Light of Falling Stars

by J. Robert Lennon

  “So are we going?” Paul said. His fingers wiggled at the ends of his bandages.

  She turned to him. “I guess we are.”

  * * *

  The house lights at the bowling alley were off and the walls glowed with sparkling, outer-space decor: a bolt of lightning, a ringed planet, a UFO foreshortened to indicate speed. A spinning mirror ball glimmered above the twelfth lane, casting dots of light over the bowlers, and the alley’s PA system blared an unintelligible rock song. Occasionally the sound of falling pins cut through the noise, and a scoring computer flashed a yellow X. People cheered almost unceasingly. Paul said something, but Lars couldn’t hear what it was.

  “What?”

  “I said, is it always like this?” He seemed less impressed than dismayed.

  “I’ve never seen it like this,” Lars shouted. “Usually it’s kind of less hip!”

  Christine leaned into him, and he could smell her tired, stale odor before he could hear. “This crap is vibrating my guts! I feel like running to the can!”

  They rented shoes from a short, curly-haired man with a handlebar mustache who seemed inexplicably irritated that they wanted to play. “You’re gonna wait for a lane!” the man screamed ominously.

  “What about that one?” Lars said. There was one empty lane near the far end of the alley.

  The man stood on his toes, squinting. In the shifting fluorescence, his shirt glowed red. “Yeah, okay, twenty-three,” he said, and punched a few keys on a computer. Then he turned and stalked off.

  They picked house balls from the rows of racks. Lars found one for himself and a couple for Christine, who hefted them tentatively, as if they were porcelain vases. “We can use these? They don’t belong to anybody?”

  “They’re the bowling alley’s.”

  “This one’s got a name on it.” She brought the ball a few inches closer to her face. “It says ‘Lanza.’”

  “People sell them. They trade in their old ones at the pro shop. It’s okay.”

  She stuck her fingers into the ball and frowned. “Gross. There’s gunk in there.” She took her fingers out and rubbed them together. “It’s like using somebody else’s toothbrush.”

  Lars was thinking: She’s got tubes sticking out of her arm, and they run her blood through a machine, and she thinks a bowling ball is gross. He grinned and patted her shoulder.

  “What?” she said.

  “Nothing.” She smiled back eventually, and they stood there with the light dragging across them, momentarily happy.

  Lars was entering their initials into the scoring computer when Paul showed up at their lane with a gigantic pitcher of frothing beer. “I got three glasses,” he said.

  “I can’t drink!” Christine yelled.

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “Pour me a glass,” Lars said, picking up his ball. “I’m gonna start bowling.”

  He stepped up to the markers, fitting his feet to the third and fourth, as he always did. He remembered starting this habit, completely arbitrarily, in high school. It made him look like he knew what he was doing, and when, after every awful game he played, he told his friends he was having an off night, they believed him. Now doing it felt wonderful, like returning home after a long and not particularly satisfying vacation. The pins appeared and disappeared in the shifting light, and he hefted the ball in his hands.

  He focused on the sweet spot between the first and third pins, where, if he curved the ball right, it would smack open the space and domino the other eight pins into each other, sending them crackling into the darkness at the back of the lane. The pins blinked in and out of view. He approached, raising his arm behind him like a catapult, then let it swing down, gathering momentum. He released the ball and it sped across the boards, then struck home with a hollow crash. The pins jumped. A strike. From behind him came cheering, and he turned to find Paul and Christine there, slumped in their chairs, Christine clapping and Paul stamping his feet. Not Megan.

  * * *

  Paul got drunk. Lars had maybe a glass and a half of beer, but the pitcher was drained before the second game was half over. He touched Paul on the arm when he got up to get another.

  “Hey, I don’t know if I want any more.”

  He gave an expansive wave of the hand. “Oh, sure you do.”

  “Well.”

  Paul waited, breathing with a noticeable and labored rhythm, like a dog watching a passing car. Finally he said, “Ah, don’t worry about it,” and jogged off to the bar.

  Christine was doing poorly but didn’t seem to mind. Lars tried to coach her on her form. “You have to shake hands with the ball.”

  “Shake hands?”

  “Like this,” he said. He leaned forward, his right leg rising into the air behind him, and swept out his hand toward the lane. “Hello, ball!”

  She mimicked his motions, switching the left for the right. “Hello ball,” she said.

  She was amazed at the ball return. “It comes back to you?” she said. “Automatically?” Lars was shocked that she’d never seen this, not even on television. She also didn’t know about the pinsetter or the scoring computer or, she confessed when she had gotten more comfortable with her surroundings, the bar. She was surprised you were allowed to drink while you bowled. “Doesn’t it seem dangerous?” she asked Lars. “With all these heavy objects?”

  Lars shrugged. “I’m from Wisconsin,” he told her. “Drinking and bowling are in my blood.”

  It had been Paul’s turn for a long time, and still he hadn’t returned. Lars turned and peered back at the bar. There was no line, and he didn’t see Paul either.

  “This is the most fun I’ve had since I came to Marshall,” she said.

  Lars was sitting next to her. “Oh, no problem.” And without thinking, he set his hand on her knee.

  He saw her, out of the corner of his eye, turn her head toward him, but he didn’t look up. He was looking at his hand, resting there on her jeans. Slowly he picked it up and put it on his lap. A few seconds passed, and she lifted her leg and crossed it over the other.

  “Lars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks for taking me here. I would never have bothered to go anywhere.”

  He still could not look up. What had he been thinking? He slumped farther into his seat. “Sure.”

  They sat in silence a few minutes more, the sounds of the bowling alley swelling around them. Christine cracked her knuckles. “Where’s Paul?”

  “I should go look for him.”

  “Why don’t you?” she said, and he got up and walked to the bar.

  Paul was at the back of the room, next to the keno machines, at a pay telephone. He had the pitcher in one hand and the receiver in the other, and was blubbering desperately into the latter. When he looked up and saw Lars, he tried to wipe his face with the pitcher arm. Beer sloshed onto the carpet. “I gotta go,” he said into the receiver. “Donworry. I gotta go. I gotta go.” He hung up, then wiped his face a second time, again with the pitcher arm.

  “Why don’t you let me take that?” Lars said. “It’s your turn.”

  “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay.” He handed over the pitcher. “I gotta.” he said. “I have to…I can’t go—” And he burst into fresh tears. “You got a place I can stay tonight?”

  “Oh, sure. No problem.”

  “You’re a real pal.”

  “Come on. Let’s go finish this game.”

  They finished off the game in palpably lower spirits. Lars didn’t hit any of his spares and Christine threw a lot of gutterballs. Paul stood before the lane, reeling slightly, his ball dangling from his fingertips. He took a very long time to release it. Once or twice he simply replaced the ball and sat down without having thrown it. They didn’t bother with a third game, and Paul insisted on paying for everyone. He leaned up against the counter and dropped his wallet. “Come on, hurry up,” the attendant told him.

  They had taken Paul’s car. Lars took the keys from him and drove, while Paul slept in the
backseat.

  “I’m sorry, Lars,” Christine said quietly, as they drove down Cedar Avenue. The river shimmered in the street light to the south, low and sluggish and unrippled.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “I’m just so used to…”

  “I don’t care. It’s…I like the idea that somebody would touch me like that. Just friendly.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  She was silent for a while. “I guess I am a little sad.” She slumped against the window. “I’m a sad sack, Cowgill.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’m so tired,” she said. “I want to wake up one morning and not be tired, you know what I mean?”

  “I guess I do.”

  She sighed, and picked up his right hand with hers and put it on her knee. He left it there.

  When they reached the Safeway, they could see Christine’s mother moving behind the window. He pulled up in the car and she opened the door. “Thanks, Cowgill,” she said. “That was the most fun I’ve had in ages.”

  “Me too,” he said.

  She looked out the windshield. “She’s going to kill me.”

  Lars shrugged. “She’ll get over it,” he said.

  She smiled at him. If this were different, he’d kiss her goodnight. But it wasn’t. “Okay,” she said suddenly, and stepped out of the car. The trailer door opened before she reached it, and her mother, a tiny, frizzy-haired woman, stood silhouetted by the kitchenette light. He could see the worry in her posture; her dress hung off her as if tossed onto a hook. Christine turned and waved one last time, and the door closed behind her.

  * * *

  Lars pulled onto Cedar and headed for home. He could smell Paul’s breath even in the front seat, and he rolled down the window to let some fresh air in. Paul moaned. “Too bumpy,” he said, referring, Lars supposed, to the road, but there was nothing to be done about that.

  He slowed to drive over the tracks, and followed them with his eyes over the old train bridge. Trains no longer ran over it—the tracks dead-ended north of here at the wall of the dairy—but teenagers still dared each other to cross it, and at his apartment on the other side of the river, Lars could often hear them calling to each other in the dark. He remembered looking through a book of old photos in the library, and finding a picture of the old rail station, now a hunting club, that stood on the far side of the bridge. Trains angled in from Butte or Coeur d’Alene, clouds of coal smoke gushing out above them, and rail passengers idled in the haze over the platforms, their bags at their feet. He could make out the station’s outline from here, and the red glow of the Coke machine in its bell tower. He could imagine the sounds of the passengers drifting across the river, broken up by the current. If the sounds were real, he thought, he’d leave tonight. He’d take the train to Whitefish, then east, over the mountains toward home. He would sleep as North Dakota and Minnesota flooded past.

  He had only had his eyes off the road for a second. But when he turned back, there was a woman, a gray figure waving her arms in the glare of his headlights. He hit the brakes. The tires squealed and his seat belt locked across his chest. He felt something heavy strike his seat from behind.

  “Paul! Are you okay?”

  “Ohhh.” Paul was saying. “I’m going to puke…”

  The woman had jumped off the road and was opening the passenger-side door. To Lars’s surprise she got in. “Hoo-hoo!” she said. “Sorry if I gave you a fright.” Her face was round and open and gently wrinkled; her lips were thin and long and she carried a bulging white handbag. She smiled.

  “Uh…I guess I wasn’t paying attention.”

  “No harm done!” she said, buckling her seat belt.

  “Ohhhhh,” Paul said.

  Lars leaned back between the seats. “Are you going to be okay? Do you need to get out?”

  “Uh…uh…” He had dragged himself back onto the seat, and now he blinked. “No.”

  “Good.”

  “Are you all right?” the woman asked Paul. She sounded vaguely disapproving. “You look awful.”

  Paul raised his head, squinting, then moaned and fell back to the seat.

  “Excuse me,” Lars said suddenly. They had not yet begun to move. “Do you want a ride somewhere?”

  “Oh, yes!” the woman said, laughing. She looked to be in her early sixties, as far as Lars could figure. “I certainly do!”

  “Where to?”

  She shrugged. “Oh, anywhere.”

  “I can take you wherever,” he said. He restarted the car and put it in gear. “It’s no problem.”

  “No matter.”

  Lars thought about that for a second. “Okay, then,” he said, and turned onto Front Street. “How about Fourth?”

  “Wonderful!”

  Nobody said anything for a little while. Paul shifted in the back and sighed heavily. Lars turned onto the Cherry Street bridge. A grizzled-looking man carrying a bedroll was walking over in the opposite direction, and the old lady waved to him. He grinned suddenly and waved back.

  “You know that guy?”

  “Oh, yes.” Out of the corner of his eye, Lars saw her stating at him. “You drive very well,” she said. “I can barely feel you switching gears.”

  “Well, I’m not right now. I’m just in third.”

  “I have a driver’s test next week,” she said. “Wish me luck!”

  “Good luck.”

  Suddenly she stuck out her hand. Lars took a glance at it, then shook it perfunctorily. “I’m Amelia Potter,” she said.

  “Lars Cowgill,” he said to her, and she frowned. “What?”

  “Have you been drinking? I don’t accept rides with drunks.”

  “I had a couple beers.” What was he feeling guilty for? “You probably smell my friend there.”

  Amelia’s frown deepened, but she didn’t ask to be let out. They went several blocks without speaking. Lars steered carefully, staying under the speed limit.

  At his apartment, he pulled over and turned off the car. For a second he cupped Paul’s keys in the palm of his hand, enjoying their heft, and wondered what the house was like that they would admit him to. “Well,” he said. “I live here. Are you sure you don’t want to go anywhere else?”

  “Oh, yes. This is fine. Tell me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Can you make a left on red? That is, when it’s onto a one-way street?” Her face was suddenly very serious.

  “I think you can. Don’t quote me on that.”

  She nodded. “Well, thank you. I’ve learned so much.” She opened her handbag and pulled out what at first appeared to be a large candy bar. When she brought it into the light, he saw that it was in fact a box of number 2 pencils. He noticed that her white bag was filled with identical boxes. “Here you go. Use these well. Write down your innermost thoughts.”

  “Gosh,” Lars told her. “Thanks.”

  And then she leaned across the space between them and touched Lars on the arm. Lars looked at her, his eyes wide. He could smell her, something like dead leaves drying in the sun. Then she pulled away and got out, leaning back in only to say, “I’ll be comin’ round the mountain, then.”

  “Goodnight.” And she slammed shut the door and was gone.

  “Anita?” Paul said.

  * * *

  Inside, Lars pulled some blankets from the closet and spread them on the floor. It was not much of a mattress, but Paul didn’t seem to mind. In the same closet he found an extra pillow, Megan’s, which he’d stuffed there weeks before. He held his breath as he pulled it out, and exhaled only after he had pushed it under Paul’s head.

  Hodge meowed and Lars fed him. Then he undressed and got into bed. He looked at Paul and noticed a shaft of street light falling over his eyes. They were wide open.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Spins,” Paul said, his head absolutely still.

  “You drank a lot. If you’re going to do that, it shouldn’t be beer. You’ll get sick.”
<
br />   Paul seemed not to hear. “Excuse me,” he said. He got up. Lars heard him vomiting behind the bathroom door. When he came back he looked better. “It’s not so bad,” he said to Lars. He lay back down and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. You probably think I’m a loser.”

  “No.”

  “My wife, you know…and we have a houseguest. From Italy. It’s all too confusing.” He coughed.

  “They’re two different guys?”

  “Huh?”

  “The Italy guy and…you know…”

  “Oh,” Paul said. “Yeah.” Then he was silent a long time. Lars thought he was asleep. Hodge slunk over to Paul and sniffed his nose, and Paul’s face scrunched up. The cat seemed to decide he was all right and curled into a little ball on his ankles.

  “I gotta tell you,” Paul said. He shifted his ankles a little and the cat yawned.

  “What?”

  “This is weird, I know.”

  “Go on.”

  He sighed. “Well, that plane crash.”

  Lars stiffened. “What about it?”

  “I saw it. It happened right by my house. I saw it go down.” He paused. “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  Lars considered his reply for a long time. “I don’t think I want to hear any more.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can you understand that?”

  “Uh-huh. But if you ever do,” he said, “you can ask me.”

  “Maybe I will,” Lars said. He turned over in bed to face the window, and looked out over the neighborhood houses, shrouded by trees. Backlit by the moon, they were blank, save for a dim light here and there in the windows. On the upturned milk crate next to his bed, he saw the box of pencils, and he snaked a hand out from under the sheet to pick them up. Potter, Potter Pencils. He wondered if there was a connection there. The plastic wrap came off with difficulty, and he took one out—the same kind he’d used in school, when he was a kid. Whatever happened to pencils? Why didn’t adults use them? He thought to write this down, and even found a piece of paper to do it on, but the pencil wasn’t sharpened. He was considering getting up to sharpen it when sleep took hold with uncommon strength, and he let it pull him away.