Steve stood at the foul line surveying the emptiness at the other end of the alley as upright pins appeared on automatic reset. As the host was yelling into his headset, “Steve Wong is perfect!” our friend knelt on one knee, appearing to thank God-as-he-knew-God for such a triumph.
Instead, he was unlacing his left shoe—STEVE. He took it off and set its toe on the foul line. He did the same to WONG on the right, neatly setting his custom-made bowling footware so that XXX showed on TV.
In stocking feet, he padded to the ball return and took up that which had already been delivered. Carrying Chinese Lightning in two hands like it was nothing more than a paving stone, he set it on top of his shoes in a gesture that Anna, MDash, and I knew to mean, “I will bowl no more. Forever.”
As he tossed his bowling glove into the crowd—setting off a melee for the memorabilia hounds—Kim Terrell-Kearny ran up and kissed his cheek in an embrace, while the other pros offered handshakes and head rubs.
By the time we made our way through the adoring bowlers—all of them now fans—Anna was weeping. She threw her arms around Steve Wong and sobbed so deeply I was worried she would pass out. MDash kept saying something in his native language, a superlative, I am sure. I toasted Steve with a beer I had found in a cooler by one of TV cameras, then grabbed his stack of bowling gear and stuffed it all in his bowling bag.
Only the three of us heard him say, “I’m glad that’s over.”
None of us went bowling again for the next few months, though not by plan. I had a dime-size growth on my leg that went all raised up and spooky on me, so I scheduled outpatient surgery to have it removed, sliced away, potato-peeled off. Nothing serious. MDash got a new job, walking away from his career possibilities at Home Depot for a position at Target, his new workplace separated from his former job by a vast, shared parking lot. He walked to the other store, changed his polo shirt, and never looked back. Anna took fly-fishing lessons at a place run by the Parks Department—at the Stanley P. Swett Municipal Casting Ponds, a place no one had ever heard of or could find without Google Maps. She tried to get me to sign up along with her, but I look on fly-fishing as a companion sport to luge racing—never will I do either one.
Steve Wong’s life settled down. He figured out how many ESPN dollars would go to taxes and planned accordingly. He went back to work, had to take selfies with customers for a while, and told MDash that leaving Home Depot for Target was like emigrating from his sub-Saharan home country to North Korea (such is the competitive rhetoric of Home Depot management). One thing Steve never did talk about was bowling.
But one night, there we were, bowling for free, the regulars at the lanes sidling up to Steve for bumps with the fist that had rolled those perfect games. Steve and I arrived first. I had picked him up, but he came out of his house empty-handed!
“You dope!” I said as he climbed into the shotgun seat of the VW Bus.
“What?”
“Go back inside and get your stuff. Your shoes and your bag and Chinese Lightning.”
“Okay,” he said, after a long pause.
By the time Anna arrived, then MDash, I had finished a Rolling Rock and Steve was pumping quarters into a video motocross game. We carried his equipment down to our assigned lane, changed into our rental shoes, and picked out our bowling balls, Anna considering every single one, I think. When we called to Steve that we were ready to begin, he was still racing on the machine and just waved blindly for us to start without him. We ended up playing two games, just the three of us. Anna won both, I lost them, and MDash was crowing about being a Silver Medalist over me.
Steve came down to our lane and watched the last frames of that second game. We were debating whether or not to go again, since it was getting late and it was a Thursday night. I wanted to go home, MDash wanted to beat Anna for the Gold, and she wanted to crush all our dreams for the third straight time in one evening. Steve didn’t care what we did, saying he would sit out the next line and maybe have a beer or two.
“You aren’t going to bowl with us?” Anna was incredulous. “When did you get so stuck-up?”
“C’mon, Steve,” MDash pleaded. “You and bowling mean America to me.”
“Put your shoes on,” I told him. “Or you are walking home.”
Steve sat there for a moment, then called us a bunch of jerks and took off his street shoes to change into his ugly bowling footwear.
I rolled first, hitting a paltry four on my first ball, then missing the remaining pins by millimeters. MDash nearly died laughing. His first ball left three standing, which he then clobbered to pick up the spare.
“Tonight,” he hissed at Anna, “you are going to die!”
“Bit heavy with the taunts,” she told him. “No one dies bowling unless a tornado is involved.” She then knocked down nine of the pins and expertly closed the frame on her second ball—she and MDash were tied.
Then came Steve Wong, sighing as he took his custom ball out of its custom bag, the spherical tool of his legendary alley work. I may exaggerate by saying the bowlers in the place stopped what they were doing to watch a master at work, that the whole joint suddenly went silent, wondering if, somehow, Lightning would strike again and start another chain reaction of perfect games, proving that Steve Wong was the true God of Turkeys. I think it was mostly in my head.
He stood still on the lane, holding the ball once again to his heart, his eyes locked on the faraway wedge of ten white pins. Then he began his swing and step-step-stepped to the lip of the foul line and released Lightning, lifting his bowling hand up to the sky. His right toe tapped the floor behind his left heel, the total of six Xs displayed for all to see. His ball curved and spun down the long lines of the shiny hardwood, headed for that pocket between the 1 and 3 pins, looking to be a strike for sure.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Anne Stringfield, Steve Martin, Esther Newberg, and Peter Gethers—the four in-laws of these married words.
Special credit to E. A. Hanks for her blue pencil and sharp, honest eyes.
Plus, a tip of the cap and a buck apiece to Gail Collins and Deborah Triesman.
And thanks to all those at Penguin Random House who examined, admired, improved, and made presentable these stories.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Tom Hanks has been an actor, screenwriter, director, and, through Playtone, a producer. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker. This is his first collection of fiction.
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Copyright
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF