“I don’t loathe them!” she protested.
“Oh yeah? Well, you look like you’d just as soon drive head-on into a brick wall. Now put your shoes on and stop acting like you’re above bowling, because you’re not. You put on your shoes one foot at a time just like everyone else in this joint,” he said sternly and picked up a ball. “Here. Stick your fingers in there.”
“I’m going to ruin my nails,” she pouted as she stuck them inside three holes.
“You can buy more. What do you think, does it feel okay? Not too heavy?”
She shrugged. He groaned, pointed her back to the table with her ball, her shoes, and her handbag. Robin sat gingerly next to Reba and forced herself to smile. “You bowl a lot?” Reba asked.
“Ah . . . no.”
“Have you ever bowled?” Sylvia asked, grinning at Sue’s horrified little snicker.
Okeydokey, here they went. “Once,” Robin said. The three women looked at each other. Robin bent over, slipped off Cole Haan flats, and, with a grimace, forced herself to slide her foot into one bowling shoe, then the other.
“Can we take a couple of practice rounds?” Jake asked as he breezed by.
“Sure!” Sue all but shouted, and bounced to her feet and hurried to the carousel, where she picked up a flaming pink ball.
“This oughta be good,” Sylvia said, sniggering with Reba.
It was good. Jake brought the ball up to his nose, gracefully glided to the edge of the lane, one leg sweeping long behind him as he went down and let the ball roll from his fingers. Much to Robin’s surprise, he knocked all the pins down.
“Strike!” shrieked Reba.
Jake turned around, grinning from ear to ear, sooo pleased with himself. “Ladies, I do believe I am ready to go,” he said proudly, and smiled as the three of them came clamoring forward to bowl their practice rounds.
Surprisingly, the women bowled as expertly, and almost as gracefully, as Jake. Reba was the last to lumber up to the line, and in movement that seemed to defy physics, knocked all the pins down except two, which she managed to hit with the next ball.
Then all heads swiveled, Exorcist-like, toward Robin. Jake motioned for her to come up. Damn. Robin had bowled once in her life, and that was only because she’d had one too many beers, and it had been a public persona disaster. As she really was not one to relish making a complete ass of herself, Robin swallowed a lump in her throat, stood, and walked stiffly in the funky shoes to where Jake was standing.
Jake put his hands on his hips. “You’ll need a ball.”
Well, he didn’t have to smirk when he said it. Robin pivoted like a robot, went to the carousel and picked up the blue ball he had selected for her, and walked back to the line.
“Relax,” Jake said. “This isn’t Chinese water torture. Just line it up and let go.”
“I think I can figure out how to bowl,” she said with a roll of her eyes.
Jake frowned, leaned over her shoulder. “Do you want this company? If you don’t, then let’s just ask one of these nice ladies for a ride hack to the airstrip and get the hell out of here. If you do want this company, then I strongly suggest you get that chip off your fur sashi shoulder and lighten up.”
“And just who are you, my conscience?”
“Fine,” he muttered and stepped back. “Be a bitch about it. You’re up.”
Bitch. Bitch! Oh yeah, she was up, all right. So far up that when she was done with him, she was going to leave his dismembered body all over Louisiana. Robin lifted the ball, eyed the pins down the lane, took two steps forward, and let the ball fly.
Only it flew across the lane, popped up out of the gutter, and went sailing down the next lane, where it ricocheted off the pin gate and disappeared into a hole on the side. Dumbfounded by her incompetence, Robin stood there, wondering if this latest episode of The Twilight Zone was ever going to end.
“Serves you right,” Jake said. “But don’t freak out,” he added, his voice a little softer. “We’ll find you another ball and hopefully you’ll get it right next time. It would help if you’d loosen up and bend your knees a little.”
“I did bend my knees,” she whimpered.
“No, baby, there was no bending of any knees anywhere on this lane. There wasn’t even a bend of an arm. Or a waist. That was a Frankenstein bowl if I’ve ever seen one.”