Little Casino

In Caldwell

ALTHOUGH INFORMATION, SPARSE AND unsatisfactory as it is, has been grudgingly offered by crack journalists as to the mundane origins of a mundane summer romance that began in, of all places, a mundane bowling alley, the activities of Perry have been all but ignored, not only on that particular night (of the bowling alley), but throughout the entirety of the subsequent summer.

Questions were asked, possible witnesses canvassed, and so on. No one seems to remember Perry’s activities.

Perry was seen, as we know, in conversation with the small, dark girl, and we have been told, perhaps irrelevantly, that “later that summer, his [not Perry’s] friend, Teddy, would fall in love with [her].” Did Perry also fall in love with her? Did he tell her of his notions concerning the romantic light of bowling alleys? What actually happened to Perry that summer? For that matter, what happened to him that night? All the information so far granted or gathered has been filtered through a prose utterly, even slavishly subservient to the sensibilities of an embarrassingly lovestruck young man, dazed by a girl, by her smile and her perfume, and by the concomitant and irregularly recurring image of a faceless female body in what he imagines to be a crisp white uniform. Can such a prose be trusted? Was Perry angry that the small, dark girl found, if that’s the word, Teddy? And if there was such anger, did Teddy ever learn of it? Did Perry despise himself for his amorous vacillation, procrastination, shyness?

Somebody supposedly remarked to Hal, who would be killed the following summer in an automobile crash near the Delaware Water Gap, that Perry had been in Caldwell on, it was clear, the same fall afternoon that the young man, stupid with love, was picked up at the bus stop in that little town by the girl’s older sister, Helen. The small, dark-haired girl was also at the lake on that crisp, chilly weekend, but she was with two Upsala freshmen, Bob and Noah, complacent and insufferable identical twins destined for contented, more or less, lives, defined by endodontics, corporate law, and marital infidelities. She and Teddy had broken up; the young man, “our hero,” if you please, would soon break up with the girl of the bowling alley and beach and smooth tan.

But what on earth had Perry been doing in Caldwell?

He wished, for a long time afterward, that he could meet Perry again, bump into him somewhere, and explain. Explain? Explain what?

He went back to the lake years later, but he might as well have gone to Akron or Sunnyvale or Killeen. He stood outside a Radio Shack that had been the Blue Front. He stood there for an hour, smoking. Was he waiting for Perry? Maybe. Or Teddy? Or the magical girl in the white bathing suit? The bowling alley had also been torn down, and on its site was a buffet restaurant, Jack’s Pantry. Just as well.

This area of New Jersey was served by two bus lines, the DeCamp Bus Lines and the gray-and-white municipal buses of the Public Service.

It is always safe to poke fun at dentists, as the motion-picture business, in all its creative brilliance, well knows.

“Obviously, the author ‘well knows’ it, too.”

Perhaps Helen picked him up in a Chrysler station wagon: they still had wooden sides in 1948. Perhaps he made love to Helen in the back of the station wagon. Or maybe she drove them to a … maison de rendezvous.

“A maison de rendezvous? In Essex County, New Jersey?”

The beginner, bowling, looks somewhat endearing, but when shooting pool, he appears to be bumblingly incompetent, lost and abandoned and foolish. This proves that pool is a real game.

It is always safe to poke fun at bowling, as any fifth-rate stand-up comic knows. And when bowling won’t get a laugh, there’s always the toilet, humping, waitresses, and stupid girlfriends.

“It can be, kind folk, a veritable laff riot.”

If you have ever sojourned in Fort Hood, Texas, the chances are good that you whiled away many an evening in the town of Killeen.

“Your notions, Perry, concerning the romantic light of bowling alleys?”

“R equals two pi squared times em bee to the fourth power over lambda to the third power, lady.”