The Color of Money

by Walter Tevis

  Fats stepped up to the table with composure; Eddie was thinking of what Fats had said and did poorly on the lag. He left the cue ball six inches from the rail while Fats’ stopped a quarter inch from it. He would have to break them.

  This table was a foot longer than the one in Miami; the distance made a difference. He had to squint to see the edge of the corner ball.

  He managed a decent break but left the cue ball a foot away from the end rail. When Fats stepped up and shot, the cue ball came out of the bottom corner and rolled back up to freeze itself. Eddie concentrated on trying to return the safety, squinting hard and stroking with care, but he hit the corner ball wrong and spread the rack open. The audience was silent. It was a bad shot—embarrassingly bad.

  Fats began to make balls. He ran out the fourteen on the table, breaking apart clusters with caroms from the white ball, and left himself in perfect position for the break shot, with the fifteenth ball near the rack and the angle perfect. Eddie looked down at his hands holding the Balabushka while the referee racked and then Fats broke, smashing the rack apart. Eddie tried to tell himself that it didn’t mean anything, but it wasn’t true. He felt each ball Fats pocketed as though it were a rude finger poking him in the chest. Fats’ position play was flawless and he moved nimbly around the table, calling out to the referee softly, “Seven ball, corner pocket,” and “Thirteen ball, side pocket,” and so on, until fourteen balls were gone and the only colored ball left on the table was the one he had chosen a dozen shots back to leave for the break. And when he broke them open this time, sending balls spinning across the table with a solid, sharp stroke, there was loud applause.

  Fats kept it up for another rack, and another and then another. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes a player ran the whole hundred and fifty balls; it seemed now that Fats was headed that way. He had been good in the parking lot at Miami, but in here he was superb. And Eddie felt he was going crazy waiting to shoot.

  Finally, after running eighty-six, Fats got a bad roll and was forced to bank on the three ball. He aimed carefully and shot; the ball rolled across the table, hit the rail and came back to miss the pocket by a fraction of an inch. The table was wide open.

  When Eddie stepped up he could see there were shots all over and a ball well-positioned for the upcoming break. It was a splendid lie, but he felt awkward looking at it. Had Fats missed on purpose? He tried to dismiss the idea, concentrating on the order the balls should be made in. A part of his mind did that automatically, the way a bank teller counted money. The twelve would go in the corner, with the cue following down for the nine, there on the bottom rail. Then the three, fourteen and six. Finally the eleven, so the cue would sit a foot below the side pocket on the break. He would break from the pale blue two ball near the rack. He did not look at Fats but bent to the table, drew back his stick and shot the twelve in. It fell neatly, but the cue didn’t follow it far enough; he had to cut the nine a little more than was comfortable. This left him a bad angle on the three and he had to change his plan, shooting the six in first. He managed to recover and get the three in next. That was better. He ran the rest out and left the two, with his cue ball exactly where he wanted it.

  While the referee was racking, Eddie walked to the corner of the stage where Fats was sitting. “Did you mean to miss that bank shot?” he said softly. He had intended his voice to be friendly; it surprised him with its tightness.

  Fats stared at him a moment. Then he said, “Why should you care?” and looked away. Eddie stood there feeling foolish for a moment, and went back to the table. He felt impotent and angry. He wanted to hit someone.

  The lie was perfect. The two was easy, and the natural angle of the cue ball would take it into the side of the rack to break them open for the next shot. Eddie tightened his jaw, bent down slowly, pulled the butt of the Balabushka back farther than usual and slammed into the cue ball. The cue ball smashed into the two, and the two whacked into the corner pocket, vibrated back and forth and came back out onto the table. He had shot too hard. The cue ball buried itself in the rack like a small, furious animal and spread the balls wide.

  It was horrible. He stared for a moment and then turned away. He walked over to the corner, not looking at Fats as they passed each other. He seated himself, holding the stick loosely at its joint with its butt on the floor beside him. Fats began running the balls.

  Eddie tried to look away a few times but it was no good; his eyes were drawn back to the table in front of him where the fat man kept moving crisply from one side to the other, barely straightening up between shots, making them one after another, clicking them into the pockets and always, always playing perfect, dead-ball position.

  In a monotone, the referee kept counting: “ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one-oh-one…” And then it became “one forty-nine” and, on a simple pocketing of the seven ball in the side, “One fifty.” Suddenly there was loud applause. The score was one fifty to nine. Eddie began unscrewing his cue.

  Chapter Three

  When he came into the kitchen, Jean was at the sink putting vitamin pills into little egg cups, and she didn’t turn around. “I’m giving you four C’s, Eddie, because you smoked so much last night.” Jean was big on health. On the counter by the blender sat jars of lecithin granules, brewer’s yeast and desiccated liver, together with a large bottle of safflower oil. During their first month together, it was croissants and scrambled eggs with chives; now it was vitamin pills and instant coffee.

  He walked into the little living room with its rock maple furniture, and raised the Venetian blinds. The morning sun was already ferociously bright on the suburban lawns; it would be another hot day. Across the street their Pakistani neighbor came striding from the front porch of his brick ranch house to the Toyota at the curb, on his way to the laundromat he managed. Before the poolroom closed, Eddie and he would sometimes nod amiably to each other in the mornings—neighbors off to work at the same time. Now that was over; Eddie’s working day would consist of one phone call. The Pakistani started his car and drove off. Eddie stood at the window, thinking now of Minnesota Fats. One fifty to nine.

  Jean came in with the vitamin pills and a plastic mug of Folger’s Instant. “Maybe you’ll beat him in Chicago next week,” she said.

  Eddie took the vitamins and said nothing.

  “You looked terrible last night,” she said. “You shouldn’t have stayed up so late.”

  “I couldn’t sleep. It hurts like hell to lose like that.”

  “It isn’t that important, Eddie.”

  “If it isn’t,” Eddie said, “what is?”

  “I’ve got to go to work. I’m already late.”

  ***

  Donahue had another sex-book author—a woman who talked about freeing yourself up and discarding the old tapes. When Donahue began working the audience with his coy smiles and earnestness, Eddie turned it off and called Enoch’s office. Enoch Wax ran Mid-American Cable TV from an office downtown. He never returned calls.

  “Mr. Wax isn’t in right now,” the secretary said.

  “What about my check?” Eddie said.

  “Mr. Wax didn’t say anything about a check, Mr. Felson. But he did say that Chicago has cancelled. They decided to use Rich Little for the program, instead. The impersonator.”

  “I know who Rich Little is. Have you called Fats?”

  “I left a message on his answering machine. If you’ll come in Monday afternoon, we’ll be running the tapes from Miami. Mr. Wax will be in then.”

  “I’ll be there,” Eddie said.

  Without Chicago, there would be ten days until the next match in Denver. Eddie found the Yellow Pages, looked up “Eye Doctors” and was referred to “Ophthalmologists.” He picked one on Main Street, and called.

  ***

  The doctor put drops in his eyes that made him squint and, eventually, see watery haloes tinged with iridescence. In the trick chair that was uncomfortably like a dentist’s, Eddie peered through eyecups at blac
k letters on the far wall while the doctor clicked circles of glass into slots, making the letters go from black to gray and back again, making them elongate or compress, blur or sharpen. He chatted of the upcoming racing session at Keeneland as he slipped disks in and out of the machine, interrupting himself with questions about the clarity of what Eddie saw. There was some randomness to the progression, but gradually the white square with its letters became sharper, until the black edges had a delineation that was remarkable. In Eddie’s stomach was a sudden hope: he had forgotten how clearly a man could see.

  “That’ll do it,” the doctor said.

  “When do I get the glasses?” Eddie said.

  “Eight days.” The doctor swung the machine away from Eddie’s face and Eddie blinked.

  “Can’t I get them sooner?”

  “Come in Monday.”

  ***

  The red cloth on the table was even redder on the TV monitor, but you could see the balls well enough. Fats was shooting, and for a while his large body blocked the view of the balls—until the picture switched to the other camera. Eddie lit a cigarette, leaned back and tried to relax. It was the first he’d seen of the tapes.

  “I’m really sorry about the money, Eddie,” Enoch said. “Wednesday for sure.”

  Eddie said nothing. He caught a quick shot of himself sitting and felt a strange embarrassment. There he sat, doing nothing, not even at the moment watching Fats shoot pool. It was the first time he had ever seen himself on television.

  Fats kept shooting for what seemed an intolerable length of time. In the TV office, Eddie sipped coffee from a Styrofoam cup, smoked cigarettes and waited to see himself. He remembered the shot Fats would miss on—the three ball, a long cut into the bottom corner. The office was small and disorderly. There was no sound yet on the videotape, and the only noise was from the air conditioner in the window.

  He got his glasses out and tried them carefully. They felt strange sitting on his nose and digging slightly into his ears, but the picture on the screen became clearer when he put them on.

  Then Fats stepped up to the three ball and Eddie leaned forward in his chair to watch. Fats missed, but barely. It did not look as though he was doing it deliberately.

  On the screen Fast Eddie stepped up. Looking at himself on television, Eddie was shocked at his inelegance, compared to Fats. He could have been the older man. The TV Eddie, holding the Balabushka, hesitated over the position for a long time before bending to shoot. And when he bent, he looked stiff.

  “Well now!” Enoch said from his seat next to Eddie’s. “There you are.”

  Eddie said nothing, watching himself with dismay.

  ***

  He went directly from Enoch’s little suite of offices to the shopping center and parked where he had always parked when the place was open for business. The big sign was down now, leaving rough holes in the concrete-block facade, and there was a card reading THIS SPACE FOR RENT on one window. The door key was still on the ring with his car keys. He opened up and flipped on the lights. It was a shock. There were only seven tables. Numbers Five and Nine had red tags with the word SOLD. The cash register and the time clock were gone, but the water cooler was still there; after turning on the air conditioner he took a long drink. Then he folded the dust cloth off Number Four, got a box of balls and spread them out on the green surface. He took the Balabushka from its case, screwed the two pieces together and set the assembled cue on the table. He slipped his glasses from his pocket and held them up to the light; they seemed clean enough. He put them on and picked up his cue. It was three o’clock in the afternoon.

  At first it was exasperating, and he thought it might be impossible. He kept looking over the frames as he shot. He tried holding his head higher, but then the frames split his vision. But he had seen other players shoot with glasses on; it could be done.

  He held his head even higher, not bending down as far over the table as he was used to, and tried stroking that way. He made a few easy shots, but his neck felt stiff from it. And everything looked strange—the table seemed shorter. But the balls at the far end had a sharpness he hadn’t seen for years. He kept at it, and by four o’clock he was getting the feel. It was a matter of the way he held his head and his body.

  He remembered how awkward he had looked on television, and that had been without the glasses. He could feel the awkwardness in himself now and he hated it—he hated wearing these damned things on his face, hated the way his body felt as he bent over the table. He kept at it for the rest of the afternoon and eventually began making longer and longer runs of balls. He ended by pocketing nearly fifty without missing, cutting in several difficult ones across the entire length of the table. By that time, it was seven o’clock. Jean would be wondering where he was. He put the balls away, brushed the table, took his cue apart, turned off the air conditioner, and left.

  ***

  Six years before, to celebrate paying off the mortgage on the poolroom, Eddie and Martha went to Northern California. It was Martha’s idea; she wanted them to have the nude massage at a place she had heard of. “You’re naked,” she said, “and all you can hear is the sound of the surf.” Eddie was willing to go along. He needed a vacation from fluorescent lights and the clatter of pool balls; and he hadn’t been back to California in the twenty years since he had left, with Charlie, to try his skill on the road. They flew Supersaver to San Francisco, rented a Ford from Avis, and drove. But by that time Martha had a cold and she spent the time fussing with Kleenex and checking her watch while Eddie drove silently. He tried to ignore her. It was good to be back in California.

  His masseuse was naked too. He hadn’t expected that. They had told him to strip and then to lie on the padded bench on the wooden deck below. He was alone there on his stomach, looking out at the water, for ten minutes before she showed up. The surf was loud, and he didn’t hear her come up but only saw, sleepily, her deeply tanned body. Her hair was brown and gold and she had freckles like smashed raisins on her neck and her breasts. She was about thirty.

  “I’m Milly,” she said. “Sorry I’m late.”

  “I’ve been enjoying the sun.”

  “Do you want oil?”

  “Oil?” It sounded like a gas station.

  “Some people like to be rubbed with oil. We use Chinese sesame.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I want the whole thing.”

  She said nothing, but poured pale oil from a jar into the palm of her hand and rubbed it between her palms. Then she said, “Relax now,” and began rubbing his back.

  He closed his eyes and began to relax. It felt good. The woman’s hands were firm and practiced in what they did. She rubbed his calves in long strokes, ending with a firm squeeze at the ankles. When she bent down, he could feel the heat from her breasts at the backs of his knees. The oil felt wonderful on his skin; in direct sunlight he was feeling baked and basted. The woman was humming something softly; he could hear her between the crashings of the waves below. Martha was back at the hotel watching TV and filling herself with Dristan. It was good to be away from her for a while. Milly began squeezing his ankles harder, around the Achilles tendon; it was painful in a way, and sent little sparks into his head; but there was something remarkable about it—as though his feet were being liberated. He began to get hard.

  Milly was massaging the soles of his feet now, still humming. “Your body’s in good shape,” she said, “for a man of your age. Do you work out?”

  “Three times a week.”

  “It shows. Do you eat meat?”

  “Sure. Are you a vegetarian?”

  “I’m supposed to be. But I had salami for lunch.”

  She might fuck. But where would they go? No one else was on the little deck with them, but it was still public, and someone could come in. She was oiling his toes individually now, and running her fingers between them. He opened his eyes for a minute and looked back at her. She was facing him with her head down. Between his feet he could see the dark of her pubic
hair.

  “You’re getting turned on, aren’t you?” Her voice was matter-of-fact.

  The bright sun seemed to burn away the need for indirection. “What about you?”

  “No,” she said, finishing with his toes. A moment later she added, “I like women.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  “No it isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with it.” She began patting his feet. “Let’s talk about something else. Are you an athlete?”

  “I run a poolroom in Kentucky.”

  “Oh,” she said. “My dad has a pool table in the basement. I used to play eight-ball. It was awfully competitive. Do you play pool?”

  “Sure.”

  “Isn’t it very competitive?”

  “It’s better to win than lose.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t answer. He had heard that question before. She came alongside him now and began putting oil on the small of his back. “Who cares whether you win or lose?” she said. “What difference does it make?”

  “If you’re playing for fifty dollars a game, it makes fifty dollars’ difference.”

  “A hundred,” she said. “The difference between plus fifty and minus fifty.”

  “Be my manager,” Eddie said.

  She leaned over and began pressing hard into the muscles of his back on either side of his spine, using more oil. Several times her breasts brushed against his side. “It’s the way men want to win just to be winning,” she said. “It’s a sexual thing—like war—and there’s no end of it.”

  “Is that why you like women?”

  She laughed and rested for a minute. “No.”

  “You were being competitive when you said the difference was a hundred dollars.”

  “You’re right.” She began to knead around his spine. Her pubic hair pressed against his hip like warm bristles.