Уолтер Тевис - The Color of Money

Twenty minutes passed, during which Eddie seated himself in one of the two swivel chairs set up for the players, drank a glass of water and tried to be calm. The TV people in their glossy jackets acted as though they were the stars. Their boom, their rubber-wheeled mounts with the heavy gray cameras on them, their thick rubber cables, their monitors and their clipboards had become the show. Eventually one of the jacketed men came over to him and checked the pronunciation of his last name, and then said, “It’s Fast Eddie, right?” Eddie said yes. The boom was only a few feet above the table. The young man in jeans stood by the supports at each end; they began cranking metal handles. The boom slowly rose higher, as if readying for a circus act. After it stopped a foot below the ceiling, someone at the desk worked controls and the camera moved, pointing its lens down toward the table. Borchard, who looked like a stagehand himself in his jeans and workshirt, had been talking with some women in the front row of the bleachers; he came over now and sat on the swivel chair by the little table that held water, two towels, an ashtray and pool chalk. He did not look in Eddie’s direction.

The camera on the boom began wiggling, pointing off toward the wall. Eddie looked at his watch. Two-thirty.

The PA sputtered and came on. “We apologize for the delay. The television people tell me their overhead camera must be replaced and we won’t be able to start for about an hour. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Shit,” Borchard said.

Eddie stood up. Arabella climbed down from her seat and walked over. “Let’s get a cup of coffee,” she said.

Eddie looked at her. “I need to be alone for a while.” She shrugged. “Sure. I’ll get a drink.”

There were about a dozen people in the swimming pool and more working out in the gym, but the whirlpool was empty. Eddie eased himself into it, rested his back along the edge, let his chin lie on his chest and gently closed his eyelids. It didn’t work. He still felt the knot in his stomach, the sense of powerlessness. It was the TV people, with their preoccupation and delays, their arrogant busyness. They were only technicians. They weren’t taking any risks, putting themselves on the line. The sons of bitches. His head ached with it.

He would have to be back there in forty minutes, and he did not want to go back. For a moment he lay in the whirlpool feeling frightened and old. The hot water gushed and foamed over his body. Gradually the knot in his stomach eased a little. He listened to the water surging, began to hear the music from ceiling speakers, let his body go limp, feeling himself bob to the movement of the water. For a few minutes, miraculously, he fell asleep—or so near to sleep that he would not have known where he was.

When he walked back into the ballroom, the nine balls were in the wooden rack and the referee had put the lag balls out. Borchard was standing by the table. As Eddie took out his cue and put it together, the announcer introduced them to the crowd. Eddie barely listened to the words. His hands with the cue were steady.

His lag was perfect and his break overwhelming. The nine came off the bottom rail and rolled the length of the table. Although it did not go in, two other balls did. As he studied the layout a cameraman wheeled closer, while another kneeled a few feet away, pointing a camera up at Eddie’s face. Eddie ignored them. He ran the balls and pocketed the nine. The crowd was huge and its applause loud. Eddie lit a cigarette, watching the referee rack. Borchard was seated, looking at nothing in particular. Arabella sat in the stands, her face intent on the table; up above her, in the back row of the bleachers, sat Boomer. Eddie put his cigarette in the ashtray, picked up the twenty-three-ounce cue, and broke. The nine fell in the corner pocket. He went back to his cigarette while the referee racked. If you hit the balls right, they fell into the pockets. He broke and ran the rack, sending the cue ball around the table when necessary the way the younger men had done, not worrying about the speed of it or the possibility of a scratch. It stopped each time exactly where he wanted it to stop. Three-nothing.

But on the fourth break, though his power was there and the balls rolled energetically, nothing fell into a pocket. Nothing. Even worse, the cue ball stopped where the one ball was easy. Eddie stared at the table for a moment. There was nothing to do about it. He walked over to the chair and seated himself. Borchard got up.

The thing about pool was that no matter how up you were for it, no matter how ready your soul—as Eddie’s soul was ready—and no matter how dead your stroke, if the other man was shooting it made no difference. His arm ached to be making the balls himself but he had to sit, had to watch another man play pool.

And the other man’s game was inspired. Borchard—that delicate, quiet Eastern country boy with his heavy, drooping mustache and his crepe-soled shoes—seemed to have the balls on a string. He didn’t look at the crowd or the referee or at Eddie, but bent his entire attention on the nine balls and eased them one after another into the pockets with his cue ball always stopping exactly where it should stop. He chalked after every shot and his small eyes never left the table. The cameramen danced their slow dance in and out and around him and the table; the audience applauded louder and louder after each sinking of the nine ball; and Borchard’s expression and concentration did not change. He made the nine six times before a bad roll on the break made him play safe. The score was six-three. Borchard needed only four games. Eddie needed seven. Eddie stood up.

The position was terrible. The cue ball was snookered behind the seven. He would be lucky to get a hit on the one ball, let alone a safety. He looked at this, and for a moment felt like walking out of the room. Borchard stood a few feet from the table with a cold, inward smile on his youthful face, waiting for him to miss. It was a nightmare position and there was nothing he could do about it but poke at the cue ball and pray.

Eddie gritted his teeth, tightened the joint of his cue and looked at the shot. The lights on the overhead boom went out.

Someone in the crowd applauded and a few laughed. Eddie stood and waited. He looked at the speakers’ table; the tournament director sat there with a frown, talking on a telephone. After a minute he hung up and picked up the microphone and his voice came on the loudspeaker. “They say we’ve blown a fuse,” it said. “There’ll be a ten-minute recess.”

Several people in the crowd began to boo.

“We apologize for the delay,” the director’s voice said.

Borchard was making his way roughly through the standees. Men in the crowd were saying things to him, but Borchard did not look at any of them; his mouth was set in a hard line and he pushed through the mass of people with a kind of heedless urgency, as though late for an important meeting.

Eddie left his cue on the table and walked to the players’ restroom behind the bleachers. No one else was there; he stood alone in front of the wide, brightly lit mirror. His eyes were dull and his hair limp. He looked down at his hands: greenish pool-cloth dirt outlined the fingernails; a ground-in smear darkened the heel of his left hand. He turned a faucet on and watched the sink fill with hot water while he peeled the wrapper from a cake of soap. He turned off the faucet and began to work up a lather over the palms and backs of his hands, over his wrists. He began to rub hard, lathering each finger separately, abrading the dark stain on his left hand with the fingers of his right. He filled the basin, rinsed, washed again and rinsed again. He took the soap and worked it into his face, lathering around his nose and eyes, then did the back of his neck and under his chin. It was a relief. He let the water out, refilled the bowl, ducked down and began rinsing.