Ben and I drink five pitchers of Michelob Light at the bowling alley. Outside, Ben pisses on a car tire. It is Friday, near midnight. On the interstate not far away headlights sweep past. I search for my keys under arc-sodium lights. Ben has a cigarette in his mouth, his head tilted back so the smoke will not go in his eyes. Years ago, we graduated college together. Now we live in different cities and only get together two or three times a year. When we do, we forget about all the strains of domesticity: house payments and insurance, wives and children, keeping in shape and attending PTA meetings and church bake-sales and remembering Mother’s Day and anniversaries and birthdays. Instead, we revert to primordial pleasures. We drink hard liquor at blues bars and eye women with lascivious intent. We watch boxing matches, stock-car races, football games. We become men. We do not buy tampons. We do not drink strawberry daiquiris.
Behind us, the pneumatic doors swish open, three men in cowboy boots come strolling out, and Ben sprays up and down the length of the car. He says, “That’ll show em,” to no one in particular, reminding me this is the kind of thing we used to do, before our quiescent approaches toward middle-age. Earlier, Ben told me he was thinking of buying a mini-van. I told him he should paint flames on it. He said he would take it into consideration. He is a mortician living in a funeral home who is thinking of quitting his job. Once I asked him how he slept at night. He said he slept like the dead. Then he laughed. He does not look like a mortician, although, standing there, I can’t think what a mortician should look like. This night, Ben has pissed on a car and we stand laughing, pointing at what he has done.
“Hey buddy.”
The three men in cowboy boots are halfway across the parking lot, coming closer. I can’t make them out in the halogen brightness where moths flutter below stars we can’t see. A cop car circles the parking lot, his spotlight shines buildings and cars, and we watch it drive off.
“Hey buddy. You just pissed on my tire.”
Ben turns, looks at the stream splattered over the car tire and down the side of the car. The three guys carry bowling balls in leather bags. They are probably only a few years younger than us but look younger still. They wear boots and jeans and they have slight mustaches and big knuckles.
“This your car?” Ben says. He tosses his cigarette in the puddle of urine and everybody watches it hiss out.
“You just pissed all over my car.” The three guys shift stances. Their bowling bags hang loose. Their bags are blue and black and black. Initials have been stitched into the side of them, three even letters on each bag. One of them wears a vest.
Ben looks at the car in question as if he has never seen one before. The three men form a semi-circle around us. My car is twenty yards away. Ben takes out another cigarette and lights it. On the interstate, almost overhead, the cars are loud, bumping over concrete dividers. The parking lot smells like oil and asphalt on a hot night. Ben’s face is sunburnt from too much golf. His shirt is beer-stained, one side of his collar turned up. He wears his cell-phone clipped to his belt in case somebody dies.
“It’s just a car.” Ben drags on his cigarette then exhales a cloud of smoke toward the three men. “Suck it up and drive on,” he says, and winks at me, letting me know that he is still hard-core, that even though he has resorted to Rogain and sometimes Viagra he is still able to counter and command the night’s happenings. We turn away laughing. We take a few steps toward my car and I hear a noise that sounds exactly like bowling bags hitting asphalt.
When we turn around the three men are standing there looking at us. The guy whose car Ben pissed on is opening and closing his fists. They come toward us, their bootheels scuffing the pavement.
The one wearing a vest says, “You pissed on his car.”
“Honest mistake,” Ben says. He is still smiling. I have the feeling he may call one of them Boy, or perhaps Son. “You know how it is.”
“How do you piss on a car by mistake? You judge the distance wrong? Think it was a fire hydrant? They have bathrooms inside.”
The one whose tire has been soiled wears a belt buckle that says Bobby. A skinny dog runs across the parking lot trailing a leash. Outside the door, a group of kids waits for their ride. Behind the bowling alley and across an empty lot a 7-11 is open all night. From somewhere music comes at us, rap or hip-hop, I’m not sure which.
“I think you should learn to respect other people’s things,” Bobby says. His hands move as he talks. He wears two rings on his right hand.
The guy with the vest says, “No, really, explain this to me. You pissed on a car. You thought it was a toilet?” He looks at the third guy. “He must have thought it was a toilet, Jim.”
Jim laughs at the thought of a car being a toilet. Jim’s arm says Jimmy in faded blue letters. “I think you should pay to have his car washed.”
They are moving closer. We are no longer laughing. Ben closes his eyes briefly, then he is looking at me. His left eyelid twitches in what could be mistaken for a wink but is not. Instead, his red-veined eyes are asking if we have become diaper-changers and bill-payers and mortgage-holders, men who e-mail co-workers from the anonymity of air-conditioned offices under fluorescent lighting and fall asleep on the couch on Sunday afternoon, if tonight is the night we settle into this passive domesticity we have been attempting to ignore. I look at my feet. This is something I cannot answer, I think, not now. My eyes are tired and grainy and I want to sleep. I feel absolutely nothing.
“We just had a few too many, guys,” I say.
Ben nods. “You know how it is,” he says, offering a brief smile that only works on one side of his face. I can’t tell if he is relieved or angry. He takes out his wallet. He looks as if he might puke. He pulls out a few bills and hands them over. Bobby takes the bills and counts them. Ben says, “That cover it?” and Jim and the one with the vest laugh. In a moment all three of them are laughing. Ben and I laugh with them. I think maybe the guys will offer the money back and we’ll all go back in and have a beer. Then Bobby’s fist cracks Ben in the nose and Ben pinwheels backward. He catches his balance, staggers upright. He cups his hands where blood runs dark in streetlight. He looks at me and all the old questions are there. I start to say something but Jim rounds on me and I am just an observer, watching the night and the stars and the cars sweep by on the interstate, wishing I were a long way from where I stand.
Bobby leans over Ben. His hands make fists, opening and closing. “You just gonna stand there?” Bobby says. “Hey Buddy, you going to do something or just stand there?”
