The foul line

Sixty feet from the head pin, at the exact seam where the approach ends and the oiled boards begin, runs a strip no wider than an inch and a half, contrasting in color from the wood around it and visible even from the seating behind the ball return. On older lanes it is simply painted or inlaid; on newer ones an infrared beam crosses the same point at ankle height, invisible, tripped the instant a shoe sole passes over into the oiled section it is not built for. A buzzer sounds. The ball counts as thrown and the pins it knocked down count for nothing, a rule enforced with more consistency than most crosswalk signals within walking distance of the building. Wear collects just behind the line rather than on it, a pale worn crescent where thousands of back feet have planted and pushed off without quite committing to the crossing. Housekeeping repaints it perhaps twice a year, more if a birthday party has been especially enthusiastic about testing its exact location. Nobody has ever been seen crossing it deliberately and finishing the delivery standing in the oil beyond; the line does its convincing before the fact, which is the quieter kind of authority. The sensor catches what an official watching from the counter would likely miss, on a busy night, more often than not.

Arthur Pell