Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

When Eddie was nine hundred dollars down, the man excused himself to go to the bathroom. Eddie walked over to Arabella. “I hope you’re not bored,” he said.

“It’s really a thrill,” she said. “I wish you’d teach me more, Eddie, so I could understand it better.”

“Sure.”

She looked behind her to see if the other player was still gone from the room. Then she leaned forward. “When are you going to start beating him, Eddie?”

“As soon as I can.”

“Aren’t you losing on purpose? Isn’t that the way you do it?”

“I told you,” Eddie said, frowning, “I’m not a pool shark. I’m trying to beat the man.”

“Oh,” she said, clearly disappointed.

“I’m having trouble with the cue ball….”

She just looked at him.

Just then a waitress came in. “Anybody here want something from the bar?”

“Sure,” Eddie said, and then to Arabella, “What would you like?” He realized that his voice was cold.

Arabella spoke to the waitress. “Do you have white wine?”

“Sure, honey,” the waitress said brightly. “You want dry or extra dry? We’ve got a nice dry Chablis.”

“I’ll have a glass of that.”

“Bring me a Manhattan on the rocks.” Eddie was feeling uncomfortable. The man on the far table ordered beer.

Just then the Japanese came walking back into the room. “Do you want a drink?” Eddie asked.

“Bourbon and soda.” He smiled at Eddie. “Tough work, shooting eight-ball.”

There was something about him. Eddie could not help liking him. A lot of hustlers were that way, since their livelihoods depended partly on charm; but the feeling for this little man was stronger than that.

The Japanese picked up his cue, set its butt on the floor between his feet and held it so its tip was level with his chin. Then he slipped a small metal rasp from his coat pocket and began tapping the cue tip with it. It was something Eddie hadn’t seen for so long that he had forgotten: the man was dressing the tip to make it hold chalk better.

When he finished, Eddie said, “Could I use that a minute?”

He nodded and handed it to him. Eddie stood his cue in front of him and gave it a few taps.

“That’s a very pretty stick,” the Japanese said.

“Thanks.” Eddie scuffed the center of the tip where there was a hard spot, and then began chalking it heavily. The other man took a square of chalk and did the same thing. He looked at Eddie and said, “I’m Billy Usho.”

“Ed Felson. This is Arabella.”

“I’ve enjoyed watching you play.” Arabella twirled her wineglass by the stem.

“That’s nice.” Usho smiled. “My wife says it bores her. Out of her skull.”

“That’s a shame,” Arabella said. “I think it’s a beautiful game. Very intricate and bright.”

Eddie began racking the balls. He felt, as he had before in his life, that if he didn’t do something his money would drift away from him and he would go on losing. He did not like Arabella’s sympathy with the little man. He did not like his own. The Japanese was like Fats: another cool man who dressed impeccably. Another star. Eddie was better than this dapper Japanese, better maybe than Fats.

“Let’s play for five hundred,” Eddie said.

“That’s a lot of money for eight-ball.”

Eddie straightened up from racking and shrugged. At the table across the room, the men who had ordered beers were staring at him. They must have heard him say five hundred dollars. He noticed for the first time that the kids had left the other table, had apparently been gone for some time. He looked over at Arabella briefly; her face was expressionless. He turned back to Billy Usho. “What have you got to lose?”

“Okay.” Billy picked up the chalk again, ran it lightly over the tip of his cue, bent to the table and smashed the rack of balls open.

Eddie took a deep breath and watched, not sitting, keeping his back to Arabella. The five ball fell in; that gave Billy the solids. Eddie kept his eyes on the table and not on Usho’s clothes or his smooth, youthful face.

None of the solids was in an easy position, and the cue ball was frozen to a side rail. Billy studied the lie for a long time before he played safe. The cue ball stopped between the eight and the four, out of line with all the striped balls. Eddie would have to keep his nerves steady and his balls tight just to get a decent safety out of it. The cue ball would have to be banked rail-first into the eleven. It was a pisser.

Just then the waitress came in with their drinks. Eddie gave her a ten, took his Manhattan and turned back to the table. If he shot it hard, the eleven might go in the side; it was a foot and a half away from the pocket and in a direct line with it. But, Jesus, to thump that big cue ball off the cushion and try for a perfect hit on the eleven was a killer. He looked at Billy’s Japanese face, his almost pretty face, for a moment and thought, To hell with him . He took a long swallow from the sweet drink, set it down, not looking at Arabella, and walked over to the table. He could make the eleven ball.

He did it quickly, spreading the fingers of his left hand over the eight, elevating the cue stick, stroking once and then tapping the cue ball. He could feel the purchase on the big, clunky ball that roughing the leather of the tip had given him. He watched the white ball pop off the rail and hit the eleven dead center, watched the eleven roll into the side pocket. The cue ball stopped in position for the thirteen. Eddie chalked, took three steps over and pocketed the thirteen. Then the nine, the fifteen, the fourteen and the twelve. The black eight sat four inches from the lower corner and his cue ball ten inches from the eight. He plunked the eight ball into the pocket and went back to his Manhattan. Billy paid him silently and racked the balls.

At midnight Eddie raised the bet to a thousand and Billy brought in two backers. One wore a dark suit and looked like a banker. The other could have been a rodeo cowboy. He chewed tobacco, drank Rolling Rock beer, and paid Eddie in worn-looking hundred-dollar bills from what seemed an inexhaustible supply.

At one in the morning, Eddie put Arabella in a taxi and sent her back to the Holiday Inn. She kissed him sleepily before getting in the cab. “I’m glad you started beating him.”

“You know what I’m going to do tomorrow?” Eddie said to her. “I’m going to buy some new clothes.”

After they closed the bar at two-thirty, a crowd of a dozen diehards stayed to watch. Someone kept feeding quarters into the jukebox in the other room; the muted voices of Conway Twitty and Merle Haggard came through the open doorway. Billy’s face was no longer unlined, and his hair no longer neatly combed. There was a smear of talcum powder near the lapel of his blue jacket, and his narrow eyes were narrower.

Eddie was reaching a place he had almost forgotten, where the nerves of his arms and fingertips seemed to extend through the length of the Balabushka to the glossy surfaces of the balls themselves, to the napped green of the table. There were no aches in his feet or shoulders, and his stroke was unruffled, pistonlike, and dead-accurate. He could not miss. There was no way he could miss. The whole fatty accumulation of his middle-class life had fallen away from him, and his movements at the table were both fully awake and dreamlike. The visual clarity was astounding. The click of his cue tip against the cue ball, the click of the cue ball against the ball he was tapping in or easing in or nudging in or powering in was like the click of oiled machinery. He was silent and loose; in some newly awakened reach of his mind he was dazzled by himself.

Billy did not quit for a long time. It was amazing that he didn’t quit. He shot fine pool, better than he had played at the beginning, and he even won games. There was no way to prevent him from winning games. But he had no real chance. By three o’clock in the morning it must have been clear to everyone in the room, as it was to Eddie, that he had no chance; but he kept on playing and his backers kept handing money to Eddie.