The bowling alley’s version of the Big Bang was in full surround sound, all thunder and smashing and cracking as balls performed like destructive projectiles, and my date said something that sounded like, I missed you, it being a week since our first date, a movie, where afterwards I kissed her on the front stoop, my first kiss, real old fashioned, something out of Happy Days, without any of the slapstick mishaps that generate the laugh track, but what she really said was that she missed her ex-boyfriend and was going back with him but we could still have a nice night, along with our double date, who never stopped kissing, and when it was my turn I picked up the ball and thought, how odd, my first kiss a week ago and her history already involves an ex, which sounds only fitting for adults, ex-wives, ex-husbands, not a 16-year old, and I bowled a strike and sat down, and when my turn came around again, I bowled another strike and sat down, and I thought about that first kiss, the porch light making a halo above her blonde hair, and when they said, your turn again, I bowled another strike, and the other boyfriend said, hey, man, that’s a turkey, three strikes in a row, and I walked away without even looking at them and got in my car and drove home.
At Thanksgiving I’d remember that turkey, not a flattering term for a stellar feat, but a fitting one for a guy who got dumped at a bowling alley.
I thought about all this because I watched a monkey at the zoo groom another one, pluck something off the fur and cheek. The girl from the bowling alley did something similar the night we met at a funeral for my boss, the owner of a small movie theater in the shopping center, who’d fallen off a ladder trying to add a letter tile on the marquee. I was staring at him in the casket and feeling guilty because I was the one in charge of putting up movie tiles but a new usher volunteered to go up on the ladder and misspelled Halloween and when I went home the owner took it upon himself to get the ladder out to fix it.
His niece and other relatives came up to the casket and stood next to me. I worked for him, I said. I turned to walk away, to give the immediate family some time, when the niece said to hold still. She gently removed a strand of hair from my suit jacket collar, like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Maybe it was a way of sharing our different levels of grief.
I took her to the same theater where her uncle died. The projectionist kept the theater open for a week as a tribute. She held my hand and never jumped at the scary parts.
And I was at the zoo because a friend of mine from community college asked me to go observe animals with him for an acting class exercise.
I need a trait that fits my character for a scene, Eddie said.
I thought acting was about memorizing lines and coming up with fake emotions.
He picked me up in a Trans-Am. Disco music thumping. We got to go dancing sometime, he said.
We went to the Bronx Zoo. It seemed incongruous, animals and nature in the Bronx. The Bronx was known for crime and fires and abandoned buildings.
I asked Eddie what his character was like.
He works at a warehouse. He’s stuck in life and feels responsible for his sister, who’s slightly disabled.
The Glass Menagerie.
Yeah.
We read it in high school. How about a slow-moving animal, I said.
We’re supposed to wait for something to strike us, maybe an animal we didn’t expect.
Eddie walked around while I watched the monkeys groom each other. As a kid I was a big tree climber and felt sad that the most agile climbers in the world were restricted to a pen.
We’re the same, I called to the monkeys.
I didn’t know anything about science but I hoped there was something in their evolutionary DNA, like a collective trait that subconsciously enabled them to enjoy the freedom of infinite jungle spaces without ever having experienced it. Maybe in dreams, but it was just wishful thinking.
I caught up to Eddie by the crocodiles. They had to be the most pre-historic-looking creatures on earth. I can’t take my eyes off them, he said, but they don’t move.
There’s your animal, I said.
I have to move. Show the trait.
You just said you can’t take your eyes off them.
It’s because I’m waiting for them to do something.
That’s your character. You’re stuck in the house, you want to leave, but you feel responsible for your sister. Like you’re the disabled one. In your mind.
You studying psychology?
Everybody watches Laura, feels sorry for her, but get them to watch you. Power in stillness, like the crocodile.
Maybe, he said.
Eddie invited me to class to watch his scene.
His acting partner had set up real glass figures on a table. Frogs and turtles. Eddie stood at the side of the stage, still, staring at Laura while she said her lines and moved around, gently swaying from side to side, not wanting to be obvious with her limp, which was incorporated into the movement of whatever animal she’d chosen.
Eddie’s character was supposed to be drunk but his lines came out measured, soft.
He moved when no one expected it, from complete stillness to violence. He swiped over the table of glass figures. The actress stepped back, tripped, and ended up on the floor. Eddie stared down at the broken glass figures. The actress remained on the floor in a pose that reminded me of a famous painting an art teacher showed us, a woman in the field, a farmhouse in the distance.
I’m sorry, Eddie said, pointing to the mess.
I’ve never seen that kind of behavior from Tom, the teacher said. Strong choice, Eddie.
You scared me, the actress said. I guess that’s a good thing. She said her animal was a butterfly. Eddie said he wanted to keep his unknown.
We sat in the student square. Eddie was on a high. He said he spent the past week practicing being still, just staring at things, not moving, even trying not to blink. I guess it was like meditating, he said.
I asked what motivated him to smash the table. There was supposed to be power in your stillness, I said.
I was staring at those glass things, he said, and I had the urge to smash something. I read that Dustin Hoffman was crossing the street in a shot in Midnight Cowboy and the taxi came out of nowhere and he slammed the hood and said, I’m walkin’ here. That wasn’t supposed to happen. This was my Dustin Hoffman moment.
Yeah, but he almost got hit by a car. You were looking at glass objects.
It was my mother, he said, and her cleaning, making me use Lemon Pledge, hovering over me, making sure I picked up every one of her goddamn little tchotchkes.
The next day I went to meet him in the cafeteria. He was usually at a table reading a book or writing an essay but this time he sat in a chair facing the glass window, which looked out on a large brick square with cement benches. I crossed in front of him and stopped. He didn’t acknowledge me. It’s like he was in a trance, staring at something outside, but it was more than that, it’s like he was looking beyond the people in the square, at something farther away, something beyond what an ordinary person could see, like he’d tapped into a moment outside our existence, before evolution, going back to the first cosmic epoch.
I said his name but he didn’t react. It kind of scared me. I walked away.
The disco was crowded and covered with a blanket of cologne. Some guys had gold chains. It was suburbia, not Brooklyn. How serious could you take a disco when it shared a parking lot with Jack in the Box. Not like the allure of Saturday Night Fever and the 2001 Odyssey disco.
Eddie ordered Tanqueray and tonics at the bar. There were two girls across from us. He said one of them reminded him of his ex-girlfriend. Another person with an ex, and I hadn’t had a date since the bowling alley girl.
He stared at them. I figured it was too noisy for him to go into that weird trance state but when I asked him a question, kind of loud, close to his ear, he didn’t respond. The girl who reminded him of his ex looked over at him, then back to her friend. She leaned in and said something, and the other girl looked back to Eddie. They appeared unnerved.
They’re staring, Eddie said. Good sign. Let’s ask them to dance.
Maybe later, I said. He went over anyway.
The girl next to me ordered kamikaze shots. For some reason naming a drink after people who went on suicide missions didn’t feel right. Her friend choked on the drink and knocked over a glass of beer, soaking her arm and bare legs. I took some napkins and blotted her arm and then, without thinking, I wiped her legs. What are you doing? she screamed. Sorry, I said, it was an instinctive reaction.
Eddie came back. They said they weren’t in the mood to dance, he said. I don’t get it. They were looking at me.
You were staring, I said. Maybe it was uncomfortable.
I’m still in character, he said. Like a real fucking actor.
The strobe light went into effect and then a guy walked up to me, real close, and put his hands around my throat. You touching my girlfriend, he said, and suddenly it all felt disorienting, the fragmented light creating a series of still images of the guy’s face, and then Eddie came out of nowhere and hit the guy in the head with a bottle and the bouncers jumped in and glass started breaking and things were crashing and people were screaming and bodies were tumbling, a real wild west show, and I was knocked to the floor and scooted around through legs, real agile and monkey-like, until there was nobody left to block me, and ran out the door.
I crouched by Eddie’s car. A few minutes later he was escorted out by two bouncers. His face was bleeding.
In the car I thanked him.
We got to take care of each other, he said. Got cut by some glass.
Let’s get Jack in the Box, I said.
In the cafeteria Eddie and I sat with two guys from English. One of them was a Vietnam vet who drank a lot of coffee and chain smoked. That was the thing about community college, you could find people of all ages and backgrounds. And there were no bullies.
Eddie had a band-aid above his eye. We told them what happened at the disco. Jesus, the vet said, everybody’s always trying to kill everybody. The other guy was Earl. His hands were wrapped in white gauze. Earl had been seeing a married man. They met at Macy’s, where Earl worked. He helped the man pick out a yellow tie. They used to meet in motels or a beach house the man had rented, but then last night the man broke it off because he couldn’t continue with two lifestyles. Earl said he smashed his cologne bottles together and made a motion that looked like he was playing cymbals in a marching band.
Looks like everybody had a tough night, the vet said. We got some wounded here. He smiled. Love and death, he said, that’s what it’s all about. Earl held up his hands and smiled too. I smiled. I was still wounded from a bowling alley four months ago. Even Eddie smiled. His eyes were present, no more blank stillness.
The sun broke through what had been a cloudy morning and settled on Eddie’s face. Something glittered. I moved closer for inspection. A tiny shard of glass stuck in his cheek. Hold still, I said. I took a napkin, gently plucked it out, and dabbed the small pinpoint of blood.
Then we went to class.
Peter DeMarco is a retired New York City high school English teacher. Before teaching, Peter spent a considerable amount of time acting in regional theater and attempting to be funny on the stand-up comedy amateur circuit. His debut novella-in-flash, Background Noise, is upcoming from Alien Buddha Press. His writing has appeared in The New York Times “Modern Love,” Rejection Letters, The Bulb Region, New World Writing, trampset, Maudlin House, A Thin Slice of Anxiety, New Flash Fiction Review, Bottle Rocket, BULL, Hawkeye, Does It Have Pockets (Best Microfiction nominee), SmokeLong Quarterly, Pithead Chapel, & Eunoia Review.
X: PDMwriter
