quick-sketch: bowling

It was mid-morning and the parking lot of the bowling alley was empty, except for a few Buicks and Cadillac’s of the regular retirees.

Zoey rode in on her orange Huffy mountain bike, which she had outgrown two decades ago. Still decked out in her sweats and Adidas, she strolled into the bowling alley, without giving even a sense of the fact she hadn’t been there since her senior year of college.

Carl, the manager, still recognized her.

“Well hey little lady, you haven’t changed a bit,” the old man smiled.

“Hey Carl, a lane and shoes if you don’t mind; Size 9,” she replied, grateful to see a friendly face.

“No problem at all Zoey. You still working in the telephone business?”

“I left. A lot of mismanagement. Just a toxic place.”

“That’s a shame. How’s your pal Margo doing?”

“I haven’t heard from her in some time. Still in New York probably; last I heard she still hadn’t learned to drive.”

“How can you spend so much time repairing cars as a kid and never actually drive one?”

“Beats the shit out of me.”

“Here are your shoes, lane 20. You look a bit off you know? You got kind of an empty-eyed expressionless gaze there. Just let loose a little. As many games as you want, it’s on me.”

Zoey smiled, best she could. and walked off to her lane, past the arcade and its pinball machines blaring music, speech and sound effects.

After three games of mostly gutters, Zoey pulled two bucks from her wallet and went to the Coca Cola machine. Coke was Zoey’s favorite drink. If America itself were a beverage, it would be Coca Cola. It was a comforting symbol she had seen all over the world in her travels and could always be counted on to remind her of home.

Oddly enough, Zoey found that Leda Lanes still had a working Jukebox. She flipped through the digital images of albums and chose Teach Your Children from Crosby Stills and Nash’s Greatest Hits. She leaned on the machine and sung along quietly, after eyeballing the joint carefully.

Even trying hard, there was only so much of her attentiveness she could turn off, but she was getting better at it. The medication was helping, in its own weird way. It was a little less common to hear people talking about her, that she didn’t know at all. But, she had never felt so spacey in all her life. But the restlessness in her legs was insufferable, at times, and her nose was stuffed up worse than ever before, such that sleeping was difficult.

In all honesty, the reason she went to the bowling alley was in the hope of seeing someone familiar…well other than Carl…though she knew that was silly for an early Sunday in Nashua. She wanted to make a connection. Though the few people she knew in the area left long ago.

The Eminem song Rock Bottom started to play. She rolled her eyes at the irony of it, then closed them for a minute.

Nashua was not where she was going to run into people her age. She needed to relocate to a major city. She needed to wash her hands of this place and move on. She dropped off her bowling shoes, and with a kind wave and nod to Carl, she left.