11



Thursday morning, the twins woke me up. Little did I notice that it was fifteen minutes earlier than usual as I shaved, drank my coffee, and read through the morning paper, still sticky with fresh ink.

“There’s a favor we have to ask,” said one of the twins.

“Do you think you could borrow a car this Sunday?” said the other.

“Perhaps,” I said, “but where do you want to go?”

“The reservoir.”

“The reservoir?”

They both nodded.

“What do you want to do at the reservoir?”

“Last rites.”

“Whose?”

“The switch-panel’s.”

“I see,” said I, and returned to the paper.

Unfortunately, on Sunday it began drizzling from the morning. To be sure, I had no way of knowing what kind of weather was most appropriate for a switch-panel’s funeral. The twins didn’t broach the subject of the rain, so I kept quiet.

Saturday night I borrowed my business partner’s light blue Volkswagen. He insinuated that maybe I’d found myself a woman, to which I merely said

Umm.



The back seat of the bug was stained across one side, probably milk chocolate rubbed in by his kid, though it looked like bloodstains from a machine gun battle. My partner didn’t have any decent cassettes for the car stereo, so we traveled the full hour and a half to the reservoir without any music, driving on and on without a word. As we drove, the rain came down harder and then weaker, then harder again, then weaker, alternating at regular intervals. It was enough to make you yawn, that rain.

The only sound was that of the high-speed whoosh of passing cars on the highway.

One of the twins sat in the front seat, the other sat in the back holding a shopping bag with a thermos bottle and the defunct switch-panel. The girls were properly somber in keeping with the funeral day. And I followed suit. We were even somber as we ate roast corn-on-the-cob at a roadside rest stop.

Only the sound of the kernels popping off the roasting cobs broke the restrained mood. We left behind three corncobs nibbled clean to the last kernel, then we were back in the car and off again.

There were an awful lot of dogs around, wandering aimlessly in the rain like schools of yellowtail in an aquarium. So we had to keep honking the horn nonstop. For all you could tell from their faces, they weren’t the least bit concerned about the rain or the cars. Generally, their expressions would turn downright disdainful at the sound of the horn, but they dodged out of the way just the same. Of course, there was no way for them to dodge the rain. The dogs were sopping wet, right down to their buttocks; some looked like waifs from a Balzac novel, others like pensive Buddhist priests.

The twin in the seat next to me put a cigarette to my lips, and lit it for me. Then she put her little hand on the crotch of my cotton pants, and stroked. Her action was more like some kind of reassurance than stimulation.

The rain seemed destined to fall forever. October rains are like that. Falling steadily, ceaselessly, until everything is soaked through and through. The ground was soggy. The trees, the expressway, the fields, the cars, the houses, the dogs–everything without exception had soaked up rain, filling the world with a hopeless chill.

The road led up into the hills, and eventually we emerged from the depths of the forest onto the bank of the reservoir. Thanks to the rain there was not a soul in sight. As far as the eye could see, rain poured down across the surface of the reservoir.

The sight of that rain-swept reservoir was far more heart-wrenching than I could have imagined. We parked beside the bank, and sat in the car drinking coffee from the thermos and eating the cookies the twins had brought along. There were three kinds of cookies: coffee cream, butter cream, and maple syrup, which we divided up to make sure that we each got our fair share.

The whole time, the rain poured down relentlessly and silently over the reservoir. The sound was something like shredded newspaper falling on a thick pile carpet. It was like the rain that falls in Claude Lelouche movies.

Once we finished the cookies and had each had our two cups of coffee, we all brushed off our laps in unison as if by prior arrangement. No one spoke.

“Well, we might as well get it over with,” voiced one twin.

The other nodded.

I put out my cigarette.

We walked to the end of the catwalk that projected out over the water without bothering to put up umbrellas. The reservoir had been formed by damming up the river. The surface of the water curved unnaturally where it lapped into the folds of the hillsides. The color of the water gave you an unsettling feeling of depth. The raindrops made tiny ripples everywhere.

One of the twins took our dearly beloved switch-panel out of the paper bag and handed it over to me. In the rain, the switch-panel looked more miserable than ever.

“Say some kind of prayer, will you?”

“Prayer?” I was caught off guard.

“It’s a funeral, so we need to say last rites.”

“It hadn’t occurred to me,” I said. “I haven’t got anything prepared.”

“Doesn’t matter, anything’s fine.”

“Just for form’s sake.”

I searched for some appropriate words, meanwhile getting soaked from head to toe.

The twins glanced alternately from me to the switch-panel with a worried look on their faces.

“The obligation of philosophy,” I drew on my Kant, “is to eradicate illusions born of misunderstanding. Oh, switch-panel! Rest ye at the bottom of the reservoir.”

“Toss it.”

“Huh?”

“The switch-panel.”

I went into a windup, and hurled it up at a forty-five degree angle with all my might. The switch panel traced a beautiful arc through the rain, and struck the water. The ripples slowly spread, finally reaching our feet.

“That was a wonderful prayer.”

“You make it up?”

“But of course,” I said.

Then the three of us, drenched as dogs, huddled together and stared across the reservoir.

“How deep is it?” asked one.

“Very deep,” I answered.

“Are there fish?” asked the other.

“Ponds this size always have fish.”

Seen from a distance, the three of us standing there must have looked like some classy memorial marker.



12



Thursday morning that same week, I put on my first sweater of autumn. A totally undistinguished gray sweater, slightly frayed under the arms, but still quite comfortable. I shaved myself a sight more neatly than usual, put on heavy cotton slacks, and pulled out my scuffed-up desert boots. They somehow looked like two trained puppies at my feet. The twins buzzed around the room gathering together my cigarettes and lighter and wallet and train pass.

I sat down at my desk in the office, and sharpened six pencils while I sipped the coffee the office girl brought me. The whole room was filled with a sweater-just-out-of-storage and pencil-lead smell.

Lunchtime, I ate out and once again played with the Abyssinians. I stuck the tip of my little finger through a gap in the showcase, and two cats vied with each other to jump up and bite me.

That day someone from the pet shop let me hold one of the cats. Its coat felt like fine cashmere, and it pressed a cold nose to my lips.

“It really cuddles up to people,” the shop attendant said.

I expressed my thanks and returned the cat to the case, then bought a box of cat food I couldn’t use. The attendant wrapped it up nicely, and as I walked out of the pet shop with it under my arm, the two cats stared after me as if trying to recall some fragment of a dream.

When I got back to the office, the girl brushed the cat hairs off my sweater.

“I was playing with a cat,” I offered by way of explanation.

“Your sweater’s all frayed under the arms.”

“I know. It’s been like that since last year. It got caught on the rearview mirror while I was trying to knock over an armored car.”

“Off with it,” she said, unamused.

I took off the sweater, and she sat beside the chair, her long legs crossed, and proceeded to darn it with black yarn. While she was mending the sweater, I returned to my desk, sharpened my pencils for the afternoon, and got back to work. Even if anyone saw fit to comment, you could hardly fault my work habits. I did exactly the work I was asked in exactly the prescribed amount of time, and did it all as conscientiously as possible–that was my method. I surely would have been prized at Auschwitz. The problem was, I think, that the places I fit in were always falling behind the times.

But that probably couldn’t be helped. There was no going back to Auschwitz or twin-seater Kamikaze torpedo-planes. Nobody wears miniskirts any more, nobody listens to Jan and Dean. And when was the last time you saw a girl wearing a garter belt?

When the clock struck three, the office girl came to my desk as usual with hot green tea and three cookies. She’d mended my sweater beautifully.

“Say, could I have a little talk with you?”

“Go ahead,” I said, munching on a cookie

“About the trip in November,” she said, “how does Hokkaido sound?” We were planning to take a company trip, just the three of us.

“Not bad,” I said.

“Then it’s settled. Do you think there’ll be any bears?”

“Hmm, I imagine they’ll all be hibernating.”

She nodded, relieved “By the way, could you have dinner with me tonight? There’s a great lobster restaurant nearby.”

“Fine by me,” I said.



The restaurant was a five-minute taxi ride from the office in a quiet residential area. We sat down, and a black-suited waiter floated noiselessly across the woven palm-fiber carpeting to leave us with two menus the size of swimming pool paddle boards.

We ordered two beers before dinner.

“The lobster here is really good. They boil it live.”

I acknowledged this with a grunt and drank my beer. Her slender fingers toyed with the star-shaped pendant around her neck.

“If you’ve got something to say, you might as well come out with it before dinner,” I said. The moment I’d spoken, I regretted it. Happens every time.

She smiled slightly. Then, simply because it was a bother to put that one-tenth-of-an-inch smile back in its proper place, she kept it there on her mouth a while. The restaurant was so empty you could almost hear the lobsters waving their feelers.

“Do you like your present job?” she asked.

“Hmm. You know, I don’t believe I’ve ever thought about work in that way. But I can’t say as I’m dissatisfied.

“Nor me, I can’t say I’m unhappy,” she said, taking a sip of beer. “The pay’s good, you two are both considerate, and I have a free hand at arranging my vacations.”



I didn’t say anything. It’d been a long time since I’d given a serious listen to someone else’s troubles.

“But I’m only twenty,” she continued, “and I don’t want to end up like this.”

Our conversation was temporarily brought to a halt while they arranged our dishes on the table.

“You’re young,” I said, “with everything still ahead of you, love, marriage. Your life’s going to go through 311 kinds of changes.”

“Nothing’s going to change,” she muttered, deftly wielding her knife and fork to crack the lobster shell. “Nobody’s going to take a fancy to the likes of me. I’ll spend my whole life assembling lousy roach traps and darning sweaters.”

I sighed. I felt as if I’d suddenly aged years.

“You’re cute, you’re attractive, you’ve got nice legs and a good head on your shoulders. You crack a mean lobster. Everything’s gonna work out just fine.”

A glum silence fell over her, and she continued eating her lobster. I ate my lobster, too. And all the while I thought about the switch-panel at the bottom of the reservoir.

“What were you doing when you were twenty?”

“I was crazy about a girl.” Back in 1969, our year.

“So what happened to her?”

“Things came between us.”

“Were you happy?”

“If you look at things from a distance,” I said as I swallowed some lobster, “most anything looks beautiful.”

By the time we’d finished our food, the place had begun to fill with customers, the clatter of knives and forks, and the screech of dragging chairs. I ordered a coffee, and she ordered a coffee and a lemon soufflé.

“How about now? You have a girlfriend?”

After thinking it over, I decided to exclude the twins. “No,” I said.

“And you’re not lonely?”

“I’m used to it. I’ve had practice.”

“Practice?”

I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke not half a yard above her head. “I was born under a strange sign. You see, whatever I’ve wanted I’ve always been able to get. But whenever I get that something, I manage to spoil something else. You know what I mean?”

“Kind of.”

“Nobody believes me, but it’s true. I only realized it myself three years ago. That’s when I thought, better just not want anything any more.”

She nodded. “And so that’s how you plan to spend the rest of your life?”

“Probably. At least I won’t be bothering anybody.”

“If you really feel that way,” she said, “why not live in a shoe box?”

A charming idea.



We walked side by side to the station. The sweater kept me comfortable in the night air.

“Okay, I’ll keep plugging away,” she said.

“Wasn’t much help, was I?”

“No, actually, it took a load off me just to be able to talk.”

We caught trains going in opposite directions from the same platform.

“You’re really not lonely?” she asked one last time. And while I was searching for a good reply, her train came.



13



On any given day, something claims our attention. Anything at all, inconsequential things. A rosebud, a misplaced hat, that sweater we liked as a child, an old Gene Pitney record. A parade of trivia with no place to go. Things that bump around in our consciousness for two or three days, then go back to wherever they came from to darkness. We’re always digging wells in our heads. While above the wells, birds flit back and forth.

That autumn Sunday evening it was pinball that claimed my attention. The twins and I were on the golf course watching the sunset from the green of the eighth hole. It was a long par 5 hole with no obstacles and no slope. Only a straight fairway like the corridor of an elementary school. On the seventh hole, a student from the neighborhood was practicing the flute. The sun was setting behind the hills to a heart-rending backup score of two-octave scales. Why, at that very moment, I had to get stuck on pinball machines, I’ll never know.

Not only that, but as one moment followed the next, the pinball images expanded at a frantic pace in my mind. I shut my eyes, and my ears rang with the sounds of bumpers rebounding balls, and the score tallies clicking away.



* * *



In 1970, when the Rat and I still had our bouts of beer drinking at J’s Bar, we were by no means the most earnest pinball players around. The machine in the bar was a rare three-flipper “Spaceship” model. The field was divided into upper and lower sections, the upper with one flipper and the lower with two. A model from the nice, peaceful times before solid-state circuitry inflated the world of pinball. There was a photo of the Rat and the machine, taken at the peak of his infatuation with pinball to commemorate his best score: 92,500. There was the Rat grinning away, leaning up against the pinball machine, also grinning away with the numbers 92,500 still in place. The only heartwarming photo I ever took with my Kodak Instamatic. The Rat looked like a World War II ace. And the pinball machine looked like a veteran fighter plane. The kind of fighter plane whose propeller the mechanic had to spin by hand, and whose canopy the pilot would slam shut once it was off and running. The number 92,500 forged a bond between the Rat and the machine, perhaps even a feeling of kinship.

Once a week, the money-collector-cum-repair-man from the pinball company would pay a call on J’s Bar. He was an abnormally thin man of about thirty who almost never spoke to anyone. He’d come in, and without even so much as a glance over at J, he’d unlock the lid to the compartment under the pinball machine, and let the coins come gushing out into a canvas drawstring pouch. Then for a spot test, he’d take one of those coins, put it back into the machine, check out the plunger action two or three times, and finally let the ball fly with no trace of enjoyment. Next he’d aim balls at the bumpers to observe the condition of the magnets, send balls down all the rails, and into all the targets. Drop targets, kick-out holes, the lotto target. Then, last but not least, he’d hit the bonus light, and with a look of utter relief, drop the ball into the out lane to end the game. That done, he’d turn to J, give him this casual-no problems, eh kind of nod, and leave. All in less time than it takes to smoke half a cigarette.

I’d forget to tap the ash off my cigarette, the Rat’d forget to drink his beer. Just watching that commanding display of technique always took our breath away.

“I must be dreaming,” said the Rat. “With technique like that, you could score a hundred fifty thousand, easy. Nah, more like two hundred thousand.”

“He’s a pro, what d’ya expect,” I consoled the Rat. Even so, there was no salvaging the ace pilot’s pride.

“Compared to that, my game’s about as strong as a little girl’s pinkie,” the Rat pouted, falling into a silent huff that lead to visions of scores soaring to six digits.

“That’s only a job to him,” I continued my spiel. “It might have been fun at first, but just try doing that every day from morning to night. Who wouldn’t be bored out their minds?”

“Not me,” the Rat said, shaking his head. “You’d never see me bored.”



14



It had been a long time since J’s Bar was this crowded. Most were new faces, but J had no gripes–a customer’s a customer. He had every reason to be in good spirits. For what with the icepick cracking ice, the clinking of ice and tumblers, laughter, the Jackson Five on the jukebox, clouds of white smoke hovering about the ceiling like balloons of dialogue in a comic book, that night seemed like another round of summer.

Nonetheless, there was something “off” about the Rat. He sat by himself at one end of the counter, skimming the same page of his book over and over again before finally giving up and closing it. If at all possible, he would have liked nothing better than to chug down the last of his beer, go home, and simply sleep. If he would have been able to sleep, that is.

For one week now, luck had lost all sight of the Rat. Scant snatches of sleep and beer and cigarettes, and even the weather was starting to give out on him. The rainwater washed down off the hills into the river, then flowed to the sea, turning it a blotchy brown and gray. A disgusting view, an ugly outlook. He felt as if his head was stuffed full of wads of old newspaper. He slept lightly, and never for very long. It was like sleeping in a dentist’s overheated waiting room. Whenever anybody opened the door, you’d wake up. He gazed at the clock.

Half the week he’d been immersing himself in whiskey, he’d decided to freeze all thought for a while. One by one he’d inspected the cracks of his consciousness like a polar bear looking for ice thick enough to cross. And only when he found prospects that might just possibly get him through the rest of the week did he sleep. The trouble was, when he awoke, everything would be just like before. Except maybe his head would ache a little.

The Rat looked blankly at the six empty bottles of beer lined up in front of him. Between the bottles he had a good view of J’s back.

Maybe the tide’s going out, thought the Rat. I was eighteen the first time I had a beer here. How many thousands of bottles of beer ago had it been? How many thousands of potatoes worth of fries, how many thousands of jukebox selections? All of it, everything that had swept like waves up to this little barge, was withdrawing. Haven’t I already drunk enough beers in my time? Of course, by the time people get to be thirty or forty they’ve had their share of beers. Even so, he thought, there’s something about the beer here. And twenty-five, that’s not such a bad age to retire. People with any sense have gotten out of college and are working as loan clerks at the bank by this age.

The Rat added another empty bottle to the lineup, and drank down half his brimming glass in one gulp. Out of sheer reflex, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then wiped his damp hand on the seat of his cotton pants.

Let’s think this one through, he told himself.

Don’t run away, think. You’re twenty-five years old, a good age to be thinking a bit. You’re two twelve-year old-boys old, kid, how do you measure up? Not even one boy’s worth. Maybe not even worth as much as an ant farm in a pickle jar. Oh, lay off; enough with these stupid metaphors. They don’t do any good. Think, where did you go wrong? C’mon, remember. Like I even know where to start looking.

The Rat gave up and guzzled down the rest of his beer. Then he raised his hand and ordered another bottle.

“You’re drinking too much today,” J said. No matter, the eighth bottle took its place on the counter.

His head ached a bit. His body bobbed up and down on unseen waves. He felt sluggish behind the eyes. Vomit, said a voice at the back of his head.

Go ahead and spit it up. Then you can have yourself a good long think. So stand up, get yourself to the john. No good. Can’t make it to first base.

Yet somehow the Rat managed to throw out his chest, stride to the restroom, open the door, chase out a young woman who was touching up her mascara, and bend over the toilet.

How many years has it been since I got myself vomiting sick? Forgotten how to vomit. You undo your trousers, was it? Cut the dumb jokes. Just shut up and vomit. Vomit till nothing comes but gastric juice.

Once the Rat had vomited up all the liquid in his stomach, he sat down on the toilet and smoked a cigarette. Then he washed his face and hands with soap, and smoothed down his hair at the mirror with wet hands. A bit on the gloomy side perhaps, but his nose and cheeks weren’t so bad-looking.

The kind of face a junior high school teacher could love, maybe.

After leaving the restroom, he went over to the woman whom he’d interrupted at her make-up, and apologized. He returned to the counter, drank half a glass of beer, chased it with a single gulp of icewater from J. He shook his head two or three times, and by the time he’d lit up a cigarette, his head was resuming its normal functions.

Well, ready then, the Rat muttered. There’s a long night ahead, let’s get down to thinking.



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.

16



Rain had been falling for days, then suddenly let up on Friday evening. From the penthouse window, the town made a depressing sight, soaked to the gills and swollen with rainwater. The setting sun breaking through the clouds turned them a mysterious color, and the afterglow painted the room in the same hue.

The Rat slipped a windbreaker over his T-shirt and headed into town. The asphalt streets of the shopping arcade were dotted here and there with still puddles that stretched out dark and wet as far as the eye could see. The whole town had that evening-after-the-rain smell about it. Pines along the river stood drenched top to bottom, fine droplets at the drooping tips of their green needles. Runoff coursed thick and brown into the river, then slid down the channeled concrete river bottom out to sea.



Evening was over almost as soon as it began, and darkness fell damp over everything. Then in an instant, the dampness turned to fog.

The Rat rested his elbow on the car window and made a slow tour of the town. Banks of white fog slanted westward up the drive into the hills. In the end, he took the riverside road down to the coast.

He stopped the car by the seawall, let back his reclining seat, and smoked a cigarette. The sand on the beach, the concrete blocks along the shoreline, the trees of the windbreak, everything was wetted down and dark. Yet a warm yellow light poured through the blinds of the woman’s apartment. He glanced at his wristwatch. Seven fifteen.

A time for people to be finishing dinner, all warm and snug in their apartments.

The Rat put both hands behind his head, shut his eyes, and tried to picture her apartment. He wasn’t really sure because he’d only gone in twice.

The door opened on a six-mat dining-kitchen; orange tablecloth, potted ornamentals, four chairs, orange juice and newspaper on the table, a stainless steel teapot, all neatly arranged, not a smudge or stain anywhere, and the two small rooms beyond with the partition removed to make one room. A long, narrow glass-topped desk, and on it three ceramic beer mugs crammed full of all sorts of pencils and rulers and drafting pens. And a tray laden with erasers, ink-eradicator, old receipts, drafting tape, clips of assorted colors and yes, a pencil sharpener. Stamps.

Alongside the desk was a well-used drafting table with a long crane-necked lamp. The color of the shade, green. And over against the back wall, a bed. A small Scandinavian-style plain wooden bed.

It could hold two people, but the thing would creak like a rowboat at the park.

The fog grew thicker as the night wore on. Its milk-white obscurity hugged the coast, moving slowly. Every once in a while a pair of yellow fog lamps would approach head on, then pass by the Rat at a reduced speed. A fine mist crept in through the window, and dampened every last thing in the car. The seats, the windshield, his windbreaker, the cigarettes in his pocket, everything. The freighters offshore began to sound their foghorns like the plaintive lowing of stranded calves. Each foghorn droned at its own pitch, high or low, piercing the gloom and drifting up toward the hills.

And on the righthand wall? the Rat continued, trying to recall her rooms. A bookcase and a tiny stereo, and records. And a wardrobe. Two Ben Shahn reproductions. Nothing special on the shelves. Mostly architectural trade books. Some travel books, too, guidebooks, travelogues, maps, a number of best sellers, something on Mozart, sheet music, several dictionaries, some kind of dedication penned inside the cover of a French dictionary. The records were mostly Bach or Haydn or Mozart. Those and a few keepsake records from her younger days: Pat Boone, Bobby Darren, The Platters.

Beyond that, the Rat was stumped. Something was missing. Something important. Something that robbed the whole apartment of its reality, left it floating in space. But what? Okay, hold on; got to remember. The lights in the apartment and the carpet. What kind of lights? And what color carpet? He just couldn’t remember.

On impulse the Rat opened the door and was about to dash through the trees of the windbreak, to go knock on her door so he could check out the lights and carpeting. Of all the idiotic notions. The Rat leaned back in his seat, this time to look out to sea. Other than the white fog over the dark water, there was nothing to see. Except off and on, out there, the orange beacon light blinked, steady as a heartbeat.

For a while, her apartment simply floated in the obscurity with neither ceilings or walls. Then little by little, the image grew weaker in its details, until it had completely vanished.

The Rat turned his head toward the ceiling, and slowly closed his eyes. Then at the flick of an imaginary switch, he turned off all the lights in his head, and darkness came over him again.



17



The three-flipper “Spaceship,” somewhere she kept calling me. For days and days, she called.

With devastating speed, I finished the mountain of work that had piled up. No more lunch breaks for me, no more playing with the Abyssinians. I spoke to no one. The office girl would come in to check on me from time to time, only to walk out again shaking her head in exasperation. I’d finish a day’s work by two in the afternoon, throw the manuscripts on the girl’s desk, and fly out of the office. Then I’d go around to game centers throughout Tokyo, just looking for my three-flipper “Spaceship.” But it was no use. Not a soul had seen or heard of it.

“A four-flipper ‘Underground Explorers’ won’t do? Brand-new machine, just in,” one game center owner said.

“Afraid not, sorry.”

He seemed a little disappointed.

“How about a three-flipper ‘Southpaw,’ then? Gives you the bonus light on cycle hits.”

“I’m really very sorry, but I’m only interested in the ‘Spaceship’.”

So he did what he could. He gave me the name and phone number of a pinball fanatic acquaintance of his.

“This guy might know something about the machine you’re looking for. He’s a regular encyclopedia, probably the most up on any machine in the catalogue. Kinda strange character, though.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Nah, don’t mention it. Hope you find it.”



I went into a quiet little coffee shop, dialed the number. Five rings and a man answered the phone.

In the background I could hear the NHK seven o’clock news and a baby crying.

“I’d like to ask you about a special pinball machine, if I may,” I declared after giving my name.

For a while, there was total silence on the other end of the line.

“What kind of machine might that be,” said the man, turning down the sound of the television.

“A three-flipper ‘Spaceship’.”

The man gave it a thoughtful hmm.

“With planets and a rocketship painted on the board–”

“I know it,” he interrupted, then coughed. He spoke like a teacher straight out of graduate school.

“Nineteen sixty-eight model by Gilbert & Sands, Chicago, Illinois. Of some fame as an ill-fated machine.”

“Ill-fated machine?”

“Well, how about it?” he said. “Worth your while to get together and talk?”

We decided to meet the following evening.



* * *



After exchanging name cards, we gave the waitress our order. Two coffees. I was taken aback to find out he was a university lecturer. Somewhere in his thirties, his hair was beginning to thin, but his body looked strong and tanned.

“I teach Spanish at the university,” he said “It’s like sprinkling water over the desert.”

I nodded eagerly.

“Get any Spanish work at your translation service?”

“I handle English, another guy does French. And that’s almost more than we can manage.”

“Unfortunate,” he said, with his arms crossed.

Although it didn’t seem so unfortunate to him at all. He fiddled around with the knot in his tie a while.

“Ever been to Spain?” he asked.

“No, unfortunately not,” I said.

The coffee came and that ended our discussion of Spain. We drank our coffee in silence.

“The Gilbert & Sands Company is what you might call a latecomer to pinball,” he began suddenly. “From World War II through the Korean War they were mostly involved with making bomb bay mechanisms. When the Korean operations ended, they took it as sign to diversify into other fields. Pinball machines, bingo machines, slot machines, jukeboxes, popcorn vendors–your so-called peace-time industries. They came out with their first pinball machine in 1952. Wasn’t bad. Real sturdy, cheap pricetag. But not a particularly interesting machine. Or rather, as the article in Billboard put it, ‘A pinball machine like a Soviet government issue woman’s army brassiere.’ Nonetheless it did quite well as a business venture. They exported it to Mexico, then to all of Latin America. Countries where there aren’t many special technicians so they’re happier with sturdy machines that don’t often break down than with ones with complicated mechanisms.”

He paused long enough to drink some water. It was a real pity he didn’t have a slide projection screen and a long pointer.

“However, as you know, the pinball industry in America–that is to say, the whole world over—is all sewed up by four companies Gottlieb, Bally, Chicago Coin, and Williams–the so-called Big Four. Gilbert tried to punch its way in. Put up a good fight for five years. Then in 1957, Gilbert pulled out of pinball.”

“Pulled out?”

He nodded and dourly drank the dregs of his coffee, then wiped his mouth with a handkerchief a couple of times. “Yeah, they gave up. The company itself was turning a profit, what with the Latin American exports and all. But they just decided to get out while the going was good, before their wounds got too deep. It turns out pinball manufacturing is a complicated business, and requires a lot of know-how. You need a team of crack technicians, and you need a supervisor to coordinate them. Next you need a nationwide network. And agents to continually stock your parts, along with enough repairmen to get to any broken machine within five hours. Well, unfortunately, our newcomer, Gilbert, didn’t have what it took. So they simply swallowed their tears and withdrew, and for seven years they stuck to making vending machines, and windshield wipers for Chrysler. But that didn’t mean they’d given up on pinball.”

At that he pursed his lips. He took a cigarette out of his jacket pocket, tamped the end on the table-top, and lit up.

“No, they hadn’t given up. They had their pride, you know. R&D was underway at an underground workshop. They secretly rounded up experts who’d left the Big Four, and formed their own project team. What’s more, they gave them a huge research budget for their mission to make a machine that’d be more than a match for anything the Big Four had. And within five years, no less.

“That was in 1959. Those five years the company put to good use. Using their other products, they set up the perfect network that covered everywhere from Vancouver to Waikiki. Now all the preparations were complete.

“They came out with their first new model on schedule in 1964. It was called the ‘Big Wave’.”

He pulled a black scrapbook out of his leather briefcase, opened the pages, and handed it over to me. There, he’d pasted what seemed to be a magazine clipping, complete with a front-view photo of the “Big Wave,” a field chart and board design, even an instruction card.

“This was a truly unique machine. Full of all sorts of gimmicks which had never been seen before. Like the selectable sequence patterns, for one. With the ‘Big Wave,’ you could choose the pattern best suited to your own technique. This machine caused quite a commotion.

“Of course, these ideas the Gilbert Company came up with have now become commonplace, but at the time they were state-of-the-art innovations. Moreover, the machine was extremely well built. In the first place, it was built to last. Where Big Four jobs might give out after three years, this could last a good five years. In the second place, it was geared to technique, rather than luck. After that, Gilbert brought out a number of famous machines along the same lines–the ‘Oriental Express,’ ‘Sky Pilot,’ ‘Trans-America’–all highly acclaimed among true enthusiasts. The ‘Spaceship’ was their last model.

“The ‘Spaceship’ was a major switch from the previous four machines. Where those four had been packed solid with innovation upon innovation, the ‘Spaceship’ was frightfully orthodox and simple. There was not a single device the Big Four hadn’t already used. On the contrary, you might even say the machine was really meant as a challenge to the Big Four on their own terms. They’d gained self-confidence by then.”

He spoke slowly, enunciating every word. I kept nodding as I drank my coffee. I drank water when the coffee was gone, then smoked a cigarette when there was no more water.

“The ‘Spaceship’–now there was a curious machine. Nothing that would really grab you at first sight. But give it a play and there’s something different about it. Same flippers, same targets as all the others, but something’s different. That something possessed people like a drug. I don’t know why. But I do have two reasons for calling the ‘Spaceship’ an ill-fated machine. The first being that people never fully understood its greatness, and by the time they did begin to understand, it was too late. The second was that the company went bankrupt. They overdid it on the conscientiousness. Gilbert was absorbed by one of your conglomerates. Whereupon the head office said there was no need for a pinball division. And that was that. A total of fifteen hundred ‘Spaceships’ were produced, which explains why today they are regarded with such awe, and why in America fanatics will offer two thousand dollars for a ‘Spaceship.’ Not that there are any up for sale.”

“Why is that?”

“Because nobody wants to let go of one. Nobody’s capable of letting one go. A curious machine, that.”

He looked at his watch out of habit when he finished, then smoked his cigarette. I ordered a second cup of coffee.

“How many machines were imported into Japan?”

“I looked into it. Exactly three.”

“That’s all?”

He nodded. “That’s because there wasn’t any route to Japan for Gilbert products. In sixty-nine, one import agency brought some in as an experiment. Those three machines. And by the time they got around to a supplementary order, Gilbert & Sands no longer existed.”

“Those three machines, do you know their whereabouts?”

He gave the sugar in his coffee cup a few stirs, then scratched fervently at his earlobe.

“One machine went to a small game center in Shinjuku. The game center folded the winter before last. The whereabouts of the machine, unknown.”

“That much I know.”

“Another machine went to a game center in Shibuya. That burned down last spring Granted, they had fire insurance and nobody took a loss. Only another ‘Spaceship’ vanished from the face of the earth. No two ways about it, it’s an ill-fated machine.”

“It’s starting to sound like the Maltese Falcon,” I said.

He nodded. “And as to the whereabouts of the third machine, I have no idea.”

I gave the address and telephone number of J’s Bar. “But it’s no longer there. Got rid of it last summer.

He meticulously made a memo in his notebook.

“The machine I’m interested in was the one in Shinjuku,” I said. “You really have no idea where it went?”

“There are several possibilities. The most obvious being scrap. The turnover of machines is quite fast. Your ordinary machine depreciates in three years to where a new machine is more economical than repairs. Of course, there’s the question of what’s in style. That’s why some things get scrapped. A second possibility is that it gets traded in as used equipment. Old models that are still usable get passed around from hand to hand, and wind up in some dive, where they end their days at the mercy of drunks and amateurs. Then third, in extremely rare cases, an enthusiast might get hold of it. But eighty percent of the time, it’s the scrapheap.”

I scissored an unlit cigarette between my fingers, and thought myself into a dark mood

“About that last possibility, any way to check up on something like that?”

“Couldn’t fault you for trying, but it’d be difficult. Hardly any contact between enthusiasts. No registers, no official society organs but hell, we’ll see what we can do. I myself have some interest in the ‘Spaceship’.”

“Much obliged.”

He sank back deep in his chair, and puffed on his cigarette.

“Just out of curiosity, what was your best score on the ‘Spaceship’?”

“A hundred and sixty-five thousand,” I said.

“Now that’s impressive,” he said with not the least change of expression. “Really quite impressive.” Then he scratched his ear again.