Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Would you want it?”

He lit a cigarette and said, “What in hell are you mad at?”

She walked to the desk and picked up the paper she had typed. “I’m mad at Harrison and I’m mad at the professor who wrote this study of stress resistance in water-retaining structures.”

“I think you’re mad at me ,” Eddie said.

“I’m tired of the university. There are students who graduate from here with nothing in their heads but drugs and rock music.”

“You’re forgetting sex. I think it’s me you’re mad at.”

She looked at him. “Eddie, why don’t you get your act together and start playing tournaments?”

“I’m not good enough yet. I may never be.” He looked at his watch. It was midnight. He walked over to the sofa and began unfolding it into a bed. “If you lived in a house like that, why don’t you have a lot of money?”

“The house belongs to Harrison’s mother and didn’t figure in the settlement. I get eight hundred a month in alimony.”

“You could live on that.”

Arabella was quiet while he got his shoes off. Then she said, “Eddie. When I got upset in North Carolina and wanted to come home, it wasn’t just the boredom and the bad food.”

“I thought there was something.”

“I need to do more than support a man in his career. It was beginning to feel as if I’d never left Harrison.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry. You’re not like Harrison, but you’re another kind of star.”

That annoyed him but he said nothing.

When she spoke again her voice was resigned. “I could do more work for the arts-and-crafts journal. They’ve offered me an office for reading copy.”

“Take it.”

“It’s still working for professors.”

“Then don’t take it.”

“I just don’t know.” She looked upset. She walked to her desk and picked up the folder with the paper she had just finished typing. “Maybe all I want is to be with a good-looking man who’s good at what he does.” She tossed the folder back on the desk. “There’s a lot of pressure on women these days to be themselves. Maybe it’s all a mean joke.”

Eddie looked at her. “No it isn’t,” he said.

“But what can I do ?”

He stood up barefoot and stretched. “I know that one. It’s a real son of a bitch.”

The game was at a fairgrounds outside Albuquerque; from the parking lot came the smell of horses and straw, even on a cold November day. When Eddie got out of the taxi, Fats was at a hot-dog stand, eating a Coney Island piled with chili. In the autumnal sunlight his face had a distinct pallor.

Fats chewed and swallowed before he spoke. “I’ve seen the table,” he said. “A four-and-a-half-by-nine Gandy. It looks all right.”

“You look pale, Fats,” Eddie said.

“I was sick two weeks ago.” Fats held his cue case under his arm and finished the hot dog. He wiped his fingers and chin with a paper napkin, wadded it, dropped it in a trash bin nearby.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be here.”

“Being here is no problem. The chili dog is the problem.”

“Then stop eating chili dogs.”

“Let’s play pool, Fast Eddie.” Fats turned and started walking toward the open-air arena with a banner reading THE GREAT MINNESOTA FATS AND FAST EDDIE SHOOT OUT. He was, as always, light on his feet.

In the taxi afterward, Eddie stared out the window at the distant Rockies. He had concentrated, shot well, seen the balls clearly and lost by seven points. One fifty to one forty-three.

Fats was leaning back in his seat, his black cue case across his lap. Finally he spoke. “That was a good run.” Eddie had scored over eighty balls before missing a difficult bank shot.

Eddie said nothing. It made five matches in a row that Fats had beaten him. There would be only one more—at Indianapolis in early December. If he couldn’t beat a seventy-year-old man one game out of six, he was hopeless. He had no business trying to play pool for a living.

“Did you use the list?” Fats said.

“Most of it.” He had not tried the two towns at the bottom, although one was in driving distance of Lexington.

“It’s a good list,” Fats said. “I won money in every place on it.”

“It worked at first. I beat Billy Usho in Memphis for seven thousand. A few thousand from a man named Boomer.”

“After that?”

As the road curved, Eddie could see the eminence of Scandia Peak, snow-capped, from between two lesser mountains. “Nothing. Maybe enough to pay the hotel bill.”

“Did you find Ousley in Connors?”

“I hear it’s a terrible place.”

“Ousley has money. He owns coal mines.”

“Maybe I’ll go next week.” He looked at Fats. “Tell me something. Have you ever had a job?”

“No.”

“Have you ever played nine-ball tournaments?”

“I don’t like the kids who play them.” Nine-ball had always been a different world from the one Eddie knew, even though he had played it from time to time.

“If I don’t take a job,” Eddie said, “I’ve got to do something. There’s more money in nine-ball than there is in bars.”

Fats pursed his lips. “You might win the small ones.”

“There’s a big one in Chicago next month. And then, in the spring, there’s Lake Tahoe.”

“You won’t win those. How much nine-ball have you played?”

“Not a lot.”

“Earl Borchard could beat you at straight pool, and he plays nine-ball better. You need more experience.”

“Fats, I have experience. I was beating every player in the country when those kids were in kindergarten.”

“This is nineteen eighty-three,” Fats said.

“November.”

“That’s right. I was looking in Billiard’s Digest . There’s a tournament in Connecticut the day after we play in Indianapolis. It goes three days, and first prize is twenty-five hundred. You can practice nine-ball a few weeks and then get in it.”

“I’ve been practicing.”

“That’s right,” Fats said, “but I just beat you.”

They drove the rest of the way to the airport in silence. When the driver slowed to get in line at the Eastern Airlines terminal, Fats said, “It’s mainly a matter of growing up.”

Eddie looked at him but said nothing.

Arabella was out when he let himself into the apartment. A note by the telephone read, “Roy Skammer called twice,” and gave the number. He opened a beer and dialed.

“Fast Eddie,” Skammer said, “how would you like a job?”

“You’re full of surprises.”

“The man who runs the billiard room at the College Union is retiring, and I talked to the dean about hiring you.”

“How many tables?”

“Eight or ten. There’s Ping-Pong, and some other things. Do you know where the building is?”

“Yes.” It was the only modern building he walked by on the way to the Faculty Club.

“Why don’t you drop in tomorrow morning and look it over? The old man’s name is Mayhew.”

“I will,” Eddie said.

Arabella had been serving wine and cheese at a student art show in the university gallery; she didn’t get home until midnight. Eddie didn’t mention the job. When she asked him about Fats he said, “I still can’t beat him.”

“Maybe next time.” She had gone into the bathroom to soak her feet. “I don’t know why I agreed to run those openings. Thelma’s was more interesting.” She began filling the tub.

“Fats says I need to grow up if I want to beat the kids who play nine-ball.”

“That sounds like Heraclitus. The way up is the way down. The way forward is the way back.”