The angels must have had the day off. Sidewalks were sweating, you weren’t around, and I was down to my last quarter.

It had been a pinball mission like no other. I carnivalled out of my house that morning, juggling three dollars in quarters. The neighbors applauded. I did a cartwheel, they gasped, and I was on my way.

I drove to my first destination with my belly at the wheel, juggling all twelve quarters with the five bare toes of my left foot. Then I hit the brakes and parked my car.

Opening the door let in an erupting crowd. They were there, waiting like a thousand peepers, to see a pinball legend, a has been, a once was.

I bowed.

They quieted down.

The games began.

First quarter went in, and I was still juggling the other eleven with my toes. That was the deal: all quarters and one ball in motion.

By noon they had the intravenous hooked up, and this pom-pom girl was feeding me porridge lunch from a wooden spoon. I was juggling five, paddling one.

It had been a slow start.

Then, while down to four quarters and on my last ball, the crowd sounding thin, and with no visible signs of Jesus, something clicked. Each time that silver ball kissed a paddle I could feel it cool and electric against my sweated palm. I was on fire, so to speak.

“Gee wiz, fella, I’m all out of porridge and you’re still giving it the hip.”

“Missy, I’m just getting started.”

I could hear the bartender on the phone like it was coming from a million miles away. Give or take a thousand.

I was in the zone.

Flip, flip, flipper, hip. Bonus, bonus, flipper, hip.

Bonus, bonus, flipper, hip, flip, flip, flipper . . . and then I had to urinate.

Game Over.

So I used my shoe-covered foot to kick the next quarter into the pinball machine, staring through its dirty pane of glass while devising a way to drain myself.

“Hey, missy, got a hose?”

Now water passed through me on both ends.

By midnight I settled into a rhythm that I hadn’t encountered all day. I was only juggling--if you could still call it that--two quarters, but I knew I could hold off the press until morning. They always show up as a streak ends.

That pom-pom girl was my only witness.

“You could take a break.”

“I’m working on a record.”

“No one would have to know.”

So spoke the last temptress of pinball man. She was cute enough to give a second look, the game over sign on its way.

“Sorry, miss,” I said, kicking up one of my last two quarters, “but I’ve got a record to beat, and I want to know that I’ve broken it.”

It wasn’t until dawn that I realized I was down to my last quarter. All the carnival was out of me, and the one person I wanted to testify, however it ended, was as far away as that night, seven years, seven odd jobs ago, when I first busted the record open. The streets were sweating--the humidity sauntering in to take a drink at the bar--and heat waves do not improve with age.

I paddled straight into the applause of a prodigal crowd. I had seven minutes to go and my last ball in play; and if you don’t mind the hubris, I assure you the Lord would have had to rest more than a day if someone had started a countdown with seven minutes to go on the last day of creation.

Six minutes.

I started thinking about asparagus.

Five minutes.

I was no longer certain if I was thinking.

Four minutes.

I was almost there.

Three minutes.

Two.

The crowd erupted.

One minute.

The crowd shook the ground I stood on.

Zero minutes.

I kept paddling. I gave it the hip. And I kept at it.

I kept paddling for a host of reasons, some I wasn’t aware of, but mostly I paddled at the thought of outlasting the crowd.

I was going to put them to bed.



J. Spinazzola is a writer and former attorney whose short stories have appeared in Boston Literary Magazine, Charlotte Viewpoint, Full of Crow, Metazen, The Molotov Cocktail, The Nakedist, and previously in Stymie: A Journal of Sport & Literature.