three-flipper “Spaceship” – only I understood her, and only she understood me. Whenever I pressed her replay button, she’d perk up with a little hum, click the six digits on the board to zero, then smile at me. I’d pull her plunger into position – not a fraction of an inch off – and let that gleaming silver ball fly up the lane onto the field. And while the ball was racing about, it was as if I were smoking potent hashish; my mind was set free.
All sorts of disconnected ideas floated into my head, then disappeared. All sorts of people drifted into view across the glass top over the field, then faded away. Like a two-way mirror to my dreams, the glass top reflected my own mind as it flickered in unison with the bumper and bonus lights.
It’s not your fault, she said. To which I only kept shaking my head. You’re not to blame, you gave it your all, didn’t you?
No way, said I. Left flipper, top transfer, ninth target. Not even close. I didn’t get a single thing right. I hardly moved a finger. But I could have, if I’d been on the ball.
There’s only so much a person can do, she said.
Maybe so, said I, but that doesn’t change a thing.
It’ll always be that way. Return lane, trap, kick out, out hole, rebound, hugging, sixth
target bonus light, 121,150. It’s over, she said, it’s all over.
* * *
In February of the new year, she vanished. The game center was stripped clean, and the following month it had become an all-night doughnut shop.
The kind of place where girls in curtain-material uniforms brought you tasteless doughnuts on tasteless plates. There were high school students who parked their bikes out front and nighthawk cabbies, bar hostesses, and diehard hippies, all drinking coffee with the exact same bottomed-out expression. I ordered a cup of their awful coffee and a cinnamon doughnut, and asked the waitress if she knew anything about the game center.
She gave me a dirty look, the way she might have looked at a doughnut that had fallen on the floor.
“Game center?”
“The joint that was here up to just a little while ago.”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” she said, shaking her head wearily. Nobody remembers a thing from the month before, that’s the kind of town it was.
I roamed the streets in a blue funk. My three-flipper Spaceship was gone, and nobody knew where.
That’s when I gave up pinball. When the time comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it.
Chapter 16
Rain had been falling for days, then suddenly let up on Friday evening. From the penthouse window, the town made a depressing sight, soaked to the gills and swollen with rainwater. The setting sun breaking through the clouds turned them a mysterious color, and the afterglow painted the room in the same hue.
The Rat slipped a windbreaker over his T-shirt and headed into town. The asphalt streets of the shopping arcade were dotted here and there with still puddles that stretched out dark and wet as far as the eye could see. The whole town had that evening-after-the-rain smell about it. Pines along the river stood drenched top to bottom, fine droplets at the drooping tips of their green needles. Runoff coursed thick and brown into the river, then slid down the channeled concrete river bottom out to sea.
Evening was over almost as soon as it began, and darkness fell damp over everything. Then in an instant, the dampness turned to fog.
The Rat rested his elbow on the car window and made a slow tour of the town. Banks of white fog slanted westward up the drive into the hills. In the end, he took the riverside road down to the coast.
He stopped the car by the seawall, let back his reclining seat, and smoked a cigarette. The sand on the beach, the concrete blocks along the shoreline, the trees of the windbreak, everything was wetted down and dark. Yet a warm yellow light poured through the blinds of the woman’s apartment. He glanced at his wristwatch. Seven fifteen.
A time for people to be finishing
All sorts of disconnected ideas floated into my head, then disappeared. All sorts of people drifted into view across the glass top over the field, then faded away. Like a two-way mirror to my dreams, the glass top reflected my own mind as it flickered in unison with the bumper and bonus lights.
It’s not your fault, she said. To which I only kept shaking my head. You’re not to blame, you gave it your all, didn’t you?
No way, said I. Left flipper, top transfer, ninth target. Not even close. I didn’t get a single thing right. I hardly moved a finger. But I could have, if I’d been on the ball.
There’s only so much a person can do, she said.
Maybe so, said I, but that doesn’t change a thing.
It’ll always be that way. Return lane, trap, kick out, out hole, rebound, hugging, sixth
target bonus light, 121,150. It’s over, she said, it’s all over.
* * *
In February of the new year, she vanished. The game center was stripped clean, and the following month it had become an all-night doughnut shop.
The kind of place where girls in curtain-material uniforms brought you tasteless doughnuts on tasteless plates. There were high school students who parked their bikes out front and nighthawk cabbies, bar hostesses, and diehard hippies, all drinking coffee with the exact same bottomed-out expression. I ordered a cup of their awful coffee and a cinnamon doughnut, and asked the waitress if she knew anything about the game center.
She gave me a dirty look, the way she might have looked at a doughnut that had fallen on the floor.
“Game center?”
“The joint that was here up to just a little while ago.”
“Haven’t the foggiest,” she said, shaking her head wearily. Nobody remembers a thing from the month before, that’s the kind of town it was.
I roamed the streets in a blue funk. My three-flipper Spaceship was gone, and nobody knew where.
That’s when I gave up pinball. When the time comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it.
Chapter 16
Rain had been falling for days, then suddenly let up on Friday evening. From the penthouse window, the town made a depressing sight, soaked to the gills and swollen with rainwater. The setting sun breaking through the clouds turned them a mysterious color, and the afterglow painted the room in the same hue.
The Rat slipped a windbreaker over his T-shirt and headed into town. The asphalt streets of the shopping arcade were dotted here and there with still puddles that stretched out dark and wet as far as the eye could see. The whole town had that evening-after-the-rain smell about it. Pines along the river stood drenched top to bottom, fine droplets at the drooping tips of their green needles. Runoff coursed thick and brown into the river, then slid down the channeled concrete river bottom out to sea.
Evening was over almost as soon as it began, and darkness fell damp over everything. Then in an instant, the dampness turned to fog.
The Rat rested his elbow on the car window and made a slow tour of the town. Banks of white fog slanted westward up the drive into the hills. In the end, he took the riverside road down to the coast.
He stopped the car by the seawall, let back his reclining seat, and smoked a cigarette. The sand on the beach, the concrete blocks along the shoreline, the trees of the windbreak, everything was wetted down and dark. Yet a warm yellow light poured through the blinds of the woman’s apartment. He glanced at his wristwatch. Seven fifteen.
A time for people to be finishing
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