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“Guess you must
have been adopted. Hi, I’m Helen, Vinnie’s wife.”
    “Looks like the missus bowls a
little, Doc” Jeanne said. “What do you say . . . shall we
make things interesting?”
    Vinnie switched to his poker
face. “I don’t know, Jeanne. What do you have in mind?”
    “Three couples, three games. The
winning couple collects twenty dollars apiece from the losers . . . forty
bucks a game.”
    “You’re on.”
    * * * *
*
     
    Vin retrieved his bowling ball, waiting
for the pins to reset. Jeanne and Lana had won the first match by nine pins
over him and his wife—thirty-one pins over Jacob and Nancy’s combined score.
Going into this—the tenth and final frame of the second match, he and Helen held
a slim six pin lead.
    Okay, V.C., you let Conannie
and her lover steal game one; game two is yours.
      Eyes focused, back
muscles taut, Vincent Cope moved like a cat as he strode into his approach and
released the ball.
    The bowling ball rolled straight
and true—striking the head pin and setting off an avalanche of ivory . . . leaving
in its wake the infamous seven-ten split.
    “Suck balls, not again!”
    Jeanne hi-fived Lana.
    Helen shook her head. “How many
times must I tell you—don’t aim for the head pin.”
    “I didn’t aim for the damn head
pin. I hit the head pin, I didn’t aim for it.”
    “You never listen. I carry a one-eighty-four
league average and you never listen.”
    “You also carry a lower center of
gravity and child-bearing hips to keep you balanced. I’m lanky. Plus I’m
fighting the effects of a devastating football injury that ended my collegiate
career.”
    “What collegiate career? You
played one year on the practice squad.”
    “Exactly. We battled the ones
everyday! You saw Rudy . You saw what that poor kid had to endure. There
are pieces of me scattered across every inch of turf at Wellington Business
School. Thank God I was blessed with a mind as well as athletic talent. Thank
God.”
    Helen rolled her eyes.
    Jeanne called out, “Hey, doc,
I’ll give you three to one odds on one of those mint cleansings of yours if you
nail the split.”
    “You’re on!”
    * * * *
*
     
    Having forfeited from the competition, Jacob
and Nancy were seated next to each other at the end of the wrap-around bench,
engrossed in conversation.
     “Is Jeanne always this
competitive?”
    “Always,” Nancy said.
    “Vince, too. It gets obnoxious
after a while.”
    “I suppose everyone has their
baggage to carry.” Glancing at Jacob’s wrist watch, she noticed it was dive
watch. “Are you certified?”
    “Did Vince tell you that? Sure, I
have a few phobias, but I’ve never been committed.”
    “No . . . no,
not certifiable— certified . As in diving.” She pointed to his wrist.
“That is a dive watch, right?”
    “Oh, yeah, I guess it is.”
    “How often do you dive?”
    “Oh, I’ve never been diving. The
watch was a gift from one of the managers at Lehman Brothers.”
    “The investment firm?”
    “Yeah. I designed a lot of their
software. I had no idea they were using my programming to camouflage their
accounting gimmicks. Bastards went bankrupt owing me millions in stock options
and bonuses.”
    “That’s terrible.”
    “Tell me about it. I had to
testify before a Congressional committee. It was around that time when a lot of
my phobias started coming out.” Jacob looked up as Vinnie yelled, “Suck balls!”
his brother missing the spare.
    “Jacob, have you ever had
therapy?”
    “Mostly just on-line chat-rooms.
It helps.”
    “What about therapy from a real
professional?”
    “When I was younger. My mother
sort of screwed me up at an early age.”
    “What happened?”
    “It’s a little embarrassing.”
    “I’m a psychologist. I seriously
doubt you could shock me.”
    “My father was in the Armed
Forces; he committed suicide when I was six.”
    “I’m sorry. Post traumatic
stress?”
    “Yeah. Anyway, Ma was pretty upset
by the whole