Уолтер Тевис - The Hustler

Her apartment was on the fourth floor; they had to walk up the stairs. They climbed them silently, and he said nothing when they went in, but seated himself on the sofa. She began taking off her sweater, and said, “I’ll get a couple of glasses.” She went into the kitchen. The blouse she was wearing was white, silky, and it clung loosely to her back.

The apartment was shabby, but there were some nice touches to it, and he noticed these. All the hotel rooms he had lived in during his ten years of hustling pool had made him more, rather than less, interested in the way a room was furnished. In front of him was a long low coffee table, its top of white marble, its legs of elaborate, filigreed brass. The walls were of gray, cracked plaster, but on one of them, over a painted brick fireplace with broken bricks, hung a huge picture in a white frame. The picture was of a sad-looking clown in a bright orange suit, holding a staff. Eddie looked at this carefully, not understanding what it meant, but liking it. The clown looked mean as a snake.

There was one big window, with white curtains edged with gold; and a cheap, painted bookcase in the same colors. Books were everywhere, in bright jackets—on the coffee table, in the seat of an armchair, stacked on what must have been a dining table. Around the edges of the rug the floor was painted with the ugly brown paint that people paint floors with. It reminded him of his mother’s home in Oakland; linoleum and painted wood, and the refrigerator on the back porch.

Apparently, the place had three rooms. The big living room, the tiny kitchen in which Sarah was now fumbling with the ice cubes, and what was obviously a bedroom, its door half open, leading into the room he was in.

When she handed him his drink she looked at him and said, “Eddie, don’t make a pass.”

He did not answer but took the drink and began sipping it. Suddenly, he cursed himself silently; he had forgotten about the fifth at his hotel room. He would need it; the pint would soon be gone.

She was sitting now, watching him with a blank look, holding her knee, abstractedly rubbing the edge of the glass against the side of her neck. The light in the room seemed gray and her arms were white. There was a delicate and fine line of a blue vein in her wrist, branching gently on the white skin of her inner forearm. The skin at the side of her knees was white, too, smooth as if stretched taut, as if it would be resilient to the touch. Above her knee, below the edge of her skirt, was a fine line of white lace.

Well, here we go , he thought, fast and loose . He got up slowly, setting his drink down.

“Don’t, Eddie,” she said. “Not now.”

The chair she was sitting in had broad arms. He sat on one of these, letting his arm fall across the back of the chair. He set his free hand on her shoulder, lightly. She turned her head down and away from him. “Eddie,” she said, “I didn’t mean this when I asked you to come up.”

“Sure,” he said, “I didn’t either.” Then he put the palm of his free hand against the side of her face, and bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Her cheek was warm against his hand and her hair brushed against his forehead, smelling of whiskey. Her lips were hard. She did not kiss him back. He pulled away from her awkwardly, immediately angry. Then he got up and stood for a moment, facing the kitchen, and finished his drink. He set the glass down, and turned to look at her. She was staring at her whiskey glass. He could not tell what her expression meant.

There was only one way to play it from here—and that was a long shot. He did not look at her again but walked out the door, hesitated, and began going down the stairs.

And then when he had come to the landing he heard her voice, calling softly, “Eddie,” and he turned and walked slowly back up the steps. She met him inside the door, standing, her mouth slightly open, her hands at her sides. Her voice was soft, nervous. “You win again, Eddie.”

He pushed the door shut behind him. Then he reached out and put one hand behind her back, pressing gently against her silk blouse, his fingertips quivering slightly against invisible, taut straps. He cupped the other hand over her breast. Then he bent forward slowly, mouth open, into her warm, quick, shallow breath. Her mouth against his was like an electric current. It had been a long time….

Her voice awakened him, saying, “We have no eggs.” He looked around, dazed. Red neon came in the window, dully. The sky was black, tinged with the lights. He could smell coffee. He rolled over; Sarah was gone from the bed. And then in a moment he saw her come padding, limping in from the kitchen, wearing a white flannel bathrobe and furry slippers, her eyes swollen from sleep. She stopped in the doorway a moment, then came and sat beside him on the bed. “We have no eggs,” she said. “Do you have money?”

He reached out a hand and laid it on her arm. “Get in bed,” he said.

She looked down at him with gravity. “I want breakfast,” she said. “Where’s your money?”

He rolled over. “In my pants pocket. Buy anything you want. Buy a coffee cake, the kind with pineapple on it.”

“Okay,” she said. He let himself fall back into sleep….

She got him out of bed when she came back with the sack of groceries; he dressed while she was frying the eggs. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his shoes on, feeling good, when she said from the other room, “What do you do, Eddie? For a living?”

He did not answer her for a minute. Then he said, “Does it make any difference?”

She didn’t say anything further, but in a minute she was at the door, looking at him. “No,” she said, and then, back in the kitchen, she laughed wryly, “I should be glad I’ve got a man.”

The eggs were poorly cooked and the coffee was worse than restaurant coffee. The coffee cake was good. He was hungry and did away with it all. Then, when he finished, he looked at her and said, “I have to go out. Suppose I pick up some salami and come back in about four or five hours?”

“Sure,” she said, “and bring some cheese.”

He decided, suddenly, that there would be no use edging around with it. “I’ve got a suitcase….”

She looked at him a moment and then shrugged, “Bring it. I expected you to.”

It was so simple that it came as a shock. “I wasn’t sure…” he said.

“Look,” she smiled, “no strings—okay?”

He hesitated a moment, and then grinned at her. “Okay,” he said.

In the morning she had to go to class, at ten o’clock. After fixing himself a cheese sandwich, he went back to bed and lay there thinking, first about himself and then, gradually, about the reason that he was in Chicago in the first place.

He thought about the profession of hustling pool, and about the men in it, feeling somehow, that he must organize what he knew, must find out his position in the system, now that he was on his own and almost broke, in Chicago, in the summer….

As Charlie had told him and as he had learned himself, in snatches—always, before, at a distance—there are two kinds of hustler, two kinds of gambler: the big-time and the small. Their sources of income are vastly different. The income of the big-time gambler is limited in range, although never in amount. And his expenses are high. The small-time men—the scufflers, musclers, dollar jumpers—prey in nibbles: on unwary but seldom wealthy drunks; schoolboys who aspire to what they take to be manhood; middle-aged men who aspire to what they take to be youthfulness; and the smaller scufflers, musclers and dollar jumpers. They live the obsequious, frustrating life once allotted to the petty courtier, now seen in its purest form in the two-dollar tout and the professional drink cadger. Such men occasionally engage in small con games—although seldom; all con men gamble, but few gamblers con—or they attempt to ride on the great money bus, Sex; usually trying for the taillights or bumper, through part-time pimping, the sale of various obscene artifacts, even through gigolo work, all of which are professions grossly underpaid.