1
Get a job at the local bowling alley when your mom starts drinking again. Take whatever position they are willing to give you. You will be fifteen years old with no experience, three-fifths of a mustache, and the charisma of a dried pickle, so your only offer’ll be to man concessions for what you will later find out is far less than minimum wage. Luckily, the terms of your employment will matter zilch to you; important as the money will eventually become, you are really here only to avoid meeting the seemingly endless string of new lovers in your mother’s life. Somehow they will all seem to be the exact same man: around 6’1″, white, tan, bulky upper body buttressed by toothpick legs, with a translucent habit of barking laughter at jokes you haven’t finished telling yet. With unusual frequency their names will be three letters long. They will be Rays, Joes, Tads. They will all tend bar and wear silver chains that hang down into the Vs of their V necks. Introductions will be conducted with your mother speaking in the third person. “This is your mom’s New Friend Tad,” your mom will say, capitalizing new and friend with her eyebrows.
Unfortunately, any Tad who sticks around longer than three weeks will at some point express interest in becoming your New Friend too. Not in a skeevy way. They’ll just keep asking you hollow questions while you play Call of Duty on your days off. However, in a way that is hard to pin down exactly, these innocuous interviews actually will end up making you feel as though you are being hit on.
Pick up as many shifts at the alley as your new boss will allow.
2
Your new boss will be named Rory. At the time of your hiring, he will have been the owner and GM of Crankers Bowling Center for just over twenty-seven years. He is an obese, balding man with the sad jowls of a bulldog, and often smells of pine. Your first instinct will be to fear speaking in front of him. He will seem both to notice and to be perfectly okay with this.
Rory will also be in charge of your job training. It will be completed in under seven minutes. This includes the long, slow walk from Rory’s office inside the Pro Shop (over by Lane 24) to Concessions, which stares out over the beer-postered, neon-bedecked horizon of Lanes 1–8. Learn how to lock and unlock the steel cashbox behind the counter and how to attach and detach said cashbox to and from the rusty chain that Rory has, bizarrely, run through the cracked tile floor and rigged up to the foundation for “added security measures.” Observe the Crock-Pot in the back of the kitchen, where the hot dogs sleep, and the oldest convection oven you have ever seen, inside which sits a cake pan filled with the two dozen burger patties Rory grills each morning. Together, press the button that brings the nacho cheese to a boil. Then Rory will sigh, in anticipation of beginning the trek back to his office, and cease communicating with you verbally for about a month.
Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, come in after school, around three, and stay till close, around nine. The employee you will relieve on these weekdays is a pregnant woman named either Trudy or Gerty, who dresses like time stopped in 1979. Every day after you take her place behind the greasy counter, she and her massive shirt collar will amble on down to Lane 1 to enjoy the single free game of bowling employees at Crankers earn per shift, courtesy of the generous Rory. Unused games do not roll over.
Watch the way Trudy/Gerty throws her balls, and be impressed. Later, you will learn that she is what’s called a Power Stroker, but for now, just think she bowls like someone you might accidentally see on ESPN3 while channel-surfing. She’s got this huge backswing that takes the ball higher even than the top of her head and this way of flicking her fingers at the last second before letting go that makes the ball curve across the lane like something in orbit. Take note of and relish the tiny thrill that rushes through you each time she makes a strike. Soon you will live for that sound: the controlled chaos of a perfect ten-pin explosion.
Start closing down the concession stand thirty minutes early every shift so you can take advantage of your own free game. It will be shocking how long it takes Rory to notice that you are doing this. On your first go, grab a fourteen-pound ball and nearly break your wrist trying to spin it down the lane. Watch the ball fly directly into the gutter. Feel exhilarated by the dull throb in your forearm.
Go find a nine-pound ball.
Try again.
. . .
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