Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

On the next rack he did not get the nine; it only turned over a few times, but he made two of the others. Not looking at Borchard, he concentrated on the balls, using the Balabushka now, and smoothed them into the pockets one at a time. Dropping the nine was simple.

“Like buttering bread,” Boomer said.

“How’d you do at eight-ball?”

“Six hundred,” Boomer said. “I put it on you.” He nodded toward the man in the brown overcoat who had been making bets.

“Good bet,” Eddie said. “I can’t miss.”

For three more racks he didn’t. He felt control of the game now, felt some of the clarity he had felt in bed the night before. He did not make the nine on the break again, but he made something each time and then ran them out. It was like straight pool: a matter of position, or confidence, of knowing that the game was, at bottom, shockingly easy.

But on the fourth break, even with the smash he gave them with the twenty-three-ounce house cue, nothing fell. The three ball was headed for a side pocket but at the last moment the seven knocked it away. The nine had stopped two inches from the bottom corner.

But the score was five-two. He needed only two more games. Borchard needed eight. While Borchard started shooting, beginning with an easy one ball, Eddie went to the bar, ordered a Manhattan, and looked over his shoulder to see Borchard pocket the nine on a combination. Five-four. The son of a bitch. Borchard broke, made a ball, began running. Two pairs of balls were frozen at different ends of the table; one of them should stop him, force him at least to play safe; but neither did. He caromed his cue into one pair as he pocketed the three ball, doing it with the ease of a straight-pool player, and separated the other two on the next shot. He ran out. Five-five.

In the next rack he made the nine on his third shot, from a billiard off the three. On the next he ran them out after pocketing two on the break; and on the next he made the nine on the break. Eddie and Boomer said nothing. The score was eight-five. Borchard looked unstoppable. The crowd had become silent.

Borchard stepped up, quiet and concentrated, and broke, making the seven ball. His position on the one was fine. He drove it in, made the two and then the three. The four ball was a cinch and the position on the five another cinch. Borchard looked at the four and hesitated. Then he bent and shot. He missed. He missed the four ball, hanging it in the pocket. He raised his eyes heavenward, dropped his shoulders and said, “Son of a bitch.”

It had happened. It could happen to anyone. Eddie chalked his cue and stepped up. Borchard had left him an open table and a road map: the four, five, six, eight and nine, as easy as pie. And one more game after that. Borchard had choked or blinked or twitched or one of the things that every player sometimes did, and this was what he had left.

Eddie shot the four in, killing his cue ball for the five. He made the five, then the six and eight. His position on the nine was dead-on. He clipped it in. Eight-six.

He gripped the big cue hard and slugged with it, but the balls were sluggish and the nine barely moved. The one teetered and fell in. The two was tough—a table’s length away and the kind of backward cut Eddie hated. He looked at Borchard, who seemed expectant, and then at Boomer. Boomer winked at him, unruffled. Boomer looked certain enough. What the hell , Eddie thought, I’ll make the two ball . He looked at it again. It was a son of a bitch. For a moment he allowed himself to think of all the ways of missing it, but then, knowing it was deadly to think that way, put the thought out of his mind. He was not fifty years old for nothing. You did not have to think about missing. He would make the two ball. It would be a pleasure to make it.

He stroked easily, and shot. The cue ball rolled down the table, hit the blue two ball with just the right amount of fullness and speed. The ball rolled diagonally away from the white ball and fell into the corner. The cue ball kept going. The three ball was frozen to the head rail. The cue ball came back up the table, slowing down, and set itself in line with the three. The room was silent.

Eddie shot the three in, loosening even more, and the cue ball settled behind the four. He shot it in. Then the five. And the six, seven, eight. The nine, striped with pale yellow, sat near the spot where it had sat ever since the break. Eddie stepped up, chalked, and drilled it into the corner pocket. The sound it made, hitting bottom, was exquisite.

“Well,” Boomer said, driving them back. “Twelve hundred dollars can change a man’s philosophy beyond belief.”

“Don’t shoot craps with it,” Eddie said.

“Eight-ball. I was born to play eight-ball.”

Eddie had the twenty-five hundred in his pants pocket, and he pushed it down with his thumb. On the backseat lay the twenty-three-ounce cue stick which he had bought for ten dollars. “He had eight games. If we’d been playing even, he’d have won.”

“Don’t you get philosophical,” Boomer said. “The man lost. You beat him.”

There were six rounds to go in the losers’ bracket, and all of them were sudden-death. Eddie had three matches on Thursday and three on Friday. If he won. If he lost, that was the end of it. On Saturday night the one undefeated man would play the single player who had managed to come out of the losers’ bracket unbeaten. That would be the finals, for first and second place. Whomever the winner had beaten the day before would be third. Third place was seven thousand dollars and second was fifteen. First prize was thirty thousand, and a trophy.

He got to bed at three, slept until eight-thirty and managed a quick swim and a whirlpool before breakfast, but there was no time for a workout. At ten o’clock he beat his man handily. It was over by eleven-thirty, and Eddie, not seeing Boomer around, headed straight for the Nautilus machines and gave himself a light session, just enough for a sweat, and then immersed himself in the whirlpool. The next game was at two. He would not practice today; he needed all he had for the two upcoming matches. He had beaten Borchard, and in the one match had made almost as much money as he had put into those quilts. For a moment he thought of Betty Jo Merser’s round black face with her lips pursed, liking her. So few women could do anything. The loss of those quilts—especially of the Fiery Furnace with its three children on a shovel and its bright flames—had hurt him as much as losing a pool game could hurt. And the quilts could not be won back. They were gone forever. It was best not to think about it. He eased the back of his neck against the warm tiles and let the churning water come up to his neck and chin, relaxing his shoulders. He let his legs float out in front of him beneath the water. The music of a string quartet came across the broad pool to his right with a delicacy like that of the light coming through the ferns beside him. He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting off to near-sleep. The young men could be beaten. He had beaten Borchard. Nine-ball was only pool. He had played pool all his life.

He stayed in the whirlpool a long time and then dried off lazily and dressed. He had a sandwich for lunch, went back to the ballroom, warmed up for ten minutes on a practice table and then played and beat the man who had beaten him the day before, Willy Plummer. The score was ten-three and Eddie did not miss a shot. Plummer scored on the two breaks when Eddie made nothing, and he pulled a lucky shot out from one of Eddie’s safeties, but it was no contest. The next game was at nine that night.

Back on a practice table Boomer was playing eight-ball with one of the tournament officials. When Eddie came by, he looked up from his shot and said, “Cooley got beat. At noon.”