Pinball, 1973

15

It was the winter of 1970 when I slipped into the enchanted kingdom of pinball. I might as well have been living in a dark hole, those six months. A hole dug to my size right in the middle of an open meadow, where I just covered myself, putting a lid on all sound. Not a thing engaged me. When evening rolled around I'd wake up, bundle up in my coat, and have myself a time off in a corner of the game center.

I'd finally found myself a three-flipper "Spaceship" exactly like the one at J's Bar. When I put in a coin and pressed the play button, the machine would raise its targets to such a succession of noises it'd almost start shaking. Then the bonus light would go out, the six digits of the scoreboard would return to zero, and the first ball would spring into the lane. An endless stream of coins fed into the machine, until one month later, a chill and rainy evening in early winter, my score soared to six figures like a hot-air balloon after the last sandbag is tossed overboard.

I wrestled my trembling fingers away from the flipper buttons, leaned back against the wall, drank my ice-cold can of beer, and stared for the longest time at those six digits registered on the scoreboard–105,220.

That was the beginning of my brief honeymoon with the pinball machine. I hardly showed up at the university, and poured half the earnings from my part-time job into pinball. I became practiced in most techniques – hugging, passing, trapping, the stop shot – and soon enough it seemed someone would always be watching in the background when I played. A high school girl with bright red lipstick even came up and brushed her breast against my arm.

By the time I broke 150,000, winter had really set in. There I'd be, alone in the freezing, deserted game center, bundled up in my duffel coat, muffler wrapped around my neck up to my ears, grappling with the machine. The face I'd encounter from time to time in the restroom mirror looked lean and haggard. My skin was flaky. The last sip of each beer began to taste like lead. Cigarette butts scattered everywhere around my feet, I'd munch on a hot dog or something I'd keep thrust in my pocket.

She was great, though. That three-flipper "Spaceship" – only I understood her, and only she understood me. Whenever I pressed her replay button, she'd perk up with a little hum, click the six digits on the board to zero, then smile at me. I'd pull her plunger into position – not a fraction of an inch off – and let that gleaming silver ball fly up the lane onto the field. And while the ball was racing about, it was as if I were smoking potent hashish; my mind was set free.

All sorts of disconnected ideas floated into my head, then disappeared. All sorts of people drifted into view across the glass top over the field, then faded away. Like a two-way mirror to my dreams, the glass top reflected my own mind as it flickered in unison with the bumper and bonus lights.

It's not your fault, she said. To which I only kept shaking my head. You're not to blame, you gave it your all, didn't you?

No way, said I. Left flipper, top transfer, ninth target. Not even close. I didn't get a single thing right. I hardly moved a finger. But I could have, if I'd been on the ball.

There's only so much a person can do, she said.

Maybe so, said I, but that doesn't change a thing.

It'll always be that way. Return lane, trap, kick out, out hole, rebound, hugging, sixth target bonus light, 121,150.

It's over, she said, it's all over.

* * *

In February of the new year, she vanished. The game center was stripped clean, and the following month it had become an all-night doughnut shop.

The kind of place where girls in curtain-material uniforms brought you tasteless doughnuts on tasteless plates. There were high school students who parked their bikes out front and nighthawk cabbies, bar hostesses, and diehard hippies, all drinking coffee with the exact same bottomed-out expression. I ordered a cup of their awful coffee and a cinnamon doughnut, and asked the waitress if she knew anything about the game center.

She gave me a dirty look, the way she might have looked at a doughnut that had fallen on the floor.

"Game center?"

"The joint that was here up to just a little while ago."

"Haven't the foggiest," she said, shaking her head wearily. Nobody remembers a thing from the month before, that's the kind of town it was.

I roamed the streets in a blue funk. My three-flipper Spaceship was gone, and nobody knew where.

That's when I gave up pinball. When the time comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it.