“Steve is throwing up in the parking lot,” she told us. “Between the TV trucks.”
“Nerves?” I wondered.
“Are you an idiot?” she asked.
MDash left us to get a selfie with Shaker Al Hassan.
I found Steve sitting outside on a low wall by the entrance, his head in his hands like he was fighting a fever and might chook again.
“Wong-o,” I said, squeezing his shoulder. “Here’s what you are going to do today. You roll Chinese Lightning a couple of times. You go home seventeen hundred bucks to the better. Easy. Breezy.”
“Can’t do that, man.” Steve raised up his head, eyes to the horizon across the parking lot. “Everyone expects god damn perfection. Drive me home right now.”
I sat with him on the low wall. “Let me ask you a question. Is this bowling alley not like every bowling alley on the planet, with the foul line and the arrows in the wood? Are there ten pins down at the other end of the lane? Will your ball come back to you magically via an underground slot?”
“Oh, I see. You are giving me a pep talk.”
“Answer my insightful questions.”
“Yes. True. Golly, jeepers, I see that you are right. Everything will be hunky-dory now that you have talked some sense into me.” Steve was speaking in a monotone. “I’m special and I can do anything I set my mind to and dreams do come true if I just carpe diem.”
“Atta baby,” I said. We did not move for a couple of minutes. The exhausted woman in the headset came yelling for us that it was post time for Steve Wong.
He ran his fingers through his jet-black hair, and then rose up, letting loose with a string of very un-Wong expletives. Good thing his parents weren’t around.
When Steve put on those ugly bowling shoes, a ripple of “hey… that’s that guy…” went through the crowd. His Internet legend had preceded him. When the tape was rolling and he was introduced by the host of Alley Nation, the place echoed with applause. Even the pro bowlers looked over at lane 4.
“Steve Wong,” the host intoned. “Six perfect games in succession. Seventy-two strikes in a row. But questions linger as to whether your incredible streak has been the creation of clever editing and computer special effects. What is your reaction to such allegations?” The host stuck the microphone up to Steve’s lips.
“Makes sense, what with the Web being the Web.” Steve’s eyes darted from the host to the crowd to us to the floor and back to the host—all so fast it looked like he was having an attention-induced seizure.
“Have you ever thought you’d reach such a level of technique and form that so many closed frames would be in your game?”
“I just bowl for fun.”
“The official record for straight strikes is held by Tommy Gollick at forty-seven, but here you claim to have rolled twenty-four consecutive Turkeys. Many in the bowling world wonder if such a string is even possible.”
I turned to a fellow next to me who, with his bowling shirt emblazoned with a Crowne Lanes logo, must have been a citizen of Alley Nation. “What does he mean by Turkeys?” I asked him.
“Three strikes in a row, dipshit. And no way in hell did that punk roll twenty-plus of ’em.” He then yelled “Hoax!” at the top of his lungs.
“As you may hear, Steve Wong, there are some who doubt not just your claim but also the word of the manager of your home alley, the Ventura Party, Billiards, and Bowling Complex.”
Steve looked the crowd over, probably seeing only the glaring eyes of unbelievers. “Like I said. I bowl for fun.”
“Well, as I always say, the proof of any bowler is in the crash of pins, so, Steve Wong, step up to the line and show us what game you brought with you today. And remember, folks, a great time is waiting for you and your family at your nearby Bowling Alley and Fun Center. Take up bowling and get on a roll.”
Steve walked to the ball return, strapping on his glove as the three of us hooted and hollered “Atta baby.” Some in the crowd catcalled. Steve heaved a sigh so deep and soulful we could see his shoulders sag, and we were perched far away in the upper row. He turned his back to us all and sighed again. By the time he took Chinese Lightning into his hands and placed his fingers into the ball’s custom-drilled holes, we who knew Steve Wong could tell this about him—he was not having fun.
And yet, his movements were still a vision of grace, his release of the ball smooth and effortless, the flick of his hand applying the same spin we had seen so many times, his fingers reaching for the ceiling in one hand waving free, the toes on his right foot tap-tapping on the hardwood akimbo to his left shoe, XXX flashing from his heels.
Rumble. Smash. Strike. Cries of “Lucky!” echoed throughout Crowne Lanes. Steve, his back to the world, cooled his hand waiting for Chinese Lightning to appear from below. With ball in hand, he assumed the pose and did it again. Rumble. Smash. Strike number 2.
Then came strikes number 3 through 6, netting a score of 120 in the fourth frame. Steve had turned the crowd decidedly in his favor, but I doubt he noticed. He didn’t so much as glance our way.
Shaker Al Hassan was asked what he thought of Steve’s form. “Unworldly magnificent!” he said on camera to all citizens of Alley Nation.
Strikes 7, 8, and 9 had all four professionals weighing in on Steve’s balance, his mechanics, his cool-under-pressure command, in what Kyung Shin Park called “the Tunnel” and Jason Belmonte knew as the “Line of Fate.” Kim Terrell-Kearny said the PBA had a place for a competitor as poised as Steve Wong.
When ten X-ed frames were superimposed on the TV monitors, the host became flabbergasted—actually saying, “I am flabbergasted by the performance of this fine young example to bowlers everywhere!” The crowd was on its feet shouting encouragements equal to those for the gladiators of Ancient Rome. Steve’s eleventh roll was a surreal moment in time, a dream ballet, a free fall out of the sky that hit the perfect pocket between the 1 and 3 pins and kablooey went all eight of the rest of them.
With one last strike needed for a perfect game, $100,000, and ESPN immortality, Steve soft-shoed to the ball return without any tell of emotion—no expectation, no anxiety, no fear. No fun, either. As far as I could tell from the back of his head, his face must have looked like an open-eyed death mask.
As he held his ball before his heart in preparation for his windup, something more encompassing than silence fell on Crowne Lanes—a void of sound, like the room had been vacuum-pumped of atmosphere, robbing sound waves of their purchase. Anna’s fingers were digging into MDash’s and my arms, the words atta baby forming mutely on her lips.
The exact moment of the beginning of Steve’s twelfth and final roll was imperceptible, like the slow liftoff of a rocket to the moon, so heavy a thing that nothing moves despite the ignition of boosters and all the flames and fury. The nanosecond Chinese Lightning hit the hardwood a roar exploded so loud you’d have thought every member of Alley Nation was on the cusp of simultaneous orgasm with the love of his or her life. A SABRE jet engine is not as loud as the roof-busting blare that grew and grew as that brown and yellow orb spun along its arc. Just inches from the impact of ball on pin, Crowne Lanes was engulfed in a wall of sound.
The smash of ball in the pocket just between pins 1 and 3 happened in some other place, a clap of thunder a hundred miles away. We all saw the flash of white, like the smile of a giant with perfect teeth suddenly busted, all ten pins scattering and clattering until what was left was empty space and dead soldiers—ten of them.