A white ball streaked across green felt and snapped into a triangle of colorful balls. The formation exploded, and the balls thumped off rails, clicked off one another, came to rolling stops. Two stripes fell into pockets.

Billy Miller removed a greasy baseball cap, ran a hand through greasy hair, returned the cap to his head, and said: “I hate you.”

Stephen Zander smiled and chalked his cue with a big fist. He was tall and rangy, twenty-seven, with broad, stooped shoulders and fried golden hair. He looked like a weathered Brit-rocker from the Seventies.

“Thirteen over there,” he said and gestured at a pocket with his cue stick. He laid out flat over the stick, and his arm made a fluid motion at the elbow. The white ball rolled slowly across the felt, clicked off the Thirteen and the Thirteen inched along – nearly stopped -before dropping with a click into a side pocket.

Zander indicated another pocket and grinned at Miller. “You’re going to school today, son. Eleven off the Fourt-”

A phone buzzed, and Zander frowned. He leaned his stick against the table and dug the phone from a pocket.

Miller sighed.

Zander stabbed the screen with his finger, and an agitated female voice chittered. Zander winced, pulled the phone away, held it out to Miller, and mouthed: “Talk to her!”

Miller frowned and shook his head.

Zander’s smile went away, and a scowl took its place. He barked at the phone. “I told you I was stopping after work!”

The phone chirped higher, and Zander stormed around the pool table and out the screen door to the parking lot. The door clattered shut behind him.

Miller watched the door and peeled the soggy label from a bottle of beer. He was alone in the small room now and, after waiting a while for the door to reopen, he ambled to the right side of the bar and called: “Becky!”

“Grab what you want, Love!” a woman said from a back room. “I’m cleanin’ the fryer.”

“Taking another bottle of Snakes!”

“Okay!”

Miller walked around behind the bar and took out a bottle of beer. He tossed the bottle cap in the trash and laid four dollars on the register, then came back around to the front of the bar and studied the pool table. Fifteen minutes passed before Miller said out loud: “Forfeit,” and chalked Zander’s stick. He took painstaking care aligning each shot and cursed the ones he missed.

With the table clear, Miller leaned the stick against the table, walked around, clattered out the screen door into the parking lot, and was blinded. His eyes snapped shut as hot, orange light warmed them through his eyelids like midday summer sun. He put up a hand and squinted.

Overhead, a circular craft whirled and whirred and filled the night sky. It bathed the world, as far as Miller could see, with orange light so that everything was the color of marmalade. Wind from the saucer swept grit into Miller’s face, and he turned his head and closed his eyes. When he did so, the light winked out, and the wind stopped and the night air was cool again. It was silent. Miller stood blinking, then saw a crumpled heap across the lot by his car. He sprinted over and knelt down and took Zander by the shoulders. “Stephen?” he yelled. “Stephen!”

Zander’s mouth twitched. His eyes fluttered open, green and clear and intense, and Miller gawked into them.

“Dude,” Zander whispered. “Wait ‘til you see all the shit I can do now!”