Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

“Roseate spoonbills?” Fats said. “I am what I am because I shoot pool.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Eddie said.

“I am right. Practice eight hours a day. Play people for money.”

“I don’t know….” Eddie said.

“ I know,” Fats said. “If you don’t practice, your balls will shrivel and you won’t sleep at night. You’re Fast Eddie Felson, for Christ’s sake. You ought to be winning when you play me. Don’t be a goddamned fool.”

“You make it sound like life and death.”

“Because that’s what it is.”

Back in Lexington, he tried it the first morning. Out to the closed poolroom at nine for eight hours of practice. When he unlocked the door he was shocked. There were only three tables in the room. He tried to shake off the dismay and began to shoot. It made him dizzy, walking around the table for hours in the near-empty room, bending, making a ball and going on to the next one. But he stayed with it doggedly, leaving for a few minutes at noon to get two hot dogs and a cup of coffee at Woolworth’s. He shifted from straight pool to banks but got bored with that and started practicing long cut shots, slicing the colored balls parallel with the rail and into the corner pockets. His stroke began to feel smoother but his shoulder was tired. Was Fats right? Had his balls been shriveling? He started shooting harder, making them slap against the backs of the pockets, rifling them in. Fats knew a lot. Loaded on junk food, his belly and ass enormous, over sixty years old, Fats shot pool beautifully; he had balls. Balls was what he, Eddie, had started playing pool for in the first place—that was what they all did. Mother’s boys, some of them. He had been shy when he was twelve and thirteen, before he first picked up a pool stick. When he found out about pool and how well he could play it, it had changed him. He could not remember all of it, but it had even changed the way he walked. He smashed the orange five ball down the rail and into the pocket. Then the three, the fourteen, twelve, hitting them perfectly. He went on blasting at them, but missed the final ball. It came off the edge of the pocket, caromed its way around the table, bouncing off five cushions, and then rolled slowly to a stop. His back was hurting and he had a headache.

It was almost five o’clock. The phone at the room had been cut off for weeks. He went outside to the pay phone in the parking lot and called Arabella.

“I’d like to come over for a drink,” he said.

“I’m going to a play at eight. You can come for a while.”

“I’ll bring wine,” he said, and hung up.

“Tell me about your husband,” Eddie said. He was seated in one of the white armchairs. “Is his name Weems?”

“Harrison Frame.”

“Haven’t I heard of him?”

“It would be hard not to,” Arabella said. “He used to do a television show on the university channel.”

“You sound like you hate him.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

She took a thoughtful swallow from her wineglass. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s not talk about him. What have you been doing today?”

“Catching up on my homework.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Catch up?”

“I only started.” He got up and went to the window, looking at the traffic in the street and the buildings across the street. “I like this apartment a lot,” he said.

“Eddie,” she said from the sofa, “I’ve been living in this one room for two months and I’m going crazy.”

“It’ll be better when you find a job.”

“I’m not going to find a job. There’s a recession going on. President Reagan speaks of recovery, but he’s another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another goddamned performer, like my former husband. He’s only working the room, our president. Counting the house and working the room. The son of a bitch.”

“ Hey ,” Eddie said, laughing. “You sound terrible. Are you drunk?”

“If three glasses of wine makes you drunk, I’m drunk.”

“I’ll get you something to eat.” He left the window and went to the refrigerator. There was a wedge of Brie and four eggs. Nothing else. “What about a soft-boiled egg?”

“If you say so.”

He boiled her two of them and, since there was no butter, merely put them in a bowl with salt and pepper and handed it to her. He heated some coffee and gave her a cup of it black.

She was a real cutie, eating her eggs on the sofa. She hunched over them with her silver hair glowing in the late afternoon light from the big window, spooning them in small bites. He sat across from her and watched, sipping his own coffee.

“Thanks, Eddie,” she said when she finished. She held the bowl in her lap and smiled. “Why don’t you tell me what you do for a living?”

He hesitated. “I was a poolroom operator until a few months ago. A long time ago I was a player.” He felt relieved; it was time he told her about pool.

“A poolroom?” She didn’t seem to understand.

“Yes.”

“But what has that to do with Enoch Wax?”

“I’m doing exhibition games for Mid-Atlantic.”

“Then you must be good.”

“I lost the first two matches.”

She didn’t seem to notice what he said. She just kept looking at him. Finally she said, “Holy cow. A pool player.” She sounded excited by the idea.

“My game isn’t what it was. I practiced all day today and it bored the hell out of me.”

She bit her lip a moment, then reached forward and set her empty bowl on the glass coffee table, next to a vase of orange gladiolas. “It must be better than sitting around an apartment.”

“Not by much.”

She stretched and yawned. “My God, Eddie! First you cheer me up, now I’m cheering you up. It could go on forever. Why don’t you go to the play with us tonight? I can inveigle a ticket.”

“I’ve never seen a play.”

“All the more reason to go.”

“Maybe you’re right. What’s the name of it?”

“ A Streetcar Named Desire . At the university theater. The principal character bears some resemblance to you.”

He looked at her. “Stanley Kowalski or Blanche DuBois?”

“ Well ,” she said, “a closet intellectual.”

“I saw the movie.”

“You didn’t say Marlon Brando or Vivien Leigh.”

“Look,” he said, irritated, “I’ll go to the play with you. But I’m tired of being figured out. I’m not a rube. I know who Tennessee Williams was. I just don’t go to plays. Nobody asked me to before.”

They had dinner at the Japanese place, and this time Eddie ordered Sushi. He had practiced with a pair of pencils at Jean’s apartment, picking up cigarettes. The trick was to hold the bottom one steady and use the top one like the jaw of a clamp. The Sushi was easy. Arabella watched him for a moment but made no comment.

They met the other couple outside the theater, in the Fine Arts Building. The Skammers, both of them professors. He was history and she was math. They were both thin people, both in running shoes and bright cotton sweaters, both easygoing and cordial. She had reddish hair and was pretty in an unexciting way. Eddie noticed the man was wearing a gold Rolex. The four of them had only a few minutes to chat before curtain time.

He had never seen even a high-school play and was uncertain what to expect. The actors were college students, and from his third-row seat he could see their makeup. It took him awhile, feeling self-conscious with real people on the stage in front of him, but after a few minutes he got into it. He liked Stanley; the student playing the part had the right swagger. And Blanche was a genuine loser—the real thing—with her talk and her posing. Arabella, sitting by him, laughed aloud at some of Blanche’s lines, but he didn’t find her funny. It would be frightening to be like that, in that kind of a fog. It was fascinating to listen to her talk, to hear her construct her version of her past and Stella’s, and to watch her come apart. He had seen pool players come apart like that. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” You didn’t have to be taken off by men in white suits to fail like that. You could stay home, drink beer, watch TV. There was a lot of it going around.