William Kennedy - Billy Phelan's Greatest Game

“Yes, do that. Send your father a postcard.”

And Melissa put her book aside and stood up, sweeping her hand up behind her neck, tapping the wig, smoothing the rattled mind. The gesture was not Katrina’s but Melissa’s, which generated confusion in Martin. He felt impatient with the play, half fearful of seeing the development a few scenes hence when his father would enter with the awful dialogue of duplicity and defeat, to be met by the witty near-madness of Katrina.

Now the dialogue of mother and son moved the play on toward that moment, but Martin closed out all the talk and watched the silent movement of Melissa, not at all like Katrina, and remembered her in her voluptuary state, drenched in sweat, oozing his semen. The Olmecs built a monument of a sacred jaguar mating with a lustful woman. A male offspring of such a mating would have been half-jaguar, half-boy, a divine creature. The boy-animal of Martin’s morning vision, perhaps? Is your mind telling you, Martin, that you’re the divine progeny of a sacred mating? But which one? Your father’s with your mother? Your father’s with Melissa? Your own with Melissa?

The corruption he felt after his time with Melissa came back now with full power: the simoniac being paid off with venereal gifts. He stayed with her three days, she securing her purchase with a lust that soared beyond his own. That body, now walking across the stage, he saw walking the length of the sitting room in The Hampton to stand naked by the window and peer through the curtains at the movement on Broadway and State Street below. He stood beside her and with a compulsion grown weary, slid his hand between her thighs as a gesture. They looked down together, connected to the traffic of other men and women in transit toward and away from their lust. He would stay in the room with her another day, until she said, Now I want a woman. And then Martin went away.

Through the years since then he insisted he would never touch her sexually again. But perceiving now that a second infusion of pain distracts the brain and reduces the pain of the first and more grievous wound, he would, yes, make love to Melissa as soon as possible. He might ask her to wear the blond wig. That would appeal to her twist. He might even call her Katrina. She could call him Edward.

They would pretend it was 1887 and that this was a true wedding of sacred figures. He would tell her of the Olmecs, and of the divine progeny. He would tell her his dream of the divine animal at bedside and suggest that it was perhaps himself in a new stage of being. As they made their fierce and fraudulent love, they would become jaguar and lustful partner entwined. Both would know that a new Martin Daugherty would be the offspring of this divine mating.

The quest to love yourself is a moral quest.

How simple this psychic game is, once you know the rules.

All of a sudden Doc Fay was playing like a champ in Daddy Big’s round robin. Billy had been ahead sixteen points and then old Doc ran twenty-six and left Billy nothing on the table. The Doc blew his streak on the last ball of a rack. Didn’t leave himself in a position where he could sink it and also make the cue ball break the new rack. And so he called safe and sank the ball, and it was respotted at the peak of the new rack, the full rack now facing Billy.

The Doc also left the cue ball way up the table, snug against the back cushion. Toughest possible shot for Billy. Or anybody. Billy, natch, had to call another safe shot — make contact with a ball, and make sure one ball, any ball, also touched a cushion. If he failed to do this, it would be his third scratch in a row, and he’d lose fifteen points, plus a point for the lastest scratch. Billy did have the out of breaking the rack instead of playing safe, as a way of beating the third scratch. But when he looked at the full rack he couldn’t bring himself to break it. It would seem cowardly. What’s more, it’d set Doc up for another fat run, and they’d all know Billy Phelan would never do a thing like that.

He bent over the table and remembered bringing Danny into this pool room one afternoon. The kid stood up straight to shoot. Get your head down, put your eye at the level of the ball, Billy told him. How the hell can you see what you’re hitting when you ain’t even looking at it? Get that head down and stroke that cue, firm up your bridge, don’t let them fingers wobble. The kid leaned over and sank a few. Great kid. Stay out of pool rooms, kid, or all you’ll ever have is fun.

Billy tapped the cue ball gently. He was thrilled at how lightly he hit it. Just right. The ball moved slowly toward the rear right corner of the pack. It touched the pack and separated two balls. No ball touched a cushion.

Scratch.

Scratch number three, in a row.

Billy loses fifteen, plus one for this scratch.

Billy is down twenty-seven points and the Doc is hot. Billy doubts he could catch the Doc now even if he wanted to.

Billy hits the table with his fist, hits the floor with the heel of his cue and curses that last goddamn safe shot, thrilled.

Billy is acting. He has just begun to throw his first match.

The lights in the pool room went out just as the Doc lined up for the next shot. I’ll get candles, said Daddy Big. Don’t nobody touch them balls. Which balls are they, Daddy? Footers asked in a falsetto. Billy remembered Footers just before the lights went out, licking a green lollipop, and Harvey Hess, his thumbs stuck in his vest, nodding his approval at the Doctor burying Billy. Daddy Big liked that development too, the string of his change apron tight on his gut, like a tick tied in the middle. Behind Billy stood Morrie Berman, who was again backing Billy. Morrie had given Billy fifty to bet on himself with the Doc, and also took all side bets on his boy. Billy heard Morrie softly muttering unhhh, eeeng, every time the Doc sank one.

Maybe a hundred men were standing and sitting around the table when the lights went. Billy saw Martin come in late and stand at the back of the crowd, behind the chairs Daddy Big had set up. Daddy Big lit four candles. They flickered on the cigar counter, on the edge of a pool table covered with a tarpaulin, on a shelf near the toilet. Many of the men were smoking in the half-darkness, their cigars and cigarettes glowing and fading, their faces moving in and out of shadows. Here was the obscure collective power. What’ll they do if I fink? Will I see my father? Some of the shadowy men left the room when the lights went out. Most of those with chairs stayed put, but then some of them, too, went down to the street, needing, in the absence of light, at least an open sky.

“Tough shot you had,” Morrie said to Billy.

“The toughest.”

“You’ll pick up. You got what it takes.”

“That Doctor’s hot as ten-cent pussy.”

“You’ll take him.”

“Sure,” said Billy.

But he won’t, or else how can he do what he’s got to do, if he’s got to do it? Wrong-Way Corrigan starts out for California and winds up in Ireland. I guess I got lost, he says, and people say, Yeah, oh yeah, he got lost. Ain’t he some sweet son of a bitch?

Through the front window of Louie’s, Martin saw that the lights were out on Broadway and in the station. He saluted Billy across the candlelight and went down to the street, which was dark in all directions. He walked to the corner of Columbia Street and looked up. Pearl Street was also dark, candles already dancing in two windows up the block. He walked back and into Becker’s and headed for the phone, past customers drinking by the light of the old kerosene lamp that had sat on the back bar for years, unused. Now it illuminated Red Tom’s mustache. The test of a real mustache is whether it can be seen from behind. Red Tom’s therefore is not real.