"Hey, come on in," I called to the dog as it withdrew. The dog turned away hesitantly, then resumed wagging its tail as if the message hadn't quite gotten through.
"Come on in. I'm tired of waiting."
I fished a stick of chewing gum out of my pocket, and held up the wrapper for the dog to see. The dog stared at the gum for a while before making up its mind to crawl under the fence. I gave the dog a few pats on the head, rolled the gum up into a ball in the palm of my hand, and chucked it toward the other end of the platform. The dog dashed off straight as an arrow.
I went home satisfied.
* * *
On the train ride back, I told myself over and over again, it's all over with now, you got it out of your system, forget it. You got what you came for, didn't you? Yet I couldn't get it out of mind, that place. Nor the fact that I loved Naoko. Nor that she was dead. After all that, I still hadn't closed the book on anything.
* * *
Venus is a sweltering planet covered with clouds. Half the inhabitants die young from the heat and humidity. It's a feat just to live thirty years. But by the same measure, that makes them all the more tenderhearted. Every Venusian loves all Venusians. They don't hate or discriminate or hold grudges against anyone. They don't even curse. No murders or fighting, only love and consideration.
"Even if, say, someone dies, we don't feel sad," said the guy from Venus, an ultra-quiet type. "We'd rather just show that much more love while the person's alive. That way, there's no regret afterward."
"So it's like you get your loving done ahead of time?"
"Hmm ... the words you folks use sound so strange to me," he said, shaking his head.
"And everything really comes off with no hitches?" I asked.
"If it didn't," he said, "Venus would be buried in sorrow."
* * *
I returned to the apartment to find the twins in bed, snug under the covers like two sardines in a tin, giggling away to themselves.
"Welcome back," said one of them.
"Where did you go?"
"Train station," I said, loosening my tie, and snuggled in between them. I was bushed.
"What station, where?"
"What did you go for?"
"A station a long ways away from here. Went to see a dog."
"What kind of dog?"
"You like dogs?"
"A big white dog, it was. And no, I'm really not so crazy about dogs."
I lit up a cigarette, and until I'd finished, the neither of them said a word.
"You sad about something?" one of them asked.
I nodded silently.
"Why don't you get some sleep?" said the other.
And so I slept.
* * *
So far, I have been telling this story as my very own, but it is also the story of another guy, whom we'll call the Rat. That autumn, the two of us – he and I – were living nearly five hundred miles apart.
September 1973, that's where this novel begins. That's the entrance. We'll just hope there's an exit. If there isn't one, there wouldn't be any point in writing anything.
ON THE ORIGINS OF PINBALL
First of all, we'll need to know the name of one Raymond Maloney. It seems that there used to be someone by that name, but he has since died. That's about all there is to know about his life. Which is to say that nobody knows him from nothing. Not any more than they know a water spider at the bottom of a well.
To be sure, it's a historical fact that by this man's very hands the first prototype of the pinball machine was brought unto this realm of defilement in 1934 from out of the great, golden cloud of technology. Which is again the very year that, across that giant puddle called the Atlantic, one Adolf Hitler was getting his hands on the first rung of the Weimar ladder.
Raymond Maloney's life story has none of the mythic color of the Wright Brothers or Alexander Graham Bell. No heartwarming episodes of youth, nor any dramatic "Eureka!" Only scant mention of his name on page one of a strange tome written for a scant handful of curious readers. A reference which may be summed up: in 1934, Raymond Maloney invented the first pinball machine. Not even a photograph with it. Needless to say, we find neither portrait nor statue to his memory.
Now you're probably thinking, had this Maloney never existed, the history of the pinball machine would have been entirely different from what it is today. Or worse, it might well not have come into existence at all. And hence, might not our hasty underestimation of this Maloney amount to the height of ingratitude? Yet if we had occasion to personally examine that very first prototype "Ballyhoo" created by Maloney's own hands, all such thoughts would surely vanish. For there we'd find not one single element to stir our imagination.
The progress of the pinball machine and of Hitler exhibit certain similarities. Both have dubious beginnings, coming on the scene as mere bubbles on the froth of the times; it is through their evolutionary speed rather than any physical stature per se that they acquire their mythic aura. And of course, that evolution came riding in on three wheels: to wit, technology, capital investment, and last but not least, people's basic desires.
With devastating speed people kept providing the singularly undistinguished protean machine with ever-newer capabilities. Someone proclaimed, "Let there be lights!" Someone else shouted, "Let there be electricity!" Still another shouted, "Let there be flippers!" And so there came to be lights illuminating the field, electricity to deflect balls magnetically, two flipper arms to whip them back into play.
Scoring came to numerically convert players' proficiency by a factor of ten, while tilt lamps guarded against rough handling and rocking of the machine. Next came the metaphysical concept of sequencing, which led to such variations as the Bonus Light, Extra Ball, and Replay schools. Actually by this time, pinball machines had come to possess a magical fascination.
* * *
This is a novel about pinball.
* * *
The introduction to Bonus Light, that exegesis of pinball, has this to say:
There is precious little you can gain from a pinball machine. Only some lights that convert to a score count. On the other hand, there is a great deal to lose. All the coppers you'd ever need to erect statues of every president in history (provided, of course, you thought well enough to erect a statue of Richard M. Nixon), not to mention a lot of valuable and nonreturnable time.