Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

That was what he said when Skammer asked him, afterward, how he liked it. “There’s a lot of that going around.” They all stared at him and then laughed loudly.

“Eddie,” Arabella said, “will you teach me to shoot pool?”

He was feeling good. “Right now?”

“Why not? Do you know a place?”

“Shoot pool?” Roy Skammer said. “That’s a stunning idea.”

“Oh boy!” Pat said. She had been crying at the play and her face was streaked from it. They were walking along the campus on their way to the car.

“Don’t knock it,” Roy said. “In my sophomore year I did little else. I was a veritable Fast Eddie.”

Arabella looked at him. “A Fast Eddie?”

“Of the Princeton Student Union.”

“There’s a table at the Faculty Club,” Pat said. “Roy is the eight-ball terror of arts and sciences.”

“My my,” Arabella said. And then to Eddie, “Will you teach me?”

Eddie shrugged. He was still feeling high from the play. It was a warm night and the light from mercury lamps was filtered through tall trees along the campus walk. He was not really interested in shooting pool. His right shoulder was sore from the eight hours at the room that day and he was not interested in seeing how well Roy Skammer shot eight-ball. Roy Skammer seemed amiable and smiled a lot, but Eddie did not like him. He did not like the man’s glib way of talking.

“I’d like to learn,” Arabella said.

“Okay. I’ll show you how.”

“If you’d like,” Roy said, “I’ll help.”

There was a little bar when you came in the front door. A group of men were sitting there at a table drinking beer. A couple of them waved to Roy. “There he is,” one of them said to Skammer; and another said to Arabella and Eddie, “Don’t play him for money.” There were dark oil portraits above the bar, probably of former professors.

The pool table was in a big upstairs room with an Oriental rug on the floor and more paintings of scholarly-looking men on the dark walls. It was an old Brunswick table with fringed pockets and a cloth with brownish stains on it. Skammer flipped a switch and yellowish lights over the table came on. “Go ahead,” he said to Eddie. “I’ll go down and get some beer.”

Since they walked in the door, Eddie had felt a little stiff. He had never been around professors before, had not even been on campus in his years in Lexington. The Skammers made no attempt to impress with their education, but he felt inhibited. They were the kind of couple you sometimes saw on the street or read about in magazines. But when he got a pair of cue sticks out of the wall rack and gave one to Arabella, he began to loosen up. He showed her how to hold the cue at the balance and to keep her left arm straight. He had her stand sideways at the table and bend at the waist, letting the stick slide across her open-hand bridge. She concentrated and did it surprisingly well. Pat had played before and didn’t require instruction. Watching Arabella shoot the white ball around, she said, “You’re pretty damned apt, Weems”; and Arabella, bending to shoot at the seven ball, said, “You don’t type a hundred forty words a minute without being apt.”

“Come on,” Pat said, “nobody types one forty. The ribbon would disintegrate.”

Arabella frowned harder at the seven ball, then bit her lip. She pumped her right arm and hit the cue ball surprisingly hard. The seven rolled across the table and into the side pocket. Eddie could have hugged her. She looked up at Pat and said, “On a good day I do one fifty. Haven’t lost a ribbon yet.”

Roy came in with four cans of beer and handed them out. “Let’s play some eight-ball,” he said impatiently. “I want to show my trick shots.”

“I’ll rack,” Eddie said.

“Wait a minute!” It was Arabella. “I don’t know the rules.”

There had been some two-piece cues locked at one end of the wall rack. Roy went over and unlocked one of them. “We’ll explain it as we go along.” He came back with his cue. It was an old Wille Hoppe, with a brass joint. “Pat and I will be partners, and Arabella and Ed. The losing team buys the next round.”

“You’re on,” Arabella said, looking at Eddie.

“Two out of three games,” Pat said.

“Sure.” Arabella began chalking her cue the way Eddie had showed her. “That’ll give me time to get in stroke.”

The women went first. Pat broke weakly and missed an easy shot on the four ball. That gave the Skammers the solids. Eddie explained to Arabella that they had to shoot the striped balls in; he showed her how to make the thirteen in the corner. She was still awkward with her cue, but she concentrated and shot it in. But her position was terrible and she miscued on the next one. Roy went to the chalk dispenser and banged powder into his left hand. Too much of it, making a little cloud. “I want everyone to pay complete attention,” he said. He didn’t seem entirely to be kidding. “You are about to see eight-ball shot the way it was intended to be shot.” He walked to the table and pointed at the two ball with his stick. “I am going to bank this blue ball into the side pocket right here”—he pointed to the pocket—“and the cue ball will roll into position for the six afterward. Very few white people understand this kind of playing.”

“Quit grandstanding, Roy,” Pat said. “Make the shot.”

“Certainly,” Roy said. He bent down, stroked, then stood up again. It was not a difficult bank, but Eddie felt he would miss it; it needed inside English to avoid kissing the cue ball. Roy bent down again, and to Eddie’s surprise used the inside English and made the two. The cue ball rolled over to the six.

Pat applauded. Looking at Eddie, Roy said, “Would you like to double the bet?”

“Sure,” Eddie said.

“That’s two rounds,” Roy said. He bent and shot the six ball in, and then the one. But after he made the one, his cue ball rolled too far, giving a bad lie on the three. He tried another bank, missed it, but the cue ball rolled by luck to the top rail. The striped balls were clustered at the other end of the table and it didn’t look as though anything could be made. “ Well ,” Roy said, “anybody want to bet a few dollars on the side?”

Eddie looked at him and said softly, “You don’t want to do that.”

There was an embarrassed silence for a moment, and then Arabella spoke up crisply. “I’ll bet you twenty dollars we win.”

“So that’s it,” Roy said. “Those instructions Ed gave you were a front. In fact you’re the United Kingdom pocket billiards champion.”

“You’ll find out,” Arabella said. “Put your money where your mouth is.”

Roy laid his cue stick on the table and slipped his wallet out of his jeans pocket. He took out two tens. Arabella was carrying a leather purse. She took out a twenty. “I’ll hold the stakes,” Pat said and took the money.

Eddie stepped up to the table. The only shot on was the eleven and it was a killer: it sat a few inches from the bottom rail and a long way from either corner pocket. The cue ball was nearly frozen to the top rail. Eddie leaned his stick against the table and put on his glasses. He picked up the cue and said, “I’ll go for the eleven,” and bent down.

“If you make it, I’ll eat it,” Roy said, kidding and not kidding.

“Fine,” Eddie said and drew back. Through his glasses the red stripe on the eleven was as sharp as the edge of a crystal wineglass. He stroked the cue hard and loose, smacking powerfully into the cue ball. The cue ball hurtled down the table, sliced the eleven paper-thin and bounded off the bottom rail, its path barely altered by contact with the eleven. As the cue ball came flying back up toward Eddie, the eleven rolled slowly, its red stripe turning over and over like a hoop. The white ball sped around the table, crashed into a cluster of balls and stopped. The eleven ball, still moving in its unhurried way, arrived at the mouth of the corner pocket, hesitated a moment at the edge, and fell in.