to wait. Bud’s patience had a fuse, and you could hold up thumb and forefinger of one hand to depict its length.