Chapter 1

It all started because of the fog. Driving home that night was like swimming through buttermilk or skating through shaving cream. It was like traveling blindly through forty years of hazy, unhappy memories. The wipers made a grating noise as they dragged across the dry windshield. The misty drizzle had stopped five miles back, but in my foggy trance, I’d forgotten to switch off the wipers.

“Dr. John, my husband and I haven’t made love in nearly a year. Is there something wrong . . .” a Southern accent tried to fight through the crackling static on my AM radio. Damn talk radio shows were the only programs you could find out in the boondocks at night. I strained to hear Dr. John’s expert answer, but the relentless cackling squelch of static drowned out the response. I clicked off the radio and listened to the hum of the defroster. There was a tape player in the car, but I’d never spent the ten bucks it would’ve cost to have decent music while I drove. Guys like me don’t feel worthy of frivolous self-expenditures.

The wooly fog was so thick I could barely see the end of the car hood as I strained to follow the faded white dashes down the middle of Orchard Road. It was close to midnight, and I was driving home from my Thursday night bowling league in Rolling Ground, a crossroads of two hundred people eight miles from the town of Lake Hope where I lived.

Thursday night bowling was a bizarre ritual performed weekly by a group of guys who had gone to high school together, but now had nothing in common, and made no effort to see each other except for those weekly sessions at a smoky, dilapidated four-lane bowling alley in the middle of nowhere. I hated the ritual but didn’t have the guts to admit it. I guessed the others felt the same way.

My being part of the bowling team was ludicrous. I didn’t drink beer during beer frames. I didn’t make jokes about my wife or fantasize about the weekly cleavage displays of Helen Cooper who tended bar on Thursday nights. And I rarely scored above 130. But I went there because somebody asked me to.

These guys were not even my friends in high school. In fact, I didn’t have many friends when I was in high school. I’m not sure why I was ever asked to join their league. Must have been desperate for another body, I guess. Perhaps it was time to give up this silly ritual.