Pinball, 1973

2

The autumn of 1973, it seemed, deep down, held something spiteful. It was painfully clear to the Rat, plain as a pebble in his shoe.

Even after that year's all-too-brief summer had vanished, as if sucked up into thin air along with early September uncertainties, some small reminder of summer lingered on in the Rat's heart.

There he was, still in his old T-shirt, cut-offs, beach sandals. Back again to J's Bar, where he'd sit at the bar facing J, downing overchilled beers. He'd begun smoking again after five years, and every fifteen minutes or so he'd glance at his wristwatch.

The Rat could almost see the passage of time cleaving away-slice-at intervals somewhere down the line. Why it had to be like that, the Rat could never understand. He couldn't find the severed end. And so he wandered through the dimming autumn twilight holding the limp cord. He cut across grassy knolls, crossed rivers, forced open any number of doors – but the limp cord didn't lead him anywhere. Like a fly that winter has robbed of wings, like an estuary confronted by the open sea, the Rat was powerless, alone. An ill wind had blown in from somewhere, and to the Rat it felt as if his protective blanket of air had been sent sailing clear around to the other side of the globe.

No sooner had one season slipped out the door than the next came in by another door. A person might scramble to the closing door and call out, Hey, wait a minute, there's one last thing I forgot to tell you. But nobody would be there any more. The door shuts tight. Already another season is in the room, sitting in a chair, striking a match to light a cigarette. Anything you forgot to mention, the stranger says, you might as well go ahead and tell me, and if it works out, I'll get the message through.

Nah, it's okay, you say, it was nothing really. And all around, the sound of the wind. Nothing, really. A season's died, that's all.

* * *

Every year it was the same: came that chill time of autumn-going-on-winter, this university-dropout-rich-kid and that lonesome Chinese bartender would be huddled together, just like an elderly couple.

Autumn always hit hard. Those few friends who had been in town for the summer holidays would not even wait for September to roll around before they'd bid brief farewells and be off again to their distant haunts. Ever so subtly the colors changed, as if the summer light had crossed over some unseen divide, and the Rat would note that aura-like brilliance fading away around him. Soon the last breath of the warm dream has seeped away like a stream vanishing into the autumn sands, leaving no trace.

Even for J, autumn was by no means a happy season. From the middle of September on, the number of customers would noticeably dwindle. It was a yearly thing, but that autumn's decline was something to see. Neither J nor the Rat knew what to make of it. At closing time, there'd still be half a bucket of potatoes for fries left peeled and waiting.

"It'll start jumping, just you wait," the Rat consoled J. "You'll be so busy you'll curse your luck."

"Think so, eh?" J voiced dubiously as he plopped down on a barstool he'd commandeered behind the counter and began scraping away with an ice pick at the butter that had dropped on the toaster.

Nobody knew what to expect from there on in.

So the Rat went on thumbing through the pages of his book, while J, between polishing the liquor bottles, would take puffs on the filterless cigarette protruding from his stubby fingers.

* * *

For the Rat, some three years before, the passage of time had begun little by little to lose its evenness. In the spring he quit the university.

Of course, the Rat had any number of reasons for dropping out. The wiring to those reasons had gotten impossibly tangled up, and when things heated up past a critical point, the fuse blew with a bang. Some stayed with him, some were blown clear away, some things bit the dust.

He never explained to anyone why he quit school. It would have taken him five hours to put the pieces in place. And if he told one person, then everyone else would want to hear. Pretty soon he'd be in a real fix, and have to explain it to the whole world. The very prospect was enough to plunge the Rat into a state of depression.

"They didn't like the way I mowed the grass in the courtyard," he'd say whenever further explanation became unavoidable. One coed actually went so far as to go check out the courtyard lawn. "You didn't do such a bad job," she told him when she came back. "Maybe some bits of paper here and there, but..." "A matter of taste," was all the Rat said.

Or when he was in a fairly good mood, he might say, "We just couldn't get along, the university and me," and leave it at that.

But that's three whole years ago now.

Everything passed unbelievably quickly. Until at some point, the entire palette of builtup emotions lost all its color, fading to the meaninglessness of old dreams.

* * *

The Rat left home the year he entered university and moved into a penthouse apartment his father had once used as a study. His parents didn't oppose the move. After all, they'd bought the place figuring to hand it over to their son by and by. Plus they had no real objection to him struggling along on his own for a while.

Nevertheless, no one would have ever said he was struggling, no matter how they looked at it. A melon just doesn't look like a rutabaga. The place, you see, was a truly spacious two-room, living-dining-kitchen layout, complete with air-conditioning, telephone, a 17-inch color TV, bath-and-shower unit, an underground parking space set up with a Triumph, and to top it off, the ideal veranda for sunbathing in style. From his top-floor southeast corner window, he could gaze down on a magnificent view of the city and sea. Open the side windows and the rich scent of trees and the sound of birds chirping wafted in.

The Rat spent leisurely afternoons in the comfort of a rattan chaise lounge. Lazily closing his eyes, he'd feel the gentle current of time flow through his body like a stream of water. Hours, days, weeks, the Rat spent like that.

Occasionally, though, tiny ripples of emotion would be set off, as if to remind him. At times like that, the Rat simply closed his eyes, sealed off his mind, and sat tight until the ripples subsided. By then it would already be getting a little dark, toward early evening. The ripples gone, that same hushed tranquillity would come over him again, as if nothing had happened.