never say never.

He bowls. He dons his suede brown bowling shoes with straw colored laces and scarlet red trim with the pride of a peacock. The purple majesty of his velvet smoking jacket gleams in the smoky dim lighting of the bowling alley. He knows he strikes a unique image, setting down his black marble ball on the rack and walking away. He is a man walking with a purpose toward the end of the bowling alley, toward the depressing glint of fluorescent lights, toward the familiar clinking of glasses at the lonely bar in the back. He orders up a shot of whiskey from the bartender and downs it. The warmth of it travels down to his gut and settles there, matching the heat in his head as he tries to settle the chaos of his thoughts.

He watches the other bowlers in their white trash glory slide and glide and throw for victory. The crack of the shining marble balls as they aim in calculated fury towards innocent pins fills his ears, as well as the loud cheers and jeers of the other patrons there. But more importantly, he needs to tell, needs to leak out his hurt and frustration to someone who will listen. And that is why he is here tonite. He is here to find a sympathetic ear to hear his problems, and take pity on him, and maybe buy him a drink too. He wants his life to be like Cheers where everybody knows his name, but he doesn’t have a bar he frequents yet. The bowling alley was the next best place he could think of because he’s there every Tuesday anyway. And bowling alleys are festering pools of depressing things anyhow, which is close enough, right? It’s so fitting he should be in one now, he tells himself as he feels the whiskey begin to take effect.

He wants another shot. The bartender has entered into enthusiastic banter with the woman at the further end of the bar, and is ignoring the hollow sounds of his shot glass tap-tap-tapping on the surface of the counter. The whiskey is clearing his head, which only helps to make the glare of the neon lights above all the more obtrusive to his weary eyes. He begins a string of staccato taps on the bar with his glass, and finally catches the bartender’s attention. The bartender strides over to him, annoyed, and snatches away the glass from his hand. “Whatcha want, son?” he growls, turning his back to the bar.

“Gimme another shot.” His fingers creep into his pockets and discover a rosary lurking in its depths. Surprised at the find, he removes it and sets it down on the counter to examine. It was a rosary from his former religious days in high school. The rosary is silver with delicate dried rose petals inside each bead. The roses had been flowers at his grandmother’s funeral. He hadn’t been to church in years.

The bartender slams another shot down in front of him, the whiskey sloshing out over the sides. “Thanks,” he says and gulps it down without a wince.

Impressed at this scrawny creature who tucks away hard liquor like candy, the bartender finds himself abandoning his usual apathy to strangers. “That bad?”

He takes a dramatic pause before answering. “The worst.” And before the bartender escapes again to the other end of the bar, he launches into his story.

“I’m dating my best friend. She’s a wonderful gal. We went off together to New York and she decided to break up with her boyfriend while we’re there to go out with me.” The bartender raises his eyebrow at this and he quickly adds on, “But it’s okay ‘cause the guy was a dick anyways. Gave her lots of shit ‘cause he didn’t understand our friendship. I didn’t know that though. I mean, I thought me and the guy were friends and all that, but no, she tells me, he’s a Class A jerk. So she finally dumps him and we’re together now, you follow?”

The bartender nodded, cleaning an empty cup with a rag. “So you were friends with the guy before?”

”Kind of.”

”And now you’re dating his girlfriend?”

”Ex-girlfriend.”

“That’s fucked up, dude.”

“You’re not getting it!” He gives an exasperated sigh. This confessional cleansing is not going as he had imagined, and he begins fiddling with the rosary again. “So I get home from New York and find out that my best friend has been fraternizing with the guy. Can you believe that? The fucking traitor!” The bartender gave a half-hearted shrug. “Now the sonsofbitches are saying that my girlfriend and I aren’t gonna last and spreading all these rumors. My best friend! We’ve been pals for eight years and this is how the fucker repays me!”

”Sounds ‘bout right to me.”

“What?”

“That she’s gonna leave you eventually.”

He looks stunned. “What?”

The bartender gives him a long, hard stare. “Now son, you don’t expect some girl who dumps her boyfriend over the phone to stick around, do ya?” When he doesn’t respond, the bartender simply shrugs again. “Sounds like you got yourself into quite the shithole, little guy. Now me’n’my buddies here, we got this rule about not dating each other’s ex’s. Sure looks like you fellas could use a similar rule.”

He throws money down onto the bar angrily. “What the fuck do you know? I’m the one getting the shaft here. I’m the one losing my best friend to this shithead and getting my name dragged through the mud. I’m the one who’s suffering here.”

The bartender smirks. “Oh yeah? Well who’s got the girl?”

The cowboy hat was tipped back high on his head now as he wiped away the perspiration from his forehead. The dust of the road and his travels took permanent residence in the wrinkles of his bronzed skin. Clumps of caking mud clung to his worn boots, once his pride and joy, and the spikes that had once twinkled at his ankles were long since removed. The sleeves of his dirty white button down shirt were rolled high on his slender arms; they clung to his body like a second skin from the sweat that dripped off his torso. He carried a guitar case in his right hand, a small suitcase in the other. Both were as dusty as the landscape, and firmly gripped in his sweaty palms. The noon day sun was beating down on the black asphalt on which he walked, the waves of heat rising from the road. Texas was hot, but despite the scalding sun above, the bitter cold that had moved within his breast wore away any recognition of the heat from his mind.

In the distance, a giant dust storm descended with a fury down the road towards him. He kept walking. A few minutes later, a dull blue station wagon flew by him, leaving a camel-colored fog in its wake. He paused a moment to spit the gritty sand from his mouth. Ahead, the car screamed to a stop and then jolted back to him, a dizzying haze of wild blue.

“Hey amigo, where you going?”
“Anywhere.”
“You wanna lift?”
“No.”
“It’s hot. You gonna die out here, man.”
“It happens.”

The man gave him a curious look. “What you runnin’ from, my friend? The law?” He shook his head. “You in a gang?”

“I’m runnin’ from a woman.”

The man nodded his head wisely. Understanding had lent compassion to his dark eyes. “But amigo, you know you never gonna get away from that woman, right? She always stay with you.” He patted his chest. “Right in there, right inside.”

“I know.” A grand silence fell over the two as they each remembered their own woman.

“You sure you don’t wanna ride, man?” He shook his head again. “Alright amigo,” the man said, shaking his head. “Good luck.” The car gave a dusty cough and lurched forward, speeding off down the road once again.

He watched the car disappear behind the next hill. The sun beat down on his head. Giving a sigh, he picked up his load and continued on down the road, one step at a time, towards nowhere.

What CD could I play that would make you fall madly in love with me?

She shrugged a reply, hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. He fumbled through the portfolio of glimmering discs with nimble fingers.

Foreigner! Thumping the dashboard emphatically with a heavy fist, he continued. We need some Foreigner. Everyone falls in love to Foreigner!

She glanced over at him. I thought something more along the lines of Marvin Gaye.

Marvin Gaye is for when you wanna get turned on. He winked at her. I’d like to think there’s a difference between the two. Besides, do you know how many love songs Foreigner wrote?


He rattled off the names of several songs imprinted on his mind, but her mind was already lost to the realm of empty thoughts. It was too late to tell him that he was worrying needlessly. It was too late to tell him she had already fallen in love with him.