Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

With the rail-first bank on the eleven ball, he had lost his clumsiness with the cue ball; and now he made it dance for him, still sluggish though it was. He had found the string for it and his control was flawless. He even felt a certain fondness for the big white ball, like the fondness he had felt for Billy Usho; but now he was in command of both. There was nothing in life like this. Nothing. To stroke and hit the cue ball, to watch the colored ball roll with the certitude that he himself imposed on it, to see and hear the colored ball fall into the pocket he had chosen, was exquisite.

Coming into the room, he tried not to wake her, but she stirred when he closed the door. A moment later she turned the bedside light on. She was squinting at the clock radio, her hair disheveled and her breasts bare. She didn’t look at him. “Dear God!” she said. “It’s five o’fucking clock.”

“A quarter after,” Eddie said.

“Maybe you should play tennis.”

“No I shouldn’t.” He set the cue stick in the closet and began unbuttoning his shirt. He took it off and laid it across the back of a chair. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Come on to bed.”

“After the shower.”

“All right,” she said, sitting up and rubbing her eyes. “I missed you last night. How much did you take him for?”

“Take him for?”

“Isn’t that what you say?”

He grinned at her, a bit dreamily. He felt thoroughly tired. His arms and legs, his chest and back, felt warm and relaxed, and the dull ache in his insteps and in his right arm—his stroking arm—was more a comfort than a pain. He reached into his right pocket and pulled out a handful of bills. He dropped it on the bed at her side and then pulled out another handful. Hundreds had a special shade of green on their backs, and the numbering that read “100” was curved pleasantly at the corners, the engraving baroque and substantial. He had always loved them. He dropped the second beside the first, then pulled out more, along with a fistful of loose bills. Arabella had become wide-eyed. She stared at the money and then up at his face. He felt deeply relaxed and yet alert; if someone attacked him he would respond like a drowsy leopard, like a great white shark, lazy and deadly.

“Good god in heaven!” Arabella said softly, looking at the money beside her.

He dug deeper and found another dozen of them in that pocket. Then he shifted to the other pocket, where there was a roll, pulling it out with thumb and forefinger. On the bed the roll uncoiled itself like a living thing, to become a sheaf. More bills were beneath it. He slipped them out a few at a time. The pile of green bills next to Arabella now filled up the space from her knees to her elbows, covering about a foot’s width of the bed. She reached down, scooped up a double handful and held them against her cheeks as a child might hold a beloved doll. “Where have you been all my life, Eddie?” she said.

“Who cares?” Eddie said. “I’m here now.”

The next day Arabella drove to Thelma’s with him at noon and played a pinball machine while he waited around for someone to come in. He got a handful of quarters at the bar and practiced, but none of the people who walked into the bar for an afternoon beer came back to the room where Eddie, feeling like a house hustler, was banking balls up the rails. By late afternoon it had gotten to him. During his years in Lexington he had come to hate these long days with pool tables and the endless, desultory shooting. There were games going on at the other tables now, but not for money. The excitement of the night before was gone. By the time they had their supper at the bar, his arm was tired and his feet ached.

After supper Arabella sat in the canvas director’s chair she had watched from the night before, reading a book. At nine he went out to the bar, got two bottles of beer and poured hers into a glass.

“Well,” she said, “think of how you did last night.”

“Do you want to play?”

“All right.” She closed her book and set it on the table by the beer.

He showed her how to draw the cue ball by putting bottom English on it and how to make a proper bridge with her thumb and forefinger. Her concentration was impressive. He set up balls for her and watched her tap them in, and for a while, it was a pleasure. She liked getting things right. He took the seat she had been in, drank his beer slowly from the bottle and watched her. After a while he was reading from The Collected Stories of V.S. Pritchett while she shot the balls around on the table. They were strange little stories, about Englishmen; he read three. When he looked up from the third, Arabella was standing in front of him, her arms crossed over the top of the Balabushka.

“It does get boring after a while,” she said.

Eddie stretched and yawned. “Not at five hundred a game.”

“Let’s go to the room, Eddie. I’m tired.”

The next evening around eight o’clock, Billy Usho came in. This time he was wearing a chocolate-brown velvet jacket and tan slacks over light Italian shoes. He was carrying his cue case and he smiled ruefully when he saw Eddie sitting in the director’s chair.

“What if I bank the eight?” Eddie said.

“Blindfold, maybe,” Usho said.

“Have a seat,” Eddie said. “Where can I get a game?”

“Next to impossible.”

“A friend told me there were money players around here.”

“Not anymore. Who’s your friend?”

“Fats, from Chicago.”

“Oh yes,” Billy Usho said, looking very Japanese. He could have said, “Ah so!” He opened his case and took out a cue that was different from the one he had used before. Its butt was wrapped in brown linen that matched his jacket. “I hear Fats came through here six years ago and cleaned them all out. But there was money in those days. It’s not like that now.”

“You’re just passing through too, aren’t you?”

“I’ve been here a week. You have to work at it.”

Eddie fell silent for a while. There was an amateurish game of pool going on in front of them, and they watched for a while. Then Eddie said, “Did you ever play the nine-ball tournament at Lake Tahoe?”

“Those tournaments are a bitch. You got to come in first or second, or the hotel bill eats you alive.”

“I hear Earl Borchard makes a good living at tournaments.”

“He’s a genius. So’s Babes Cooley.”

Eddie got down from his chair, put a quarter in the table and began shooting banks. Usho came over and watched.

Eddie tapped the five ball cross-side, freezing the cue ball. “I haven’t seen anybody play serious nine-ball for twenty years.”

Billy looked at him speculatively. “Where’ve you been ?”

Eddie slammed a long cross-corner bank on the twelve ball. “In a fog, Billy. I’ve been in a god-damned fog for twenty years.”

“Good bank on the twelve,” Billy said.

As they walked out onto the parking lot at one, a carload of teenagers drove up, screeching to a stop in the space next to Eddie’s car. Six of them got out, the boys staggering and laughing, the girls squealing. Eddie and Billy watched as they went under the big red neon sign into Thelma’s. As Eddie was unlocking his car he turned to Billy and said, “Do you think I could beat Earl Borchard at nine-ball? Or Babes Cooley?”

“No,” Billy said, “I don’t think you could.”

“Why not?”

“This eight-ball in bars is nothing but a scuffle. The best players are in nine-ball.”

“What about straight pool?”

“Nine-ball. That’s where the money is.”