Stubborn Bull - Wonderfalls

[saxloch]

Three years ago, the King Pin bowling alley shuttered. There were still bowling alleys in Buffalo – a surprising amount of them, in fact – but this bowling alley’s closure was significant. Not for the fact that no more memories would be made inside the building, mind you, but that the ones made over the course of a decade in the crumbling, seedy parking lot it shared with an equally-seedy pharmacy were now irreplicable. All because of the nachos.

Jaye Tyler spent her first prom night crying in her brother’s car parked in their spot underneath the sun-faded King Kong knockoff wearing a bowling shirt that adorned the sign. Aaron Tyler got away from his family celebrating his high school graduation, and later his master’s graduation, in the very same parking lot, his sardonic sister at his side. He’d made the grave error of attending his bachelor’s graduation and he regretted it wholeheartedly. Quite a few weekends were started by the youngest Tyler siblings parking in the lot, one going in to grab plasticy bowling alley nachos to sustain them while they bitched, moaned, talked pessimistically about the future, or simply sat in silence, watching cars go by while they indulged in over-processed junk.

It was sappy, but it felt easy for Jaye to spill her guts parked under a sign that creaked like it was about to topple onto her while her brother shoveled lava hot nachos into his mouth. She thought it was like a buffer between her mean-spirited self and the little part of her that didn’t scoff at the idea of sincerity. So long as the words she said never left the parking lot, her world built up on pillars of disinterest and disaffection would not come tumbling down.

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