I can’t turn back now. He stops wiping the counter and gives me a questioning look. He stares and waits. I can see myself in the huge mirror behind him.

“Are you the manager?” I ask timidly.

“As far as I know I am!” he thunders.

“Madame Mona Paradis sent me. She told me that you might be needing a…a pin setter.”

“Maybe!”

He doesn’t budge, his arms spread, his hands leaning on the brown counter. In one hand he’s crushing a wet rag. I can see his big stomach rub against the edge of the counter.

“Do you know how to set pins?” he asks.

“No, but I learn quickly.”

“How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Show me your hands,” he says. “Stretch out your arms! Spread your legs! Lean over! Touch the floor without bending your legs!”

I obey like a puppet. He softens his tone.

“So you live with Romeo and Ramona!” It takes me awhile to figure out that he’s talking about Uncle Méo and Aunt Mona.

The cousin fixes me with his eyes and says, “The more I look at you, the more I think you’re an Indian!”

I feel myself going pale. Surely Mona has told him all about me.

“My name is Pierre Larivière,” I say firmly. “I live at 531, rue de la Madone!”

He looks defensive.

“Okay, already. Don’t get mad, kid! Just one last question. Can you hold three pins in each hand?”

I’m standing beside a cooler full of beer. I push aside the glass door, stick both arms in the refrigerator and grab six beers, three in each hand, the necks of the bottles wedged between my fingers. I wave them under his red nose.

“Okay, put them back! Tonight you’ll sit on the bench over there and see how things work. Doesn’t take a genius. You start tomorrow at seven o’clock sharp. Don’t be late.”

And he goes back to wiping the counter.

I watch how the game works. A player stops right at the line and throws a big ball that rolls down the lane like a train out of hell. It hurtles down and crashes into the pins. Bam! The pins fly up and tumble down.

Behind a grill at the end is a person, barely visible, who sits astride a bench, legs dangling. That’s the pin setter.

While the player goes to take a second ball, the setter hurries down into the pit, collects the fallen pins and quickly sits down again. With the end of his foot, he activates a mechanism that makes nails come out of the floor. There’s a hole in the bottom of each pin. He quickly places the pins on the nails and then the nails go back into the floor.

Nothing to it.

One of the setters comes and sits beside me while he waits for another group of bowlers to come to his lane. I recognize him from school.

“Hi,” he says. “You’re the new guy?”

“Yes, I start tomorrow.”