The house ball rack

Between the shoe counter and the ball return waits a wall of shelving that has never been photographed for an alley's promotional materials, and never will be. Sixty, eighty, sometimes upward of a hundred balls sit ranked by weight in ascending columns, six pounds through sixteen, in colors that were fashionable in three different decades simultaneously: marbled teal, glitter-flecked maroon, a plain black gone dull at the finger holes. None belong to anyone. Each carries the thumb pattern of whoever held it last, which by closing time is nobody in particular, an average hand smoothed into the holes over years of Tuesday leagues and eight-year-old birthday parties. The nine-pound balls go first, then the tens, then the twelves, because most people guess low and most people are wrong about their own strength. A cracked one, hairline through the core, gets quietly moved to the bottom row where children reach anyway and rarely notice. Fitted for no one, correct for almost everyone, the rack solves the problem of ownership by refusing to have any: pick one up, use it for two hours, put it back exactly where it does not belong, and the next bowler will never know. The shelving is restocked by whoever is closing, in whatever order the balls come to hand, which is how a nine-pound ball ends up in the twelve-pound column and stays there until someone strong is disappointed.

Doreen Fitch