The Color of Money

Chapter Four

He had seen the woman before, in a situation much like this one. Both of them were waiting for something, and he could remember thinking how aristocratic she looked. She was about forty and had curly silver hair. She had been sitting in the tiny waiting room of Enoch’s office when he came in. He took the only other chair, put his glasses on and began reading from a magazine called Entertainment Monthly. It was full of pictures of child actors, each giving the kid’s credits in TV commercials. He glanced over at the woman from time to time. She could be a TV actress herself; she was strikingly good looking.

At a small desk, Enoch’s secretary, Alice, was reading too. It was like a library. Eddie would have gotten up and walked out if he had anywhere to go. He didn’t need the money right away, but it would make him feel better to collect something. So far the advance was all he’d been given, and most of that had gone to Fats.

After a while the phone on Alice’s desk rang. She picked it up and spoke softly for a minute. Then she looked at the two of them apologetically and said, “That was Mr. Wax. I’m sorry, but he’s tied up and won’t be in until tomorrow.” Eddie looked at the woman sitting across from him. She was furious.

“I’ve been here forty minutes,” she said, “and I was here an hour yesterday.” Her voice wasn’t bitchy; it was strong, clearly angry and had an accent. British.

“I’m really sorry, Miss Weems,” Alice said. “It’s this thing with the demolition derby Saturday….”

“I’ll call tomorrow before I come in,” the woman said. She turned and walked out of the office. Eddie watched her leave. Her figure was terrific.

He stood up and stretched. “Who’s the British lady, Alice?”

“Arabella Weems. She’s looking for work.”

“She looks like a movie star.”

“Come on, Mr. Felson. She’s a local woman.”

“I know. I’ve seen her someplace.”

“I promise we’ll have your check tomorrow, Mr. Felson.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Eddie said, leaving. He should have started a conversation with Arabella Weems. She was the most interesting woman he’d seen in a long time.

Alice had the envelope the next day at noon. The check was for the fee and expenses to Miami only: six hundred thirty-two dollars and change, after withholding. It was supposed to be over a thousand. “I’d like to see Enoch,” he said.

“Mr. Wax is busy,” Alice said. “Why don’t you have a seat?”

“I’m getting tired of this,” Eddie said, and looked up to see Arabella Weems coming out of the office with Enoch.

“Maybe in a week or two,” Enoch was saying. “We’ll give you a call if we need you.” And then, “Hello, Eddie. I’m sorry about the check. Cincinnati hasn’t come through yet. All I can do is call you when they do.”

“You have a contract with them,” Eddie said, looking at Enoch levelly. He hated the bags under Enoch’s eyes, the way his tan suit and striped shirt gave him the look of an aging tout.

“I have indeed,” Enoch said, smiling sadly at Miss Weems as though she were his daughter. “But what can I do? It’s hardly occasion for a lawsuit.”

Eddie stared at him a moment and then turned and left. As he was going down the stairs to the street, he heard a woman’s footsteps behind him. Outside in the sun, he stopped to light up a cigarette. When Arabella Weems came out the door, he nodded to her and said, “Slippery, isn’t he?”

She looked at him straight. “I had an uncle like him. He was a revolving son of a bitch.”

“Any way you turn him?”

“You have it.” She was still angry but not so much so. He liked her way of talking, liked her accent.

“I’m Ed Felson,” he said. “I think I’ve seen you before.”

“Fayette County District Court. June fourteenth.”

“That’s right,” Eddie said. “You were the one whose husband didn’t show up.” They had been waiting together—like today—in divorce court.

“He was late for the wedding too.”

“Did he ever show?”

“Eventually.”

“And did it go all right?”

“Swimmingly.”

For some reason her toughness did not bother him. Her hair looked even better in natural light. “Let’s have lunch together,” he said.

She looked up at him. “I don’t know you,” she said carefully.

“Levas’s makes a good Greek salad.”

She frowned. “I’ve eaten Levas’s Greek salad. Have you tried Japanese?”

“Japanese?”

“We fought a war with them. There’s a new place on Upper Street.”

He had seen the ads, but never thought of going there. It was the sort of place chic people went, and Eddie did not consider himself chic. “I don’t understand chopsticks.”

“I’ll teach you.”

The chopsticks were a nuisance, but he could eat some of the things with his fingers. She ordered sashimi for herself—raw fish that looked like Christmas candy—and negamaki for him. It was thin slices of beef wrapped around green onions.

“Are you English?” he said, picking up one of the little beef rolls with his fingers.

“I was born in Devonshire but I’ve lived in Kentucky fourteen years.”

She wore no makeup and her eyes were very dark. She had a book beside her on the table. The title was in a foreign language.

“The university?” he said.

“My former husband is a professor.”

That explained it—the book and the fact that he’d never seen her around. The university was something you read about in the paper. “Are you an actress?”

She laughed. “I want a job in television, but I’m no actress. I’m a typist—or was before I married.”

“What about the university?”

“I don’t want to work at the university,” she said, sipping tea and looking up over her cup at him. “I have spent the last twelve years of my life being a professor’s wife. I would rather be a script girl for a sleazy TV company—” She stopped herself. “Perhaps I shouldn’t say ‘sleazy.’ You have a connection with them.”

“They’re sleazy. How do you like being divorced?”

“I left him six months ago.” She picked up a piece of sashimi deftly with her chopsticks. “He may not have noticed yet.”

“I would notice,” Eddie said.

She looked at him but said nothing. They ate in silence awhile and then he said, “I haven’t got used to it yet. Starting over.”

“It’s difficult.”

“Mine got most of what we had.”

“What was that?”

“Not much. A small business.” He did not want to say “poolroom.” “I’m scuffling now—like you.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Scuffling?”

“Doing a show with Mid-Atlantic. A sports program.” He was willing to talk about himself with this woman, but he didn’t want to tell her he was a pool player or that he had, until recently, owned a poolroom. “It’s not much money. I’ve got to find something better.”

“Me too.”

She appeared well off, even if she was looking for a job. Her hair was expensively cut, and the light jacket she wore fit her beautifully. She had education and looks and poise. She probably could do a lot better running Mid-Atlantic than Wax did.

“Can’t you do better than typing?”

“I don’t mind typing,” she said. She had finished her lunch and she pushed the wooden tray away now, along with the untouched rice. “Right now I want to find work that doesn’t require thought.”

“You look like you could do almost anything,” Eddie said.

“I don’t feel that way.”

“Do you want dessert?”

She looked at him. “I live a few blocks from here. Let’s go to my place and have a drink together.”

Eddie blinked at her, shocked.

Her apartment was one large room on the fourth floor, with high windows overlooking Main Street. The walls, the ceiling and even the floor were painted white. When they came in, she went to the windows, pushed them open on their hinges, and the enormous white curtains at each side billowed out into the room like parachutes. There was a white sofa and two white chairs; one wall was covered with a white bookcase. From the center of the high ceiling hung a glass chandelier; it was shaped like an inverted bell, and etched. Over the sofa was a huge painting of a car driving through a field of yellow wheat. It was amateurishly painted—as though by a child—but bright and lively.

He turned from the picture and looked at her. She had taken off her jacket, and the T-shirt she wore showed her figure. She had a strikingly narrow waist and her breasts were high, even though she was not wearing a bra. “You’re the first person from the university I’ve met,” he said.

She frowned. “I’ll fix drinks.”

The wall by the door held a unit with stove, refrigerator and sink. On a shelf over this were some bottles. “Is Scotch all right?” she said.

“I’d rather have bourbon.”

“Okay.” She got a bottle down and a shot glass. She set two tumblers on the sink and poured a shot and a little extra in each.

He took the drink and walked over to the window, ducking around the billowing curtains. He looked down at the street, full of traffic. He had never thought of living like this—right downtown. Across the street were Bradley’s Drug and Arthur Treacher’s and a clothing store. The sidewalks were full of people. He liked it, liked the noise from it. He drank his drink, not looking back to see what she was doing. It was ten till two. He turned and saw her seated on the couch with her legs under her, looking up at him. She was holding her glass and it was still full. “Nice apartment,” he said.

“Thanks. Shouldn’t we make love?”

He looked at her. “Don’t be like that,” he said.

She looked as though she were going to say something, but she was silent, still looking up at him. Her nipples were evident under the white T-shirt. Her figure was fine and she had a beautiful face and voice and he liked her accent. But she did not arouse him. “I’m not ready to make love,” he said. “This is all new to me. This place…” he gestured back toward the windows “…and you. I don’t feel at home yet.”

“I’ll fix you another drink.”

“What for?”

“Maybe you’ll feel more like it.”

Suddenly he was annoyed. “Don’t give me that,” he said. “I don’t think you’re in the mood either.”

She looked at him.

“You just want to put the ball in my court.”

She hesitated. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I am right. You’re not the only sex that gets exploited.”

She frowned and took a long swallow from her drink. “You’re so good looking,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d be smart.”

He walked back to the window and looked out again. Far to the right, on the next block downtown, was a theater. He could just read the marquee.

He turned back to her. She had moved her legs out from under her and was now sitting on the sofa in the regular way, with her feet crossed at the ankles. She had nice feet, with pale blue shoes that fit her well. In the light from the window her complexion glowed. “Have you seen Reds?” he said.

“Reds?”

“The movie. With Warren Beatty.”

“No.”

“Let’s go see it.”

She looked astonished. “At two o’clock in the afternoon?”

“They wouldn’t play all afternoon if people didn’t go.”

“People who have nothing better to do.”

“Do you have something better to do?”

She looked at him and then shrugged. “Let’s go,” she said.

It was a long movie, with an intermission in the middle, and they didn’t get out until after five. Arabella was a lot more at ease when they came out. While they stood blinking in the bright afternoon light—startling after the dark theater—she said, “I used to be a Socialist. My grandmother wanted me to work for the Party, but I never did.”

“Why did you come to America?”

“I don’t like English men.”

“Laurence Olivier?” he said. “Mountbatten?”

“They never asked me out.”

“I could have been a Socialist,” he said. “Some people say it’s subversive. What goes on in daily business is what’s subversive.”

“Daily business?”

“Real estate. Insurance. Mid-American Cable TV.”

“I wish you could have met my grandmother.”

“Let’s go back to your apartment.”

“Don’t you have to be anywhere?”

“No. Do you?”

“I don’t want to make love.”

“That’s a relief,” Eddie said. “I want to see your place again. I like all the white.”

“Eddie,” she said, “you are a prince. What do you do for a living?”

He was silent awhile before he spoke. “I don’t want to tell you yet,” he said.

Eddie knocked, and then opened the door to Fats’ room. Fats was in a Danish Modern chair by the window, almost completely obscuring the chair, his enormous bottom stuffed into it and hanging over. The plastic swag lamp above the table by him shone theatrically on boxes of junk desserts: King Dongs, Devil Dogs, Twinkies. He held a Ring Ding Junior—a kind of chocolate hockey puck—in his hand and was chewing on another. The television was off. Nothing else was going on in the room. Eddie felt for a moment as though he’d found him masturbating. He stood with his hand on the doorknob, silent, while Fats finished chewing.

“Come in, Fast Eddie,” Fats said.

Eddie walked in. “I thought you were more of a gourmet than that.”

“Don’t gourmet me,” Fats said. “Do you think they sell French desserts in the Rochester Holiday Inn? Éclairs? Mousse au chocolate?”

Eddie shrugged and seated himself on the bed. “That’s quite a few of them.”

Fats looked at the Ring Ding in his hand with distaste. “I am not overweight for nothing.” He took a bite, chewed, swallowed. “What do you want, Eddie?”

“I was thinking,” Eddie said. “Maybe we shouldn’t finish the tour.”

Fats looked at him and said nothing.

“If ‘Wide World of Sports’ isn’t going to pick us up…”

“You’ve heard something?”

“If they haven’t done it by now they probably won’t.”

Fats finished his Ring Ding and picked up a package of Twinkies. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been enjoying myself. Relatively speaking.”

Eddie frowned. “You’re being paid more than I am.”

“And I’m winning.” He pinched the top of the Twinkie pack and zipped it open expertly—the way a wino opens a bottle of muscatel, Eddie thought. He slipped out a Twinkie, held it between finger and thumb. “My game has been good and I enjoy the applause. Now that you’ve got glasses, you should practice.”

“It bores me, Fats.” He leaned forward. “I mean it seriously bores me.”

“Then something’s wrong with your head.” Fats popped the Twinkie into his mouth and picked up his glass of Perrier.

“There’s nothing wrong with my head. I’ve just been away from serious pool too long. I’m too old to play for money.”

Fats swallowed, drank some more Perrier and looked at him. “Fast Eddie,” he said, “if you don’t shoot pool, you’re nothing.”

“Come on, Fats. Life is full of things.”

“Name three.”

“Don’t be dumb.”

“I’m not being dumb. How good is sex when you’re half a man?”

“I’m not half a man.”

“I don’t believe you,” Fats said. “I can tell by the way you shoot pool.” He took the other Twinkie out of its wrapper. “Money comes after sex. Maybe before. I already know you don’t have money.”

Eddie tried to be cool, but he wasn’t able to smile “That’s sex and money. Two things.”

“Self-respect,” Fats said.

“I can have self-respect doing something besides shooting pool.”

“No you can’t,” Fats said. “Not you.”

“Why not? I didn’t sign a contract that says I shoot pool for life.”

“It’s been signed for you.” Fats finished his glass of Perrier. “I played all of them, forty years. You were the best I ever saw.”

Eddie stared at him. “If that’s true,” he said, “it was twenty years ago. This is nineteen eighty-three.”

“August,” Fats said.

“I don’t see so well. I’m not young anymore.”

“August fourteenth. Nineteen eighty-three.”

“What are you, a calendar?”

“I’m a pool player, Fast Eddie. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be anything at all.”

Eddie looked at him in silence. Then, not ready to let it go, he said, “What about the photographs? The roseate spoonbills?”

“Roseate spoonbills?” Fats said. “I am what I am because I shoot pool.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Eddie said.

“I am right. Practice eight hours a day. Play people for money.”

“I don’t know….” Eddie said.

“I know,” Fats said. “If you don’t practice, your balls will shrivel and you won’t sleep at night. You’re Fast Eddie Felson, for Christ’s sake. You ought to be winning when you play me. Don’t be a goddamned fool.”

“You make it sound like life and death.”

“Because that’s what it is.”

Back in Lexington, he tried it the first morning. Out to the closed poolroom at nine for eight hours of practice. When he unlocked the door he was shocked. There were only three tables in the room. He tried to shake off the dismay and began to shoot. It made him dizzy, walking around the table for hours in the near-empty room, bending, making a ball and going on to the next one. But he stayed with it doggedly, leaving for a few minutes at noon to get two hot dogs and a cup of coffee at Woolworth’s. He shifted from straight pool to banks but got bored with that and started practicing long cut shots, slicing the colored balls parallel with the rail and into the corner pockets. His stroke began to feel smoother but his shoulder was tired. Was Fats right? Had his balls been shriveling? He started shooting harder, making them slap against the backs of the pockets, rifling them in. Fats knew a lot. Loaded on junk food, his belly and ass enormous, over sixty years old, Fats shot pool beautifully; he had balls. Balls was what he, Eddie, had started playing pool for in the first place—that was what they all did. Mother’s boys, some of them. He had been shy when he was twelve and thirteen, before he first picked up a pool stick. When he found out about pool and how well he could play it, it had changed him. He could not remember all of it, but it had even changed the way he walked. He smashed the orange five ball down the rail and into the pocket. Then the three, the fourteen, twelve, hitting them perfectly. He went on blasting at them, but missed the final ball. It came off the edge of the pocket, caromed its way around the table, bouncing off five cushions, and then rolled slowly to a stop. His back was hurting and he had a headache.

It was almost five o’clock. The phone at the room had been cut off for weeks. He went outside to the pay phone in the parking lot and called Arabella.

“I’d like to come over for a drink,” he said.

“I’m going to a play at eight. You can come for a while.”

“I’ll bring wine,” he said, and hung up.

“Tell me about your husband,” Eddie said. He was seated in one of the white armchairs. “Is his name Weems?”

“Harrison Frame.”

“Haven’t I heard of him?”

“It would be hard not to,” Arabella said. “He used to do a television show on the university channel.”

“You sound like you hate him.”

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

She took a thoughtful swallow from her wineglass. “I suppose you’re right. Let’s not talk about him. What have you been doing today?”

“Catching up on my homework.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Catch up?”

“I only started.” He got up and went to the window, looking at the traffic in the street and the buildings across the street. “I like this apartment a lot,” he said.

“Eddie,” she said from the sofa, “I’ve been living in this one room for two months and I’m going crazy.”

“It’ll be better when you find a job.”

“I’m not going to find a job. There’s a recession going on. President Reagan speaks of recovery, but he’s another one.”

“Another what?”

“Another goddamned performer, like my former husband. He’s only working the room, our president. Counting the house and working the room. The son of a bitch.”

“Hey,” Eddie said, laughing. “You sound terrible. Are you drunk?”

“If three glasses of wine makes you drunk, I’m drunk.”

“I’ll get you something to eat.” He left the window and went to the refrigerator. There was a wedge of Brie and four eggs. Nothing else. “What about a soft-boiled egg?”

“If you say so.”

He boiled her two of them and, since there was no butter, merely put them in a bowl with salt and pepper and handed it to her. He heated some coffee and gave her a cup of it black.

She was a real cutie, eating her eggs on the sofa. She hunched over them with her silver hair glowing in the late afternoon light from the big window, spooning them in small bites. He sat across from her and watched, sipping his own coffee.

“Thanks, Eddie,” she said when she finished. She held the bowl in her lap and smiled. “Why don’t you tell me what you do for a living?”

He hesitated. “I was a poolroom operator until a few months ago. A long time ago I was a player.” He felt relieved; it was time he told her about pool.

“A poolroom?” She didn’t seem to understand.

“Yes.”

“But what has that to do with Enoch Wax?”

“I’m doing exhibition games for Mid-Atlantic.”

“Then you must be good.”

“I lost the first two matches.”

She didn’t seem to notice what he said. She just kept looking at him. Finally she said, “Holy cow. A pool player.” She sounded excited by the idea.

“My game isn’t what it was. I practiced all day today and it bored the hell out of me.”

She bit her lip a moment, then reached forward and set her empty bowl on the glass coffee table, next to a vase of orange gladiolas. “It must be better than sitting around an apartment.”

“Not by much.”

She stretched and yawned. “My God, Eddie! First you cheer me up, now I’m cheering you up. It could go on forever. Why don’t you go to the play with us tonight? I can inveigle a ticket.”

“I’ve never seen a play.”

“All the more reason to go.”

“Maybe you’re right. What’s the name of it?”

“A Streetcar Named Desire. At the university theater. The principal character bears some resemblance to you.”

He looked at her. “Stanley Kowalski or Blanche DuBois?”

“Well,” she said, “a closet intellectual.”

“I saw the movie.”

“You didn’t say Marlon Brando or Vivien Leigh.”

“Look,” he said, irritated, “I’ll go to the play with you. But I’m tired of being figured out. I’m not a rube. I know who Tennessee Williams was. I just don’t go to plays. Nobody asked me to before.”

They had dinner at the Japanese place, and this time Eddie ordered Sushi. He had practiced with a pair of pencils at Jean’s apartment, picking up cigarettes. The trick was to hold the bottom one steady and use the top one like the jaw of a clamp. The Sushi was easy. Arabella watched him for a moment but made no comment.

They met the other couple outside the theater, in the Fine Arts Building. The Skammers, both of them professors. He was history and she was math. They were both thin people, both in running shoes and bright cotton sweaters, both easygoing and cordial. She had reddish hair and was pretty in an unexciting way. Eddie noticed the man was wearing a gold Rolex. The four of them had only a few minutes to chat before curtain time.

He had never seen even a high-school play and was uncertain what to expect. The actors were college students, and from his third-row seat he could see their makeup. It took him awhile, feeling self-conscious with real people on the stage in front of him, but after a few minutes he got into it. He liked Stanley; the student playing the part had the right swagger. And Blanche was a genuine loser—the real thing—with her talk and her posing. Arabella, sitting by him, laughed aloud at some of Blanche’s lines, but he didn’t find her funny. It would be frightening to be like that, in that kind of a fog. It was fascinating to listen to her talk, to hear her construct her version of her past and Stella’s, and to watch her come apart. He had seen pool players come apart like that. “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” You didn’t have to be taken off by men in white suits to fail like that. You could stay home, drink beer, watch TV. There was a lot of it going around.

That was what he said when Skammer asked him, afterward, how he liked it. “There’s a lot of that going around.” They all stared at him and then laughed loudly.

“Eddie,” Arabella said, “will you teach me to shoot pool?”

He was feeling good. “Right now?”

“Why not? Do you know a place?”

“Shoot pool?” Roy Skammer said. “That’s a stunning idea.”

“Oh boy!” Pat said. She had been crying at the play and her face was streaked from it. They were walking along the campus on their way to the car.

“Don’t knock it,” Roy said. “In my sophomore year I did little else. I was a veritable Fast Eddie.”

Arabella looked at him. “A Fast Eddie?”

“Of the Princeton Student Union.”

“There’s a table at the Faculty Club,” Pat said. “Roy is the eight-ball terror of arts and sciences.”

“My my,” Arabella said. And then to Eddie, “Will you teach me?”

Eddie shrugged. He was still feeling high from the play. It was a warm night and the light from mercury lamps was filtered through tall trees along the campus walk. He was not really interested in shooting pool. His right shoulder was sore from the eight hours at the room that day and he was not interested in seeing how well Roy Skammer shot eight-ball. Roy Skammer seemed amiable and smiled a lot, but Eddie did not like him. He did not like the man’s glib way of talking.

“I’d like to learn,” Arabella said.

“Okay. I’ll show you how.”

“If you’d like,” Roy said, “I’ll help.”

There was a little bar when you came in the front door. A group of men were sitting there at a table drinking beer. A couple of them waved to Roy. “There he is,” one of them said to Skammer; and another said to Arabella and Eddie, “Don’t play him for money.” There were dark oil portraits above the bar, probably of former professors.

The pool table was in a big upstairs room with an Oriental rug on the floor and more paintings of scholarly-looking men on the dark walls. It was an old Brunswick table with fringed pockets and a cloth with brownish stains on it. Skammer flipped a switch and yellowish lights over the table came on. “Go ahead,” he said to Eddie. “I’ll go down and get some beer.”

Since they walked in the door, Eddie had felt a little stiff. He had never been around professors before, had not even been on campus in his years in Lexington. The Skammers made no attempt to impress with their education, but he felt inhibited. They were the kind of couple you sometimes saw on the street or read about in magazines. But when he got a pair of cue sticks out of the wall rack and gave one to Arabella, he began to loosen up. He showed her how to hold the cue at the balance and to keep her left arm straight. He had her stand sideways at the table and bend at the waist, letting the stick slide across her open-hand bridge. She concentrated and did it surprisingly well. Pat had played before and didn’t require instruction. Watching Arabella shoot the white ball around, she said, “You’re pretty damned apt, Weems”; and Arabella, bending to shoot at the seven ball, said, “You don’t type a hundred forty words a minute without being apt.”

“Come on,” Pat said, “nobody types one forty. The ribbon would disintegrate.”

Arabella frowned harder at the seven ball, then bit her lip. She pumped her right arm and hit the cue ball surprisingly hard. The seven rolled across the table and into the side pocket. Eddie could have hugged her. She looked up at Pat and said, “On a good day I do one fifty. Haven’t lost a ribbon yet.”

Roy came in with four cans of beer and handed them out. “Let’s play some eight-ball,” he said impatiently. “I want to show my trick shots.”

“I’ll rack,” Eddie said.

“Wait a minute!” It was Arabella. “I don’t know the rules.”

There had been some two-piece cues locked at one end of the wall rack. Roy went over and unlocked one of them. “We’ll explain it as we go along.” He came back with his cue. It was an old Wille Hoppe, with a brass joint. “Pat and I will be partners, and Arabella and Ed. The losing team buys the next round.”

“You’re on,” Arabella said, looking at Eddie.

“Two out of three games,” Pat said.

“Sure.” Arabella began chalking her cue the way Eddie had showed her. “That’ll give me time to get in stroke.”

The women went first. Pat broke weakly and missed an easy shot on the four ball. That gave the Skammers the solids. Eddie explained to Arabella that they had to shoot the striped balls in; he showed her how to make the thirteen in the corner. She was still awkward with her cue, but she concentrated and shot it in. But her position was terrible and she miscued on the next one. Roy went to the chalk dispenser and banged powder into his left hand. Too much of it, making a little cloud. “I want everyone to pay complete attention,” he said. He didn’t seem entirely to be kidding. “You are about to see eight-ball shot the way it was intended to be shot.” He walked to the table and pointed at the two ball with his stick. “I am going to bank this blue ball into the side pocket right here”—he pointed to the pocket—“and the cue ball will roll into position for the six afterward. Very few white people understand this kind of playing.”

“Quit grandstanding, Roy,” Pat said. “Make the shot.”

“Certainly,” Roy said. He bent down, stroked, then stood up again. It was not a difficult bank, but Eddie felt he would miss it; it needed inside English to avoid kissing the cue ball. Roy bent down again, and to Eddie’s surprise used the inside English and made the two. The cue ball rolled over to the six.

Pat applauded. Looking at Eddie, Roy said, “Would you like to double the bet?”

“Sure,” Eddie said.

“That’s two rounds,” Roy said. He bent and shot the six ball in, and then the one. But after he made the one, his cue ball rolled too far, giving a bad lie on the three. He tried another bank, missed it, but the cue ball rolled by luck to the top rail. The striped balls were clustered at the other end of the table and it didn’t look as though anything could be made. “Well,” Roy said, “anybody want to bet a few dollars on the side?”

Eddie looked at him and said softly, “You don’t want to do that.”

There was an embarrassed silence for a moment, and then Arabella spoke up crisply. “I’ll bet you twenty dollars we win.”

“So that’s it,” Roy said. “Those instructions Ed gave you were a front. In fact you’re the United Kingdom pocket billiards champion.”

“You’ll find out,” Arabella said. “Put your money where your mouth is.”

Roy laid his cue stick on the table and slipped his wallet out of his jeans pocket. He took out two tens. Arabella was carrying a leather purse. She took out a twenty. “I’ll hold the stakes,” Pat said and took the money.

Eddie stepped up to the table. The only shot on was the eleven and it was a killer: it sat a few inches from the bottom rail and a long way from either corner pocket. The cue ball was nearly frozen to the top rail. Eddie leaned his stick against the table and put on his glasses. He picked up the cue and said, “I’ll go for the eleven,” and bent down.

“If you make it, I’ll eat it,” Roy said, kidding and not kidding.

“Fine,” Eddie said and drew back. Through his glasses the red stripe on the eleven was as sharp as the edge of a crystal wineglass. He stroked the cue hard and loose, smacking powerfully into the cue ball. The cue ball hurtled down the table, sliced the eleven paper-thin and bounded off the bottom rail, its path barely altered by contact with the eleven. As the cue ball came flying back up toward Eddie, the eleven rolled slowly, its red stripe turning over and over like a hoop. The white ball sped around the table, crashed into a cluster of balls and stopped. The eleven ball, still moving in its unhurried way, arrived at the mouth of the corner pocket, hesitated a moment at the edge, and fell in.

“Jesus Christ,” Roy said.

Eddie ran the rest and banked the eight into the side. Nobody said anything while he did it. Then he handed the rack to Roy. The thing about eight-ball was that you only needed to make eight out of the fifteen. When the balls were ready, Eddie slammed the cue ball into them, pocketed two and proceeded to run out the solids. He played it like straight pool and nudged the eight into an easy lie while making one of the earlier balls, and then pocketed it on a simple shot. During all this his cue ball never touched a rail. His position on every ball was perfect.

“Jesus Christ,” Roy said when it was over. “Do you need a manager?”

Arabella spoke up. “He’s Fast Eddie, Roy.”

“Come on….” Roy said.

“He’s Fast Eddie. You’ve been hustled.”

Afterward, when he was taking her home, Eddie said, “There are thousands of guys like him. They all play eight-ball.”

“How many are there like you?”

He hesitated. “Not many.”

“I should think not.” She stopped at the door of her building. “You looked anything but bored.”

“I wanted to beat him.”

“Maybe that’s the secret.”

He spent the next day practicing. His shoulder ached from the day before and by noon his feet were tired, but he took an hour break before lunch to work out in the gym and that made his shoulder and feet feel better. He drove directly back to the poolroom afterward and banked balls up and down the long rails for several hours. It was only when he stopped for a break at three-thirty that he realized the glasses were no longer a problem. He could see clearly and he no longer had to tilt his head in an uncomfortable way to use them.

He had not spoken to Martha for weeks and had no idea how long the last tables would be there before being sold. The Coke machine and the cigarette machine were gone. The telephone had been taken out. On the faded brown carpet with its cigarette burns and dust were large dark rectangles where the other tables had sat for fifteen years. It would be at least a month before the pasta-and-croissant place moved into the room; he knew they were having trouble financing. Martha’s lawyer’s ad, offering pool tables for sale, still appeared daily in the classifieds. He always checked it in the morning paper and it always tightened his stomach to see it: FIRST QUALITY POOL TABLES, IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.

There wasn’t any point in thinking about it. It had wiped him out for a week after the settlement, and that was enough. There was a certain pleasure in getting it done with, and another kind of pleasure in being out here himself with the blinds drawn and a Closed sign in the window, shooting balls into pockets. He kept it up until the pain in his shoulder came back and got worse than ever. But he felt better leaving the room than he had the day before. His game was sharper. The day had gone by quicker, even if he allowed for the workout at the gym. He would be playing Fats on Saturday in Denver. Maybe things would go differently.

It was another supermarket opening, outdoors like the first had been, but this time they played in front of packed stands and with three TV cameras. During the middle of the game, Eddie broke loose after a string of safeties and ran sixty before being forced to play safe again. When Fats stepped up to shoot, he said to Eddie, “You’re hitting them better,” and Eddie said wryly, “Practice.”

But Fats had already scored over ninety balls—fifteen or twenty at a time—before this, and when he stepped up he ran the rest of them out. The score was 150–112. There was no time for talk afterward; Eddie’s flight to Lexington via Chicago was leaving in an hour. Fats would be going to Miami a few hours later.

He planned to practice the next day in Lexington but woke with a sore throat and a tenderness in his joints that meant fever. It turned out he had the flu and was sick for three days. He called Arabella on the second morning, after Jean was out of the apartment. “I get over things like this pretty quick,” he said.

“It’s a nuisance anyway,” she said. “Can I bring you something?”

“Arabella,” he said, “I should have told you. I’m living with somebody.”

“That’s another nuisance.”

“It’s not a permanent thing, with Jean. I should have told you.”

“Eddie,” Arabella said, “I don’t have time to talk.” Her voice was like ice.

“I’ll see you around,” Eddie said, and hung up.

On the fourth day he was still weak, but he took his Balabushka and drove out to the poolroom. Nothing was changed on the outside, but when he unlocked and went in, there were no more pool tables. Not one. He stood there with his stomach knotted for a minute before closing the door and locking it. It was all over. He walked along the mall, past the A&P and Freddie’s Card Shop, and into the little bar-and-grill. They had just opened up and he was the only customer. “Give me a Manhattan, Ben,” he said to the bartender, seating himself. He still had the Balabushka in the case with him; he set it in front of him on the bar.

He was hung over the next morning and did not want to be devious with Jean. He came into the kitchen and said, “I think it’s time I moved out.”

She was rinsing a plate and she went on rinsing for a minute. “Where, Eddie?”

“The Evarts Hotel. I can get a room for twenty-eight dollars a night.”

“And when?” They could have been talking about mowing the lawn.

“This afternoon.”

She put the plate in the dish drainer and looked at him coldly. “I’ll fix you a supply of vitamins.”

Before he unpacked, he found the history department number in the directory and called Roy Skammer. Professor Skammer was just back from class, the secretary said. Could she say who was calling?

“It’s Ed Felson.”

There was a wait and then Skammer came on the phone. “Fast Eddie,” he said.

“I have a favor to ask. I’d like to use the table at the Faculty Club for practice.”

“You aren’t good enough already?”

“The table I was using is gone.”

“Gone?”

“My ex-wife sold it.”

“Jesus!” Skammer said. “Put not your faith in things of this world.”

“How about it—the club?”

“The table isn’t played on much, but the committee takes a dim view of outsiders.”

“What about in the morning?”

“That might work. They open at seven for breakfast. Nobody shoots pool that early.”

“How do I get in?” He might sound pushy, but it was necessary to be pushy. If Skammer wanted so badly to be thought a nice guy, then let him worry about it.

“Well…” Skammer’s voice sounded doubtful. “Why don’t you come by early tomorrow and tell Mr. Gandolf you’re a guest of Professor Skammer. I’ll give him a call when we finish.”

“Where do I find him?”

“In the club library. All the way back on the first floor.”

His room faced a back alley; he was awakened at five by a garbage truck and couldn’t get back to sleep. He had lain awake for hours the night before, looking at the dumb wallpaper and the little sink in the corner of the room and thinking of Arabella. He should have told her from the beginning that he was a pool player. He should have told her about Jean. It was stupid.

He lay in bed now, waiting for daylight, and thought about her. It had never occurred to him that he could have that kind of woman, with her high-toned good looks—the clear jawline, the look of amused intelligence. He was crazy about her voice, her accent, the words she chose in the sentences she made. And she liked him. She even admired his pool game. He had almost blown it, but it wasn’t blown yet. He began to want her strongly, more than he had ever wanted Martha or Jean, more than anyone since that afternoon at Esalen when Milly—overtanned and sweaty in the sun—had bent down and taken him in her mouth. He felt like a teenager in the first throes of lust; he couldn’t get the thought of her out of his head. He got up, washed his face in the sink, and shaved. He rinsed the lather off in the shower, and by the time he had dried off and was getting his clothes on, there was gray light at the window and his desire was gone.

He left the room at six-thirty and was at the door of the Faculty Club, carrying his cue case, when the old man opened it up.

After such little sleep, his energy at the table was surprising. He had the room to himself, hearing only the occasional clink of dishes from the dining room below; and he shot the balls with concentration and force, hardly missing at all for hours. The pockets were a shade too easy—wider open than they should have been, and a bit filed down so that doubtful shots would fall in. But he didn’t mind that; it might help his confidence, and his confidence needed help. He kept making balls, setting up difficult shots for himself and pocketing them remorselessly. He felt sharp and clear, and the fact that he wore glasses seemed now to mean nothing.

For the rest of the week he came in every morning, after walking across the campus at dawn. He would drive out South Broadway, the wide avenue nearly devoid of traffic that early, and leave his car in the university lot marked for visitors. Then he would walk across the campus to the Faculty Club, following a long, curved concrete pathway under high dark trees, crunching underfoot the leaves from overnight. It was too early for students, but he would pass glum maintenance men in dark uniforms, puffing on cigarettes, or nurses on their way to the university hospital with white uniforms half covered by jackets. Few people talked at that time of day; something deep in Eddie responded to the silence. He liked the early-morning life of this big place, with it brick classroom buildings, the new high-rise dormitories off to the east, the solid old library that he walked by every morning. He wore his leather bomber jacket with the collar turned up against the chill, carried his cue case under his arm and walked briskly. It felt like a new life.

By Wednesday he had developed a routine. He would spread the fifteen colored balls out at the foot of the table, place the cue at the other end, pick the ball he would break the next rack from, and then try to run the other fourteen. He gave himself a difficult shot to begin with so the exhilaration from making it would carry him on through the rest of the rack. If he made it. When he missed, he set it up again and kept trying until he got it. It was painful at times to miss repeatedly, since the opening shots he set for himself were tough ones, but he needed that too. His game might look good to a person like Skammer, as the punches of a professional fighter would feel devastating to a street punk; but he wasn’t preparing himself for street punks. He would be playing Fats again in a week. It was time he started beating him. He could run a rack of balls easily enough, if he made the first one. But that wasn’t enough. This was an easy table and there was no pressure; he should be running in the seventies and eighties. As a young man he would never have missed on a table like this.

Every now and then people would come in to watch him shoot. Young professors, sometimes carrying their coffee cups from breakfast. They would stand around quietly for a half hour or so and then leave. No one asked to play and he was glad of that. He did not feel like an interloper at the Faculty Club after the first week; he felt he belonged there. Increasing the length of his runs was uphill labor, and there was a suspicion it might be hopeless, that whatever fire he once possessed had been extinguished; but he kept shooting pool. The difference between now and the way it had been before the tour with Fats was that now he could see the alternative more clearly.

At their next match, in St. Louis, he did better but Fats still beat him. One fifty to one forty-two.

“I don’t know what the hell to do,” Eddie said afterward. “There’s no money in this tour. When it’s over I’ll have less than I started with.”

“People won’t pay to watch pool games. We’re not rock singers.”

“That’s the fucking truth.” Eddie lit a cigarette. “I don’t know how to make a living, Fats. I have to get another poolroom.”

“I’ve already told you all I have to tell.” Fats stood up from his bleacher seat and walked over to the table where the game had just finished. They were waiting for a car to take them to the airport and the car was late.

“I remember what you told me,” Eddie said. He got up and came over. There were still a dozen or so people in the bleachers, but they were not watching Fats and Eddie anymore. “You told me I need balls. There’s truth in that, Fats, but no money.”

“That’s debatable.” Fats picked up the three ball and sent it spinning around the table. It went three rails and fell in the corner pocket. In the parking lot a car began honking in short bursts, then stopped. “I also told you to play in tournaments.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Eddie said. “The World Open in in New York this winter and first prize is eight thousand. The entry fee is five hundred, and you have to stay in New York for two weeks. There’s only money in that if you come in first.”

“Then come in first,” Fats said.

“Against Seeley and Dorfmeyer? You couldn’t beat them, and I can’t beat you.”

“Don’t tell me who I can’t beat, Fast Eddie.” Fats took the seven ball and did the same three-rail toss, this time plunking it into the corner pocket on top of the three.

“Then you play the World Open.” Eddie looked up into the stands a moment, where a group of people was finally getting up to leave. It had been a dull crowd and their applause had been light, even for Fats’ final run of forty and out.

“I don’t need to play the World Open. When I finish this tour next month, it’ll be the last game of pool I’ll play. I don’t need it anymore. You’re the one who needs it.”

“I’ve never played tournaments, Fats. A hustler didn’t do that. You didn’t want to come out of the closet.”

“The times have changed, Eddie. Straight pool is out of style. You could stay in that closet and starve.”

“Or sell real estate.”

Fats looked at him thoughtfully. “The money’s in nine-ball.”

“I don’t play nine-ball.”

“You can learn.”

“Nine-ball is a kid’s game. It’s what they play in those bars where you put a quarter in the table and another in the jukebox.”

“They play for a lot of money in some of those bars.”

“In Cincinnati you said I wasn’t good enough.”

“You got better.” Fats looked at him. “Do you know what Earl Borchard made last year in nine-ball tournaments?”

“No.”

“Sixty thousand. And I don’t know what he made hustling on the side. They say he plays the bar tables.”

“How would you know how much money he makes?”

“In Billiards Monthly.”

Eddie got the magazine at the poolroom but never did more than flip through it. It was mostly ads for pool-table and cue-stick manufacturers, or books on trick shots. There were “profiles” of young players—usually a few lines of praise under a glossy photograph of somebody holding a pool cue. It made him vaguely sick to look at it. There were also ads for nine-ball tournaments, in places like Asheville and Chattanooga and Lake Tahoe. “Sixty thousand?”

“That’s in seven tournaments. About ten weeks’ work.”

He’d had no idea there was that much money in it. “He’s got to pay expenses.”

“You paid expenses when you were on the road. Did you ever make sixty thousand?”

“Borchard’s the best. What does the second-best make?”

“Don’t ask.” Fats turned back to the table. “If you don’t trust your eyesight, those bar tables are better. Smaller.” He looked at Eddie. “They play eight-ball on them too. A man can make a good living at eight-ball in bars.”

“Eight-ball is stupid. There’s nothing to it but slopping around.”

Fats looked at him silently a minute. Then he went to the place at the end of the table where the balls were kept, squatted down and took them out. He racked them into a triangle, with the black ball in the center. “Let’s play a game of eight-ball,” he said. He got his cue case from the bleacher and took his silver-wrapped Joss from it. Eddie watched him in disbelief. You did not think of a player like Minnesota Fats playing eight-ball. Fats tightened his cue, went to the head of the table, took his stance and blasted the balls apart. The weight behind his stroke was impressive. Balls went everywhere and two of them fell in. “In the first place,” he said, “you have to make one on the break.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“On a bar table you can,” Fats said. “I’m going to take the stripes.” A striped ball and a solid one had fallen in on the break, giving Fats his choice. “Do you know why?” He was like a schoolteacher at the blackboard.

Eddie looked over the table. “Those four stripes in the open.”

“Not at all,” Fats said. “In eight-ball the main thing is not to leave a shot. Not in the important games. Sometimes you let him have a few balls when it’s time to. You have to control it. I’m shooting the stripes to control the solids.” He bent down and made the thirteen ball. There was movement in the bleachers. Eddie looked up to see the half-dozen remaining people coming down to the front row to watch.

“I’m going to shoot the nine now,” Fats said, “and I’m going to make my position a few inches off, for the twelve. The kind of thing that happens now and then.” He bent, shot the nine ball in. His cue ball rolled too far, leaving a difficult shot on the twelve. It would have to be banked. “Now, the thing about the twelve,” Fats said, “is that I don’t have to make it. Watch.” He banked the ball across the side and missed it. The cue ball rolled to one side of a cluster of balls, where the only shot was on the fourteen ball. “If I’d made it, I’m fine. If I miss it, he has nothing.”

“I know how to play safe,” Eddie said.

“I’m talking eight-ball safe,” Fats said. “I’m trying to tell you that if you learn how to control this game you can make a living at it.”

“In bars?”

“In bars, Fast Eddie.”

Eddie thought about it, about the games of eight-ball he had played with Skammer. “In the South?”

Fats looked at him. “Winter’s coming on.”

“You’ve been talking nine-ball tournaments,” Eddie said. “Now it’s eight-ball.”

“You have to crawl before you can walk.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re not ready for nine-ball, Fast Eddie. Borchard would walk right over you, and so would a half-dozen others. You can play eight-ball on brains and experience, and you’ve got those.”

“Thanks.”

Fats started taking his cue apart again. The people behind him in the stands were watching him, fascinated. “If you do it for six months, it might put you back where you were. Then you can take up nine-ball.”

“I hate the punks who play nine-ball.”

“It’s that or real estate,” Fats said.

“Where would I play eight-ball for money?”

“When we get to the airport I’ll give you a list. Our car’s coming.” Fats pointed to the parking lot. A blue car was driving up. It had a sign on its side reading AIRPORT SERVICE.

“Where would you get a list of places to play eight-ball?”

Fats put his cue in its case. “How do you think I made the money to retire on? While you were racking balls in Kentucky, I was putting quarters in slots in North Carolina.”

Eddie stared at him. “Wearing that suit?”

“They make blue jeans in my size. It costs twelve dollars extra.”