Midnight at the Bowling Alley

Midnight at the Bowling Alley

  Copyright 2014 by Roman Theodore Brandt

  Table of Contents

  Midnight at the Bowling Alley

  About the Author

  Midnight at the Bowling Alley

  I open my eyes, the world reforming around me, and suddenly I’m looking at Zeke looking at me. The dark world passes in the window behind him.

  “You okay?” he wants to know.

  “I’m okay,” I tell him, my stomach gurgling. “I thought I heard a train.” The road rumbles under the tires. I look out my window, and the world outside is a void, with no stars or anything. There aren’t any other headlights on the road. Zeke is looking at the road again now, slouching the way he does when he’s lost.

  “Are you lost?” I ask him.

  “No,” he says, his voice small against the roar of the pavement. “I’m not lost.”

  I open the glove box to look for the travel atlas. “Where are we?”

  “Would you get out of there?”

  “I’m just getting the travel atlas,” I tell him, pushing napkins and pill bottles aside. He reaches over and slaps my hands away and closes the glove box.

  “I’m not lost,” he says. “We’re almost there.”

  “Almost there,” I say to myself quietly, and I look away from him, my stomach starting to hurt again. “I need a bathroom soon,” I tell him. I can hear his grip tightening on the wheel.

  “What did you take?”

  “Just some Xanax,” I tell him.

  He sighs, glaring at me in the dark. “Xanax,” he says sadly. “I don’t understand why you can’t do this with a clear head.”

  “I don’t think I have to explain why,” I tell him.

  “What is your problem with my mom?” he wants to know.

  “Nothing, so long as there’s Xanax.”

  “I just don’t get it,” he mumbles. I look at the glowing green clock numbers, and it’s eleven-twenty. My eyes go to the road outside, lit up in the twin beams of our headlights. I watch the particles rushing toward the car and over the hood and windshield, vanishing into the night.

  My stomach gurgles again, and I close my eyes, wishing I were home in bed. “Can’t we pull over at a gas station or something?” I ask him, and he laughs.

  “Do you see a goddamn gas station anywhere, Oscar?”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, and I imagine our bed, with the memory foam and the sheets and covers that need washed. I think of the dishes in the sink, cracking and breaking into a million pieces and falling, falling, falling into the black nothingness of the road around us. I’m a million miles from home. I might never be there again. The car swerves, and I open my eyes. I wipe the drool from my mouth.

  “You fell asleep again,” Zeke says me.

  “Was something in the road?”

  “Look at that,” he says, pointing out toward the road ahead of us. “See?”

  I look where he’s pointing and I can see a sign in the distance, growing larger and brighter. “Bowling Alley,” it says in brick and neon, and when we get to it, I see the entrance to a parking lot. The car bounces over a pothole as Zeke pulls into the drive, the frame rocking and creaking, and he curses under his breath.

  “You see?” he asks me, and he’s smiling triumphantly, the winner.

  “The bowling alley,” I tell him.

  “I was right,” he says, accelerating across the lot toward the building.

  “I suppose you were,” I tell him, and he laughs and smacks the rim of the steering wheel.

  “Fuck maps,” he says as we cross the lot, flying over the pavement and slamming into more potholes, bouncing over them and ignoring the faded lines designating lanes and spaces. Zeke never follows parking lot lines. “They need to fix this lot,” he says.

  “I need a bathroom,” I tell him. “I’m sick.”

  “Oscar, for God’s sake. I’m about to park.”

  My stomach is bubbling, and my throat constricts. My hand flies up to my mouth, and with my other hand, I fumble with the door lock.

  “Don’t you puke in the car,” he says, slamming his foot down on the brake pedal. The car stops mid-parking maneuver, tossing everything up my esophagus. I find the handle and shove the door open just in time. “Aim it outside,” Zeke yells, panicked.

  Dangling out of the car by my seat belt, I paint the pavement with the pizza we had earlier. Another heave brings up the coffee and cereal from before that, and then I’m hanging out of the car, panting. My stomach aches and my throat burns. My eyes have begun to water, my nose dripping mucus and bile. I can hear Zeke opening the glove box. He puts napkins in my hand, and then I hear his door open. I wipe my face off with the napkins with my stomach still churning. I can hear Zeke’s shoes on the pavement now, and I look up to see him coming around the car.

  “That’s pretty awful,” he says, laughing.

  “Modern art,” I tell him, and I lean back against the seat. “Paint splatters.”

  “Terrible modern art,” he says, looking back at the bowling alley entrance.

  “You’re no judge of art,” I tell him, and then I burp.

  He opens the door wide and moves toward me. “Let’s get you out of the car.”

  “I can get myself out,” I tell him with my limbs like rubber. “Get away from me.”

  He leans into the car and undoes my seat belt. “You need a breath mint,” he says.

  “You need a new face,” I mumble with my body like jello, and he laughs again.

  The seatbelt retracts, zipping across me and releasing me from the seat. I grab the door frame to keep from falling out. “Get out, I’ll walk you inside and then I’ll park,” he says.

  He tries to grab my hand, and I swat him away. “I can walk just fine,” I tell him. “I’m not completely helpless. I got sick, that’s all.”

  “You’ll feel better inside, I bet,” he says, looking down at the vomit. I climb out of the car, wobbling at first, and then I step around my mess. He closes the door once I’m out. “You ought to go easy on the self-medication,” he tells me, all serious, like he’s my therapist or something.

  “It was just Xanax,” I tell him with my nose stinging from stomach acid. I start toward the smudged glass doors of the entrance. “Xanax did not do that to me; it was your driving”

  He’s opening the driver’s door now, and I turn to look at him.

  “Are you walking me in or not?”

  “Go inside,” he says to me. “You puked up your Xanax.”

  “I have plenty more,” I tell him. “Just in case I need some.”

  He sighs and sits down in the seat, the car rocking under him. “Go inside,” he says before he closes the door. I turn around as he turns the car on and I push the door open. The smell of musty old air rushes into my nostrils, making my stomach hurt again, and I’m through the next set of doors as fast as I can get them open.

  *

  Inside the building, the walls are white and orange and brown. Behind me on either side of the doors I just came through are dimly lit alcoves with neon signs over them saying things like “Snack Bar” and “Bowling Balls” and “Arcade” and “Restrooms.” Zeke’s family is at the far end of the room, under a big flashing neon sign of a bowling ball knocking down a pin. His mother sees me first, then she immediately looks for Zeke, because fuck me. I hear the doors behind me open again, and in some back room far away, a bell dings once before the doors shut.

  Zeke pushes ahead, and his mother bounds up the three steps to the dining platform and runs to meet him. She hugs him as we approach, and she says, “Oh Zeke, honey. I've missed you.” She pulls away from her son and glances at me. “Oscar,” she says coldy.

  “Elai
ne,” I say to her.

  “Mom,” Zeke says.

  “What?” She wants to know. “I'm happy you guys came. That's all, I swear.”

  “Happy birthday, Elaine,” I say to her.

  She looks over at me and almost smiles, then she shrugs. “Yes, well,” she says. “Thank you, Oscar.”

  That's the nicest thing she'll say to me all night. She'll have Zeke with her for hours, and I'll have to find something to do by myself because I'll be excluded.

  Zeke's brother is Zane, and Zane's wife is Shelly. Elaine doesn't like Shelly that much, either, but at least she has a vagina. A vagina can produce grandchildren.

  “We've been waiting on you two to get here so that we can have cake,” Elaine says to us, mostly to Zeke.

  As we're passing the snack bar, I notice a man behind the counter. I look over at him for a second, but he's staring through me like I'm not there.

  *

  Of course the cake is this beautiful white layer cake. Why wouldn’t it be? I take a piece of it so that I don't seem rude, even though I’m not a huge fan of cake.

  “I'm leaving for Venice on Tuesday,” Elaine is telling us, shoving a bite of the white cake into her mouth.

  “We're going to Oklahoma in March,” Shelly says, and Elaine looks over at her like she just said she likes to eat cat shit.

  “What on earth is in Oklahoma, Shelly?” She wants to know finally, and Shelly doesn't say anything. Elaine laughs and looks over at Zeke. “A whole bunch nothing, I'm sure.”

  Zane looks like he wants to say something, but he won't. None of them will say anything.

  “This cake is rather bland,” Elaine says, inspecting the next bite of it on her fork. She's right, it doesn't actually have much of a taste. “Strange,” she says. “The one I sampled was wonderful.” She shrugs and eats it and then puts her plate aside on the table, leaving the rest of her piece of cake to rot. She leans back against the booth seat. “Who brought presents for me?”

  Zeke nudges me. “Did we bring the present in?”

  *

  I guess it's my duty to go out to the car and get the necklace Zeke bought for her. On the way through the glass doors, I can see our car at the end of the row, beyond the others. Crossing the parking lot, I can hear the doors to the building opening behind me. I stop by the car and look to see who came out, and it's the guy from the snack bar, wheeling a trash can piled high with garbage bags out to the dumpster.

  Elaine’s necklace is in a box and wrapped in this shiny red paper with a white ribbon. It looks like a damn Macy's commercial.

  The guy from the snack bar is wheeling the empty trash can back up to the doors as I'm coming up the sidewalk, and he stops by the door. It's almost like he's waiting for me to get there.

  “You sick?” He wants to know.

  “I'm just tired,” I tell him.

  *

  I guess I don't really feel sick anymore. Just kind of hungry. I don't want any more cake, though.

  “I was beginning to think you'd left it at home,” Elaine says as she sees me. Sometimes I want to punch her in the face. She looks around her and laughs a little. “My goodness,” she says finally, for no reason.

  I hand her the present. “From us,” I tell her, and she smiles.

  “Of course it is,” she says quietly.

  I walk away with Zeke trying to grab my leg and get my attention. I might get something to eat. On my way to the snack bar, Zeke is right behind me, and when he knows we're out of where Elaine can hear us, he says, “Are you nuts? Why did you just walk away from the whole group?”

  I stop and turn to look at him, and he almost runs into me. Boy, he looks pissed. “I'm hungry,” I tell him finally.

  “There's cake over there.”

  “I am not eating any more of your mother's cake.”

  He rolls his eyes.

  “I might get a taco or some pizza—”

  He sighs and starts to back away. “Fine,” he says. Then, he's heading back to the group, and I feel so god damned alone I want to cry.

  *

  At the snack bar, the guy smiles at me in his dusty uniform. He's like a ghost, a man from another world observing and wishing he were real. The sounds of Zeke's family bowling in the background are the soundtrack of this ethereal encounter. “You want something to eat?” the guy wants to know, and he sounds human enough.

  I'm looking down at my hands on the counter now. “Nachos, I guess.”

  He turns away to get the nachos, and I look up and see the clock says midnight as he pumps the nacho cheese out of a machine. He turns to put my nachos on the countertop, and I see his name tag: JAKE.

  “Is that clock right?” I ask him.

  Jake looks over his shoulder at the clock, then laughs. “The clocks are all wrong,” he says, and he goes over to clean up some invisible mess at the other end of the snack bar. This place is frozen in time, and even the clocks have stopped.

  It's not just the cake that's bland. These nachos are like gooey cardboard. I've got one in my mouth and I can't imagine eating another one.

  “These nachos are kind of stale,” I say aloud, and then I feel bad for pointing it out.

  Jake shrugs at the end of the bar. “Everything’s stale around here,” he says on his way into the back room.

  I put my head down on the counter because I don't want to be here anymore. The counter is dusty, too. The sounds of bowling have become a dull roar inside my head. I think of the dust in the vestibule, not circulating through the vents. I figure eventually I might puke in the restroom like a civilized person.

  *

  A bit later, I'm in the restroom cleaning up, staring at my face in the mirror. I don't remember how I got here.

  I look at myself, and I don't even know who I am, really. I'm a pale, white phantom in a men’s restroom. God, I want to go home.

  Just then the door opens, and I watch Zane come in. He smiles at me and lingers a little too long before going into a stall. He always does that, because he's a fucking pervert.

  “Mom's really got her fangs in you tonight,” he says from inside the stall, and I hear him unzipping his pants.

  I don't say anything, but I look down and see that there's blood in the sink. “There's blood in the sink,” I say aloud, but my words sound muffled. I look around to find the paper towel dispenser, but then I see my hand. It's bright red and wet from blood. My eyes go to the mirror, and I see where it's coming from. There's a piece of glass in my neck. Like part of a windshield or the glass they make aquariums out of.

  I'm screaming and backing away and the stall door bursts open behind me. Zane grabs me to keep me from falling backwards. In the mirror, everything is normal again; no blood, no glass. I blink at my reflection. In the mirror, Zane's got his eyes on mine, and I don't want to be in the restroom anymore.

  “You okay?” he asks me.

  I nod and try to pull away, but his grip tightens. He's got his mouth on my ear now, and he's saying, “Not so many pills next time, Oscar.” He's got his pants down still, pressing against me from behind. “You're gonna make some bad choices.”

  “I don't want to make bad choices,” I tell him quietly. “I want to go back to the snack bar.”

  “No you don't,” he says in my ear. “Not yet.” He’s got one hand on the crotch of my jeans, squeezing. I can feel my stomach burning inside me.

  Times like these, I think of dying. Sometimes, I imagine myself standing on a railroad with a train rumbling around a distant corner and then gaining speed down the tracks, honking and roaring, with the tracks thundering under my feet. In my mind, I’m crouching down to pick a single dandelion from the space between the rails and wooden slats. With Zane’s mouth against my ear, thrusting inside me, I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine the light bulb exploding. I imagine darkness with only the sounds of him panting against my neck. I don’t dare open my eyes to see what we look like, because I’ve seen it before. I don’t even feel bad anymore. I don’t feel anything. I
n my mind, with Zane about to finish, I think of the dandelion again, twirling it between my fingers as the train grill comes screaming down the tracks, seconds away from slamming into my body. Everything survives, I think, and then the train hits. I feel the hot jet of Zane’s orgasm inside me, and in my head, my hand is crushing the dandelion to bits. Everything survives, because everything is survivable.

  “I love you, Oscar,” he says. I wish I loved anyone in this world right now.

  *

  Some nights, I just want to go home, take a shower, and put myself into a pill coma. I shouldn’t have come here.

  *

  Passing Zeke, he reaches out for my hand. I let him grab it, and I can almost hear Elaine's eyes roll. “You okay?” he wants to know. Zane smiles at me, because we have a secret. I really, really want to leave this terrible party.

  “I don't feel very good,” I tell Zeke, and I feel everyone's eyes on me. What a fucked up mess, they're thinking. What a sad charity case.

  “I've got some pills you might be interested in,” Elaine says, and Zeke turns to glare at her. She stops digging in her purse and puts it down.

  “That's not funny, Mom.”

  I want to go home. I want to leave.

  “I'm just trying to help,” she says. “I figure Oscar of all people could use some pills.”

  Zane and Shelly are trying not to laugh, and my face is red. I want to hit Zeke's Mom until she stops talking. It’s right then that I see Zeke smile and laugh a little, too. What a surreal moment. Our eyes lock, and then he tries to hold onto my hand as I'm yanking it away.

  “These pills will get you high on life, Oscar,” Elaine says.

  Of course I can't say anything. I can't say shut the fuck up, Elaine. I'll kill you, Elaine.

  “Oscar!” Zeke is calling after me as I shove the door to the vestibule open, but I’m on my way out to the parking lot.

  *

  Out here, it's like nothing exists. The world is gone, and I'm just out here with the parking lot lights flickering under the black sky.

  He follows me outside a few minutes later, but I don't want to talk, and that's exactly what he's come out here to do.

  “Oscar,” he says as he comes up behind me, and I swear to god if he touches me I'm going to scream. He puts his arms around me, and I want to hit him until he feels as bad as I do. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have laughed,” he says him my ear.