This is the first part in a series of interconnected pinball stories I am writing for my Techniques of Fiction class. The ending turned out a little different than I planned, but that basically what always happened. Anyway, I tried some new things in this piece, and any and all comments are welcome, especially since this project is still in progress.Heartbreak at the Arcade GarageTwelve vintage Gottlieb pinball machines had been arranged neatly inside of Gary Mackenzie's oil-stained, two-car garage since the summer before seventh grade. They mostly hailed from the '50s and early '60s, all mechanical bumpers and buzzers and big flashing lights, with a score boards made of panels that flipped or spun as you racked up points, no microprocessors, no LCD screens, and plenty of busty women painted in bright colors on the back glass. The long-awaited twelfth table, Atlantis, was unloaded from the back of a battered orange van shortly after Maggie and her parents moved to the neighborhood. With no friends and nothing to do until school started, Maggie had sipped a can of lemonade in the front lawn as her uncle had helped the movers slide the machine into the last empty spot along the back wall. When it was done, he dusted off the playfield glass, opened a beer, and stood beside her, examining the makeshift arcade.
He ruffled her brown hair, a tangled mess in the dry California heat. "It's taken eight years, but I've finally ran out of room," he said. "What do you think, Maggie, should I get another hobby?"
"Aren't you going to play it?"
"Nah. But why don't you give it a shot?"
Though she could barely keep the ball in play her first few games, to hear her tell it, that afternoon was the first time she felt happy since she'd seen her apartment in Chicago all boxed up and empty. The bright lights and constant clatter reminded her of home, and the flat comicbook colors of the playfield made everything seem simple in the lost, underwater kingdom. When she signed her three-letter initials, MAG, to high-score chart Uncle Gary had made and tacked up next to the table (most of the old pinball games didn't keep track of top scores themselves), she felt the thrill of belonging.
Eric had seen the garage arcade for the first time while going door-to-door collecting bottles and cans for Boy Scouts a few years before Maggie moved to Upland, and he avoided it. Mr. Mackenzie, a barrel-chested man who insisted on wearing shorts and tanktops even in winter, let the neighborhood kids play the tables for free as long as they didn't cause any trouble, and the garage was always buzzing with loud chatter and the clanking, whirring sounds of pinball. The electric bill must have been extraordinary, even before the twelfth machine completed his collection, but if Mr. Mackenzie had lived alone for as long as anyone could remember and if he had a job, no one knew what it was.
He'd never set foot inside the place until Maggie brought him there in the spring of their junior year, on what they would later agree had been their second date. They'd each man one side of the table, standing side by side, their bare arms rubbing against each other as she showed him how to trap the pinball and then pass it between the two flippers. It was details like this, her quiet intensity as she hunched over the table, constantly blowing her hair out of her face with the side of her mouth; her barely contained enthusiasm when she would hit a difficult target or light up the scoreboard; how she'd throw her hands in the air and pout at him when she lost, before breaking into a coy smile; the way her mouth tasted like licorice and New Coke on their first kiss, these were the things that kept her real when she went away for the summer.
He loved getting letters back from her, usually written on the back of graph paper or periodic table handouts, but they could never come often enough, and sometimes when he was cashing out the register at the gas station, or sitting on Ernie's couch watching some boring cable movie all his buddies were laughing at, he found that he missed her terribly but could not remember what it was like to be next to her. But if he could grab onto one thing, say, her pristine white tennis shoes, and how she never wore socks, then he could trace that back to the way her ankles strained when she leaved over a pinball table, how she would kick her shoes off haphazardly in the grass, the time she'd accidentally kicked him in the face in the back of her mom's station wagon and been so shocked and apologetic ... and then he could reconstruct her in his mind and know that even though she wasn't there, at least she was real.
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It wasn't until Maggie went off to Colombia to study biology that Eric found himself drifting to the garage late at night to play pinball by himself. College seemed interminably long compared to six-week science camps, and without money for school, or any idea what he'd even like to study, Eric wasn't sure what he was going to do in the meantime. He was saving up money to buy them a house when she finished school, but he could only work so many hours at the gas station.
And so he found himself pulling up next to the curb of the arcade garage one night after he got off of work. Mr. Mackenzie (who by that point had given up insisting that Eric call him "Uncle Gary") knew a thing or two about heart-sickness and he left Eric in without any hassle, even though the neighborhood kids had gone home hours earlier, and the went back to bed. All the machines in the garage were dark and silent. The only sound was a buzzing hum radiating from the murky fluorescent light on the ceiling. Eric plugged in Atlantis and the machine came clanking and crashing to life, frighteningly loud at this hour of night.
It felt strange to not have Maggie next to him at the table; she often played by alone, but he rarely did. He pulled the plunger and sent the ball spinning up the ramp, catching a glimpse of the high-scores sheet tacked up to the wall -- MAG held five of the top seven scores. This was her favorite table. He jammed at the flippers, lashing out at the ball indiscriminatingly. He half-wondered why he was suddenly so angry, and why lighting up those bumpers felt so good. He threw all is weight into the game, and in an instant, everything locked up and the ball rolled straight down the table. Without realizing, he'd tilted the machine. It took him a moment to figure out what had happened. Maggie hardly ever tilted a table, and she never looked enraged while playing one, not how he had just felt.
He sent the next ball into play, trapping it with the left flipper, and taking a moment to focus. Maggie said that every table has a goal, a story that you play through, and that was the best part. This table had a series of targets to hit on the left side first, which he knew from watching her. Now he would play it her way. In order to reach the left bank of targets, he passed the ball over to the right flipper, then realized he'd only played one half of a pass before, and flubbed it.
He was down to his last play in the game and felt very much alone. But Maggie had learned this table by herself and she'd learned it when she'd been lonely. Eric stood up straight at the table and resolved to do the same thing. He didn't leave until many games later, his eyes blurry from pinball lights. He imagined them to look like the lights of Manhattan, which he told Maggie in his next letter.
What he wanted to tell her was that he'd made it into the top-ten scores on one of the tables, even though he knew that, as hand-written by players using the honor system, they were hardly a definitive record of the all-time top scores at the garage arcade, but they were the only record that existed, and she was in the top ten on every table. So Eric made it a point to visit the garage on a regular basis. The most convenient time to go was late at night, and he would leave the garage light off, so that the room was lit only by pinball, colors splashing his face as he hit bumpers and racked up points. After Eric had waken him up twice in one week to open the garage door, Mr. Mackenzie simply gave him his own key, and then Eric started coming every night to stand alone in the garage, hunched over a table, trying to feel how Maggie felt when she played. While at work, he could see afterimages of the tables behind his eyes, and he began to think of everyday tasks in terms of ramps and ricochets and multiplier targets.
He beat Maggie's scores -- all of them. That was his surprise for her when she came home for Christmas. He bought her diamond earrings and held the top score on all twelve tables.
"Well now I don't even have a reason to play," she laughed, "You've learned them better than I ever will!"
They played a few games together, side-by-side like they used to, but Eric felt frustrated, crippled with only one flipper.
"Is that how you felt?" he asked her, "Did you feel closed-off when we would play together? Like there was only half of you?"
Maggie thought for a long time, then said, "Back then, when we moved here, and until I met you, I always felt like there had only been half of me. So I didn't care that I wasn't as good at pinball when you were playing. It didn't matter." She paused. "I felt whole."
"But you left for New York." Eric spat out the words, though he didn't intend for them to come out like that at all.
"And you stayed here!" He was surprised that the hurt in her voice matched his. "Doing what? Playing pinball? When I was 17 nothing would have made me happier than competing with you for the top score, OK? But I stopped dragging you down here so much because I could tell you weren't that interested. And NOW you love pinball so much?" She was crying.
"I don't --" he stopped; maybe he did love pinball now. "This was for you! I wanted to feel closer to you!"
"I'm not HERE!" she said throwing her arms up and spinning around the garage, indicating Atlantis, Kings and Queens, Space Warriors Return, Buck Wild and all the others.
Then she looked at him, arms at her side, her cheeks pink and wet, and she seemed suddenly very small. "I'm here."
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The high score sheets with Eric's initials at the top came to Maggie in the mail at the beginning of February. Uncle Gary included a note: "No point in keeping these up in the neighborhood -- these scores would intimidate even the hypothetical pro pinball players your aunt always talked about. She would have been proud of both of you. I am, too."
Maggie gave the score sheets to Eric as part of his present for Valentine's Day; there was little room for clutter in their tiny apartment, so he kept them tucked away under their mattress for when their next to visit California. He wanted to see if he could still beat the top score.
