The Hustler

5

Eddie sat on the edge of the bed, dressed only in his expensive shorts, in which he had slept. His bed was beside the window of the room and he was looking out, into the afternoon sunshine and into a tangle of the flat sides of buildings. Behind him, Charlie was still sleeping, his face, even in sleep, comic and impassive.

Eddie lit a cigarette, in a more leisurely way than he usually lit them. He felt good. He had just awakened from a long, mildly alcoholic sleep; but his mind had been instantly clear, the meaning of the time and the place understood.

He looked around the hotel room. It was very clean, modern-looking, with blond furniture and pastel walls; and this pleased him. He began whistling through his teeth.

Then he went to the bathroom and took a hot shower, washed his hair, scrubbed his fingernails with a pink nylon brush that he carried in his shaving kit, shaved, sat on the edge of the bathtub and began shining his shoes.

Charlie padded into the bathroom, wearing pajamas, and seated himself on the commode. He blinked at Eddie a minute, and at length spoke. “For Chrissake who—who else in God’s green world in the morning would sit on the bathtub, naked as sin and with his ribs showing, and polish his goddamn shoes?” Then he fell into a classic pose of contemplation, elbows on knees.

Eddie finished with the shoebrush. “Me. And it’s afternoon. Two o’clock in the afternoon.”

“Okay,” Charlie said. “Okay, so it’s afternoon and that makes it just fine to parade your anatomy and shine your shoes in the bathtub. Okay. Now get out. I want privacy.”

Eddie picked up his shoes and walked out of the bathroom, intentionally not closing the door. Charlie said nothing, but managed to reach a fat foot out far enough from his throne to slam it shut.

Eddie put on a pair of clean shorts and sat back down on the bed. Then he called out, as casually and as jokingly as he could, “How much money am I gonna win today, Charlie?”

He hadn’t expected an answer; but he waited for one. Then he said, louder, “Who’s gonna beat me?”

This, too, got no answer. Not from the sitting Buddha. But he felt high, and he felt like talking, like needling Charlie. He knew he had talked it up much too much already; but he wanted to talk it up more, wanted Charlie to try to puncture his ego for him more, wanted to laugh at Charlie and to know, too, that everything that Charlie said about him was right.

“What do you think Bennington’s boys are gonna do when they see me?” He leaned back on the bed, grinning; but his grin was a little tense, strained.

Charlie opened the door, waddled in, and began searching through his suitcase. “I already told you what I think about Bennington’s,” he said.

“Sure. But what about Bennington’s boys? George the Fairy? Fats? They couldn’t of helped but hear of me. And somebody’ll finger me if they don’t know me when they see me. What’s gonna happen?”

Charlie found his toothbrush in the bag and held it up, pulling the lint out of it. “Look,” he said, “you know as much about that as I do. And you know more about hustling than I ever did.”

“Sure, but…”

“Look, Eddie.” Charlie stood up, holding the toothbrush. The combination of pajamas and toothbrush made him look ridiculous, like a fat child in an advertisement. “This is all your idea. I said I’d take you around on the road, because I been on the road myself. And I taught you all I knew about scuffling in the little rooms—and it didn’t take me a week to do that. But I didn’t say I could steer you in this town. I heard of Minnesota Fats for fifteen years. I heard him called the best straight-pool player in the country for fifteen years, but I wouldn’t know him on the street if I saw him. And I don’t know how good he is—all I know is his reputation. For Chrissake,” he began heading back for the bathroom, “I don’t know yet how good you are.”

Eddie watched him walk toward the bathroom and open the door. Then he said, softly, “Well, I don’t either, Charlie.”