18



The following week or so my mood was strangely languid and serene. Pinball still echoed in my ears a bit, but that fitful buzzing like the beating wings of a bee marooned in a patch of winter sunlight had all but vanished. Autumn took on greater depth with each passing day, and the woods around the golf course dropped their load of dry leaves on the ground. From the apartment window you could see piles of burning leaves here and there on the rolling suburban hills, smoke snaking up into the sky like magic ropes.

Little by little, the twins grew silent, then subtly sad. We’d take our walks, drink coffee, listen to records, cling to one another under the blankets, and sleep. On Sunday we walked an hour to the arboretum, and ate mushroom-and-spinach sandwiches amidst the oaks. While in the treetops, black-tailed wild birds sang clear and pure.

Little by little, the air was growing chilly, so I bought two new sports shirts for them, and gave them some old sweaters of mine. Hence they ceased to be 208 and 209, and became Olive Green Crewneck Sweater and Beige Cardigan, though neither complained. Besides that, I bought them socks and new sneakers. I felt like a regular sugar daddy.

The October rains were a thing to behold. Needle-fine and soft as cotton, coming down uniformly over the golf course turf that was just beginning to wither. No puddles formed, the rainwater sank slowly into the earth. After the rains, the woods were heavy with the smell of damp fallen leaves, and a few slanting rays of the setting sun would trace a dappled pattern on the ground. Birds raced across the paths through the woods.



Days at the office passed more or less the same.

I’d listen to cassette tapes of old jazz— Bix Beiderbecke, Woody Herman, Bunny Berrigan– while crossing the pass over mountains of work, smoking cigarettes to keep up a leisurely pace, having a shot of whiskey every other hour, eating cookies.

Only the office girl kept up a harried pace, checking schedules, making airplane and hotel reservations, darning two more of my sweaters, and putting new metal buttons on my blazer for good measure. She changed her hairstyle, changed her lipstick to a pale pink, wore thin sweaters that showed off her bustline. It all blended into the autumn weather.



It was a great week, one to be remembered for all eternity.



19



It was hard breaking the news to J that he was leaving town. The Rat didn’t know why it was so hard.

Three days in a row he went to the bar, and not once in those three days could he bring himself to broach the subject. Each time he’d get up the nerve to tell him, his throat would get all dry, and he’d drown it in beer. Weak-willed, he kept on drinking.

You keep on floundering, thought the Rat, and never get anywhere.

When the clock struck twelve, the Rat could only stand up, somewhat relieved, say his good-night to J the same as always, and leave. The night breeze had gotten positively cold. He returned to his apartment, sat down on the bed, and idly watched television. He opened a can of beer and smoked a cigarette. An old western with Robert Taylor, then a commercial, weather report, commercial, static.

The Rat turned off the television, got in the shower. Then he opened another can of beer and smoked another cigarette.

He had no idea where to go once he left this town. He felt like he had no place to go.

For the first time in his life, fears crept up from deep inside him. Fears like dark, shiny crawly things from underground. Without eyes, without the least endearing quality. The Rat was dragging himself underground just like them. He felt their slime all over his body. He opened a can of beer.

Over those three days the Rat’s apartment had become littered with empty beer cans and cigarette butts. He wanted to see the woman real bad. Wanted to feel the warmth of her skin all over, to be inside her forever. But you’ll never go back to her place. Done burnt that bridge, thought the Rat, haven’t you now, over that door, sealed yourself off.

The Rat gazed out at the beacon. The sky was getting light, the sea was beginning to turn gray. And by the time the crisp morning light had swept away the darkness like you’d brush off a tablecloth, the Rat had climbed into bed and fallen asleep with pains that had no place to go.



* * *



The Rat’s decision to leave town seemed to have firmed up, at least for the time being. It was a conclusion reached after long hours of looking at things from every angle. It seemed impenetrable.

He struck a match, and ignited the bridge. There went the last of anything left kicking around in his heart, though maybe something of himself would be left in town. Not that anyone would notice. And as the town changed, even that trace would vanish.

Everything would go on regardless.

Now to tell J.

The Rat couldn’t figure out why the guy’s presence should disturb him as much as it did. A quick, Hey, I’m leaving town, take care, and that would do it. It’s not like they knew a thing about each other, after all. Total strangers, just happened to be passing by, that was all. Even so, the Rat’s heart ached. Lying face up on the bed, he shook a tightly clenched fist in the air.



* * *



It was past midnight Monday when the Rat pushed up the shutters to J’s Bar. There sat J at a table in the half-darkened interior, the same as usual, doing little other than smoking a cigarette. J smiled and nodded when he saw the Rat come in. J looked ages old in the dim light. A stubble shadowed his cheeks and chin, his eyes bulged, his thin lips were cracked and dry. Veins stood out on his neck, and his fingertips were stained yellow with nicotine.

“Tired, eh?” the Rat asked.

“Kind of,” J replied, then paused. “One of those days. Everyone has ‘em.”

The Rat nodded and drew up a chair at the table, sitting himself down across from J.

“Like the song says, rainy days and Mondays always get ya down.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” said J, staring at the cigarette between his fingers.

“You ought to beat a path home and get some sleep.”

“Nah, it’s okay,” J shook his head slowly, as if shooing away bugs. “Get back home and I wouldn’t be able to sleep well anyway.”

The Rat glanced down at his watch out of sheer reflex. Twelve twenty. There in that deathly quiet dim basement, time itself seemed to have passed away. In J’s Bar with the shutters down, there was not a glimmer of the cheer he had sought here for so many years. Everything was faded, everything was tired out.

“Could you get me a cola?” J said. “And while you’re at it, grab yourself a beer.”

The Rat stood up, took a beer and a cola from the refrigerator, and brought them over to the table along with glasses.

“Music?” asked J.

“Nah, let’s keep it quiet tonight,” said the Rat.

“Like some kind of funeral.”

The Rat laughed. Then, without a word, the two of them drank. The ticking of the Rat’s wristwatch on the table began to sound unnaturally loud.

Twelve thirty-five. Yet it seemed as if an awfully long time had passed. J hardly moved. The Rat fixed his eyes on J’s filterless cigarette burning up in the glass ashtray, even the stub turning to ash.

“Why’re you so tired?” the Rat asked.

“You got me,” J said, then rearranged his legs in afrerthought. “Doubt there’s any reason, really.”

The Rat sighed and drank half the beer in his glass, then returned it to the table.

“Say J, I’ve been thinking, people–I don’t care who–all get to rotting. Am I right?”

“Right enough.”

“And there are many ways to rot.” The Rat unconsciously brought the back of his hand up to his lips. “But for each person, it seems like the options are very limited. At the most say, two or three.

“I guess you could say that.”

The last of the beer, foam gone flat, left a pool at the bottom of the glass. The Rat took a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his pocket, and put the last one to his lips. “But y’know, lately I’ve begun to think, it’s all the same to me. You’re just gonna rot anyway, right?” J reserved comment, his glass of cola poised mid-sip while listening to the Rat.

“People go through changes, sure. But up to now, I never did get what those changes were supposed to mean.” The Rat bit his lip and looked down at the table pensively. “Then it came to me. Whatever step forward, whatever the change, it’s really only a stage of decay. Does that sound so off target?”

“No, not so very off.”

“That’s why I never felt the least scrap of love or goodwill toward the run of the mill people who go merrily about their way to oblivion not even in this town.”

J said nothing. The Rat said nothing. He struck a match on the table, and after letting the flame slowly burn its way down the shaft, he lit his cigarette.

“The thing is,” J said, “you yourself are thinking about making a change, correct?”

“Well, as matter of fact…”

A frightfully quiet few seconds passed between them. Maybe even ten seconds. Then J spoke up.

“People, you gotta remember, are surprisingly hit-or-miss creatures. Far more than even you’re thinking.”

The Rat emptied the rest of the beer into his glass, and downed it in one gulp. “I’m torn, what to do.”

J nodded.

“No way to decide.”

“I kinda figured that,” said J with a tired, talked-out smile.

The Rat slowly stood up, and stuffed his cigarettes and lighter in his pocket. The clock read past one.

“Good night,” said the Rat.

“Good night,” said J. “Oh, and one last thing. Somebody said it: Walk slowly and drink lots of water.”

The Rat smiled at J, opened the door, and climbed the stairs. Streetlamps brightly illuminated the deserted street. The Rat sat down on a guard-rail and looked up at the sky. And thought, just how much water does a guy have to drink?



20



The Spanish lecturer called on a Wednesday after a holiday weekend in November. My partner had gone off to the bank before lunch, and I was eating spaghetti the office girl had made in the apartment’s dining-kitchen. The spaghetti wasn’t bad, tossed with slivered shiso leaf in place of basil. A scant two minutes overcooked perhaps. We were locked in debate over the issue of spaghetti preparation when the telephone rang. The girl picked up the phone, exchanged two or three words, and then handed it over to me with a shrug.

“About the ‘Spaceship’,” he said. “I’ve located one.”

“Where?”

“It’s a little hard to say over the phone,” he said.

And for a brief while, we both fell silent.

“You mean to say?” I puzzled.

“I mean that it’s difficult to explain over the phone.”

“One look tells all, eh?”

“No,” he said, swallowing. “I mean, even if it stood before your very eyes, it’d be difficult to explain.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I waited for him to continue.

“I’m not trying to be mysterious and I’m not just carrying on. In any case, might we get together?”

“Sure.”

“Shall we say, today at five?”

“Fine,” I agreed. “By the way, will I get to play?”

“Of course,” he said. I thanked him and hung up. Then I started in on seconds of spaghetti.

“Where’re you going?”

“I’m off to play pinball. I don’t know the location.”

“Pinball?”

“You got it, batting balls with flippers.”

“I know what pinball is. But really, why?”

“There are–how do you say–things in this world our philosophy cannot account for.”

She leaned on the table and propped her head up to think it over.

“You’re good at pinball, are you?”

“Used to be. The one and only accomplishment I ever took pride in.”

“I don’t have any.”

“Then you don’t have any to lose.”

While she gave that some more thought, I polished off the rest of the spaghetti.

“Little meaning is there to the things one loses. The glory of things meant to be lost is not true glory. Or so they say.”

“Who said that?”

“I forget. But, anyway, it fits.”

“Is there anything in the world that doesn’t get lost?”

“I’d like to believe so. You’d do well to believe it, too.”

“I’ll try.”

“Maybe I’m too much of an optimist. But I’m not that stupid.”

“I know.”

“I’m not proud of it, but it sure beats the other way around.”

She nodded. “So you’re off to play pinball tonight?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Hold up your hands.”

I raised both hands up toward the ceiling, while she carefully inspected the underarms of my sweater.

“Okay, off you go.”



* * *



I rendezvoused with the Spanish lecturer at the coffee shop where we’d first met, and we caught a taxi straight away. Head up Meiji Boulevard, he said. Once the taxi was off and running, he took out a cigarette and lit up, then offered one to me.

He was wearing a gray suit and a blue tie with three diagonal stripes. His shirt was also blue, a shade lighter than the tie. I wore a gray sweater over blue jeans, and my scuffed up desert boots. I felt like a failing student who’d been summoned to the teachers’ room.



When the taxi crossed Waseda Boulevard, the driver asked if he should go on further. To Meijiro Boulevard, said the instructor. And the taxi continued a while, then turned onto Meijiro Boulevard.

“Is it pretty far still?” I asked.

“Yes, pretty far,” he said. He searched out a second cigarette. For the time being, I watched the passing storefronts.

“I had a hell of a time finding it,” he said. “First, I went right through my list of insiders. Twenty of them, twenty fanatics. And not just in Tokyo, but nationwide. But I came up with exactly zero. Nobody knew any more than I did. Next, I tried some companies who deal in used machines. Not too many of them. But it was a lot of work going over the lists of all the machines they’ve handled. The numbers are overwhelming.”

I nodded, as I watched him light his cigarette.

“Thank goodness I had an idea of a time frame. Around February 1971, that is. So I had them look it up. Gilbert & Sands, ‘Spaceship,’ Serial No. 16509. There it was: February 3, 1971, Waste Treatment.”

“’Waste Treatment’?”

“Scrap. Like in Goldfinger, you know, the way they crush things down to a compact block to be recycled or dumped in the harbor?”

“But you said…”

“Hold on and just listen. I gave up, thanked the dealer, and headed home. But, you know, something bothered me deep down. Call it a hunch. No, not even that. The next day, I went back to the dealer. Then I went to the metal scrapyard. I watched them working for maybe thirty minutes, then went into the office and presented my card. A university lecturer’s calling card carries some weight for people who don’t have any idea what it really means.”

He spoke a tiny bit faster than he had the time before. And for some reason, I felt a little ill at ease.

“Then I told them I was writing a book, and I needed to know about the scrap business.

“The guy was very cooperative, but he didn’t know a thing about any February 1971 pinball machine. Naturally not. That was two and a half years ago, after all, and besides, they don’t check each thing out one by one. It’s just haul ‘em in, and-crunch-it’s-all-over. So I just asked one more thing. Suppose there was, say, a washing machine or a bike chassis that I wanted. Would you let it go if the price were right?’ Sure thing, he told me. And I asked, has it ever happened?”

The autumn dusk drew to a swift close, and darkness began to overtake the road. The taxi was heading into the outlying suburbs.

“If I wanted particulars, I should go ask the supervisor upstairs. So of course, I went upstairs and asked Like, had anyone taken any pinball machines off their hands around 1971? Yes, he said. And when I asked what sort of person that might have been, he gave me a telephone number. It seems they’d been requested to give a call any time a pinball machine came in. It was some kind of lead. So I asked him, about how many pinball machines had this person taken off their hands?

“Well now, he said, there were ones the client’d take on sight, and others not. Couldn’t really say, this guy. But when I asked him for just a rough estimate, he told me not less than fifty machines.”

“Fifty machines?” I exploded.

“That’s the person we are going to visit,” he said.



21



Everything was immersed in darkness. Not just a monotone black, but smeared on butter-thick in paints of all colors.

I kept my face glued to the taxi window looking at that darkness. It looked strangely flat, like the cut surface of some unreal material sliced off with a razor-sharp blade. A queer kind of perspective prevailed in that darkness. A gigantic night bird had spread its wings to sweep right past my eyes. The further we went, the more spread out were the patches of dwellings, until finally we found ourselves amidst fields and woods that resounded with hosts of chirping insects. The low-lying clouds were as still as rocks, and out in the darkness everything hung its head in silence. Only the sound of the insects that swarmed over the ground could be heard.

Not another word passed between the Spanish lecturer and myself, and we took turns smoking cigarettes. Even the taxi driver had a smoke while he squinted at the oncoming headlights. Unconsciously, I tapped my fingers on my lap. The taxi kept up its momentum, on and on, so long that from time to time I just wanted to push open the door and escape.

Switch-panels, sandboxes, golf courses, reservoirs, darned sweaters, and now pinball: how far did I have to take things? At this rate, I was going to wind up holding a hand of odd cards that would never add up. More than anything, I just wanted to go home. Take a quick bath, have a beer, and sink into my warm bed with my cigarettes and Kant.

Why did I have to be racing on and on through the dark? Fifty pinball machines was too ridiculous. Must be dreaming. And a pretty farfetched dream at that.

Yet the three-flipper “Spaceship” still called to me.



* * *



The Spanish lecturer told the driver to stop in the middle of an open space five hundred yards off the road. The lot was flat, spread out like a sand-bank with knobs of soft grass. I got out of the car, stretched, and took a deep breath. By the smell, there were chicken farms nearby. Not a houselight as far as you could see. The lights of the road hovered a ways off. The sound of countless insects hemmed us in. I felt as if I were going to be dragged off by my feet somewhere.

We kept quiet until our eyes grew accustomed to the dark.

“Is this still Tokyo?” I asked.

“Of course. Where did you think we were?”

“At the edge of the world.”

The Spanish lecturer nodded with an anything-you-say sort of expression, but didn’t speak. We smoked our cigarettes, taking in the smell of the grass and chicken shit. Our smoke drifted low across the ground like fox fire.

“Over there you’ll find a chicken-wire fence.” He pointed into the darkness, arm held straight out target-practice style. I strained my eyes for a sign of the wire fence.

“You walk straight along the fence for three hundred yards until you come to a warehouse.”

“A warehouse?”

He nodded without looking in my direction. “A big warehouse, you can’t miss it. It used to be the cold storage for a chicken farm. But it’s no longer used. The chicken farm went under.”

“But it still smells like chickens,” I said.

“Oh, the smell? It’s soaked into the ground. It’s even worse on a rainy day. You’d expect to hear wings flapping.”

I couldn’t make out anything at the end of the fence. Only a consuming darkness. Even the sound of the insects was starting to get to me.

“The doors to the warehouse should be open. The owner will have left them ajar. Inside you’ll find the machine you’re after.”

“You’ve been inside?”

“Only once I asked to look inside,” he said, puffing away at his cigarette. A point of glowing orange bobbed in the dark. “The light switch is just inside the doors on your right as you enter. Watch out for the steps.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“Please go alone. It was part of the agreement.”

“Agreement?”

He tossed his cigarette down on the grass and carefully stamped it out. “That’s right. You were invited to take as long as you like. Only you should please turn our the lights when you leave.”

The air was gradually turning chill. The cool of the grass was coming up all around us.

“Did you meet the owner?”

“I did.”

“What sort of character is he?”

The instructor shrugged, took a handkerchief out of his pocket, and blew his nose. “No outstanding characteristics to speak of. At least nothing striking.”

“And the reason for collecting fifty pinball machines?”

“Well, it takes all kinds. What more can I say?”

There had to be more to it than that. Nonetheless, I thanked him and set out to walk alone along the fence of the chicken farm. There had to be more to it. There’s a slight difference between collecting fifty wine labels and collecting fifty pinball machines.



The warehouse crouched like a waiting animal.

There it stood in the densely packed undergrowth of tall grass, a featureless blank gray wall with not a single window. A gloomy edifice. Over the iron doors, a name, probably of the chicken farm, had been obscured by daubs of white paint.

I cased the building from ten paces away. No matter how hard I thought, nothing particularly brilliant came to mind. I gave up the attempt, and just walked in with a push on the chilly iron doors.

They opened without a sound, revealing before me a different breed of darkness.



22



I flicked the switch, and after a few seconds the overhead fluorescent lamps blinked on, flooding the warehouse with white light. There must have been all of a hundred fluorescent lamps. The warehouse was much bigger than it had appeared from the outside, but even so the amount of light was oppressive. I shut my eyes against the glare. A minute later when I opened them again, the darkness had retreated, only the silence and chill remained.

The warehouse looked like the inside of a huge refrigerator, but considering its original purpose, that should hardly have come as a surprise. The ceiling and windowless walls had been painted gloss white, but were all stained yellow and black and colors. I couldn’t relate to anything. One look told you the walls were built thick and solid. Like being packed in a lead box. Suddenly, claimed by the fear that I might never get out of there, I turned around to check and recheck the doors. It’d be hard to imagine a more disturbing structure.

The kindest thing you could have said about the place was that it was reminiscent of an elephants’ graveyard. But instead of the whitened skeletons of elephants with legs collapsed under them, the concrete floor was covered as far as the eye could see with rows of pinball machines. I stood at the top of some steps, staring down on this strange scene. My hand crawled up to my mouth of its own will, then returned to my pocket.

The sheer number of machines was overwhelming. Seventy-eight to be exact. I took the time to count them over and over again. Seventy-eight, no mistake. Eight columns of machines were lined up and facing me, each column extending all the way to the back wall. It was as if chalk guidelines had been drawn on the floor; the columns were not an inch off. The whole place was as motionless as a fly sealed in acrylic. Not the slightest hint of movement. Seventy-eight deaths and seventy-eight silences. My only reflex was to move. If I didn’t, I felt as if I too would have been counted in with these gargoyles.

Cold. That and the smell of dead chickens.

I slowly walked down the five narrow concrete steps. It was even colder at the bottom. The place gave me the creeps and I began to sweat. I took a handkerchief out of my pocket and wiped off the sweat, though I couldn’t do a thing about the sweat that had poured from my armpits. I sat down on the bottom step and smoked a cigarette, my hands trembling.

My three-flipper “Spaceship” –I hadn’t wanted to meet her like this. And the same held for her probably.

After closing the doors, you couldn’t even hear any insects chirping. The perfect silence blanketed the floor like fog. The seventy-eight pinball machines planted their three hundred twelve legs firmly on the floor, patiently bearing up their immovable weight. A sorry scene.

I sat there and whistled the first four bars of “Jumping with Symphony Sid,” Stan Getz with the Head Shaking and Foot Tapping Rhythm Section.

My whistling echoed magnificently in the unobstructed emptiness of that refrigerator. I began to feel a little better, and whistled the next four bars. Then the next four. I felt as if every machine had its ears pricked to listen. Though, of course, none turned around to look, nor tapped a foot. My whistling simply died away, absorbed into the far corners of the warehouse.

“Awful cold,” I muttered after having finished my whistling session. The echo didn’t sound like my voice. It bounced off the ceiling and came down like mist across the floor. I couldn’t sit here putting on a one-man show forever. Sitting motionless, I felt as if the chill would penetrate to the bone, and I would be soaked through and through with the smell of chickens. I stood up and brushed the cool dirt off my trousers. Then I ground out my cigarette beneath the heel of my shoe, and tossed it into a nearby tin can.

Pinball, pinball. Isn’t that why I came here?

The cold was putting a damper on me. Think: It’s pinball, right? Seventy-eight pinball machines. Okay, the switch. Somewhere in this building there’s got to be an electric switch to bring these seventy-eight machines back to life. A switch, so find it.

I thrust both hands in the pockets of my jeans, and slowly began to walk the inside perimeters of the building. Here and there on the seamless walls hung ripped-out wires and lead pipes from the time when the building had been used for cold storage. Meters and junction boxes and switches had all been gouged out of the walls by brute force, leaving crater-sized holes. The walls were much slimier than they appeared at a distance. Like a giant slug had crawled all over them. It was a monster of a building when you actually started walking around the place. Unbelievably large for one chicken farm’s refrigerated warehouse.

Directly opposite the steps I had come down was another set of steps. And at the top of those steps, identical iron doors. So identical that I thought for a moment that I’d done one complete lap around the building. I pushed on the doors tentatively, but they didn’t budge a hair. No bolts or locks, yet they betrayed not the slightest sign of motion. It was as if they were painted shut. I withdrew my hand from the door, and without thinking about it, wiped the sweat from my brow. The smell of chickens.

The switch was beside the doors. A big old throw-switch. I threw the switch and all at once the whole floor started to rumble. The sound sent a shiver up my spine. Next, there followed an outrageous fluttering like tens of thousands of birds flapping their wings. I turned around and looked out over the refrigerated warehouse. It was the sound of seventy-eight pinball machines drinking in electricity, their scoreboards clicking down the thousands to zero. After the commotion settled down, only a piercing electric hum like a swarm of bees lingered on. In no time at all, that warehouse full of seventy-eight pinball machines had come to life. The playing field of each and every machine flashed with bright colored lights, the boards all bursting with their respective dream images.

I walked down the steps, and slowly paced the aisles between the seventy-eight pinball machines, a general reviewing his troops. A number were vintage machines I’d only seen in photographs, a number were models familiar to me from the game center. Then there were machines that time had forgotten, the likes of which I’d never seen. What was the name of that astronaut, painted on the board of this Williams’ “Friendship 7”? ‘Glenn’? Early sixties. A Bally “Grand Tour” with its blue sky, Eiffel Tower, happy American traveler. “Kings and Queens,” a model with eight roll-over lanes. A beautifully mustached, crewcut, nonchalant-looking Western gambler, with an ace hidden behind his spur.

Super heroes, monsters, college girls, football, rockets, and women–all worn-out and faded dreams that had done their time in game centers.

These heroes and women smiled at me from their boards. Blondes, platinum blondes, brunettes, red-heads, raven-tressed Mexican girls, Ann-Margaret, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe–every one of them pridefully heaving an awesome pair of breasts. Some from underneath sheer blouses unbuttoned to the waist, some from under one-piece bathing suits, some from beneath the pointy tips of brassieres, breasts never losing their shape, but faded all the same. Their lamps kept flashing in time with their heartbeats. Seventy-eight pinball machines, a graveyard of old, old dreams beyond recall. I threaded my way past these old girls.

The three-flipper “Spaceship” waited for me at the far end of the row. She was lined up between more gaudily made-up numbers, looking awfully demure. Like she’d been sitting on a flat stone in a clearing in the forest, just waiting for me. I stood there in front of her looking at the familiar board.

Deep blue space, a spilled-ink ultramarine. And in it, tiny white stars: Saturn, Venus, Mars, while in front floated a pure white spaceship. The portals of the spaceship were lit up, and inside a family gathering appeared to be in progress. A few shooting stars trailed glowing lines through the darkness.

The field was just as I remembered. The same dark blue. The targets smiled bright white toothy grins. Ten raised star-shaped bonus lights slowly pulsed with a lemon yellow glow. The two kick-out holes were Saturn and Venus, and the lotto target, Mars. Stillness permeated everything.

So how’s tricks, I said. Or maybe I didn’t say it. But in any case, I laid my hand on the glass top.

Cold as ice, it clouded over from the heat of my hand, leaving the white outline of ten fingers. Only then did she recognize me and smile up in my direction. It was a smile just like old times. I smiled, too.

It seems so long, she said. I feigned a preoccupied look, and flexed my fingers. Three years it’d been.

Like no time at all.

We nodded to each other, then fell into a hush. If it had been a coffee shop, we’d have sipped our coffee and fingered the lace curtains.

Been thinking about you, I said, and I’ve been feeling just miserable.

Sleepless nights?

Sleepless nights, I concurred. She never stopped smiling at me the whole while.

You’re not cold? I asked.

Sure I’m cold, awful cold. You really shouldn’t stay too long; then I just know it’s too cold for you.

Probably so, I answered. My fingers trembled slightly as I pulled out a cigarette. I lit up and breathed in the smoke.

You’re not going to play a game? she asked.

Nope, I answered.

Why not?

One hundred and sixty-five thousand, my best score. You remember?

I remember. It was my best score, too.

I don’t want to tarnish it, I said.

She was silent. Only the ten bonus lights kept pulsing on and off. I looked down at my feet while I smoked.

Why did you come here?

You called me.

I did? She was puzzled, then smiled shyly. Yes, I guess that’s true. Maybe I did call you.

I looked all over for you.

Thanks, she said. Talk to me.

You know, a lot of things have changed, I said. Your old game center is now an all-night doughnut shop. They serve the worst coffee.

That bad?

You remember a long time ago, in those Disney animal films, the zebras would be dying of thirst and they’d come upon this muddy warerhole? It’s that color.

She giggled, a beautiful little laugh. What a horrible town, she said, in her normal voice Everything’s so crude, filthy.

Them’s the times.

She nodded. So tell me, what you been up to?

Doing translation work.

Novels?

Nah, I said, your day-to-day sludge. Pouring it from one gutter into another. That’s all.

You don’t enjoy your work?

Hmm, never thought about it.

And girls?

You probably won’t believe me, but I’m living with twins now. They make great coffee.

She burst into a big smile, and looked off into space. It’s all so strange. It’s like nothing ever really happened.

No, it really happened, only it’s gone.

Taking it hard?

Nah, I shook my head, things that come out of nowhere go back to nowhere, that’s all.

We fell silent again. The thing we had shared was nothing more than a fragment of time that had died long ago. Even so, a faint glimmer of that warm memory still claimed a part of my heart. And when death claimed me, no doubt I would walk along by that faint light in the brief instant before being flung once again into the abyss of nothingness.

You’d better be going, she said.

The chill was getting unbearable, to be sure. I shook all over as I stomped out my cigarette.

Thanks for coming to see me, she said. We may not meet again, but take care.

Thanks, I said, farewell.

I left the ranks of pinball machines, climbed the steps, and threw the switch. The electricity went out of all the pinball machines like air out of a balloon, and a sleep of perfect silence fell over the place. I walked back across the warehouse, climbed the steps, switched off the lights, and shut the doors behind me. I didn’t look back once the whole time. Not once did I look back.

* * *



It was a little before midnight when the taxi delivered me to my apartment. The twins were sitting in bed finishing up a crossword puzzle in a magazine. I looked pale, and my entire body gave off the smell of frozen chicken. I stuffed all the clothes I’d been wearing into the washing machine, and soaked in a hot bath. It took thirty minutes in the hot water before I was back to ordinary human consciousness, but I still hadn’t completely gotten rid of the chill deep inside.

The twins dragged a gas heater out of the closet and lit it. After fifteen minutes I stopped shaking, took a deep breath, and heated up a can of onion soup.

“I’m all right now,” I said.

“Really?”

“You still feel cold,” worried one twin, feeling my wrist.

“I’ll warm up quick.”

Then I sank into bed, filled in the last two items in the crossword puzzle. One was “rainbow trout,” the other “trail.” My body soon warmed up, and we fell into a deep sleep pretty much together.

I dreamed about Trotsky’s four reindeer. All four reindeer were wearing red wool socks. It was an awfully cold dream.



23



The Rat no longer saw the woman. He gave up looking at the lights of her room, too. Something in his being drifted a while in the dark, then vanished, like the coil of white smoke that rises from a candle when it’s blown out. Then came a dark silence.

Silence. Peeling away layer by layer until what remained? Even the Rat didn’t know. Pride? He lay on his bed looking from one hand to the other. A person probably couldn’t live without pride. But living by pride alone, the prospects were too dark.

Way too dark.



Breaking up with the woman was simple. One Friday night he just didn’t call her up. And that was that. She might have waited until midnight for his call. Thinking about this made it harder for him.

He felt his hand reaching for the telephone any number of times, but he controlled the urge. He put on headphones, and listened to records with the volume turned up. He knew she wouldn’t call, but all the same he found himself wishing the phone would ring.

She waited until twelve, then probably gave up.

She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and crawled into bed. And thought, he’s going to call tomorrow morning, for sure. Then she turned out the light, and slept.

But Saturday morning, the phone does not ring.

She opens the windows, eats breakfast, waters the potted plants. She waits until noon, then gives up once and for all. Brushing her hair in front of the mirror, she strikes a smile now and again, as if in practice. Then she thinks to herself that she knew this was going to happen.

All this time the Rat spent in his apartment with the blinds drawn tight, watching the hands of an electric clock on the wall. The air in the room was unbelievably still. A shallow sleep overcame him now and again. The hands on the clock ceased to mean anything. Everything drifted back and forth between different shades of darkness. The Rat saw his own body lose its physical presence, grow heavier, then become numb. How many hours, how many goddamn hours have I been sitting here like this, the Rat wondered. With every breath, the wall slowly pulsed before his very eyes. Space took on a density that began to permeate his body.

He had reached the point where he figured he couldn’t hold out any longer. He stood up, took a shower, and shaved in a daze. He toweled dry, and drank some orange juice from the refrigerator. He changed into a new pair of pajamas, and climbed back into bed, thinking, that’s over and done.

Then a deep sleep came over him. An awfully deep sleep.



24



“I’m leaving town,” the Rat announced. He was trimming his nails into an ashtray with a nail-clipper he’d borrowed from J.

Six o’clock in the evening, the bar had just opened. The counter was freshly waxed, not a single cigarette butt in any ashtray on the premises.

The liquor bottles were polished and lined up with their labels facing out, small tabletop trays decked out with brand-new paper napkins folded to a sharp point, bottles of tabasco sauce, and salt shakers. J was mixing up three kinds of dressing in little bowls, and a faint garlic odor drifted through the room. A brief moment in the routine of setting up for the night.

“Leaving where to?”

“Dunno. Some town, someplace. Not too big, probably.”

J poured the dressings into three large flasks through a funnel. He put them in the refrigerator and dried his hands on a towel.

“What you going to do there?”

“Work.” The Rat kept glancing down at the nails of his right hand while he finished the trim-job.

“Can’t do that in this town?”

“Nope,” the Rat said. “I could do with a beer, though.”

“It’s on me.”

“Much obliged.”

The Rat slowly poured the beer into a glass that had been chilling on ice, then drank half of it in one gulp. “Aren’t you going to ask me why this town won’t do?”

“No, I kinda think I know.”

The Rat smiled, then clicked his tongue. “Nice try, J, but really, if everybody went around understanding each other without asking questions or speaking their mind, they’d never get anywhere. Not that I really ought to be saying this, but it seems like I’ve stayed too long in that state already.”

“Maybe so,” said J, after a moment’s thought.

The Rat took another sip of beer, then began to trim the nails of his left hand. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. And you know, maybe it’s all the same, no matter where I end up going. Still, I gotta go. All the same’s good enough.”

“You’re not coming back then?”

“Of course I’ll be back. Sometime. It’s not like I’m running away.”

The Rat scooped some peanuts from a small dish, tossing their wrinkled shells into an ashtray as he ate. He wiped off the hinged section of counter top where the beer’s chill had left a clouded ring on the brightly waxed surface.

“When are you thinking about making your move?”

“Tomorrow, the next day. Don’t know. Probably within three days, though.”

“Mighty quick decision.”

“Uh-huh. Given you plenty of trouble in my time, I figure.”

“Been through plenty together, haven’t we? J nodded, wiping down the row of glasses on the shelf with a dry cloth. “But when it’s all over, it’ll seem like a dream.”

“Could be, but I bet it’ll take an extra long time before I get to that point.”

J was silent a bit, then he laughed.

“Maybe so. You know, sometimes I plum forget there’s twenty years’ difference between us.”

The Rat emptied the rest of the beer into his glass, and drank it slowly. The first time ever he’d drunk beer so slowly.

“What say to another beer?”

The Rat shook his head. “Nah, that’s okay. I meant this to be my last. The last beer I drink here, that is.”

“You’re not coming back then?”

“Don’t intend to. It’d be too hard on me.”

J laughed. “I hope our paths cross again sometime.”

“Bet you the next time our paths cross you don’t recognize me on sight.”

“I’ll catch the scent.”

The Rat gave his neatly trimmed fingers on both hands the once-over, swept the remaining peanuts into his pocket, wiped his mouth with a paper napkin, then stood up to leave.



* * *



The breeze glided noiselessly over the face of the dark, slipping down unseen, stratum by stratum. It tussled the treetops overhead, periodically shaking down a shower of leaves which fell on top of the car with a dry rustle, danced aimlessly about the roof, and slid down the slanting windshield, before piling up on the wipers.

All alone in the woods of the cemetery, the Rat sat blankly staring through the windshield. A yard in front of his car, the ground dropped away into an expanse of dark skies and sea and night streets.

The Rat leaned forward with both hands on the steering wheel, and was perfectly still, his gaze fixed on a point in the heavens. He held an unlit cigarette between his fingers, tracing a series of complex though meaningless designs in the air with its tip.

As soon as he’d finished talking to J, he was overcome by an unbearably vacuous feeling. Diverse streams of consciousness he’d barely managed to assemble into one self seemed to have suddenly gone their separate ways. The Rat had no idea how long it would take before these streams merged again. They all seemed like dark rivulets destined to flow into a vast ocean. They might not even meet up again. Twenty-five years just to come to this, and for what? the Rat asked himself. Don’t know.

Good question, but no answer. Good questions never have answers.

The breeze began to pick up. Whatever bit of warmth arose from the human world, the breeze carried it off to some distant place, leaving those countless stars to shine in icy darkness. The Rat released the wheel, and rolled the cigarette around between his lips until it occurred to him to put his lighter to it.

His head ached a little. Not an ache exactly, but a strange sensation more like cold fingertips pressing on both temples. The Rat shook his head, casting off these things he’d been thinking. It was all done with, at least.

He took a book of nationwide roadmaps out of the glove compartment, and slowly turned the pages. He began to read out the listing of towns in order. Most were small towns whose names were new to his ears. Towns strung out along the roads to who knows where. He’d read several pages when a massive sense of fatigue, built up over the last few days, broke over him like a wave. He felt a lukewarm sludge slowly circulating through his veins.

He wanted to sleep.

He felt as if sleep would wipe everything clean.

He had only to sleep.

When he closed his eyes, deep behind his ears he could hear the sound of waves. Wintry waves striking the jetty, threading between the concrete blocks along the shore.

Nothing to explain to anyone any more, thought the Rat. No doubt the bottom of the sea is warmer, more peaceful and quiet than any town. No, why think of anything now, already.



25



The hum of pinball had all but vanished from my life. As had the feeling that I had no place to go.

Not that I’ve gotten to the big climax, like King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. That was still far in the future. When the steeds were tired, the swords bent, and armor all rusted by time, I would lay myself down in a field of grass to peacefully listen to the wind. It will be all the same to me the bottom of a reservoir or a refrigerated warehouse on a chicken farm, I’ll take whatever route I have to.

The only thing I can claim as an epilogue to this interlude in my life is an incident hardly more momentous than a clothesline in the rain.

It’s this:

One day, the twins bought a box of cotton swabs. Three hundred swabs to the box, it was. So whenever I finished taking a bath, the twins would sit one on each side of me and simultaneously clean both my ears. The two of them were positively great at cleaning ears. I’d just shut my eyes, and sip beer while listening to the sound of two cotton swabs swishing around in my ears. One night, however, in the midst of the ear-cleaning proceedings I happened to sneeze, and in that instant, I lost almost all hearing in both ears.

“Can you hear my voice?” asked the one on the right.

“Just barely,” I said, my own voice seeming to emanate from somewhere inside my nose.

“How about this side?” asked the one on the left.

“The same.”

“You just had to sneeze then, didn’t you?”

“Of all the stupid things.”

I sighed. I felt as if I were being lectured by the two corner bowling pins of a seven-ten split.

“Do you think drinking some water might clear it up?” asked one of them.

“Come off it,” I shouted angrily.

Even so, the twins made me drink a whole bucketful of water. All it did was make my stomach feel as if it were going to burst. My ears didn’t hurt, so apparently what had happened was that sneezing had driven earwax way back into my ears. I couldn’t think of what else it could be. I pulled two flashlights out of the closet and had the twins take a look. They shone them deep into my ears, and peered for several minutes as if they were looking for cracks where the wind might get through.

“Can’t see anything.”

“Not a speck.”

“Well, then, why can’t I hear?” I shouted again.

“Expiration date’s up.”

“You’ve gone deaf.”

Without asking them anything further, I checked the telephone directory and rang up the nearest ear, nose, and throat clinic. It was next to impossible to hear anything over the phone, although maybe that made the nurse more sympathetic. If I could come right away, she said, she’d leave the front door open. We quickly climbed into some clothes, left the apartment, and walked along the bus route.

The doctor was a woman of about fifty, hair like frayed iron wire, but pleasant enough. She opened the door of the waiting room and clapped her hands to quiet down the twins, then seated me in a chair and asked me without much interest what was wrong with me.

When I finished my explanation, she said that I didn’t have to shout any more because she already understood the problem. She took out an enormous needle-less syringe, sucked up a full charge of an amber liquid, and gave me a tin contraption shaped like a megaphone to hold under my ear. She put the syringe in my ear and the amber liquid came rushing into my ear like a herd of zebras, the overflow spilling into the megaphone. After repeating the process three times, she coaxed a thin cotton swab into the depths of my ear. By the time both ears were done, my hearing had returned to normal.

“I can hear,” I marveled.

“Earwax,” she said succinctly. It sounded like the tail-end of a round of password.

“But I didn’t see a thing.”

“It’s bent.”

“Huh?”

“Your ear passage is much more curved than most.”

She sketched the inside of my ear on the back of a matchbook. In diagram, it looked like one of those brackets for reinforcing table corners.

“So you see, if a plug of wax rounds the bend, it’s beyond recall.”

I cleared my throat. “What should I do then?”

“What should you do? Just take care when you clean your ears. C-A-R-E.”

“This having abnormally curved ear passages and all, could it have adverse effects on anything?”

“Adverse effects?”

“For example mentally?”

“None,” she said.



We took a fifteen-minute detour through the golf course on the way back to the apartment. The dogleg on the eleventh hole reminded me of the insides of my ear, the flag, a cotton swab. And that’s not all: clouds ranged across the moon like a squadron of B-52s, dense woods held down the terrain to the west like a fish-shaped paperweight, stars spilled out across the sky like moldy parsley flakes; but enough. My ears were keen in picking out every sound there was to hear I felt as if a veil had been lifted from the world. Miles away night birds were calling, miles away people were shutting windows, miles away lovers whispered sweet nothings.

“Glad that worked out,” said one twin.

“Real glad,” said the other.



* * *



It’s like Tennessee Williams said. The past and the present, we might say, “go like this.” The future is a “maybe.”

Yet when we look back on the darkness that obscures the path that brought us this far, we only come up with another indefinite “maybe.” The only thing we perceive with any clarity is the present moment, and even that just passes by.

That’s pretty much what I was thinking as I accompanied the twins to see them off. We cut across the golf course to the bus stop two stops ahead of ours. I kept silent the whole time Seven o’clock Sunday morning, the sky a piercing blue. The turf underfoot showed a hint of the temporary death that awaited it until spring. Here, in time, would come the frosts and blankets of snow. Then would gleam a crystal clear morning light. We walked on, the sere bleached turf crunching beneath our feet with each step.

“What are you thinking about?” asked one of the twins.

“Nothing,” I said.

The twins wore the sweaters I’d given them, and carried their own sweatshirts as their only change of clothes under their arms in paper bags.

“Where you heading?” I asked.

“Back to where we came from.”

We crossed the sand trap, crossed the straight eighth-hole fairway, walked down the outdoor escalator. An impressive number of birds watched us from the grass and the chainlink fence.

“I don’t really know how to put it,” I said, “but I’m going to be really lonesome without you.”

“Us too.”

“We’ll be lonesome.”

“But you’re set on leaving.”

The two of them nodded.

“You honestly have someplace to go?”

“Of course,” said one.

“We wouldn’t go if we didn’t,” said the other.

We climbed over the chainlink fence from the golf course, made our way through the woods, and sat down on the bus stop bench to wait for the bus.

That Sunday morning, the bus stop was amazingly still, bathed in soft sunlight. We played a few last rounds of password in that light. For five minutes, until the bus came. And I paid the fares.

“We’ll meet again somewhere,” I said.

“Let’s, somewhere,” said one.

“Yes, somewhere,” said the other.

The words echoed in my mind a moment.

The bus door banged shut, the twins waved from the window. Everything was repeating itself. I retraced my steps by the exact same route, and sat in the apartment awash with autumn light listening to the copy of Rubber Soul the twins had left me. I brewed coffee. And the whole day through I watched that Sunday pass by my window. A tranquil November Sunday of rare clarity shining through each and every thing.