Oscar Casares (18 page)
She managed to pull it together in the second game and started knocking down some strikes. Between frames she kept to herself and let her teammates chat with one another. She thought about the teenager. She saw him laughing at her on the other side of the fence. He was slouching with his pants hanging low since he never ate anything besides other people's bananas. And he had a smirk on his face because he'd taken something that was hers and there was nothing an old woman could do about it. She put her anger into the release of the black ball. Her power rolled, spun, and hooked down sixty feet of maple wood until she found the perfect place to let out her frustration.
Her last game was her best. The bowling alley grew quiet each time she lined up with the ball. She had strikes in the first, second, and fourth frames. By then she'd forgotten about the teenager. She still wanted her ball back. It was hers and she'd paid enough for it, but she also knew it was just a ball. The important thing was that she was bowling a little better now. The ball hooked as if it were being pulled along a wire that extended from the foul line to the pocket. It was only the first week of the league, but she played as though it were the last. She had a strike on the tenth frame. On the bonus frame, she split the seven and ten pins and barely missed picking up the spare. Her final score was a 244. De Luna held on to second place, just behind Fernie's Pest Control.
Lola and Vangie stayed to have some beers with the rest of the team. One of the ladies commented that Lola must be color-blind because she had scored almost as many strikes with her black ball as she had with the cherry red one. The rest of the ladies laughed. Lola smiled, but she worried about how long it would take to really get her game back. She spent the next few weeks practicing and playing in the league. Afterward, she'd linger in front of the pro shop and gaze at the new bowling balls inside the glass case. At home she had several dog-eared catalogs with the latest models, but she couldn't make up her mind which, if any, to buy, so she decided to wait.
Two months passed before Lola regained her old form. It happened one night during league play when she scored a 284, a personal best. The black ball seemed to find a groove on the lane, and the strikes and spares just kept coming. Vangie and the other ladies stayed to have a beer after the last game, but Lola said she was tired. Next time, she told them. Lola drove down International and stared past the occasional headlights on the road. She thought about how well she had bowled that night and how her game had improved over the past few weeks. She felt that maybe she should've stayed for one beer. Her friends would be at the bowling alley for a while. Lola considered turning the car around, but she was already close to home. She decided instead to stop at the Jiffy-Mart to buy a six-pack. There were so many beers to choose from; she spent a few minutes opening and closing the refrigerator doors until she picked up a six-pack of Pearl Light. She walked to the counter with her fingers looped through the plastic ring holder. It took a while to get the clerk's attention because he was watching a boxing match on a mini-TV. “¡Chíngatelo!” he yelled from his wooden stool. She had to wait for the end of the round to buy her beer.
Lola placed the six-pack in the front seat of the car and pulled out of the parking lot. She had driven less than a block when she thought she saw the teenager walking in the direction of the store. Even in the dark, she recognized him walking the same cocky way he had in the alley with her bowling bag.
Lola turned the car around and drove back to the Jiffy-Mart. The teenager was about to reach the entrance when she stepped in front him. Her shoulders were back and her chin was up, but he was still a foot taller. She grabbed him by the shoulder and was surprised at the strength she felt in his arm.
“I want my ball.”
“What are you talking about, grandma?”
“Tú fuiste. You stole it from my house. I saw you. I remember.”
“You didn't see nothing, okay?” He yanked his arm back and leaned into Lola's face, close enough to kiss her. “And if you're smart, you'll keep your mouth shut.”
His eyes were glassy and he smelled like the solution they used to condition the lanes.
“Give me back my ball.”
“Shit, I already told you, I don't have your ball.”
“Did you sell it?”
“Like I said, I don't know nothing about nothing.”
“Le voy a hablar a la policía.”
“And what? You want me to get all scared? Call them, there's the pay phone. I'll be cruising before they even get here.”
“Just give me my ball.”
“You're crazy, grandma.” He shoved her aside and walked into the store.
Lola walked back to her car. From behind the steering wheel, she could see him standing at the back of the store, flipping through a magazine. He looked up between pages to see if she'd picked up the phone. All she wanted was her ball. If he gave it back, she wouldn't even report him. She thought about calling from her house, but she knew he'd be gone by the time the police arrived. She wished she'd never stopped at the store or seen the teenager walking down the dark street. Now she couldn't turn away. She couldn't let him walk away a second time. Her only chance was to call from the store's pay phone.
She opened the trunk of the car and unzipped her bag. She slipped on her wrist brace and pulled it snug around the palm of her hand. As she walked into the store, the black ball felt as if it were a part of her arm. The clerk was still shouting for his boxer to knock out the other guy. “¡Chíngatelo!” he kept yelling. The teenager stood at the end of the long aisle. He was laughing at something he'd seen in the magazine. Lola stepped back as far as she could. The tiles on the floor were white with tiny specks of red and green. The aisle was wider than a bowling lane. She locked her gaze on the teenager. She concentrated as she took her one, two, three, four steps and released the black ball down the aisle. The rumble started low and grew louder with each second. The ball stayed centered as it shot past the shelves of dishwashing liquid, detergent, oven cleaners, aluminum foil, diapers, pacifiers, formula mix, aspirin, cough syrup, cold and flu medicine, and then found its target: Strike!
Where would I be without you?
My father taught me how to work. My mother gave me faith. My big sister, Sylvia, and my cuñado, Jones, backed me up. Toni and Idoluis guided me with sound advice. Cindy walked with me one cold February morning in New York. Others called just to remind me I still had family and friends: Noel, Stephanie, David, Jason, Rene, Celeste, Nick, Scotty, DVH, and Jaime. Tío Nico inspired me to find my own stories. Tío Hector held the floor in our living room. Don Américo Paredes set the record straight and cleared a trail for the rest of us. Dago answered my letter and started me down this road. Dorothy Barnett read week after week and believed. David Rice agreed to look at this stranger's work. My tíos from Bel-ton, Missouri, Imelda and Milton, stood in as my second parents. Matt, Josh, Jarod, and José listened while I first told some of these stories at Joe's Place. Victor Garcia and Tony Zavaleta filled in the details when my memory couldn't. El señor Garrido me dio las palabras. Lisa Marie spread the word to anyone who would stand still long enough. TZ sacrificed part of his honeymoon. Los Garcias y los Sassers opened their homes to me. Dylan and Flaco waited patiently for me to stop typing. Richard Abate never stopped asking if he could see the manuscript. Reagan Arthur and everyone at Little, Brown followed me home to Brownsville. And Cristal showed me the good that comes from love and patience.
The text of this book was set in Sabon, a typeface designed by Jan Tschichold (1902-74), a book designer and calligrapher, in the mid-1960s. Although he was a modernist and advocate of the Bauhaus style, his work as a book designer led him to create Sabon based on the early-sixteenth-century types of Claude Garamond. This classic and elegant typeface is now one of the most widely used in book design for its beauty and legibility.
The display type of this book is set in Weiss, designed by Emil Weiss (1875-1943), another book designer, in 1931. Weiss studied and admired the work of the classic type designers but was able to design and cut fonts for the then new technology of mechanically set type, making his work classic yet fresh and contemporary-looking.