The Color of Money

Chapter Eight

The carpet was a deep forest green; it extended halfway up the walls. In the center of the room a sunken bed rose six inches from the floor, covered with burnt-orange suede cloth; near it stood a huge circular bathtub of beige imitation marble. Surrounded by bright mirrors, a black marble sink glittered in a far corner. Its basin and faucets were gold. On a shelf above the toothbrush holder sat a small white television set. This was on when Eddie checked in; a closed-circuit show was explaining the rules of baccarat, as played at Caesar’s Tahoe. Lamps were everywhere, their chrome bases bright as the polished mirrors. It was a big room, a winner’s room.

The bellboy pulled the cord that opened heavy green drapes; outside was deep blue sky and a segment of a bluer lake—Lake Tahoe itself, mostly hidden by the Sahara Hotel across the highway. A Roman sofa upholstered in the green of the rug and walls sat facing the window. There were no paintings on the walls. There was no art at all.

He tipped the bellboy generously and, when he had left, stripped to his shorts and seated himself on the Roman bench for a while, looking at the sky. There was nothing of university life in what he saw outside the window or inside; he felt a kind of youthful excitement just to know that. He had a stack of one-hundred-dollar traveler’s checks on the nightstand beside the bed. He no longer had a marriage, a business or a job. It didn’t matter. He did not have to think about any of that for two weeks. This hotel and this view had been made for him; twelve floors below were a gambling casino, four restaurants, bars, a theater, and a huge ballroom with five pool tables in it. It was a world he understood more than he would ever understand life, and he sat here at the high edge of it, high himself to be West, rich enough for the time and place.

He stood, then padded barefoot to where his suitcase was and took the cue case from beside it. He slid out the solid, beautifully wrought Balabushka, walked back to the window and stood there screwing the two pieces together, looking at the sky and a distant row of dark pines behind the Sahara.

He had flown to San Francisco, picked up a rented car at the airport and had driven the two hundred miles across California, starting with the Bridge and then a four-lane highway through Oakland. There were miles of Oakland, the city where he was born, and yet none of it meant anything to him. There was not even the name of a familiar street on the exit signs, no tall building seen from the road that he had seen before. Only the light in the morning sky and the glimpses of the bay caught through heavy traffic on the Bridge were familiar. The house he had lived in was off the road somewhere, behind gas stations and gritty buildings. He had no idea where. Despite this, driving a bypass that was like any other American bypass, he knew he had come home for a moment at least. On the backseat were his suitcase and his cue stick; in his pocket was money. He had nothing to do for two weeks except play pool as well as he could.

At the hotel now he took a long, slow shower, standing in the tub in the center of the room with only half the curtain drawn, letting hot water run down his body for a long time before soaping up. He had turned on the huge TV that faced the bed, and as he showered he could hear the voice-over detailing the ways of placing bets on a roulette table: “Each player is given his own color of chips,” the plausible voice explained, as though to children, “and he keeps them throughout his time at the table. Your croupier will answer any questions.” The picture on the screen showed a young woman croupier handing chips to a bettor. Money was not mentioned. Everything was cheerful. It was just the thing to be watching while taking a shower in the middle of the bedroom. The Balabushka lay on the bed, its bright chrome-plated joint gleaming in the light from the bright Nevada sky, ready for use.

Just keeping the glass clean could have occupied the labors of half the Mafia. The elevators were walled with mirrors, and when you stepped out on the main floor you found yourself walking along a hallway lined with hundreds of large, diamond-shaped mirrors without a spot or a grain of dust on them. Then you turned left, went down a few carpeted stairs, and you were in the casino, facing an acre of chromium-and-glass slot machines—all clean, polished, in immaculate condition despite the hordes of glassy-eyed people who moved among them, wandering from the nickel slots to the dollar ones, threading their ways past the fifty-cent and quarter machines. All the machines had fronts of colored glass lit brightly from inside. Some people stood fixed before one machine for hours at a time, taking silver from a paper cup, dropping it in the slot, pulling the handle, letting the coins that sometimes fell into the chute at the machine’s bottom accumulate until the cup was empty and then refilling the cup. Terrible odds, Eddie thought, but they didn’t seem to care. Maybe they were afraid of doing something stupid or wrong in front of the croupiers and dealers at the games where you had a better chance. The only blunder with a slot machine was deciding to play it.

Powerful air conditioning sucked smoke from the air faster than the crowds could produce it. Not one ray of natural light penetrated the casino from sunlit Nevada outside; a million watts of electricity spread itself around the enormous room in luminous blue, gold and red glass like the setting for an endless, vaguely pornographic, musical.

Beyond the acre of slots sat the tables—craps and blackjack, covered in pool-table green. Off to the left in a quiet backwater cordoned by velvet ropes and monitored by men and women in tuxedoes and stage makeup, with frilled electric blue shirts, was baccarat. No sheiks or movie stars sat at those tables, but that was where they were supposed to be if they ever came to Caesar’s Tahoe. The sounds of slot machines, hushed by the thickness of the red and blue carpet, penetrated to this quieter area as a kind of atonal Muzak. The only loud noises came from the odd crapshooter instructing his dice.

Beyond craps and baccarat were restaurants and a sushi bar. Eddie headed for the sushi bar.

He started to seat himself at an empty table that overlooked the casino when he saw a Reserved sign. Annoyed, he went on through the drinking crowd and found himself a small table against the wall. He ordered a Manhattan from a waitress with fishnet hose and a skirt about three inches long; the name on her tag read “Marge.” The sushi sat in crushed ice on a buffet table in the center of the room where a piano would have sat a few years ago—before sushi joined the croissant as chic.

Just as Marge returned with his drink, he looked up to see a familiar face coming across the room toward him. It was Boomer. “You still got that electronic Balabushka?” Boomer said.

“In my room.” Eddie signed the check for the drink. “Sit down.”

“Let me have a Drambuie on the rocks, Marge.” Boomer seated himself with a sigh. “If I draw you in the first round I’m complaining to the management.”

Eddie took a sip from his drink, which turned out to be far too sweet. “Have you seen the tables yet?”

“I just got here.” Boomer did not seem to be putting on one of his acts. His voice was genuinely morose. When his Drambuie came, he drank it off fast and ordered another. Eddie’s eyes followed Marge’s legs idly as she headed for the bar, until he saw three slim young men, brightly dressed and looking wired, coming up the steps from the casino. The one in front was Babes Cooley. With him was Earl Borchard. Under his breath Boomer said, “The sons of bitches.”

The young men were laughing together. They walked to the table marked Reserved and seated themselves. Two waitresses came over, all smiles, and began taking their orders for drinks.

“Fucking kids,” Boomer said morosely.

Eddie said nothing, turning back to his Manhattan.

The main floor of the hotel was laid out like one of those supermarkets where it is impossible to buy what you want without being given opportunity to buy what you do not want: you had to go through the entire casino to get anywhere else. The ballroom where the tournament would be was at the end of a long hallway; and to get to the hallway from the elevators or the restaurants, you had to walk past the slot machines, the crap tables, the baccarat, twenty-one, roulette, chuck-a-luck and wheel of fortune. Keeno, of course, was everywhere; its numbered boards caught the eye wherever one happened to stand, and its green-skirted runners were ubiquitous.

The ballroom was not so big as Eddie expected, but it was big enough. The five tables were surrounded by rows of wooden bleachers. At the far end of the room was a platform with a speakers’ table holding microphones.

The pool tables were beautiful and new. A few well-dressed young men with leather cue cases were standing near them; one was rubbing the palm of his hand over the clean green as Eddie came in, but no one was shooting. A few dozen people sat in the bleachers. A man at the speakers’ table was adjusting a microphone with one hand while holding a drink in the other. There would be no games today, but a ceremony was scheduled for nine-thirty; some players had not arrived yet and it wouldn’t be necessary to attend it. It was seven-thirty now.

Eddie stood between two sets of bleachers for several minutes, looking at the tables. Several younger men entered the room, pushing eagerly past him. He looked to his right; beyond the bleachers was a sign reading PRACTICE AREA: PLAYERS ONLY; and just as he looked, seeing the corner of a pool table and a patch of its new green, he heard the sound of a rack of balls being broken. Someone was beginning to practice. For a moment, in his stomach, he felt ill. He turned and left the room.

He ignored the telephone and switched on the big TV set. He had told Arabella he would call when he got there, but he did not want to call anyone. It was dark outside the window now, except for the neon on the Sahara. He should go eat supper, attend the opening ceremonies and then practice, but he did not want to do any of those things. He did not want to shoot pool or watch it being shot. He did not want to hear the names of the other players or hear about their trophies and titles and championships, hear the names of the referees, the expressions of gratitude to the pool-table manufacturer who had supplied the equipment, the officials who would keep score, the man who was directing the tournament and his assistants. But most importantly—dismayingly—he did not want to take his Balabushka and shoot pool with it.

A cop show had appeared on the TV screen, with pale blue cars screeching around corners in San Francisco and then roaring downhill in low, bouncing undulations toward the Bay Bridge. The sound on the set was low—barely above a whisper. Eddie picked up the phone, dialed Room Service and ordered a medium-rare hamburger with two Manhattans. He lay back in bed watching the screen. There was the bay from closer now. There was Alcatraz, pale in the distance, shimmering and insubstantial.

One problem with Babes Cooley was he reminded Eddie of Arabella’s dead lover. So sure of himself. So young.

Halfway through the second Manhattan, he fell asleep. He awoke with a sore throat at six-thirty, with pale light in the sky outside the still-open draperies. The air conditioner had been set high and he had not gotten under the covers; he still lay on the burnt-orange bedspread with his Balabuska beside him. A teacherly woman on TV was lecturing in Spanish. He felt stiff. He was catching cold.

For a moment he felt like getting under the covers with his clothes still on and going back to sleep. He was drugged already by sleep, had probably slept for ten hours, but he could sleep more. It was too early in the morning to be up. He had done this kind of thing before, on weekends when married to Martha—sometimes sleeping for sixteen hours at a stretch and then taking the rest of the day to wake up on coffee and cigarettes.

He shook his head sharply at the memory of that, and sat up. It was visibly brighter outside. He took off his wrinkled shirt, walked to the bathroom and began to shave, soaking his face awake with hot water. It was time to get on with it. Maybe he could get into the ballroom and practice.

But the ballroom was closed and locked. The casino certainly wasn’t. Although the action was light at seven in the morning, it was still action. Five weary crapshooters were huddled around one of the tables; there were a half-dozen blackjack games going; and a crowd circulated among the slot machines—most of them women, most of them motherly. Eddie pushed past them, found the coffee shop and had breakfast. After that he explored the main floor of the hotel, which was like a city in itself. He found a long mirrored arcade of shops; some were just opening up. Expensive clothes were displayed in windows: bathing suits from France, tweed jackets from Italy. One shop sold Krön chocolates; another, Cartier watches. He kept walking, carrying his cue case. At the end of the arcade, a sign over a doorway read HEALTH CLUB AND POOL. He walked in.

The pool was huge and free-form, under a skylight. It was surrounded partly by gray boulders, to give the effect of a grotto—in fact, there was a real grotto entrance across the water from him, with the boulders making an opening like a cave, where you could swim in. There were a few small palm trees. Off to one side was a tiled whirlpool bath big enough for a dozen people at once. Behind this stood a row of trees; through them was a glimpse of a glass door and a tiny bit of sky. It was the only natural light he had seen from the main floor of the hotel. On the other side of the pool was a restaurant, closed now, with pink cloths on its poolside tables. From speakers somewhere came classical music.

To the left of the restaurant was the entrance to the health club; through the glass door he could see a woman at a desk. He walked along the concrete margin of the empty pool and pushed open the door.

There was a gym—also empty—a few yards past the desk. In it sat a half-dozen new Nautilus machines, their chromium glistening, their leather seats and benches polished, deep red. Beyond the gym a sign read MEN’S LOCKER ROOM AND SAUNA.

He turned and looked at the woman. “Can I get trunks?”

She smiled like a stewardess. “Sure.”

He showed her his room key and she handed him a pair of disposable shorts with the same houndstooth pattern he and Arabella wore at the Holiday Inn the day they had decided to go into business. There was a pile of big yellow towels on the counter. He took two, headed back to the locker room and changed. The supporter in the trunks was no good. He left his Jockey shorts on under them, stowed his clothes, padded out to the concrete, took a deep breath and dove into the pool. There was still no one else there. He began doing laps, swimming in long, powerful strokes.

After twenty minutes of that he dried off and worked his way slowly through the Nautilus machines, using the same weights he used at the gym back in Lexington: the hip and back machine, the leg curl, the leg extender, the triceps and biceps, the chest and shoulder. They were better machines than he had ever used before, just as the pool was the best indoor pool he had ever seen. Their gears worked quietly; the weights moved smoothly and did not clank. He kept at each machine until he had exhausted the muscle group, sweating profusely. The music from the speakers stopped and a cultivated voice announced the Overture to The Marriage of Figaro, and Mozart music began. Eddie pumped the weights up and down, wearing his wet bathing suit, sweating. Only on the overhead press did he cut back on the drag, reducing it by twenty pounds from what he was accustomed to. He did not want to overwork his shoulders; they had to be smooth for shooting nine-ball.

The tournament would start at one, but the ballroom opened at ten. At a quarter till, Eddie was in his room exchanging his wet shorts for dry ones; he was at the ballroom door when it opened. He went to one of the practice tables, put the fifteen colored balls out on the green, screwed his cue stick together and began to shoot. His stroke was crisp and sharp, his eyesight clear. His body—clean, exercised and purged of its long sleep—felt tireless. He ran the rack, and then another. Some young men began a practice game on the other of the two tables behind the bleachers; he ignored them, clipping balls into pockets.

“…one of the all-time greats, Fast Eddie Felson!” the announcer said with forced enthusiasm. There was scattered applause. Someone whistled through his teeth.

This was the low bracket of the tournament, and Eddie was matched with a jeweler from Alameda who looked deadly earnest but could barely make three or four balls in succession. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, had a potbelly, and seemed never to have considered winning. Eddie beat him handily but without doing anything especially well. He needed more practice.

He hesitated several times before picking up the telephone and quickly punching out the Kentucky number. When she came on, the lack of tension in her voice surprised him; he was surprised again by the ease in his own. Maybe the distance in miles was working for them. He asked if there had been any word from the police.

“They say they’re looking,” she said. “But I don’t know what they can prove. If they catch him.”

“I don’t want to think about it.” He reached across the bed for a cigarette. “I won my first round.”

“That’s good news. How many do you have to win to be in the money?”

“If I beat the next man it’ll pay back the entry fee. Fifteen hundred dollars.” He hesitated a moment and then said, “I’ve got to get back down there and practice.” He could not think of anything else to say.

“Sure,” she said, too quickly. “Give me a call in a day or so and let me know how you’re doing.”

When he came into the ballroom, the second round had started. Babes Cooley was playing on Number One, and most of the crowd in the room filled the bleachers near that table. Eddie got as close as he could and watched for a moment, standing on the back row and seeing as well as he could over the heads in front of him. Babes was running a rack, concentrating quietly on his position. When he broke the balls the power in his lithe body was phenomenal; the rack of nine exploded like a meteor, like a firework, like a heavy atom split to fragments by a neutron. Babes waited for the remaining balls to stop moving, chalked up, bent down, stroked, shot them in.

Eddie turned, climbed down the back of the bleachers. He found a practice table. He put the fifteen balls on it and began shooting them in.

After a half hour, he looked up to see Boomer watching him.

Boomer was no longer dressed in workman’s clothes; he had on a bright yellow shirt and tight designer jeans. He was freshly shaved.

“Fast Eddie,” Boomer said, “don’t shoot the fifteen balls. Shoot nine-ball.”

Eddie stood up from the table and looked at him.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Boomer said, “but it’s no good to shoot straights when you’re going to be playing nine-ball. Different games.”

“I know they’re different.”

“You stroke different, too. You don’t coddle the balls in nine-ball. You got to be firm with ’em.”

“I know that, Boomer,” Eddie said.

“Then get your head out of straight pool. Straight pool’s a dying game. I shouldn’t be telling you this. You want to be a gentleman straight-pool player, go right ahead.”

Boomer walked off to the other practice table, just left empty by another player. He racked the balls into the diamond and then took his cue from its case. “And when you break, forget your dignity,” Boomer said. “Don’t protect that Balabushka. Smash the fuckers.” He tightened his cue stick with a final twist. “Beats me why I tell people things like that.” He drew back and smashed the rack open.

Boomer was right. He had been protecting his cue stick while hardly being aware of it. He put away the six high-numbered balls and racked the other nine. Then he set the cue ball down on the line, gripped his Balabuska tightly at the butt, holding it farther back than he usually did, hesitated a second and let go. The balls spread wide. Two of them fell in. It was a good break, better than any he had made in New London. He could feel the power of it in his right shoulder as he swung.

When he was racking again he heard applause from the playing area and then the amplified announcer’s voice: “Mr. Cooley wins the match by a score of ten-three.” Eddie gritted his teeth and slammed into the rack. The balls flew apart. The nine rolled across the table and stopped just short of the corner pocket.

Something had gone wrong with the air conditioning in the ballroom. When Eddie left the practice table behind the bleachers and came around to the playing area, a heavy layer of cigarette smoke hung below the ceiling; the spotlights pierced it like sunshine through clouds. It was evening of the tournament’s first day. The bleachers were at last filling up. Cocktail waitresses circulated, taking orders for drinks. Eddie pushed through the people standing between the bleachers and looked over the playing area.

Above each of the five tables hung a yard-long metal lamp shade with a red Budweiser logo in the center and card holders on each side. A white-sleeved man stood on a stool and changed the cards at the middle table while another brushed the cloth with a heavy brush, cleaning off the chalk marks and talcum powder. The man on the stool put up a card that said MAKEPIECE, and then on the other side, FELSON. Eddie walked up and waited, holding his cue.

A moment later a tall black man in an impeccable brown suit walked up. He held out a huge hand to Eddie and Eddie took it. “I’m Makepiece.”

“Felson.”

“Fast Eddie?”

“That’s right.”

The referee put the stool away, slipped on his tuxedo jacket and straightened his tie. He put two white cue balls on the table and looked at Eddie and the black man. “We’re ready to lag.”

From loudspeakers came the announcer’s voice: “On table three, from Orange, New Jersey, runner-up in the Eastern States Nine-Ball Championship of 1983, Mr. Brian Makepiece!” There was mild applause. “His opponent will be the star of the Mid-American television series along with the late great Minnesota Fats—from Lexington, Kentucky, Fast Eddie Felson!”

The applause was slight. Earl Borchard was playing on Table One, and most of the crowd’s attention was fixed on him. “Star of Mid-American television.” Was that the best they could do? But he had no titles, not even as a runner-up in some regional tournament. All he had was the name, and sometimes when he heard it like that on a loudspeaker, he did not picture himself as being that person—Fast Eddie.

He bent to lag, and overshot. Makepiece won the break, stood erect at the head of the table, bent, and in a kind of swooping motion pounded the cue ball into the rack. The seven ball fell in. He pursed his lips in a scholarly way, studying the lie, then bent and shot in the one. A cool, detached black man. Eddie felt no threat from him. The idea was to keep calm, shoot the balls remorselessly, play safe when necessary and grind him out. Makepiece ran them up to the eight and mussed. When the eight jarred back and forth in the corner pocket and then hung up, he scowled at it and looked away. Eddie did not need to be an expert at nine-ball to see the man was a loser. He chalked up carefully and pocketed the eight. Then he dropped the nine in the side. On the break for the next game, remembering Boomer, he slammed into them with all his strength and made the nine. Two-zero. For the first time in nine-ball, he began to feel good, to see the multiple ways of winning a game not as a confusion but as an asset. He could make the nine on the break. He could make it after the break on a combination and, that failing, he could run the other eight balls from the table much as he might in straight pool and then pocket the nine. Looked at that way, the game was simple. He ignored the crowd that was ignoring him and bent to work. In an hour he had won by a score of ten games to two. His playing was not brilliant but solid. Makepiece lost his nerve during the fifth game, and the rest was mechanical.

The applause, when the referee announced the score, was better than before. Two down. One more win would put him in the money.

In the evening he played a kid on Number Two, in the corner to the left of the official’s table. The kid’s name was Parsons; he was some kind of boy wonder of seventeen. He had come in third in the World Open at straight pool, but this was his first nine-ball tournament. He was pretty good—far better than Makepiece—but not good enough. Eddie stayed ahead of him throughout, and the final score was ten-seven. A kid like this was no problem. Out of the hundred twenty-eight players maybe a dozen would be a problem.

He unscrewed his cue, got his case from under the table, slid the two cue pieces into it, fastened the lid. He looked up. The air conditioning must have been repaired; there was no more smoke below the ceiling. He felt tired. It was good to be in the money—a real start. Pushing his way through the crowd to leave, he was congratulated by several strangers: “Way to go, Fast Eddie!” and “Good stroke!” As he left the ballroom he began to whistle.

It was ten o’clock and he had not eaten. That hardly mattered here, where time seemed without reference in the world and the casino never closed. He stopped at a near-empty blackjack table with a betting minimum of twenty-five dollars, bought four chips and hit a blackjack on his first hand. By the time he quit at midnight, he had won nine hundred. He tipped the dealer a chip and went to the hotel’s Polynesian restaurant for dinner, sat by an artificial waterfall that burbled between enormous ferns and ate sugary pork with chopsticks. He ignored the drinks that came in coconuts and ordered a half bottle of new Beaujolais with his meal, as Arabella would have done. Good old Arabella. With the money he had just won at blackjack he could bring her out here. He thought about that a moment as the waiter poured his wine and decided not to. Being alone was all right. He did not need help, or company, or sex. He needed to roll with the good feeling inside him, the feeling that came from winning money, and he needed to practice nine-ball.

At one o’clock he went back to the ballroom, found an empty table behind the bleachers, racked only nine, and practiced until the ballroom closed at three. His game, despite the wine and the deep fatigue he felt, was even better. He could see in glimpses the entire gestalt of the table, see the nine different balls as one patterned entity. He could run out a game as a unit. It was something he once had at straight pool and then forgot. It was mystical. Intuitive. The balls fell in for him as if charmed.

Later he lay between crisp sheets, listening to the nearly inaudible deep whirr of the air conditioning, seeing through open draperies the glow in the night sky from the huge neon sign of the Sahara. He had won three nine-ball matches in two days, had worked out each morning in the gym alone, had swum a dozen laps in the huge pool, eaten in the hotel restaurants, played blackjack in the hotel casino. His soul was easing into peace. The frenetic days working for Mayhew and then buying quilts and sculptures and wood carvings, then painting, wiring and cleaning the gallery were all past him, along with the confusions of middle age: sex, money and love. He belonged here, in this room. He belonged in the ballroom downstairs, in the casino, in the long mirrored hallways like a maze running by unworldly shops. He had not stepped outdoors and he did not plan to. This hotel was like an anthill or a starship, a dwelling offering everything in life that Eddie wanted. This week was like a religious retreat. Between these sheets at four in the morning, his shoulder faintly throbbing from the swing of his splended cue, he let his heart experience the fine old ecstasy of the gambler’s life: his dedicated life, lived at the edge of the world and partly in dream, where polished balls spun across a brilliant green, where his skill shone in a room beneath layers of smoke. He could see himself now as a monk, a sleepwalker in life. As a monk was drawn by God—or was in those moments in which he was permitted to be—Eddie was drawn by money. He played pool for money and he loved money deeply and truly—loved even the dark engraving on the splendid paper of fresh bills. He could love the game of pool and the equipment of the game, the wood and cloth, the phenolic resin of the glossy balls, the finish of his phallic cue stick, the sounds and colors of pool. But the thing he loved the most was money.

On the next day the losers had come to dominate the tables, and Eddie, if he won, would play only once. It worked like this: after the first round there were sixty-four winners and the same number of losers; after the second, thirty-two winners remained; and after the third round, sixteen. That would become eight, then four, then two, then one—requiring one day for each reduction in numbers, each narrowing of the winners’ field.

That would not end it. Whoever survived would have to play the winner of the losers’ bracket in the finals, since this was double elimination. The losers’ play-offs were going on from ten in the morning until midnight, each of the five tables continuously in action, like a chorus to the dwindling stars of the winners’ bracket. Eddie was one of the sixteen undefeated, as were Borchard and Cooley. So, for that matter, was Boomer—although Boomer was barely hanging on.

His game was at ten that morning. Downstairs, he ate, swam, worked out lightly with the machines, swam more laps, and had coffee while he lay in the whirlpool bath and let the jets of hot water massage his shoulders. It was nine by then. He got out after fifteen minutes, dried off and had scrambled eggs in the restaurant at a poolside table, watching a couple of young women in bikinis who had begun swimming. Nice small breasts; nice asses. He had a second cup of coffee and watched them as they climbed out of the pool and stood, knowing they were being watched, laughing and pushing the wet hair out of their faces. The speakers were playing Mozart. Eddie finished his toast and left.

The match was very, very tough, and to win it he had to be lucky. He was. On the third rack the young man made the nine-ball but scratched on an unlucky kiss; on the fifth, Eddie was left a simple combination when the cue ball made a long, unexpected roll. And twice, when Eddie simply missed a ball he left the table safe by luck. The final score was ten-seven, and this time the applause was loud. The crowd had been watching his game more than the others, and they clapped loudly and whistled when he pocketed the nine for his tenth game. He was now one of eight. The luck didn’t matter for now; he was getting there.

As he started to leave he saw Boomer coming in, still morose, screwing his cue together.

“Good work,” Boomer said. “I’m next.”

“Who’s your man?”

Boomer grimaced. “Borchard.”

“I’ll pull for you.”

“Just break his arm when he comes in.”

Eddie managed to crowd in at the bleachers; they made room for him. It didn’t last long; Boomer didn’t have a chance. Borchard shot like a wizard, clipping balls in with a nerveless placidity while Boomer sweated and grumbled under his breath and chalked his cue and cursed and missed. The score was ten to one and the applause was thunderous.

After the match Eddie shook Boomer’s hand.

“Son of a bitch,” Boomer said. “Bastard blew past me like a monsoon.”

Eddie went back to a practice table and began to shoot. Watching Borchard, he had noticed some things about the way the younger man played position, shooting the cue ball without English and at medium speed, letting the cushion control the rolling far more than a straight-pool player would. He wanted to try it himself. It was tricky; it violated things Eddie had learned thirty years before; but he kept it, thinking if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, and shooting the cue ball without English and at medium speed, trying to kill it in corners and off the side rail. It took awhile but he was getting it.

He practiced three hours before going to lunch. On his way to the French restaurant he stopped at a blackjack table for twenty minutes and won six hundred dollars, drawing the right card every time he hit. It was luck again, and he was wise enough to know it was only luck, since the odds of the game were against him. He took his money and had the best lunch on the menu, drinking Perrier instead of wine. He wanted his head clear for practice afterward. He was getting a grip on nine-ball; he could feel it in his stomach. He wanted to keep shooting, watching the way he could make the cue ball set itself down for position on the next ball, and the next.

On his way back to the ballroom he walked past the blackjack tables without looking for a seat, and as he approached the final gambling area on his way to the tournament he heard a familiar gravelly voice shout, “On the come, Sweet Jesus!” and looked over at a crap table and there was Boomer throwing the dice, putting his whole body into it.

Eddie stopped. Boomer was no longer wearing his nine-ball clothes. The silk shirt and tight pants were gone; he had on wrinkled brown corduroys, a tan work shirt and scuffed lumberjack boots. On his head was an olive drab Aussie hat—an Anzac hat with a safety pin in the side of the brim. His sleeves were rolled up over hairy arms and his broad, ugly face was fervid. “Do me now!” he shouted as the dice came to rest, and then his face twisted sourly. “Craps,” said the man in the tuxedo behind the table. “Pass the dice.” Eddie went on to the ballroom.

He racked the balls and broke them as hard as he could, going for the nine. It moved only a few inches. He racked them again, broke again. The nine went to the side rail and bounced, then stopped. He racked again and broke, and then again. This time the nine fell in. The swing had to be controlled and yet be as strong as he could make it. He broke with top English and with draw, and with no English at all, and kept breaking until he felt he had the stroke right. In a game of straight pool you would never hit anything that hard, but this wasn’t straight pool. After getting the break down to where he wanted it, he began spreading the balls wide with his hand, setting them up for a run that required the cue ball to make a tour of the table. He was weak there too, because you didn’t play three-rail position in straight pool, chasing colored balls from one end to the other and back again. He kept at this until eight o’clock. His shoulder was killing him, but he had learned something. He looked up as he was taking his cue apart and there was Boomer, wearing his nine-ball clothes again and carrying his cue stick. Boomer’s silk shirt was electric blue and his pants were white. The hat was gone.

“You’re a virtuous son of a bitch,” Boomer said. “You been here all day. Or night, or whatever it is.”

“How’d you do?”

“Let’s have a drink.”

Eddie felt his right shoulder. “I need the Jacuzzi.”

“They got one of those?”

Eddie nodded.

“Let’s get a drink and go to the Jacuzzi.”

As they went through the casino Eddie said, “I saw you shooting craps.”

“So did the whole fucking world. I make a god-damned spectacle of myself at a crap table. Always did. I was born to be an engineer. Gambling is no work for a man of my gifts.”

“How’d you do?”

Boomer stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I got eliminated.”

“At craps or at pool?”

“At both.” He nodded his head contemptuously toward the crap table they were passing. “That Makepiece, the one you had sitting on his hands, shot nine-ball against me like a fucking sorcerer.” He shook his head. “I’m broke.” They headed down the hallway that led to the pool. “When they play against me they play like demons. I’d do better assembling radios.”

Eddie reached in his pocket and took out two of the hundreds he had won at blackjack. “Here. You can pay me back next time.”

“Thanks,” Boomer said, scowling.

“I owe you,” Eddie said. “You were right about nine-ball.”

They had the whirlpool bath to themselves. Boomer was wiry, hairy and pale, and he got into the water with finicky care. They leaned against the tiles side by side with a few feet of space between them, and Boomer drank Drambuies one after the other while Eddie nursed a single Manhattan. The water eased Eddie’s shoulder and the drink helped relax him.

After his third drink Boomer had cheered up a bit. He stretched out his legs under the frothy water, stuck the toes up out of it and began wiggling them. “I need to quit this life,” he said, “this goddamned gambling foolishness. I’m too old for it.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“I’m fifty, Boomer.”

Boomer rolled his head over to look at Eddie. He was still wiggling his toes. “We’re different,” he said. “I like gambling, but winning isn’t all that much to me. I like to fool around.”

“What about me?”

“Well,” Boomer said, “you may not be comfortable with it, but you’re a winner.”

Eddie looked at him a moment. “Have another Drambuie,” he said.

The next morning he lost. He did as he had the day before; slept soundly, worked out, swam, ate breakfast and arrived at the ballroom feeling strong and ready. The young man he was paired with was named Willy Plummer; he was the third-place winner from last year and the titleholder of this year’s West Coast Nine-Ball Open. He was small and thin, and he shot pool like a machine. He seemed unable to miss. Eddie played a better game of nine-ball than he had played before in his life and he lost the match ten-seven. There was nothing to do but shake the man’s small hand and then go to the chart on the wall behind the bleachers and see where his name came up on the losers’ bracket.

He would have one match that evening against someone named Hastings, and then, if he was still in it, three more the next day. And three after that. He took a deep breath. He had been pushed back into the swamp; he would have to fight his way out to get back in the air. A lot of people like Boomer had been eliminated, and all the easy marks were gone, even from the losers’ bracket. It would be uphill all the way, and very tight at the top.