"You look terrible."

"It's been a rough week," Toris replied with a small, strained smile as he ran his fingers through his hair. Arthur offered him the cup of tea, and he accepted it with a more natural smile of gratitude.

"Job hunting?" Arthur asked, glancing at the newspaper Toris was reading.

His smile immediately fell, and he looked down, shoulders caving in slightly. "I lost my job. . ."

Arthur frowned. "You're much too young to be worrying about that sort of thing."

Not meeting his eyes, Toris murmured, "But I want to help out as much as I can. . ." It wasn't a lie exactly. Just . . . slightly misleading.

With a sigh, Arthur sat down in the chair beside him.

"I think I may be able to help if you're interested." Toris's eyes met his with a questioning look, signaling him to go on. "I have a half-brother. He's . . . significantly wealthier than I am and has been looking for, erm, a housekeeper of sorts? He's a bit hard to get along with, but I'm sure the job will pay well as he's awfully generous with his money."

Toris chewed on his lip, mulling it over. Finally, he asked, "Is-is it all right if I only work afternoon shifts?"

"It should be fine." He stood up. "I'll go arrange a meeting for you."

Toris glanced down at the slip of paper in his hand and then back up at the big neon letters on the front of the building for at least the fifth time, as if doing so would somehow make the building in front of him change into something else, wondering once again if there had been some sort of mistake.

Why a bowling alley?

With a deep breath in some vain effort to diminish his ever-growing anxiety, he forced himself to enter the building, deciding that if there truly had been a mistake, he wasn't going to find out just standing there. And it certainly wouldn't do to be late if this was where the interview was to be held.

"Um, I-I'm looking for a Mr. Alfred Jones," he told a lady behind the counter, already feeling embarrassed at the possibility of him not being there.

The lady smiled sweetly at him. "He's waiting for you at Lane 4, dear."

Toris nodded and quickly left to find Lane 4, feeling a tiny bit of the tension in his chest drain away at finally knowing for certain he was in the right place, though he couldn't help but still be thrown off by the odd choice of setting for a job interview.

"Hey!" The loud voice immediately broke through his train of thought, and he found himself flinching before he could stop himself. "You must be Toris, right?"

"Um, y-yes. Hello."

"Great! Have a seat, man," he said, gesturing towards a seat on the other side of the table. "Bumpers, or no?"

"I-I'm sorry?"

"For what?" He grinned, and when Toris opened his mouth to try to explain, he cut him off with a chuckle. "I'm just messin' with ya. I do that to Artie all the time. You kinda talk like him, you know that?"

Toris blinked, cocking his head. "Do I?"

"Yeah. He's so uptight. You both need to loosen up." Toris looked away in shame, but was quickly drawn back as Alfred continued. "So, yeah, like I was saying: Do you usually bowl with bumpers or without?"

"Wait, we're bowling?"

Alfred gave him a confused look. "Well, yeah, why else would I invite you to a bowling alley?"

"I thought this was a job interview?" Toris felt dizzy. This was all moving too fast, and nothing was happening even remotely the way he had thought it would.

"If it'll help you relax, you already got the job. So now it's time to cut loose and have some fun!"

Toris stared at him, dumbfounded. "You're going to give me the job, just like that?"

"Why not? After all, Artie recommended you. And if you can get him to like you that much, you've gotta be a pretty amazing person."

Toris blushed and looked down, resisting the impulse to deny his statement. Instead, he quickly changed the subject. "I don't know how to bowl," he mumbled.

"You don't know how to bowl." Alfred repeated, staring down at him. "How do you not know how to bowl?"

Toris stammered, trying to formulate a coherent response, but Alfred reached out a hand and grabbed his wrist, pulling him up and leading him to the rack of bowling balls. He picked up a ball and placed it into Toris's hands. As soon as he let go, Toris nearly dropped it.

"Whoops. I always overestimate how much people can hold. Sorry! How 'bout we try this one instead?"

Once they had gotten a bowling ball that Toris could at least mostly hold, Alfred walked him over to the top of their lane.

"Okay, so you just hold it like this, and roll it down the lane!" and he mimed the motion of throwing a bowling ball.

Toris tried to mimic his actions and watched as his bowling ball crawled down the lane, thinking to himself all the while that that probably wasn't quite right.

"Er, maybe try for a little more power next time," Alfred suggested, staring after the ball. Would it even make it down?

The ball tilted too far to the right side and dropped down into the gutter. Toris glanced up at Alfred. "That's bad, right?"

Alfred scratched the back of his neck, looking away. "Well… It's not… good…"

…

"Ya want bumpers?"