Endurance

"Lenny’s Lanes" exists in the kind of suburban time warp where it is always ten years too late for irony and five years too soon for nostalgia. Every Tuesday is league night, but tonight it’s not. The oil-slicked lanes gleam under the migraine of fluorescent lights, and the aroma of scorched nacho cheese and gym-sock rental shoes hits you as soon as the automatic door shoves you inside. Pop music from two presidents ago pulses through speakers patched with masking tape, the volume set to “deafen children.” At the far end, a retirement-age man with two championship patches on his polo shirt throws a strike with balletic grace. His ball hits the pins with a sound like a car crash in miniature, but no one claps.

Doug is first through the door, windmilling his arms and humming along with the Katy Perry track vibrating the linoleum. Steven follows at a steadier pace, his hands in the pockets of his black windbreaker, expression a mix of bemusement and secondhand embarrassment. Michael brings up the rear, gaze fixed on the scuffed tile at his feet, shoulders hiked up like he’s waiting for the next shoe to drop.

“You ever notice how every bowling alley smells like feet and regret?” Doug says as he sweeps past the arcade machines. “It’s almost comforting. Like my childhood, but with less parent-teacher conferences.”

Steven snorts. “Your childhood was ninety percent timeouts and ten percent Wii Bowling.”

“Which is why I’m such a natural,” Doug replies. He pivots, walking backward so he can address both men at once. “First round’s on me, losers. And by round, I mean pitcher. And by losers, I mean you, Steven.” Doug’s smile is the same as it’s ever been—big, careless, all teeth and momentum.

Michael hangs back, blinking at the electric blue glow of the scoring monitors. He moves toward the shoe rental counter without looking at the clerk, mutters his size, then waits as the kid laces up a pair of clownish red-and-white shoes from a pyramid behind the counter. Michael peels off his running shoes and stands in his socks, toes splayed against the cold tile, before shoving his feet into the rentals with a grimace.

Doug, already in his bowling shoes, leans over the counter and addresses the clerk. “You got these in a size fifteen? My man Steven’s got feet like a Hobbit on PEDs.”

The kid shrugs, produces a pair so enormous they could be used as kayak paddles, and slides them over to Steven without a word. Steven offers a polite nod in return, then sits at the edge of the next bench to lace them up.

The house balls are arranged by color and weight along the racks, but only half of them have their finger holes free of gummy residue. Doug picks the ugliest—high-gloss chartreuse—and cradles it in the crook of his arm like a newborn. “I’m calling it now,” he says. “This baby’s taking us to state.”

Steven selects a ball with clinical efficiency, testing the holes for fit and balance. “You know we’re not actually in a league, right?”

“Yet,” Doug says.

Michael’s ball sits untouched on the return rack, cobalt blue, chipped at the edge. He stares at it for a long second, then palms it, feeling the cold against his skin.

Doug sets up the scoring screen, hunting and pecking at the rubber buttons. “All right, what’s our team name? I’m thinking ‘Three Strikes You’re Out.’ Get it? Like, because there’s three of us?”

Steven shakes his head, but lets the joke stand.

Michael sits on the bench, hands folded over the ball, not looking up as Doug passes the controller to him. “Mike, you’re player two,” Doug says, then nudges him with an elbow. “Unless you want to be player one? Alpha status?”

Michael doesn’t answer. He lifts the ball, inspects the surface, then sets it back down. He presses two buttons at random on the screen and enters “M” as his nickname, barely bothering to confirm before passing the controller back.

Doug shrugs. “Mysterious. I dig it.”

Steven watches Michael for a long moment. “You okay, man?”

Michael shrugs, but doesn’t look up. “Just tired.”

Doug plops down beside him, bouncing his leg in time with the beat overhead. “You sure you’re not, like, dying or something? Because you look like you’ve been trapped in a mine shaft since last week.”

Michael’s lips twitch, but it could just as easily be a spasm as a smile. He looks past Doug at the lanes, watching a pack of middle schoolers shriek as they launch a ball at the speed of sound and gutter it immediately.

Doug elbows him again, not gently. “Come on, bro. Let’s get some grease in your veins. Mozzarella sticks and plastic cheese work miracles. I read it in Men’s Health.”

Steven chimes in, quiet but insistent. “We can grab food after we bowl a frame.”

Michael nods, finally. “Sure.”

Doug is up first. He sidesteps to the lane, spins the ball on his palm, then throws with a combination of force and zero technique. The ball hooks hard left, threatening to vanish into the gutter, but at the last possible moment catches the lane's edge and caroms into the head pin. A messy strike.

“Boom!” Doug howls, spinning on his heel and pointing finger guns at Steven and Michael. “That’s how you do it.”

Steven shakes his head, stands, and approaches the lane with calm precision. He lines up his shot, rocks once on his heel, and sends the ball down dead center. Eight pins drop, two remain. He’s back in his seat before the ball has even returned.

Michael’s turn. He stands, rolls his neck, then walks slowly to the line. The blue ball is heavier than he expected; he nearly loses grip on the back swing. He lets it go. It drifts right, picks off two pins, and the rest stand unbothered. He sits before the ball even returns, ignoring Doug’s exaggerated groan.

Doug: “Gonna be a long night, M.”

Steven says nothing, but he watches Michael with a quiet, deliberate focus.

Doug calls to the snack bar. “Three sodas, two baskets of sticks, and a pizza with everything but olives. If it’s got olives, send it back.”

The cashier mumbles an “okay” and returns to restocking the soda machine. Doug returns to the bench and resumes his color commentary, narrating each frame with ever-increasing bravado.

Michael barely listens. He stares at the scoring screen as if hoping for a sign, anything to snap him out of the gray. His fingers drum on his knees, then on the ball, then back on his knees.

Steven, sensing the mood, keeps his voice low. “You want to talk, we’re here.”

Michael shrugs, never taking his eyes off the digital pins tumbling across the screen. “It’s nothing.”

Doug, on his way back from the ball return, leans in and whispers, “He’s lying. It’s definitely something.”

Steven nods. “Yeah. But it’s his call.”

Doug throws another strike, this time without the gutter drama. He whoops and does a lap around the empty table, high-fiving a confused toddler who’s wandered over from the birthday party on lane six.

Steven bowls a clean spare, then sits beside Michael. “You don’t have to talk,” Steven says. “But you look like someone replaced your soul with a soggy towel.”

Michael finally looks at him, blinking as if surprised to find Steven so close. “I’m fine,” he says, but it sounds rehearsed.

Doug slides back onto the bench, sloshing a Sprite and ignoring the droplets on his shirt. “You know what your problem is, Mike? Not enough endorphins. We should have gone to the trampoline park instead. Or, like, paintball.”

“I hate paintball,” Michael says, the first real note of emotion all night.

Doug grins, triumphant. “See? Now we’re getting somewhere.”

Steven leans in, voice pitched so only Michael can hear. “You can tell us, or not. Either way, you’re not alone.”

Michael breathes in, then out, chest rising and falling like the bellows of a machine about to quit. “Let’s just bowl,” he says, and when he stands for his next turn, he rolls a clean eight, then picks up the spare.

Doug gives Steven a look: Progress.

The game continues. Michael gets a little better, frame by frame, but never celebrates, never even smiles. Doug keeps the banter going, upping the stakes with every roll, but the jokes glance off Michael like water on glass. Steven scores steadily, occasionally offering a low five, never pushing harder than Michael is willing to go.

By the third frame, the pizza has arrived, the cheese congealing into a single sheet. Doug grabs a slice, burns the roof of his mouth, and claims it’s worth it. Michael picks at a mozzarella stick, not tasting it, eyes always drifting back to the blue ball and the silent score creeping up the screen.

For all the commotion of the bowling alley—birthday parties, league teams, the echo of pins and pop music—the bench where the three friends sit is its own silent planet, turning slowly, waiting for the night to be over.

When the tenth frame comes, Michael steps up for his final roll. He holds the ball longer than before, eyes closed, jaw set. He lets it fly. It curves perfectly, drops all ten pins in one smooth crash. Doug whoops, Steven offers a fist bump, and for a fraction of a second, Michael lets the faintest smile flicker across his face.

He sits, the weight on his shoulders no lighter, but at least balanced by the presence of the two men at his side.

Doug lifts his glass. “To the king of the comeback.”

Steven smiles, a rare full one. “Well done, Mike.”

Michael shrugs. “Just lucky,” he says.

But it’s not luck. It’s just three friends, huddled against the world, each taking their turn at the line.

Michael sits, hands folded so tight the knuckles have gone bloodless. He stares at the ball return, the steady hum of machinery filling the silence between them.

Steven, whose bowling style is as efficient as his speech, throws his ball clean and true. Eight pins. He spares them with a neat, unshowy roll, then sits beside Michael, close enough to talk but not so close as to demand it.

“Everything okay, man?” Steven asks, low and even. “You’ve been quiet all night.”

Michael blinks, as if waking from a deeper sleep. “Yeah,” he says. “Just tired, I guess.”

Doug jumps in from across the bench, voice pitched like a game show host in sudden death: “What, Abby dump you or something?”

The words hang in the air, too sharp, too careless, and for a second Michael’s face crumples. He looks at Doug with an expression that is all raw nerve—hurt, angry, but mostly just stunned.

Doug backpedals so fast he nearly slides off the vinyl. “Okay, wow, I take that as a no,” he says, hands up in apology. “Sorry, man.”

Michael exhales, slow and deliberate. He shifts in his seat, picking at a loose thread on his jeans. “It’s not Abby,” he says, voice barely audible over the din. “It’s just… family stuff.”

Doug and Steven exchange a look—one of those tiny, loaded glances that means we should drop it, but also means this is not at all over.

“Family issue, huh?” Doug says, softer this time. “That sucks.”

Michael nods, head down, eyes fixed on the smeared glow of the scoring screen.

Steven tries to help, but keeps it gentle. “You don’t want to talk, that’s fine. Just—if you do, we’re here.”

Michael manages a half-smile, but it’s so thin it might just be a tic. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and watches the league bowlers on the next set of lanes, their perfect deliveries and practiced fist pumps.

Doug tries to fill the space. “Hey, remember the time in college you bowled a 280 on two pitchers of Schlitz? I still don’t know how you didn’t hurl on the lane.”

Michael snorts, the memory forcing a real, if fleeting, smile. “I don’t think I ever recovered. My liver filed a restraining order.”

Steven grins, relieved to see the cloud break even for a moment. “That’s the Michael I remember.”

Doug drops his voice. “I mean it, man. If there’s something we can do—”

Michael interrupts, sharper than he means: “There isn’t.”

The words freeze the air. Doug and Steven both retreat, letting the silence do what they can’t.

For a while, nobody speaks. They bowl, they sit, they eat another round of mozzarella sticks that have somehow gotten even colder. Michael’s phone vibrates twice on the table, but he ignores it.

Eventually, Steven finishes a frame, sits, and says, “You want to bail, we can bail. No shame.”

Michael shakes his head. “I’m good. Let’s just finish.”

And they do, the three of them running down the score sheet frame by frame, each roll another step away from whatever conversation they are trying not to have.

None of them say it, but all three know the conversation is just paused, not ended.