His posture was the thing Thandie noticed about him when she first met him. She told him that over dinner one night during the initial months of their courtship. “I loved the way you held yourself,” she said, giggling as she confessed to him. “Just fell for those broad, pushed-back shoulders.” He almost chuckles now recalling that evening as he takes cautious steps up the stairs.
In the bedroom he pulls the T-shirt over his head and throws it into the laundry basket that sits behind the door of the walk-in closet. With a single smooth motion he strips off his pajama bottoms and chucks them into the basket, as well. Striding back into the room on his way to the bathroom of the master bedroom, its luxurious ivory carpet under his feet, he catches his naked body in the dresser mirror. He turns to face it and inspects his nakedness. Gotta hit the gym, man, he instructs himself.
All is not lost, though. There is still time to salvage his once beautifully toned physique. Sure, his six-pack, the centrepiece of his own marvellous creation, is barely visible. There is the hint of love handles, and his former rock-hard chest has softened, reinforcing his current state as a man who has at last come to terms with his distinctly average looks. For years he managed to look way above average by sheer hard work and the belief that it was his moral duty to co-operate with Mother Nature and do his bit to make life more beautiful.
As Zakhariye studies his naked self, he lets his eyes wander to his crotch, stopping to focus on his limp penis. Once the centre of his universe, it now appears neglected, unimportant, no longer the facilitator of unimaginable pleasures. It is true, he thinks. The less you do it the less your body desires it. Placing a hand on his genitals, he tries to muster a reaction. A moment later he gives up, disappointed but resigned to the fact that he is a different man these days. He is no longer that guy who lived in the smithy of his body, perpetually delighting in all its pleasures great and small.
Standing over the bathroom sink, still naked, Zakhariye shaves, a task he loathes but has to do today because of his meeting with the publisher. He works up a good lather and takes the triple-blade razor to his face. Starting from the top of his sideburns, he glides the sharp metal along his skin until he strips the last strand of three-day growth. When he begins to rinse the razor, he notices a large drop of blood in the white sink moving toward the drain. He wonders whose blood it is. Startled, he inspects his face and discovers he has nicked, very badly, a shaving bump under his chin. A thin stream of blood trickles down his collarbone. He dabs a finger and holds the blood-covered finger to the light, surprised by its vivid redness. It sparkles. Wow, I didn’t even feel a thing.
A peculiar rush at seeing his own blood grips Zakhariye. It is the kind of thrill foreign to a peaceful, middle-aged, middle-class man who has never witnessed the shedding of his own blood. His delight is heightened by the delayed sting of the cut that his brain now registers. This is the strongest bodily sensation he has had in so long that the elation he experiences overwhelms him. It feels as if his nervous system has finally jumped up from its long hibernation and screamed, “Wake up!” But he is dismayed by the ephemeral nature of his newfound aliveness. As soon as the blood stops flowing and the sting of the aftershave subsides, the joy ceases.
Zakhariye longs for more. He would give anything to have that rush again. Independent of his intelligent, rational mind, he watches his hand, the one clutching the razor, move toward his face. He runs the middle finger of his other hand along his chin in search of another bump. When he finds one just under his jawbone, he rests the blade on it, relishing the moment before the skin ruptures. With a quick gesture he drags the blade over it and feels the bump open. A guttural scream escapes him. This time what he feels is sheer pain minus the exhilaration that accompanied the first cut. Disappointment, as with everything else in his life, sullies the whole enterprise.
He wants to find another bump to see if he can re-experience, recapture, the bliss of the first nick, but his nerves fail him. Maybe tomorrow, he thinks, regarding himself in the mirror, maybe tomorrow.
Gregory Christiansen has never been in a bowling alley. Less than an hour ago he stood in a hospital waiting room where a kind, soft-spoken doctor told him that his wife of thirty-nine years was dead. Now he finds himself in a rundown bowling alley whose geographical location in the city is a mystery to him and how exactly he got there an even bigger riddle.
He remembers leaving the hospital waiting room, desperate to get out of the building as if by escaping the scene he could somehow erase the fact that the centre of his life around which he and the rest of his family congregated has vanished. Gregory also recalls getting lost in the hospital and ending up in the surgery wing where a willowy Ethiopian-looking nurse in scrubs stopped him, telling him he shouldn’t be there and pointing him in the direction of the elevator. Then there was the sensation of finally rushing out of the building and the cold, damp air hitting his face. But that is where his memories end.
Gregory doesn’t remember getting into his car, if he did, or what made him come into this place, since he has never had a desire to enter a bowling alley. He also doesn’t recollect paying at the counter or sitting on one of the blue-and-white chairs to put on the silly shoes he is wearing now, which make the ground beneath his feet shaky and untrustworthy.
Much to Gregory’s annoyance some loud people two lanes down are relentlessly teasing one another. The unruly bowlers are likely office co-workers on a team-building excursion to get acquainted outside their usual roles and duties. Just as Gregory gets ready to roll the ball on the long, narrow strip in front of him, the place explodes into sudden, shrill cheers coming from the noisy bowlers, making Gregory miss the pins by a mile. Never stopping to consider that his failure to topple any of the pins might have more to do with the fact that he has never bowled before, he shoots an angry, self-righteous glare in their direction much like the ones he and his wife used to aim at chatty couples who always sat next to them whenever they went to a stage play, which was often.
He glowers at one of the rowdy bowlers — a fifty-something woman with blond hair so puffed up it resembles an actual beehive. She shoots him a screw-you look. Gregory returns to his solitary game, convinced that if he had a quiet moment to concentrate, he would be able to knock over the pins before him. They seem to mock him, as if they, too, are involved in a vast conspiracy against him.
Gregory wants to ask them why of all the bowling alleys in the world this flock of office nobodies had to invade this one in his hour of need. He desperately needs to flatten some pins as though that mere accomplishment has the power to put the rest of his life back together in a recognizable form, one that resembles the way the world was when his wife was still in it.
Taking a deep breath, his sausage-like thumb barely fitting in the hole of the navy blue ball, Gregory positions himself, making a great effort not to slip and slide in the unfamiliar shoes. As he is about to release the ball, a member of the raucous group executes a perfect shot, sending all the pins crashing. The successful bowler celebrates his triumph with a long chicken dance, complete with squawks in his opponent’s face. The man’s office comrades cheer him on loudly.
That’s it! Gregory thinks. A man can only be pushed so far, then it’s war.
Gregory drops the ball on the hardwood floor. It thuds so loudly that everyone turns to stare at him. He scurries over to the man doing the chicken dance. When he reaches the guy, he pushes him back with the open palms of both hands on the man’s thick chest, feeling the warm, cushy fat of the thick chest under the golf shirt. “Have you people no respect?” Gregory cries.
The other bowlers surround him, ready to protect their man. The chicken-dancing fellow stumbles backward under the force of Gregory’s fury, then yells, “What the fuck’s your problem, buddy?”
