The CuisinArt

It was 4:45, and Eric had skipped out of work a few minutes early. This wasn’t a problem anymore. He’d spent 10 years in the same office, learning the same people’s tendencies. He knew Susan always had a cigarette at 4:35, and stayed outside, pretending to talk on the phone till 4:50, at which point she would return and start packing her things. He knew all of their vices. He did nothing with them, but use them as a means to avoid them. Ducking out was no longer more difficult than slipping in 10 minutes late from his lunch break. He could probably stretch it to an hour.

He despised the outfit he’d chosen to wear today: a royal blue collared shirt tucked into a black denim pair of jeans over white sneakers. It was such a bland and self-loathing outfit. He despised attention being brought on him. It didn’t even match.

He’d arrived a time in his life where pleasures were a dying breed. Natural selection was taking over, and in the form of banalities and inconveniences. Almost everything was at this point- an inconvenience. There was his sister. He could hardly stomach the bemoaning scene - where she pried for money and support - that was lunch on Wednesdays. He watched the History channel, although he wasn’t particularly interested in it. But he didn’t want to be included. News, sports, celebrity scandal- he wanted nothing to do with it.

He stopped trying to meet women, or more accurately avoided them, as well- turned off to the whole concept of marriage after spending his childhood absorbing the noise of his bickering parents, and most of his young adulthood trying not to hear the shouts from what was once a marriage, turned adversarial co-habitation.

Standing alone, the only sounds in the alley were the gears churning on the ball return. The ball travels down the lane, up the return ramp and back to his hands- Time and time again; too repetitive to remember. Just an image. He lined up his shot, balanced his weight and approached with a smooth, upbeat stride reminiscent of a dance step. Down, forward, slide, release, pop up. His back leg kicked up behind, with the faintest bit of life and charisma, as the ball rolled its way down the lane. It was poetry in motion, but he never thought of it that way. The sport had become his escapist pleasure, but he hardly allowed it to be even that.

The ball glided along the second arrow from the right, rotating forward and diagonally on its axis toward the front pin, just off center and it followed the exact path he’d aimed for. The ball struck the pins just as he had planned, and evaporating in front of the ball was each pin, with the exception of one. He’d thrown a perfect ball and received imperfect results. He stared at the 10th pin, alone in the far corner of the lane. It should have fallen with the others; it should have been a strike.

But, being as rigidly stable and uncompromising in the release of his emotions as he was, he just spun slowly on the heels of his plain white sneakers, grimaced slightly - certainly not enough for anyone who wasn’t watching to take notice of - and waited for the ball to spit itself back out the return and into his hands. The result was almost as he expected. Of course he wouldn’t get the strike. He couldn’t get a break in any other moment of the last 10 years of his life, he thought, why would he get one in bowling? And had he gotten a strike, it was but a mere confirmation of what he knew should of happened. There was no pleasure, either way. If he couldn’t win, he’d at least be satisfying with predicting that he would fail, unfairly. Feeling justified, he picked up the spare and waited for the next frame. He’d already forgotten the last one.

After the game, he approached Ken, the establishment’s owner and only employee. A rigid business man; willing to purchase or spend capital on what the old fashioned and lifeless alley needed: snack machines, electronic dart boards, an updated food stand, but intransigent on spending a cent more than necessary. Before attending to Eric, Ken ordered a woman, who just entered the building that she’d have to throw her bottle of soda out. “We have soda machines, if you’re thirsty.” Eric gazed at the door, knowing kids were to follow this woman, and his own private lane amongst the beautifully desolate alley was moments away from being intruded upon in the crudest of fashions.

Ken turned to Eric, knowing why he was at the desk, and went straight to the bar. He’d always purchased a pitcher of water, for one dollar, as well. The days were getting longer. Each minute dragged. The weeks felt like they would never end, but conversely Eric also felt that so many years had escaped him, and faster than the pins fall upon contact. Eric hadn’t had any contact in some time.

Each day at the alley was beginning to feel that way. The games were long and grueling, and by the end, it felt as if he’d never even started. Ken returned, not with a pitcher, but with two plastic cups of water, and charged Eric nothing. Eric nodded his head and returned to his lane, a cup in each hand. Ken is a rigid businessman.

As he walked, he turned his head toward the door again, which had yet to have rowdy children burst through. He couldn’t stand children. He couldn’t even remember what it was like when he was one. Was he ever one? Rotating his head back towards his destination, he and the woman, who now sat, embittered and thirsty, met stares. He tried to divert his gaze, casually, but something in his neck kept him from turning.

She wasn’t particularly beautiful, plain but pleasant. Her hair, however, was stunning. It was long, rich, and flowed down her neck, around her shoulders, and dangled delicately and deliberately off her back. In the midst of the inauspicious attempt to be inconspicuous, he noticed that she too, was not turning her head, aimlessly staring at the ceiling, or pretending to find something to occupy her attention until Eric had looked away. 

Decidedly more curious, he saw that she unmistakably smiled at him. What was this happening? Could this be one of those real moments that he’d only seen on screen or heard told time and time again by a burdensome colleague? When you avoid people, you rarely see their eyes, or their smiles, or their hair. You see faces, and fabric, all forgotten by the mind as quickly as it was processed and before you realize it, you haven’t seen a person in years. But this time, he saw a woman.