Jen and I hopped off the bus, walked uphill a while, then found the motel. 

The place looked seedy and deserted, weather-worn.

“Seen better days,” Jen noted.

As had Kevin, who answered Jen’s knock, and Roy, in shadows behind Kevin, slumped on a bed. Until a couple of days ago, both had been working with Jen and me at a small resort a few miles away. Roy was the cook, Kevin a handyman. Nice guys and conscientious professionals, too. Until they weren’t.

The men had lasted about three weeks, during which time they battled against a wicked urge to drink excessive amounts of liquor. They fought valiantly, but ultimately, they crumbled. A maid found them in their room, incoherent and staggering. Amid piles of bottles and cans, each of which had been sucked dry.   

Having been fired, the men had holed up in this out-of-the-way dump. Jen and I were here to check up on them.  

“Joint probably hasn’t had a respectable guest in years,” Jen said, entering the room. I stepped in behind her, nodding amiably. Going from the summer sun into this dim, cave-like setting delivered a jolt, like diving into cold water.

“Jen, Mike,” Kevin said in greeting.

“Gosh,” Jen said, “what’ve you guys been up to?” She nodded toward a collection of empty containers, stacked in a four-foot-tall pyramid near the bathroom door.   

Roy and Kevin were former Navy seamen, some 15 years older than Jen and me, who were in our late teens. Kevin was stocky with a pinkish face, mustache, and receding hairline; Roy was slimmer with a full head of brown hair.

Both men visibly brightened at Jen’s presence. Who wouldn’t have? But I knew they’d go no further. Kevin and Roy may have been drunks but they were gentlemen, which is more than I could say for most guys in our orbit that summer.

Jen had dark, glossy hair, ice-smooth skin, and a cheerful face. She had an unusually sunny disposition in the face of impropriety. Jen seemed to regard guys hitting on her as merely an indication of the friendly nature of people. Fortunately, she had a knack for deflecting the efforts of these louts without offending them.

Me, I hadn’t hit on her yet, afraid of the consequences. Whether she accepted and I had to follow through (which I had never tried with anyone), or she declined. Kindly as her rebuff might be, I figured I would still be woefully embarrassed. But I hung with Jen as often as I could, her presence a thrill beyond any other.  

The room had two beds; Kevin sat heavily on the empty one. A six-pack of Pabst was on a nightstand between them. The room reeked of cigarettes, though Jen and I did not mind; we smoked, too. 

“What else can we do?” Kevin said. He tore a beer from the pack, which seemed to further revive him. “We need our paychecks to get out of here, and they are not ready. As you know. So, we wait.”

“If those morons pay you,” I said with conviction. Of course, Jen and I sided with the men, authentic working-class heroes that college kids like us could champion.

“Oh, they’ll pay,” said Roy, who had a surprisingly soft, deep voice. “Not to worry.”

“They tell you that on your way out?” I demanded.  

“It’s the way of the world,” Roy said gently. He shifted around, put his feet on the floor. You could smell a waft of beer come off him. “The way things are done.”

“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Trust the system.” He laughed and guzzled Pabst.    

“Huh,” I said. I had decided, with teenaged zeal, never to trust the system. Jen and I exchanged significant looks. Her eyes, large and wide-set, held the fire of a true believer; they damn near knocked me backward.  

We hung around for a while, drinking beer and smoking. The men sitting on their beds, Jen and I leaning against a wall. We watched TV. Onscreen, there was the prelude to a movie; a buff, shirtless man banged a large gong.

“Ah,” Kevin said. “A British job.”

It struck me as a learned comment. I wondered if alcoholics knew their movies because they had so much down-time. At work, Kevin had once surprised me after I mentioned I was reading In Cold Blood. I’d expected a manly talk around blood-and-guts-murder. Instead, he told me he had enjoyed Other Voices, Other Rooms, another Capote book. I guess alcoholics had time to read, too.

The movie was, indeed, a British job—A Night to Remember, about the sinking of the Titanic. “Like our careers,” Roy drawled, and we all laughed heartily.                                                 

Before the movie was half over, we decided to go bowling. There were lanes near the resort, so we hiked down the road to catch the bus. We must have been a sight, blitzed and staggering down the road, attempting to maintain single file. Two older men in t-shirts and jeans, swaying as if in a stiff wind, gripping beer cans. Jen and me in shorts, too drunk to even consider holding a beer, stumbling just slightly less.

After the bus let us off, we still had a half-mile to walk. The sun was blinding. We finally entered the air-conditioned bowling alley looking like we had just hiked the Mohave Desert.   

Though it was mid-afternoon, a few lanes were already in use, and the echoing thunder of balls demolishing pins seemed to shake the earth. 

“Damn, I wish these people would keep it down,” Kevin said, like he had a migraine.  

“Um, it comes with the territory,” Jen said. “Bowling, you know.”

We sat to replace our shoes with ones the alley supplied, which proved surprisingly difficult. Long-legged Jen stared quizzically at her right foot, upon which she had forced her left bowling shoe. When I (half) jokingly offered to help, she emitted a booming laugh that left me a little miffed. Roy misplaced a shoe, mumbled about how goddamn filthy the shoes probably were, with everyone and his mother putting them on, bowling, then taking them off. He wondered if you could get “a communicative disease” through them.

“Wait’ll you have to choose a damn ball,” I said. “You wanna worry about germs.”

“I’m sure they clean them thoroughly,” Kevin said. His face screwed up as he appeared to re-consider. “Well, maybe.”

After a few more minutes, Jen beckoned me. I stood then she led me to the area where those damn balls awaited.

Most balls on the racks were black; a few had other, brighter colors. Jen and I dug fingers into the holes of several, then lifted and tested their weight. After finding a cobalt-blue ten-pounder I liked, I began to showboat, tossing the ball back and forth between my hands. “This one appears to fit the bill,” I said.

It rolled off my palm, fell and crashed to the floor. I retrieved it with haste, glanced around. Only Jen had noticed.

“Appears to fit the bill, hey?” She pretended she was going to throw her ball at me and I ran off, both of us red-faced, laughing.

As we began bowling, I couldn’t miss. I had no idea what was happening, except it was great. I’d bowled a fair amount in my life, but I was average. I’d scored in the 150s a few times, but usually didn’t come near that. Like most recreational bowlers I was happy if I hit 100.       

But that afternoon, I felt all-powerful, like I could knock the pins over with a wave of my hand. Even with a barrel-full of beer in my gut, I mostly rolled strikes. I peered down the alley at the wavy-looking pins, stepped up, rolled the ball, then magical things happened. I was hardly conscious of effort, just an elevating, positive sensation that glowed like a warm light inside me.  

“Jesus Goddamn Christ, what hijacked your body?” Kevin asked after I had picked up a difficult 4-6-10 spare.

For that shot, all I’d done was aim vaguely at the pin furthest to my left. The ball hit just where it needed to—the outer left edge of the pin so that it slid over and knocked down the other two. It was like a dream.

“And wipe that goddamn grin off your face,” Kevin added, as I walked back to my seat.

He and Roy had continued drinking, steadily draining plastic cups of beer from the bar. Both rolled plenty of gutter balls, hooting with laughter and not giving a damn. I wondered how much beer those guys would need to reach the gonzo condition that had cost them their jobs. As far as I could tell, they had a ways to go. While obviously inebriated, they had their bearings still, walking upright and speaking with some coherence.

Jen and I had slowed down, each nursing one beer during the game. Jen moved well, was coordinated and athletic. She rolled a few strikes herself. She also used plenty of energy reacting to my performance. Jen’s toothy grin, which put fizz in her eyes, alternated with exaggerated looks of shock each time I rolled a successful frame. As she engaged with me, my sense of dreamy confidence rose.

I ended up scoring 263, more than 100 points above my previous high.

As we were finishing the game, one of our co-workers at the resort approached our group. His name was Harrison, another college kid who worked in the kitchen with me. He seemed an okay guy, if at times a little rowdy.  

With his apple cheeks, thick hair, and burley build, Harrison seemed the type girls would go for. I eyed him warily as he approached Jen.

“Holy shit, Roy and Kevin,” Harrison said, getting sidetracked. “What are you guys doing here?”

Roy sat, smoking a cigarette. “I’m kind of wondering that myself,” he said. “You see my score?”

Harrison laughed. “You getting your jobs back?”

Kevin was standing behind Roy. “Not likely,” he said. “Hey, you got something for us?”

As I stood a few yards away, next to Jen, I could see Harrison was hiding something behind his back.

“Not for you guys,” Harrison said, smiling. “Most definitely not for you.”

He walked toward Jen, looking directly at her and ignoring me. The jubilant high I had enjoyed was draining away. Jen’s welcoming face indicated she was either willing herself to be polite or was genuinely pleased.

Harrison revealed his hand with a circular flourish and a slight bow. He held a long-stemmed daisy, bright yellow at its core, surrounded by rays of white petals.

“I found it this morning in the park,” Harrison said to Jen. “It struck me as perfect. Just beautiful. When I saw you in here, I had to go back and grab it. No one deserves to have it more than you.” Then he hesitated, as if to show what a humble fellow he was. “I, uh, hope you don’t mind.”

The smooth-talking bastard, I thought. I was mortified at the clever way he was honing in. Using a different approach than most of the guys at the resort would try. And it was bullshit. From what I could tell about Harrison, he generally considered flowers as no more than a nuisance to be stomped on.

“I don’t mind at all,” said Jen, with a smile that looked sly. What that meant, I had no idea, but it couldn’t be good.

Jen took the daisy. Harrison stepped back and repeated his bow. “I’m glad,” he said. “I hope to see you later.”

He turned and walked off. I looked elsewhere, as if I wasn’t interested. I heard bowling pins getting demolished, people yelling in delight or disappointment. But it sounded far away. I heard Kevin exclaim: “Well, how about that?”

Jen approached me. She held up the daisy. There was no lightness in her eyes. I thought, for a second, she was going to chide me for not being as thoughtful and charming as Harrison.

She said, “What am I supposed to do with this?” She shook her head, looking weary.

I hadn’t an idea of how to respond. I suppose I didn’t have the imagination to recognize that Jen might react in a way other than the one Harrison was hoping for. I shrugged, then sat next to Roy. Jen followed, sat on my other side.

I smiled nervously at her, then stared ahead, watching balls roll into pins in adjoining lanes.  

“Well, I’m flat out bushed,” said Kevin. “Don’t think I could play another one.”

Roy grunted in agreement. I looked at the daisy, which Jen had laid on the scorer’s table. To my surprise, someone took my hand. It wasn’t Roy.

She gave it a warm squeeze. I froze, took a few moments to comprehend what was happening.

Balls continued to send pins twirling and ricocheting off each other. BOOM! CRASH! BOOM! People squealed, cursed. 

I was still afraid of consequences. I began to feel as hot as I had when we were outside. Jen’s fingers remained tangled with mine. My pulse raced and vibrated. Next thing I knew, Roy and Kevin stood before us.   

“You guys coming?” Kevin said.