by Walter Tevis
“You like winning arguments.”
“I don’t bet money on them.”
“That wasn’t what we were talking about. Nobody bets money on wars either.”
“My dad did. He bet the Germans would win.”
“How’d he do?”
“Don’t be facetious.” She began rubbing his ass, gently, using more oil.
“My my!” he said.
“Enjoy,” she said.
“Let’s fuck.”
“Come on,” she said. “Take it easy.”
He rolled over on his back, carefully so as not to fall off the bench. “Come on, Milly,” he said, “you can bar that door.”
“I told you,” she said, “I like women.” She looked thoughtful.
“Give me a break,” Eddie said. “Let’s don’t compete about this.”
“Well,” she said and smiled slightly. She reached out and took it in her hand. He had to hold himself back. “That’s the ticket,” he said. “Climb on.”
“I don’t even know your name.”
“Eddie Felson,” he said quickly. “They call me Fast Eddie.”
“Fast Eddie!” she said. “My God, Daddy used to talk about you.”
“Come on,” he said. “Don’t just stand there.”
“Fast Eddie,” she said. “Jesus Christ!” And then, “I don’t have my diaphragm.”
“Then use your goddamned hand,” he said. “Use the Chinese oil.”
Suddenly she laughed and squeezed him. “I can do better than that.” She bent down to him.
“There you go,” he said. She put her free hand under him, moving her head up and down slowly, more or less in rhythm with the sound of the surf below them.
It was wonderful, and he took her address and phone number afterward, but he never called. It was the last time sex had been really good. On the way home from California he decided he needed a mistress, but it was years before he found one. And nothing with Jean ever turned out as simple and pleasant as it had been that day at Esalen with Milly. Nothing.
***
He had not realized before that day at Esalen how middle-class he had become, how his life had consisted of the business and the apartment and the marriage and the slow moving toward the grave. Cigarettes, Manhattans before bedtime, art posters on the family-room walls, Time magazine, anger buried so deeply that it seemed more a part of the rooms he lived in than in himself; television. Martha wanted a Mr. Coffee and he wanted something from her, something sexual but more lasting than sex; and he swore at her that they had two coffee makers already and what they drank was instant. There were two toasters. The freezer was full of hard blocks of meat wrapped in Reynolds Wrap. To the front door came magazines that were never read, along with offers of bargain rates for new magazines, discounts on photo developing, discounts on travel. There were telephones in every room, even in the bathroom by the toilet, and there was no one he wanted to call.
When he found Jean after twenty years of marriage, he thought he had found a way out of the boredom and drift. But he was wrong. The affair was tepid from the start; Jean’s life was, if anything, narrower and less interesting than his. The principal effect of the relationship resulted when Martha found out about it. When she said, “I want a divorce,” he hardly blinked; his soul yielded Martha her point without protest. At the moment, the only difficulty he foresaw was in disentangling with Jean, who bored him by now as much as Martha did. It was only the next day, when Martha told him she had seen a lawyer and intended to keep their apartment for herself, that he realized he needed Jean. At least until he could find a place to stay.
He had lived a life without drama for twenty years, remembering from time to time the games of straight pool he had played as a young hustler—some of them filling the entire night until sunlight came shockingly through poolroom blinds and lay unwanted on the chalk-smeared green of the table. Urbana, Illinois. Fresno and Stockton in California. Johnson City. Valley Falls. Carson. Poolrooms with eight-by-ten tables and men holding bottles in paper sacks—men lined up to watch him as he played the local pool-shark through the night. One pocket at forty a game. Fourteen-and-one straight pool for a hundred. Two hundred. Sometimes a thousand. A cone of yellow light hung above the table and the colored balls rolled harshly on the worn green, plopping into leather pockets. Paper money. Wrinkled old tens and hard-edged new twenties, jammed into the table’s side or corner pocket and tamped down by the heavy balls dropping on it. After he ran the final rack of straight pool or drilled in the winning ball in one-pocket or stiffened the final ball up the rail in a game of banks, he walked to where the money was, taking out the bills a few at a time and smoothing them. Then he folded and pushed them down in the front pocket of his pants, feeling the pressure against the top of his leg while he watched someone racking the balls up for the next game. A night in some small town could pass like that and seem a matter of minutes. Or in the bigger places there might be a crowd with college students in it—girls sometimes, trying to look knowing despite the innocent makeup they wore, girls in tweed skirts and angora sweaters. That would be 1960. Sometimes the man he played—in Columbus, Ohio, or Lexington, Kentucky, or in Chicago—would carry a name Eddie had heard for years but never before attached to a face: Shotgun Harry, Flyboy, Machine Gun Lou, Detroit Whitey, Cornbread Red. And then, in Chicago, at Bennington’s in 1961, Minnesota Fats. They had played for over thirty hours, and for the first time Eddie lost. Up to then he had beat them all—all the local favorites, all the resonant old names heard in the poolroom in his teens where he had played five or six hours a day during his last years of school. He had beaten them all and earned his own name doing it: Fast Eddie. Because he liked raising the bet. He had come back and beaten Fats—beaten him until Fats quit with a shrug of the shoulders and with words that Eddie would never forget, no matter what else he might forget in the life that kept passing less and less intelligibly before him: “I can’t beat you, Fast Eddie.”
And then Bert had told him he was no longer on his own. From now on, if he played he would be backed by Bert’s people and would share what he won with them.
That was the end of it, of the all-night pool with strangers, the travelling, the hotels and the sleeping all day. He never saw Bert again. He dropped him from his life as he had dropped the crippled Sarah in that same summer of his twenty-eighth year, in Chicago. Somebody had spoken of a poolroom for sale in Kentucky, and borrowing from Martha, he made a down payment, changing his life with a signature and the seal of a notary in a bright suburban bank. The lease on the apartment, and the marriage, followed like the sequence of shots, unquestioned, in a game of nine-ball.
Sometimes it all came back and he would feel again the late-night vigor from the old poolrooms and the bedazzled love for his old skill at the table. His win over Fats had become known around the country and, a few years after it, some fat pool player whom Eddie had never heard of started appearing on television. Watching the man shoot, Eddie was reminded of Fats and of the night he played him. It came back to him with a tightness in his stomach and a prickling of the hairs on the back of his neck. It was a Sunday afternoon and the poolroom was closed. When the television show ended with trick shots, Eddie went to the poolroom to play straight pool alone for hours, missing supper doing it, playing at first with the old excitement, remembering players like One-Eyed Tony and Wimpy Lassiter and Weenie Beenie; and then picturing Fats, silent and heavy and nimble, pocketing balls like a gross dancer. After hours of making shots in the closed poolroom, on the center table, alone, Eddie finally permitted the sensation that had nagged him since watching the stupid show on television. It was a feeling he could not bring himself to name. It was grief. The best part of him had died and he grieved for it.
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 w
hite 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.”