The Hustler

10

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some of this small-time money—the greasy money—is filtered up to the big-time gamblers, the true professional men; but only—as Eddie was beginning to find out—seldom, and then in small amounts. The main sources of the big-timer—like Minnesota Fats—are only three: the well-to-do sportsman, the big con man, and the other big-timer. The well-to-do sportsman comes in two breeds: the tweedy philosopher with a gun collection and money, and the Miami Beach industrialist, with friends in the Senate and money. The big con man is hard to recognize, except that he is always personable and intelligent; but when he has money he has plenty, and he likes to lose it. And the other big-timer is somebody you don’t seek out when all you need is money. Games between full-scale, professional gamblers always have things at stake which are not as easily negotiable or recognizable as cash. It’s said that when whales fight whales it is never merely because one is hungry. And that makes sense; the sea is very full of smaller fish.

But these factors were working against Eddie, who, by nature, by skill, by ambition, by everything except income and experience, was a big-timer; and who was beginning to feel that he must have a thousand dollars before he was anything at all. In the first place it was summer. Wealthy sportsmen are seldom in the big northern cities in the summer; they are sunning or shading themselves in places created especially for wealthy sportsmen. And the con men are with the wealthy sportsmen, usually buying them drinks. Most of the big-timers are following the races—horse, boat, automobile—or the sportsman and the big con. (This makes a sort of procession: sportsman, con, gambler; with money in the lead, as is only fitting and proper.) True, some big gamblers remain behind, like Minnesota Fats. Either they have business connections at home, or they do not find it necessary to leave town in order to find action. A man like Minnesota Fats needs no agent; he attracts—as Eddie knew well—his own clientele.

Summer was against him, in Chicago. Also against him was the fact that now he had announced his presence in town and his high talents so clearly, in the one big game, it would be impossible for him to enter any major poolroom—any big-timers’ room—without being spotted. He would go back to Bennington’s; but not until he had money. And he had been depending on a manager, Charlie, for too long. Without Charlie his only hustle was to talk himself into a game and squeeze out what he could. He was good at the talking in part—was, in fact, phenomenal—but found the squeezing difficult. He had lost some of the touch—and all of the enthusiasm—for it….

After Sarah had come back from school and had taken him to bed, they talked, lying together, barely touching. He did not tell her much about himself, did not feel that he had to. He told her that his father was an electrician, his mother dead, that for a long time he had made his living “one way or another.” She asked him what that meant, but he did not answer her. He did not want to say, “I’m a pool hustler. I intend to be the best goddamn pool hustler in the business,” so he said nothing.

Her father and mother had been divorced for a long time. Her father, a moderately wealthy man, a car dealer of some kind, was remarried and living in St. Louis, where she had been raised and had gone to school. The first of every month she got a check for three hundred dollars from him.

Her mother lived in Toledo; they had not seen each other for five years. She spoke several times of herself as an alcoholic and as if they, she and Eddie, had some kind of contract of depravity between them. He did not like this; it was phony and mildly embarrassing. But, if she liked to think of herself that way, as harder, more dissolute than she actually was, it did not really make much difference. Maybe she would outgrow it. Maybe the kind of treatment that he was giving her would make for a change.

When he left the apartment he walked for a while, not heading for any particular place, but wanting to walk and to think.

Finally he came to the poolroom where he had won the forty dollars at snooker. He did not like the place; its walls were too bright, with glaring white tile like a subway station and bright incandescent lamps; but he had done well there before.

He did not do well this time. There was nothing happening, nothing at all. But then, he had something to go home to….

He did not often think of Minnesota Fats and of the game they had played, not explicitly; but he would think around the edges of it—the whole forty hours of it were now compressed in his mind into a single event, as if it had all happened in an instant, so that the memory was a kaleidoscopic picture of the fat man with the rings on his fingers and of the moment when the high ceiling of Bennington’s had spun, slid, and fallen on him, and of himself lying on the floor with the sound of the cue ball crashing in his dulled ears and his money and his victory gone. And, without detailing the events in sequence, his mind could skirt around the whole thing, licking at its edges, probing at it, wanting to twist it, ease it, pull it, jerk it out, as the restless tongue probes at a strand of food wedged between the teeth; or the fingers, working of their own volition, toy with the scab that overlays a cut.

And there was beginning to be a feeling of restlessness, the unformulated knowledge that he must be setting about his business, that there were things he had to do. There was money to be won, capital to be earned. And there was the need for practice….

It was several days later that he got into a poker game, got into it because he was becoming desperate for action. It seemed impossible to locate a pool game that had any chance of becoming worthwhile.

It was in the middle of an afternoon. He was in the little poolroom near the Loop, on Parmenter Street, trying to find some kind of game, any game at all. There was nothing doing, nothing whatever. There were only four men in the pool-playing part of the place, and all of them knew him. He offered to play one of them a handicap game where he would shoot with one hand in his pocket—jack-up pool—while the other man shot the usual way. The man laughed, pleasantly enough, and shook his head. “You’re outta my league, mister.”

The door to the back room was open and Eddie wandered back, not thinking of anything in particular, feeling disgusted with himself, irritated. He felt, for a minute, like giving the whole thing up for the day and going back to Sarah’s apartment and drinking with her. But there was something about that idea that made him uneasy. He looked around the room he was in; it was the first time he had been back there. Five men were sitting around a circular table covered with the faded green felt that could only have been a worn-out pool cloth, quietly playing cards. There were no other chairs in the room. He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall.

The other men seemed hardly to notice his presence, and he watched them idly. It did not seem to be a very interesting game. The limit was fifty cents; and the bets were not running very high or very fast. But one of the men in the game caught Eddie’s attention. There was something vaguely familiar about his face—although it was a totally unremarkable face—and the way he played poker seemed interesting. One man in the game was drinking whiskey from a highball glass; two had coffee cups in front of them; but this man had a glass of milk on the table, and he would sip from it carefully after every hand. Also, although he did nothing sensational, he seemed to be quietly winning; and the other men, very terse with one another, spoke to him with respect. They called him Bert.

He sat upright, straight in his chair, a fairly small man of normal build, maybe a little heavy around the waist, although that appearance could have been caused by his sitting. His features were regular, slightly womanish if anything, for his skin was fair, and his cheeks mildly pink. His hair was brown, very fine, and freshly trimmed. He wore steel-rimmed glasses. There was something prim about him, about the set of his pale, thin mouth and the careful, almost prissy, way he handled the cards. And, although the face was ordinary, there was something very odd about it that puzzled Eddie until he realized that Bert’s hair was so fine that he seemed not to have eyebrows.

He had not intended to get in the game—he knew very little about poker—but when one of the players quit, complaining that he had to meet his wife, Eddie found himself slipping into the empty chair and calmly asking for chips. He immediately found himself in possession of the first two winning hands: two little pairs followed by an eight-high straight. For a moment he suspected a hustle; but he knew enough about poker to be able to discount that after a few minutes’ careful watching; and he quickly became wrapped up in the game, enjoying what was his first action in several days. But he played wildly, lost a few critical hands, and, when the game broke up at supper-time—it seemed to be an extraordinarily casual game compared with the poker he had known before—he had lost twenty dollars, which he could not afford. Bert, who had been quiet and meticulous throughout, had won about forty or fifty, as well as Eddie could estimate, since he had started playing.

The other men left the poolroom, but Bert went into the front and seated himself at the bar, and when Eddie started to leave—the pool tables were now empty—he said, affably, “Have a drink?”

Eddie felt a little irritation in his voice. “I thought you only drank milk.”

Bert pursed his lips. Then he smiled. “Only when I’m working.” He made what seemed for him an ambitious gesture, making his voice friendly. “Sit down. I owe you a drink anyway.”

Eddie sat down on a stool beside him. “What makes you owe me a drink?”

Bert peered at him through the glasses, inquiringly. It struck Eddie that probably he was near-sighted. “I’ll tell you about it sometime,” he said.

Irritated by this, Eddie changed the subject. “So why drink milk?”

Bert asked the bartender for two whiskies, specifying a brand, the kind of glass, and the number of ice cubes, without consulting Eddie. Then he peered at him again, apparently to give thought, now that that was taken care of, to his question. “I like milk,” he said. “It’s good for you.” The bartender set glasses in front of them on the bar and dropped in ice cubes. “Also, if you make money gambling, you keep a clear head.” He looked at Eddie intently. “You start drinking whiskey gambling and it gives you an excuse for losing. That’s something you don’t need, an excuse for losing.”

There was something cranky, fanatical, about the serious, lip-pursing way that Bert spoke, and it made Eddie uneasy. The words, he knew, were directed at him; but he did not like the sound of them and he did not let himself reach for their meaning. The bartender had finished with the drinks and Bert paid for them—giving the exact change. Eddie lifted his and said, “Cheers.” Bert said nothing and they both sipped silently for a few minutes. The bartender—the old, wrinkled man who was also rackboy, bookmaker and manager—went back to his chair and his reveries, whatever they were. There was no one else in the place. Some broad puffs of hot air came from the open doorway, but little else; nothing seemed to be going on in the street. A cop ambled by the door, lost in thought. Eddie looked at his wrist watch. Seven o’clock. Would Sarah feel like eating now? Probably not.

He looked at Bert and, abruptly, remembered the question that had been on his mind, hazily, all afternoon. “Where have I seen you before?” he asked.

Bert went on sipping his drink, not looking at him. “At Bennington’s. The time you hooked Minnesota Fats and threw him away.”

That was it, of course. He must have been one of the faces in the crowd. “You a friend of Minnesota Fats?” Eddie said it a little contemptuously.

“In a way.” Bert smiled faintly, as if pleased with himself for some obscure reason. “You might say we went to school together.”

“He’s a poker player too?”

“Not exactly.” Bert looked at him, still smiling. “But he knows how to win. He’s a real winner.”

“Look,” Eddie said, suddenly angry, “so I’m a loser; is that it? You can quit talking like Charlie Chan; you want to laugh at me, that’s your privilege. Go ahead and laugh.” He did not like this leaving-the-fact-unnamed kind of talk. But hadn’t he been thinking that way himself, for a week or more—leaving the fact unnamed? But what was the fact, the one he wasn’t naming? He finished his drink quickly, ordered another.

Bert said, “That isn’t what I meant. What I meant was, that was the first time in ten years Minnesota Fats’ been hooked. Really hooked.”

The thought pacified Eddie considerably. It pleased him; maybe he had scored some sort of victory after all. “That a fact?” he said.

“That’s a fact.” Bert seemed to be loosening up. He had ordered another whiskey and was starting on it. “You had him hooked. Before you lost your head.”

“I got drunk.”

Bert looked incredulous. Then he laughed—or, rather, chuckled—softly. “Sure,” he said, “you got drunk. You got the best excuse in the world for losing. It’s no trouble at all, losing. When you got a good excuse.”

Eddie looked at him, levelly. “That’s a lot of crap.”

Bert ignored this. “You lost your head and grabbed the easy way out. I bet you had fun, losing your head. It’s always nice to feel the risks fall off your back. And winning; that can be heavy on your back too, like a monkey. You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse. Then, afterward, all you got to do is learn to feel sorry for yourself—and lots of people learn to get their kicks that way. It’s one of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry.” Bert’s face broke into an active grin. “A sport enjoyed by all. Especially the born losers.”

It did not make very much sense; but it made enough, dimly, to make him angry again, even though the whiskey was now filtering through his empty stomach, placating him, busily solving his problems—the old ones and the ones yet to come. “I made a mistake. I got drunk.”

“You got more than drunk. You lost your head.” Bert was pushing now, in a kind of delicate, controlled way. “Some people lose their heads cold sober. Cards, dice, pool; it makes no difference. You want to make a living that way, you want to be a winner, you got to keep your head. And you got to remember that there’s a loser somewhere in you, whining at you, and you got to learn to cut his water off. Otherwise you better get a steady job.”

“Okay,” Eddie said. “Okay. You win. I’ll think about it.” He did not intend to think about it; he wanted to shut Bert up, vaguely aware that the man, ordinarily quiet, was loosening himself from some kind of tension, some kind of personal fight of his own, was sticking pins into him, Eddie, to drive out his own private devil. And he had thought about it enough already.

Bert had finished his second drink and was saying, “So what do you do now?”

“What do you think? I hustle up enough capital so I can play him again. And this time I leave the bottle and concentrate on what I’m doing.”

Bert peered at him, not smiling this time. “There’s plenty of other ways to lose. You can find one easy.”

“What if I’m not looking?”

“You will be. Probably.” Bert waved—an incomplete, supercilious wave—at the bartender, signaling for another. “I don’t think you’ll be ready to play Fats again for ten years.” His voice sounded prissy, smug, as he said it.

Eddie looked at him, astonished. “What do you mean, ten years? You saw me hook him before.”

“And I saw you let him go, too.”

“Sure. And I learned something. I’ll know better next time.”

“You probably won’t. And you think Fats didn’t learn something too?”

Somehow, he hadn’t thought of that one before. “Okay. Maybe he did.” The bartender was pouring another drink. Eddie took out a cigarette, offered one to Bert. Bert shook his head. “And maybe he learned the wrong things. Maybe he thinks the next time I play him I’ll get drunk again and throw away the game. Maybe I wanted him to learn that.” That was a fantastic lie, and he realized it even as he said it.

Bert’s look became mildly contemptuous. “If you think that’s right you’ll never learn a thing. How many times do I have to say it, it wasn’t the whiskey that beat you? I know it, you know it, Fats knows it.”

Eddie knew now, what he meant; but he persisted in not understanding him. “You think he shoots better than I do, is that it? You got a right to think that.”

Bert had got a pack of potato chips from a rack on the counter. He chewed on one of these, nibbling at it thoughtfully, like a careful, self-conscious mouse. Eddie noticed that his teeth were very even, bright, like a movie star’s. Then Bert said, “Eddie, I don’t think there’s a pool player living that shoots better straight pool than I saw you shoot last week at Bennington’s.” He pushed the rest of the potato chip past his thin lips, into the pretty teeth. “You got a talent.”

This was pleasant to hear, even in its context. Eddie had hardly been aware of how impoverished his vanity was. But he tried to make his tone of voice wry. “So I got a talent,” he said. “Then what beat me?”

Bert pulled another potato chip from the bag, offered him one, and then said, his voice now offhand, casual, “Character.”

Eddie laughed lightly. “Sure,” he said. “Sure.”

Bert’s voice suddenly returned to its prissy, schoolteacherish tone. “You’re goddamn right I’m sure. Everybody’s got talent. I got talent. But you think you can play big money straight pool—or poker—for forty straight hours on nothing but talent?” He leaned toward Eddie, peering at him again, nearsightedly, through the thick, steel-rimmed glasses. “You think they call Minnesota Fats the Best in the Country just because he’s got talent? Or because he can do trick shots?” He pulled back from Eddie and took his drink in hand, looking now very pompous. “Minnesota Fats,” he said, “has got more character in one finger than you got in your whole goddamn skinny body.” Bert looked away from him. “He drank as much whiskey as you did.”

The truth of what Bert was saying was so forceful that it took Eddie a moment to drive it from his mind, to explain it away. But even this was hard to do, for Eddie had a kind of hard, central core of honesty that was difficult for him to deal with sometimes—a kind of embarrassing awareness that only a few people are afflicted with. But he managed to avoid the fact, to avoid capitulation to what Bert was saying, that he, Eddie, was—simply enough—not man enough to beat a man like Fats. But, not knowing what else to say, he said, aware that it was feeble, “Maybe Fats knows how to drink.”

Bert would not let him go now, knew that he had him. Eddie became abruptly aware that Bert talked like he played poker, with a kind of quiet, strong—very strong—pushing. “You’re goddamn right he knows how,” Bert said softly. “And you think that’s a talent, too? Knowing how to drink whiskey? You think Minnesota Fats was born knowing how to drink?”

“Okay. Okay.” What did Bert want him to do? Prostrate himself on the floor? “So what do I do now? Go home?”

And Bert seemed to relax, knowing he had scored, had pushed his way through Eddie’s consciousness and through his defenses—although Eddie still only partly understood all of what Bert had said, and was already prepared to rationalize the truth out of what he did understand. But Bert had suddenly quit pushing, and seemed now to be merely relaxing with his drink. “That’s your problem,” he said.

“Then I’ll stay here.” For the first time in several hours Eddie grinned. The conversation seemed to have become normal now, the usual kind of understandable conversation, where the challenges are so deeply hidden or buried that you only accept them when you feel like taking a challenge, and then only to the degree that you choose. Eddie liked things to be that way. “I’ll stay until I hustle up enough to play Minnesota Fats again. Maybe by then I’ll develop myself some character.”

Bert’s voice was amused, but not pushing, “Maybe by then you’ll die of old age.” He paused. “How much do you think you’re gonna need?”

“A thousand. Maybe more.”

Bert set his drink down. “No. Three thousand at least. He’ll start you out at five hundred a game.” His tone was analytical now, detached and speculative. “And he’s gonna beat your ass at first, because that’s the way he plays when he comes up against a man who already knows the way the game is. He’ll beat you flat, four or five games. Maybe more, depending on how steady your nerve is.” He hesitated, “And he might—he just might—be a little scared of you. And that could change things. But I wouldn’t count on it.” He began chewing another potato chip. “And, either way, he’ll beat your ass at first.”

“How do you know? Nobody knows that much.” There was something preposterous about this little prissy god sitting beside him, passing judgment on him, now affably and dispassionately. “I might beat him the first five games.”

“Sure you might. But you won’t. And how do I know?” Bert raised a finger significantly and pointed towards the door. Eddie turned, looking out. “See that Imperial out there? That’s mine.” Parked across the street was a long, new-looking black car, with large white-wall tires. “I like that car and I get a new one every year because I make it my business to know what people like Minnesota Fats—or like you—are gonna do.” Then he smiled, with an afterthought. “And if I hadn’t already paid for it I could of with the money I won in side bets. When you two were playing last week.”

For a moment Eddie felt himself angry, remembering now for the first time the neat little man who was taking bets while the games were starting. Then he grinned, sipping his drink. “I guess you owe me these drinks after all.”

“I told you I did.” Bert gave his rare grin again. And, with the whiskey, Eddie began to feel a pleasant sense about Bert. Bert was smart; he knew the answers. Now he was saying, “And maybe I can help you out,” almost as if he had at the same time begun to feel friendly. “With that three thousand.”

But Eddie hesitated. Maybe there was an angle. “Why?” he said.

“Ten reasons. Maybe fifteen.” He smiled, “Also, there’s something in it for me.”

Eddie grinned back at him. “That’s what I figured. Go ahead.”

“Well,” Bert said, “I’ve been thinking about a game for you. A little game of pool, with a man named Findlay…”

Eddie had the bartender give him two hard-boiled eggs on a dish with some soda crackers. He peeled the eggs, made a little white mount of salt on the plate and began eating, while Bert told him about James Findlay, in carefully phrased detail. Findlay lived in Kentucky, in Lexington, and had a fame that was becoming wide-spread in gambling circles. Once a poker player notorious for his ability to lose, he had recently turned to pool, at which he was even more of a born loser. James, it seemed, was very rich; he owned twenty per cent of a tobacco company, through the graces of God and a dead aunt. He also owned a large house, and in the basement of this house he had a pool table. He seemed to enjoy thinking of himself as a hustler, a quaint aristocrat who took on all the passing hustlers in the genteel quiet of his own basement, while he smoked cork-tipped cigarettes and drank eight-year-old bourbon and invariably lost his ass. Fortunately, he apparently never kept books. And, fortunately for himself, he seldom let himself lose more than a few thousand. Also, he was a reasonably good player; it took a certain amount of skill to beat him—more skill than that of the average second-rate hustler. And he played no one but the best. Eddie found all of this interesting; Bert told it well and with the evident relish of a born arranger, a matchmaker.

After Bert was finished and Eddie had eaten the eggs, Eddie said, “How do we get to Lexington?”

“In my car.”

“Fair enough.” It would certainly be an improvement over the old Packard—although he would have preferred traveling with Charlie. “What’s your percentage?”

Bert blinked at him. “Seventy-five.”

Eddie set down the napkin he had been wiping his mouth with. “What did you say?”

“Seventy-five. I get seventy-five per cent. You get twenty-five.”

That was impossible. Fifty-fifty maybe, at the most… “What do you… Who do you think you are, General Motors? That’s a very large slice.”

Bert’s smile vanished abruptly. “What do you mean, a large slice? What kind of odds do you think are right for these days anyway? I’m touting you on this game; that’s worth ten per cent anywhere by itself. I’m putting up the paper. I’m supplying transportation. And I’m putting up my time, which isn’t exactly worthless. For this I get a seventy-five per cent return on my money. If you win.”

Eddie looked at him scornfully. “You think I can lose?”

Bert’s voice was calm. “I never saw you do anything else.”

“You saw me beat Minnesota Fats for eighteen thousand.”

There was irritation in Bert’s voice again. “Look,” he said, “you want to hustle pool, don’t you? This game isn’t like football. Nobody pays you for yardage. When you hustle you keep score real simple. After the game is over you count your money. That’s the way you find out who was best. The only way.”

“Okay,” Eddie said, “Then why back me at all? Back yourself. Find you a big, fat poker game and get rich. You know all the angles.”

Bert smiled again. “I’m already rich, I told you. And poker happens to be slow these days.”

“You probably picked up fifty this afternoon.”

“That’s business. I want action. And one thing I think you’re good for is action. Besides, like I say, you got talent.”

“Thanks.”

“So we go to Lexington?”

Eddie looked at him. It occurred to him that Bert had probably been working up to this since he had first offered to buy him a drink. “We don’t.”

Bert shrugged his shoulders. “Suit yourself.”

“I will. Maybe if you cut that slice down to bite size we might talk some more.”

“Then we won’t talk. I don’t make bad bets.”

Eddie started to get up. “Thanks for the drinks,” he said.

“Wait a minute.” Bert looked at him, standing now. “What are you gonna do about that money?”

“I’ll scuffle around. Somebody told me about a room called Arthur’s where there’s action.”

Bert looked concerned. “Stay out of that place,” he said. “It’s not your kind of room. They’ll eat you alive.”

Eddie grinned down at him. Bert seemed very small from where he was standing, next to him and over him. “When did you adopt me?” he said.

Bert looked back at him, peering at him closely again, through the thick glasses. “I don’t know when it was,” he said, quietly.