Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

He broke the rack and began to shoot, banking the balls. The table was easy. His stroke was smooth and certain and he made clean shots, bringing them sharply off the cushions and into the pockets. It was a matter of getting the feel of the table under pressure, and keeping it. He had almost forgotten that, over the years. He ignored the men watching him, neither grandstanding for them nor missing deliberately to deceive them; and he banked the balls in prettily with his glossy Balabushka. It was reassuring to come into a strange place like this, with its dim hostility, and fall immediately into perfect stroke.

He came to the bar and got two dollars’ worth of quarters. The movie was still on, but no one was watching. They were all looking at him. He got the change and went back to the table.

By six in the evening, the bar was full of men, but no one wanted to play. There was a grubby washroom, and he cleaned the table grime from his hands as well as he could before taking his cue apart and putting it back in the case.

The young man was still at the end of the bar, still drinking Rolling Rock beer. He didn’t turn around when Eddie came up to him. “I’ll be back at eight-thirty,” Eddie said. “If your friend comes in, tell him I’m looking for him.”

“He’s no friend of mine,” the man said, staring at his beer bottle.

“Eight-thirty,” Eddie said.

The young man turned around and looked up at him with a cold, inward stare. “I’ll tell him your name. If you’ll tell it to me.”

“Ed Felson,” Eddie said. “I’m called Fast Eddie.”

The young man turned back to his beer.

“I did eight pages on Deeley and watched ‘Search for Tomorrow.’ Or maybe it was ‘Search for an Abortionist,’ considering the overall tone.”

“You had a better day than I did.”

“It wasn’t bad. I took a walk down the road and found a drive-in movie.”

“Maybe we can go tonight. The man I’m waiting for may not show up.”

“ Debbie Does Dallas ,” Arabella said. She was pouring them each a glass of white wine from the big bottle, using the motel’s plastic glasses. “I suspect it’s about oral sex.”

“Sounds like a winner.” Eddie seated himself on the bed next to a pile of Arabella’s papers and took the wineglass. “We’ll stay through tomorrow. The player I was looking for, the one Fats told me about, isn’t in town, but there’s one other. He’ll be in tonight or tomorrow.”

Dent was there when he came in. He was a huge, soft-looking man in his thirties, with sideburns and a gray T-shirt with the words EAT ME. He was shooting balls on Eddie’s table, using a cheap jointed cue with a scarlet butt. The young man was still sitting at the bar. The TV was off. On the jukebox Bobbie Gentry sang “Ode to Billy Joe.” A couple of the old men had their heads on folded arms at the bar. “Here he is,” the young man said coldly to the big man at the table. “Fast Eddie.”

The big man went on shooting. He was drilling the balls straight in, and he looked good at it. When he had finished the table, slamming the last ball the long diagonal into the far corner pocket, he looked up at Eddie. His face was pale and treacherous-looking, with a pout to the thick lips. He had the weedy beginnings of a mustache. Bobbie Gentry finished and Johnny Cash started, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.” Eddie did not like the looks of the man nor the feeling in the buzzed-out barroom, but decided to heed Cash’s words and go with it.

“I heard of you,” Dent said.

Eddie nodded noncommittally. “Do you want to play eight-ball?”

“I expect you mean for money,” Dent said in a drawl, “being as they say you’re a hustler.”

“I started hustling pool thirty years ago,” Eddie said. “I’ll play you eight-ball for fifty a game if you want to play.”

“Shit,” the man said, “you sound mean as a snake, Fast Eddie. Maybe you’re just too good for me.”

Eddie shrugged. “Maybe I am.”

“I’ll try you for fifty.”

“Fine,” Eddie said. He took his glasses from the pocket of his leather jacket and put them on.

They tossed a coin for the break. The other man won it, broke the balls wide and ran half the solids before dogging a thin cut into the corner. Eddie played it carefully and had him beaten in five minutes. He was nervous but he had no trouble controlling the game. The room was silent when he finished. Dent reracked the balls. Then he reached up with the tip of his cue and slid a wooden bead along the string near the back wall, over a big Miller’s High Life poster.

Eddie looked at him.

“Break the balls,” Dent said.

“You owe me fifty dollars.”

“On the string,” Dent said, looking back over his shoulder toward it. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a clump of bills fastened with a money clip in the shape of a naked woman, and flashed it for Eddie. “Okay?”

“It’s the way we do it here,” the young man at the bar said.

Eddie shrugged, stepped to the table and broke the balls. He ran four of the solids and then missed deliberately, leaving Dent an easy shot on two stripes. Dent ambled heavily up to the table and began shooting; he made all the stripes and then pocketed the eight. Eddie felt annoyed at himself for making it that easy. The man was good enough without help. He would play it straight and not throw off; he would beat this man, with his dangerous baby face, his hostile, shifting eyes, until he quit.

It was difficult at first. Dent shot eight-ball well, but Eddie bore down and beat him, gradually adding beads to the string. His stroke was better than it had been for years, better even than during the long run against Fats at Albuquerque; he bent and shot, bent and shot, and the balls kept falling in. He won six in a row before Dent set his cue against the wall and took a huge sheepskin coat from a hook near it. He put the coat on, his back to Eddie.

Eddie looked up at the string. There were twelve beads pushed over to his side of it. He looked toward Norton Dent, even huger in the coat, and began taking his cue apart.

“You owe me six hundred dollars, Norton,” Eddie said.

Dent turned slowly. His voice was soft, almost amiable. “You’ve got to collect it.”

Eddie had the cue in two pieces now. He set the smaller one, the shaft, on the table. He took off his glasses and set them beside it. “Is that how you pay what you owe, Norton?” he said levelly. The danger was palpable, but he ignored it, did not care about it. He wanted to kill this oaf.

Dent took a step closer. Behind him, every man in the room was staring at them, waiting.

“I don’t pay what I don’t have to pay,” Dent said, “you pool-shark piece of shit.”

For a moment Eddie felt a horrible weariness, heard an old voice saying Do I have to do all this? He gripped the small end of the cue butt, stepped forward and swung hard, going for the side of the man’s head.

Dent was young, and faster than he looked. He ducked and turned; the stick fell across the collar of his coat. With his free arm Eddie rammed him in the stomach, cursing the coat that would soften the blow and knowing it wasn’t going to work, that he was going to get hurt. Maybe the others at the bar would stop the man.

Immediately Dent’s weight was on him, wrapping him in a bear hug, the greasy smell of the coat in his face. He dropped the cue butt and got in one solid punch against the side of the man’s nose before the sheer weight on his body held him down and a blow crashed against his neck and seemed to explode intolerably in his head.

He came to as some men were putting him into the backseat of his car. He was numb and could not see well. The men had been talking, and one of them was saying, “You can follow us and pick me up.” It was the young man, the one who had been presiding over this whole thing from the start. He was talking to a man in a red baseball cap. “Where to?” the man in the cap said.