There’s this 1995 Batman Forever pinball machine for sale on Facebook marketplace, which I know because in the evenings my fiancée, Liz, likes to steal my phone and “take a stroll through the market” as she says. She deleted her own Facebook account back in 2016 due to the general state of the world suddenly becoming even more depressing. Tonight, she’s found this functional, original, totally kickass piece of nerdy machinery that has my name written all over it.
“Ho. Li. Shit,” I say. “Can you even imagine?”
My mind flashes to the old arcade in my hometown, Monkey Business. My brother and I running from game to game with a Crown Royal bag full of quarters, the weighted purple felt feeling like the key to unlock the universe. Benny trailing behind me, his Velcro shoes blinking alive with each step that made him an extension of the arcade.
“Says some lights don’t work anymore, but otherwise good condish.” She’s been saying things like that lately. Condish, commish, permish. Though she still says “delicious,” which is weird—you’d think that one has good “ish” potential.
She’s facing my phone screen toward me in a way that lets me see the beautiful 4K images of the Batman Forever pinball machine, but also tells me she’s not done with the market, so hands off, you know? She’s curled up in her blanket cocoon, blonde ponytail flipped up like a palm tree from the cushion placement, her pursed lips and squinted eyes telling me: look but don’t touch, k?
Growing up, that exact pinball machine was my favorite. All the characters from the movie cast on the back plate, the Batman logo lit in whacky Jim Carrey Riddler green, all the multicolored lights, Nicole Kidman’s tasteful cleavage beneath the tempered glass. I spent a lot of hours racking up higher and higher scores, trading back and forth with Benny, making sure he got plenty of turns.
On account of the no Facebook thing, Liz has no clue the legend himself (rest in peace), Val Kilmer, AKA Batman / Bruce Wayne in Batman Forever, passed away two days ago. Something about the timing feels cosmic, karmic, serendipitous. I was meant to find this pinball machine on this very night. Well. Liz was meant to be scrolling the market and stumble across it. She could have kept scrolling, but she knows I’m a huge Batman fan. When I bring up the Val Kilmer element to this whole deal, shoring my defenses with nostalgia and empathy, she says she doesn’t remember him playing Batman, but kind of sort of remembers him as Maverick in Top Gun.
“He was Ice Man. Tom ‘Ice Man’ Kazansky. You’re thinking of Tom Cruise.”
“But Val Kilmer was in Top Gun, right?”
“Well, yeah, but he wasn’t Maverick. He wasn’t even Goose. He was Ice Man, Maverick’s rival.”
“Tomato, tomahto.”
“Zoom in on Batman’s face in that second pinball pic,” I say, pointing to my own phone screen, careful not to touch it. “That’s Val Kilmer.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” she says.
That’s something else she’s been doing lately—what she just did with the Val Kilmer thing. Dismissing my feelings, stifling… something. Stifling my light—what my therapist would say if they were standing here listening to her. Well, what a therapist type would say, if I were to have a therapist. They would say that. They would also maybe comment on Liz’s desire to change my phone background from the last photo I have of Benny and me to one of us, one of our pasture engagement pictures. Because who cares about my dead brother, right?
“Anyway, I’m thinking it should go in the basement, by the mini fridge. Maybe by the boxed-up Christmas tree and ornaments,” I say. I consider the outlet and plug-in situation. I’m no electrician but I worry it’ll run too many amps. Hertz, or something. Watts?
“As long as it’s in the basement and not up here where company can see, everything will be kosh.”
She means “kosher.” Do you see what I’m saying?
I realize that, through a carefully orchestrated series of questions and comments, appeals to logic and emotion, being a smidge aloof, I’m about to be the proud owner and operator of something that would make my pubescent self cream his shorts. Or cry, or both. Hell, I could cry right now just thinking about all this. About the dings, clacks, BAM!s, and POW!s that once enraptured Benny and me.
“Oh, it’ll be kosh. Hella kosh,” I say.
We both drive beater cars, so we need a truck for a job like this. I imagine a pinball machine weighs a few hundred pounds, maybe more. I doubt Liz could/would help me load and unload. I’m going through a mental rolodex of dudes with trucks who owe me a favor, which turns out to be a surprisingly short list, when Liz delivers the blow.
“Oh, fuck,” she says. “It’s five grand. Five. Grand,” she emphasizes, her surprise lining each syllable. She laughs. “Get real.” She’s already moved on to vacuum cleaners and antique mailboxes on the market—two of her frequent searches. I get ads for them on my phone now. Dyson was having a sick online deal last week.
“We can afford that,” I say.
“That’s five months’ rent. Or a sick vacash, like, I don’t know, the honeymoon we’re planning, maybe?”
“Yeah, one sick vacash, or a lifetime of neon-lit Val Kilmer Batman pinball badassery…”
She’s right about the vacash, and she does make more money than me, but it seems like the nice honeymoon is mostly for her. I’d be fine taking a long weekend trip to Kansas City: nice hotel, room service, see the sights, get nasty with the KC barbeque. But she’s all about Cancun and Maui.
“One sick vacash, duh.”
“But you said you liked it and that if I put it in the basement, everything would be kosh.”
“Did I say I liked it?”
When I made the decision to storm off and drive to the Batman Forever pinball house, I didn’t realize it was an hour away. Surely that’s enough time to think on the situation, come to my senses, and turn around, right? Wrong, motherfucker. In fact, I’m now surer than ever that this pinball machine needs me and will solve most of my problems—a cosmic miracle.
The pinball house even looks like a pinball machine as I pull up to the curb—Christmas lights still up in April, moonlight glinting off the tin roof, all the curtains pulled back to reveal lamps, lightbulbs, and TV screens ablaze with color.
A man about ten years older than me opens the frosted glass front door after I knock. In fact, he looks a lot like me, almost a spitting image to the point that I just stare at him. His beard is longer than mine with gray on his chin. The receding hairline doesn’t look bad on him—not as good as the situation Walton Goggins is rocking, but we can’t all be so lucky—so now I’m rethinking my own insecurity about that. He’s wearing glasses while I have my contacts in. But you know, tomato tomahto. And the robe. I’ve always wanted one and his looks awesome in his, shiny gray and super fuzzy—I want to reach out and pet it but decide that’s probably not a good look, insofar as petting a strange man is weirdo behavior.
“Can I help you with something?” Bizarro Pinball Me says.
His voice makes me remember I’m not staring into a mirror. “This is the pinball machine house, right?”
“This is in fact the pinball house. Which pinball machine ad are you responding to?”
“Batman Forever, based on the 1995 film starring Val Kilmer. Wait, do you have others?”
Both doors groan open, revealing a garage filled with pinball machines and all kinds of arcade games. When I say “filled,” I mean they literally butt up against one another with no empty space and seemingly no organization. Area 51 and Time Crisis are side-by-side in the back, sure. But Tekken 3 and Street Fighter 2 are on opposite sides of the garage and Cruisin’ USA is sandwiched between an air hockey table and an empty claw machine. It’s an arcade game graveyard, all their sparkle and juice sucked dry.
My mouth must be hanging open, because at some point the guy laughs and says “Yeah, it’s a lot. My old man owned an arcade pretty much his whole adult life. My whole life, anyway. He died a few months ago.”
“Oh, wow. I’m sorry, man. I lost someone recently, too. Grief is hard.” When the words leave my mouth, I realize I mean Val Kilmer. “Losing” him is truth-adjacent at best, but I just want to connect with my pinball doppelganger. But the hurt, heartfelt look on his face makes me think of Benny, how I really did lose him, how I’d trade a million pinball machines to get him back.
“Thanks. Turns out he was in a lot of debt so they sold the building to cover it all. Now what do I have left? All these pieces of shit taking up every inch of my garage. And half the living room.” He gestures aggressively.
“I take it you didn’t like the arcade as a kid?”
“No, I did. But when you grow up without a mom and your dad runs an arcade and works 60 hours a week, you spend all your time there and it gets old quick.”
I consider running an arcade and being around it all day, vs. working the front desk of a gym like I do now. “I don’t know, man. I think pinball is something I could never get sick of.” The grass is always greener or whatever, but getting sick of arcade games, pinball, candy, neon lights, fun exploding all around? Get real.
I look around at the most epic collection of arcade games likely ever assembled in some dude’s garage: Mortal Kombat II, Dance Dance Revolution, NBA Jam, WWF Wrestlemania, even a Skee-Ball table and Whack-A-Mole. I realize I’ll never be as cool as him. I’m standing in rarified air, his robe swaying in the night breeze like a cape.
“I didn’t know what else to do with all these. I’ll try to sell them all, but, in the meantime, I didn’t have any other option but my house. Which…” he says, trails off.
I can tell he doesn’t have anyone to talk to about this, that I kind of fell into his lap at just the right time. He’s staring at the concrete floor, making a face I make when I’m about to say something personal but stop myself, then second-guess myself back and forth like a game of pong.
“My wife is staying at her sister’s for a while. I feel like ‘a while’ means as long as it takes to get rid of these. But I’m afraid it’s more than just these games taking up space. I’ve not handled my dad dying… all that well, let’s say.”
“Hey, I’ve been there. You can’t control it,” I say, not meaning Val Kilmer this time, but Benny. I imagine “not handling” his dad dying very well means booze, emotions, blowing up on his wife. But Benny died five years ago when I was in high school. He was in middle school. I never really processed what happened, how I wasn’t there when he needed me.
“As far as the being in the doghouse thing,” I say after a long pause, “if it makes you feel better, my fiancée is going to be pissed at me too. She would rather this money go toward a nice vacash. Uh, vacation—our honeymoon. We’re getting married this fall.”
“Happy wife … well, you know the rest. And you’re not even married yet. Not a great way to start. Ask yourself: would you rather a honeymoon to fuel a lifetime of memories, plus a happy wife, or a pinball machine?”
“I hear what you’re saying, I do. But it’s not just any pinball machine,” I say. And it isn’t.
“Why am I telling you all this? Don’t listen to me, or do—I don’t know. Here, let me show you what you’re after,” he says before walking to the far end of the garage.
I can tell before I take one step that it’s the one. Butterflies dance in my stomach. I walk over and stand in front of it, smiling like an idiot. I feel the bottom right corner of the glass where Benny would slap his two quarters down, grinning ear to ear like the Riddler, eager to maneuver his silver ball through the streets of Gotham City, claiming next in line as if I would let any kids go before him.
“Can we play?” I ask.
“Sure. You should test it before deciding if you want to buy it, anyway,” he says. “Hey, I could use a beer—you want one?”
We’ve got an extension cord running from Greg’s kitchen—dude’s name is Greg—through the inside door and draped over the array of games out to the Batman Forever pinball machine that we’ve pulled into the dark driveway.
“Cheers,” Greg says, holding the end of the extension cord in one hand and a cold beer in the other.
“To your dad,” I say.
We cheers our PBR cans and the crisp cold hits my throat, the most delish beer I’ve ever tasted. Greg holds the ends of each cord, connecting them slowly, dramatically, as if preparing to light the Bat Signal. Electricity surges and the most beautiful incandescent blue and white and green lamps burst alive, illuminating the driveway and our faces. It’s just like I remember and the pics on the market don’t do it justice. Liz said some lights didn’t work but I don’t notice any.
“It’s perfect,” I say. I can see my smile reflected in the glass. I laugh. “My little brother, Benny … he loved this game. We played any chance we got.” I’m crying now. “I was Batman and he was Robin. I was supposed to protect him.”
I was too busy, too cool for the arcade in high school when I got my own car. Benny wanted to go one day so I dropped him off and even gave him some quarters. I could tell he wanted me to go with him, that the arcade itself was less important than us playing the games together. But I wanted to hang out with my friends, with the girl I was talking to. So, I left Benny there, watched him wave at me in the rearview. Watched him watching me turn the corner. Later I was too busy kissing the girl to notice my phone, Benny calling for a ride with our mom’s Nokia she’d lent him. Too busy getting undressed and unhooking her bra to notice the sirens echoing through town.
I feel Greg’s hand slap my shoulder. “It’s okay,” he says. “Let it out, man.”
Two quarters burn a hole in my pocket. I slide them in the coin slots and hear the machine’s innards come to life, speakers emptying themselves of dust. The first silver ball drops from its cage into the launch zone and I put my hand on the Batwing launch handle. The ball’s potential energy rests on the plunger, waiting to be struck.
Exactly as I remember, the bat logo flashes across the orange Sega screen. Purple and green and yellow lamps spiral around the paneling. Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face yells “Let’s start this party with a bang!”
Greg slides two quarters across the glass and says “I got next.”