Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

The finals would be at two. It was Saturday morning. Arabella sat on a weight-lifting bench and watched while Eddie did his workout. Then they swam and got into the whirlpool together. It was 9:00 A.M.

In the hot water she said, “Children in England learn a lot about America in school. The Grand Canyon, for instance.”

“So do we.”

“It’s not as exotic for you. In Third Form we had a picture of Lake Tahoe in our text. I remember it well.”

“I understand it’s right outside,” Eddie said, nodding toward the far wall.

“It’s the most spectacular mountain lake in the world. Thousands of feet deep, and the water extraordinarily clear.” She was sitting next to him on the whirlpool’s underwater ledge, and now she put her hand on his arm. “There’s a house called Vikingsholm at the edge of it. I’d like to go. Maybe we could have a picnic lunch.”

He had forgotten the lake itself over the past few days. When he looked out the window of his room, it was only to see the lights from the Hotel Sahara or the sky; the small patch of blue from the lake no longer registered.

“I want to be back at one,” he said.

“Of course. Can we go?”

“How far is the house?”

“I don’t know. The whole lake is seventy miles around.”

“Maybe you can get a brochure at the desk.”

“They don’t have brochures at the desk. They don’t want you going anywhere.”

It was a twenty-mile drive along a winding road. Several times Arabella cried out at glimpses of the lake itself, through dense pines and redwoods. He pulled over in a wide place and they got out to look. The water was bluer than the sky, and the sky, here where Nevada and California joined, was intensely blue. Snow gleamed on the mountains behind the water. The trees were so green they were almost black. The surface of the lake was like glass beneath them, a hundred or so yards down. Eddie, still thinking of Borchard, lit a cigarette and watched Arabella watch the lake. The air was thin and cold; he jammed his hands into his pockets, puffed on his cigarette and waited. It was a shock to be outdoors. It was a shock that this lake was here, was this big, this perfect. Somehow he felt threatened by it; it seemed less real than the casino at Caesar’s Tahoe, less real than the blackjack tables and the slots. Lakes like this belonged on postcards, with the pines, the cloudless sky, the snow on the mountains. He finished his cigarette, ground it out on the gravel at the edge of the road, looked down toward the water—at its uncluttered cold stillness—and thought of the blue Gulf of Florida and of Minnesota Fats. Fats had died a winner. It could be done. It was a question of balls.

Arabella came back from the turnoff’s edge, her cheeks red from the cold air. “It’s every bit as lovely as the textbook claimed,” she said, and put her arm through Eddie’s for a moment. Then she looked up at his face. “Let go of it for now, Eddie. Think about it later.”

It was too early for the tourist season, and the sign at the little parking lot saying VIKINGSHOLM had a smaller sign below it: CLOSED TO VISITORS. “Let’s ignore that,” Arabella said. They climbed over the chain and headed down the trail to the lake’s edge a half mile below. It was getting warmer now and the smell of the pines was strong. Every now and then they would pass a place near a turn in the trail where water gushed down the dark granite. Spring thaw. The way the lake was made. Two chipmunks scuttled along a fallen log, through ferns. Eddie and Arabella came around a turn and, below them, surrounded by enormous trees, was a house of stone and timber with a high, gabled roof. Fifty yards in front of it Lake Tahoe began.

“Sweet Jesus!” Arabella said, “I want it.”

The water, colorless except for the glitter of pyrites in the sand, lapped the shore with exquisite gentleness. They turned toward the house. To the right of the doorway, a row of casement windows overlooked the lake. “You could have breakfast in there and just look out,” Arabella said.

Eddie said nothing.

“It was built by a woman,” Arabella said.

“A woman with a rich husband.”

She looked at him. “Two rich husbands.”

There was a simple bench under a redwood a few yards from the house. They sat there and had Swiss-on-rye sandwiches, doughnuts and coffee. She had brought two beers, but Eddie refused his, wanting to keep his head clear. He leaned against the bark of the tree and tried to relax—tried to get pool balls and the bright green of the table out of his head, the feel of the Balabushka out of his right hand, the knot out of his stomach.

“When we started together,” Arabella said, “I think I was a help to you. You were low and you didn’t trust yourself. You didn’t want to tell me what you did for a living. It turned out I liked you shooting pool, and that helped you, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“The problem with me, Eddie, is that I’m good with men but not with myself. When I left Harrison, I was terrified.” She looked over at him, holding her plastic coffee cup. “ Terrified . I’d had an easy marriage and enough comfort and I stayed in it for years after I ceased to give a damn about Harrison. Then I was in love with Greg for a while and that gave me a lift. Just to be able to attract a man as young and as bright as Greg. And then there was the accident.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know if you do, Eddie. His chest was crushed. His family hated me and I wasn’t asked to the funeral. For several months, with my knees bandaged, I felt that I could not leave Harrison, no matter what.”

Eddie was lighting a cigarette. “Let me have that,” she said, and took it. “I didn’t have any bloody money . I had a C D worth three thousand dollars. There was four hundred in my checking account. It took a year to work up the courage to walk out. I’m scared to death of not having money.”

Eddie lit another cigarette. “Me too,” he said.

“I know.”

“Do you want to run the folk-art business, while I travel?”

“Are you going to travel?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “After tonight things will be clearer. Right now I’m unsure.”

“About pool?”

“I still don’t know if I can make a living at it, by playing tournaments.” He looked at her sitting by him, at her cheeks, bright red from the cold. “I’m not sure about us.”

She frowned and blinked. “I wasn’t sure either, until I bought the airplane ticket to Reno.”

“And you’re sure now?”

“I threw those newspapers away.”

He thought a long moment before he spoke. “If I had some, I’d throw them away too.”

She looked at him. “It sounds like a deal.”

Even from the doorway, with the bleachers between him and the one pool table, it was different. The lights were twice as bright as before; and when he pushed through the crowd that packed the space between bleachers, he could see the reason for the lights: television. There was a twenty-foot steel boom above the playing area, with a camera and floodlights hanging from it. Two strangers stood talking to each other by the table, oblivious of the waiting crowd. They both wore blue nylon jackets with a shoulder patch circle reading ABC. It was “Wide World of Sports.” They had never picked up the show with Fats, but here they were now. The sons of bitches. Three cameras sat on wheels around the table, each with a man in a nylon jacket by it. On the speakers’ table was a row of TV monitors.

He did not see Borchard. It was one-fifty. Arabella had asked Cooley’s girl to save her a seat, and she went to it now. Eddie walked out to the table, squinting as he came under the warm spotlights. Clearly the TV people weren’t ready, but it might be good to get used to the brightness. The men in blue jackets ignored him. The two at the table were bent over a clipboard; when Eddie came near they looked up and then back, preoccupied. He was just getting annoyed when he saw Borchard pushing through the crowd between the bleachers. People began to applaud. The TV men stopped what they were doing. One of them waved at Borchard and the two walked over to him and huddled in conversation. The applause became louder. Eddie opened his case and got out the Balabushka.