and the former owner of the Galaxy, had been ready to retire. And then it turned out when Bern died, he’d left everything to Leo, even his house and the furniture inside it. Another item in the timeline, if Leo were to tell it, was when Eddie Elias from over in Akron started the PBA to increase the purses and standardize the sport, which might’ve seemed to be a good idea, but which Leo said took the soul out of bowling. He said things were better when Walter “the Cigar” Ward had made his name in the Cleveland All-Stars, always rolling with an unlit stogie in his mouth and racking up more 700 series than anyone else in history. Or Tony Sparando, who was nearly blind, out of New York, or Joe “Bick” Wilman out of Chicago—you could know Leo ten years and he’d come up with some name you’d never heard of who’d broken all the records back in the day—and not only that, he’d fixed them drinks and fixed them up on dates with barmaids when they’d come through town. And there were his days setting up match plays down at the State, where the bookies took bets from traveling salesmen, small-time players, call girls, and fixers. He made them feel at home, since they couldn’t get into the country clubs, where their bosses, sponsors, and johns worked other deals.
But the present, I always got the feeling, was a bit faded for Leo. He had bills to pay, leagues to coach. That’s the way I saw him then—worn out, irritated, but a fixture. He was my friend Donny’s uncle, and I still didn’t know then why he’d come back to town in the first place after leaving my father in Vegas and then disappearing. My father had never discussed it and Leo hadn’t either until the day I came in with that ball.
My father and I stopped by our locker to get our bags and shoes. Beyond the pro shop, the arcade sounded like a giant ringing jar of change.
“Damn racket,” he said, as if the place hadn’t been loud before. He reached for my bag, but I grabbed it before he could try to lift it. I had the AMF under my other arm. “Look at those skinny necks,” he said, jerking a thumb at the arcade, where, in front of each machine, a boy flailed and swerved with the screen action as if plugged into a socket.
Donny had talked Leo into putting in Pong, Galaga, Space Invaders, and Asteroids, and the newest, Pac-Man—and now the place was packed every day after school. Before the arcade, it was dead on the weekdays except for the retiree leagues and team practice.
“They ought to try a game with real skill,” my father said, winking at me. We stopped at the Lustre King ball polisher, and he dug in his pocket for two dimes, handed one to me. You could choose Gloss, High Gloss, or Super High Gloss. My father put his dime in the slot and chose Super High Gloss, as always. I chose High Gloss. It was a personality test, I think. My father wanted things perfect, and I did, too, but some part of me could live with good enough. If he thought his pain was a punishment for not living up to his own standards, he never said so.
Leo was grinning when my father and I came back to the counter. He reached across and clapped my father on the shoulder, and my father did a good job of not wincing. He hadn’t told Leo anything; I knew that.
“Hey, hey Joe-Joe!” Leo said. He loved his bowling stars, even his former ones. They were good for the game and good for business. Then, to me, “You ready to drill that ball?”
I looked at my father and he smiled back at me. He was as excited as I was. “Yeah, let’s go in there,” he said. “I’m thinking top weight positive, and maybe she’s ready for the fingertip grip, what do you think?”
Leo put up his bowling hand like a traffic cop, the fingers twice as thick as his left-hand set. “Whoa there, Joe,” he said. “Only room for two in the drill room. I’ll give her some options.”
My father pursed his lips, looked away. “See you over there, then,” was all he said to me. I could’ve maybe protested, but I didn’t want my father to feel I was defending him, to give the impression he needed defending. I watched my father walk away—he’d adopted a slow stroll intended to look casual rather than careful. If Leo noticed, he hadn’t mentioned it. He stepped through the swinging door, and I followed him into the pro shop, a tiny square room with new balls on curved, Astroturf-lined shelves. Behind that room was a closet with a counter on one side and a modified mill press on the other. I carried my sliding shoe so I wouldn’t scuff it on the linoleum.
Leo opened the box and held up the ball. “So these things are going to be the next big wave,” he said, as if he doubted it. But he knew better. He may not have liked it, but he knew. “So Wyecheski Junior is sweet sixteen. How’s the old bleeder anyway? You still like it?”
He meant my White Dot. The covers were so soft they’d soak up conditioner from the lanes and you had to keep wiping it off. Overall, I liked it because it was easier to hook than a Black Beauty. “I don’t know,” I said. I felt loyal to it in a way. I had an uneasy feeling that I might be betraying it. Leo looked at me, bushy eyebrows raised. He was starting to go gray by then, specks in the hair around his temples. I straightened up, and it seemed to me that he wasn’t as tall as I’d always thought. “My mom’ll be mad,” I said. “It cost a lot.”
“Your dad’s the one bringing home the paycheck,” he said, shrugging.
“Leo,” I said. “You know my mom.” She didn’t come to the lanes except for tourneys, but even when I won, she congratulated me as if she were really trying to comfort me instead. She called Leo “the Blob.”
“A lovely woman,” Leo said, smiling. He set my new AMF in the machine. He leaned against the cinder-block wall, one foot crossed over the other, one hand resting on the ball. He patted it like the top of a child’s head. “I’ll bevel it so you come out clean,” he said. “And listen, if I could have all the time back in my life I spent worrying about what someone else thought, I’d be ten years younger.”
I considered saying that was fine for him; he wasn’t living with my mother. He wasn’t watching her go through the bills, her eyebrows hitched up with worry. My father was working reduced hours by then, a deal the union had worked out. But it was temporary, we all knew, a step that would lead us to even more uncertain territory. Leo didn’t have to watch my parents tiptoe around that fact, my mother folding the paper to the classifieds, hiding the circled ads under the phone book. In fact, Leo had never married, which didn’t surprise me, and not just because I couldn’t imagine it with him being fifty by then, his belly pooched out under his favorite Beers of the World shirt with all the labels in different languages. It was just that I couldn’t imagine him ever loving anyone that much. And I had this feeling, even after seeing him almost every day all those years, that he could disappear again the way he had after my father had frozen up at the Showboat. I’d come by some morning to practice and the doors would be locked and no one would know what had happened. Maybe Donny would take over.
“Maybe I’ll wait,” I said. “It’s like you said, a good bowler can roll with a rock, right?” I didn’t want to wait, of course. But I wanted him to tell me not to.
“It’s all the same to me, Wycheski.” He bent to lift my White Dot out of my bag and turned it around. He put his fingertips on the holes, but he couldn’t even get the first digit in. “You can do fine with this,” he said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.
Leo spun the ball on his finger and caught it in his palm like a Globetrotter, all while looking straight at me. “You think anyone’s pining over what happened to your father out there in Vegas?”
Obviously, the answer was no. I shook my head. I was shocked he’d brought it up. Since I’d never heard Leo talk about Vegas in connection to my father, I could believe it wasn’t quite true, like those stories your parents tell you when you’re little—about how babies are born or why a fair number of men in our town were missing limbs or seemed a little nervous—because they figure you’re not ready to know the truth.
“No, no one’s sorry about it anymore, probably not even him,” Leo was saying as he stuffed my White Dot back into my bag. “He’s got this idea that you’ll go pro someday, right?”
“You think I can’t?” I said.
Leo nodded. “That’s