Уолтер Тевис - The Hustler

He had not spoken to Bert for several games. After losing the last one, he watched Findlay go behind the bar again and then he turned to Bert and said, “I’ll get him this time.”

Bert looked at him coldly. “How are the hands?”

He had not been thinking about them, and he became abruptly aware that they were hurting him severely.

“Not too good,” he said to Bert.

Bert kept looking at him; and then he laughed, softly. But he did not say anything.

And Eddie felt himself suddenly reddening. “Now wait a minute….”

“Shut up,” Bert said. “We’re leaving.”

For a moment Eddie’s head spun. Then he said, “All right. All right,” and turned back towards the table, beginning to unscrew the cue, to separate the two pieces.

And then he stopped. This was not right.

He turned to Bert, and looked at him. “No,” he said. “We’re not leaving. You’ve got me figured wrong this time. I can beat him.”

Bert did not say anything.

“I’m going to beat him. He fooled me. He fooled me bad because he knows how to hustle and I didn’t think he did. He probably fooled you too, if that’s possible—for anybody to fool you. But I can outplay him, and I’ll beat him.” And then, “He’s a loser, Bert.”

Bert’s voice was level, but it had no edge to it. “I don’t believe you.”

Suddenly, Eddie turned away from him, looking at the bar and at the fat obscene wooden figures on the bar. “All right,” he said. “Go home. I’ll play him on my own money.” Then he said loudly, to Findlay, “Where’s your toilet?”

Findlay inclined his head toward the stairway. “Upstairs, Mr. Felson. To your right.”

Eddie walked up the stairway, his feet heavy and lifeless under him, and into the huge, high-ceilinged parlor, now empty. He walked through it, on thick and silent carpet, and to the bathroom, from which a light shone.

The room was a small, old one, with lavender-striped paper on the walls. He walked to the toilet and seated himself on the edge of it carefully and for several minutes thought of nothing. Then he filled the lavatory bowl with hot water, took soap and a towel and began washing his face and hands, scrubbing at the creases in his face, getting the greenish dirt off his wrists. There was a brush sitting on the edge of the bowl and he cleaned his fingernails with this. Then he refilled the bowl with cold water and rinsed his face, hands, and wrists. There was a comb in his pocket and he used it to comb his hair, neatly and carefully. He rinsed his mouth with water from the tap, spitting it out into the bowl.

Then he sat down again and began bending his thumbs, slightly at first and then more. They hurt; but they did not hurt very much; not as much as he remembered them hurting a few minutes before. They did not hurt so much that he could not stand the pain, not at all. That’s one excuse , he said, softly. Then he forced himself to think of the times he had played three-cushion billiards before; there had been a great many times, over a period of many years. And Findlay was not very good. That was the other excuse. He got up and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was clear, youthful. And I’m not drunk. And then, still looking at himself, he said aloud, levelly, “You’re going to beat that son of a bitch downstairs. That’s because you’re Eddie Felson, one of the best.” Then he went out and back down to the basement.

When he came back into the room he felt clean, clear in the head. And he felt something else, very slight, a small almost undetectable sensation, a thin, nervous, taut sense. Of power.

Findlay was standing by the bar, elegantly slim, a drink in his hand; and his face, lit by the brilliant lamps over the pool table, looked as if it might crack at any moment, as if the thin smile on his lips would shatter first and then a long, jagged crack might appear under his eyes, spreading downward until pieces of face, like plaster, would chip and fall to the floor. And Bert still was sitting in his chair, solidly planted, like a wise vegetable, keeping his own council.

Eddie walked to the table and picked up his cue, holding it for a moment and looking carefully, with pleasure, at the polished shaft, the silken-wrapped butt, the white ivory point and the little blue leather tip. All of this time a small voice in him was saying, You’ve got five hundred and forty dollars. What if you lose the first game? But he did not listen to the voice, since there was no point in listening.

He looked over at Findlay, and then at the picture, the picture of a man and two women, pink and naked, on grass, over Findlay’s head; and then he grinned at Findlay. “Let’s play,” he said.

Findlay took the opening shot and made it, but missed the next one. Eddie stepped up to the table, bent down, sighted carefully, stroked, and made a billiard. Then he made another; and another. Then he played safe.

Before he shot, Findlay said dryly, “It looks as if you mean business this time.”

“That’s right,” Eddie said.

When Findlay shot, he did not take quite as much care with the elaborate procedure, although he still rippled the little finger as he made his preliminary strokes. But he made a billiard, and then another. He missed the third by less than an inch.

It looked as if he meant business too and Eddie thought with exultation, This is the clutch. I was right. And he stroked with care. He made one billiard, but he missed the next, by a heart-breaking, last-minute kiss.

They played it safely and with great attention to detail, and Eddie played the best game of three-cushion billiards he had ever played in his life. But when it was over, Findlay had won. He had won by only two points, but when Eddie handed him the five hundred dollars he had to look at him and say, “That’s all of it. I’m broke.”

Findlay’s eyebrows rose gently, and Eddie could have kicked him in the stomach for the gesture. “Oh,” he said, taking the bills and smoothing them out with his fingers, “That’s unfortunate, Mr. Felson.”

Eddie looked at him coldly. “Who for, Mr. Findlay?” He began unscrewing his cue.

Then Bert, who was sitting behind him, said, “Go ahead and play him, Eddie. For a thousand a game.”

Eddie turned slowly, looking at Bert’s face, searching, for a moment, for a trace of a smile. There was no smile, nothing. “What brought you to life?” he said.

Bert pursed his lips, looked at Findlay, looked back at Eddie. “I think maybe the odds have changed,” he said.

“What am I—a race horse?”

“In a sense, yes.”

“Well, now,” Findlay said, “it seems as if you might know something, Bert. You’re making me think I should be careful.”

“A raise in the bet usually has that effect,” Bert said.

“And you know something?”

Then Bert smiled, very slightly. “It’s like in poker, Mr. Findlay. You’re going to have to pay to find out.”

Findlay stared at him a moment and then made a gesture with his hand. “Perhaps I won’t have to pay at all, Bert,” he said. “Perhaps I know something too.”

Bert was still smiling. It was exactly as if he were sitting behind a large, round table, holding five pasteboard cards in his small, pudgy hand.

“Let’s find out,” he said.

Eddie was still looking at Bert and, for a moment, he felt as if he would like to pat him on the back, buy him a drink, or something.

And then Findlay was saying, “All right, Bert, we’ll find out. For a thousand a game.” He finished his drink and set it down, carefully, on the edge of the bar, next to the piece of sculpture.

Then Findlay pointed a thin finger at the belly of the man in the little group of intertangled people—a little, paunchy belly with a deeply carved navel that caught the bright light from over the pool table—and said, “Have you noticed, Bert—this fellow here bears a striking resemblance to you. It seems almost as if you might have modeled for the artist.”