The Color of Money

by Walter Tevis

  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.”

&nbs
p; “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.

  Chapter Nine

  He lay back and tried to focus his attention on the hot water coursing across his shoulders and on the bank of ferns along the wall in front of him, but the memory of the lost match would not go away; it was in him like an infection. He could see Willy Plummer at the table making shot after shot, in control of the game, imperturbable, while he himself sat at the little table a few feet away and watched helplessly. He had never heard of Willy Plummer before. Willy Plummer was not the player that Earl Borchard or Babes Cooley were, and he dressed like a pimp. Green sharkskin pants and a gray silk shirt with brown squares on it. Narrow Italian shoes. Pale cheeks and pale hands. Plummer made the nine once on a combination that brought the bleacher crowd to its feet applauding; he made bank shots and kick-ins, sent his cue ball flying around the table to stop on a dime.

  “Don’t let it tear you apart.” It was Boomer’s voice. Eddie looked up. There stood Boomer in shorts, slightly bowlegged, a Drambuie in one hand and another drink in the other. “I brought you a Manhattan,” Boomer said.

  “The son of a bitch forgot how to miss.”

  “It happens,” Boomer said. “The best thing for it is a drink.”

  Eddie took the drink and Boomer got into the whirlpool. “The game of pool,” Boomer said, “has been the despair of my middle years. When I was twenty I thought it made me a man. I thought that beating other men at eight-ball was the meaning of life.”

  Eddie sat up and took a swallow from his drink. “Maybe you were right.”

  Boomer seated himself on the ledge beneath the water and stretched out his arms along the tiles at the side of the pool. “To tell the truth,” he said, “I’ve never found a philosophy to replace it.”

  “I haven’t learned much since I was twenty,” Eddie said. He finished the drink and set the glass on the edge of the pool. “I’ve got to practice.”

  “I’m going to the Golden Triangle,” Boomer said. “Why don’t you come along?”

  “What’s the Golden Triangle?”

  Boomer raised his eyebrows. “Where the action is.”

  Boomer, who seemed to belong in a Mack truck, drove a dusty Porsche. It was strange to be outside again, although at night the main street of Lake Tahoe was something like a casino, with the lights, and the crowd on the sidewalks. Boomer drove them a mile or so and then abruptly pulled off onto a side street and parked. Neon on a plain brick building read THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE: BILLIARDS. They walked in.

  It was a small, smoky place with eight pool tables and a short bar with beer signs behind it. At the back of the room a crowd surrounded the corner table, blocking it from view. On the one next to it, Makepiece was somberly shooting pool against someone Eddie did not recognize. Two other players from the tournament were playing bank pool on the front table. Each barstool held a man with a cue case. One of these smiled when he saw Boomer. “Hello, Boomer,” he said. “How’s the eight-ball game?”

  Boomer frowned at him. “Play you for fifty,” he said.

  The man unfastened his leather case and stood. One of the front tables was empty. They walked over to it. Boomer could not have much more than fifty dollars. He had better not lose the first game. Eddie followed and watched for a few minutes until Boomer sank the eight ball and racked them up for the next game. Eddie took two fifties out of his pocket and unobtrusively handed them to him. “Just in case,” he said, and went to the back of the room, where the crowd was. Two of the people watching recognized him and made way. He was able to push in far enough to see what was going on. Babes Cooley was bent over a shot; standing at the side of the table carrying his stick and watching was Earl Borchard. They were playing nine-ball. Both men were silent, intense, concentrated. Babes shot out the rest of the rack, pocketing the nine with care. Someone racked the balls. Eddie turned to the man next to him. “What’s the stake?”

  “Five hundred,” the man whispered.

  “For how many games?”

  “Five hundred a game.”

  Babes broke and made the nine. The man racked them again, Babes broke again, left himself snookered, played a delicate and perfect safety.

  Eddie watched for an hour, while the lead went back and forth. He felt a growing dismay. They both played beautiful pool; both were in dead stroke. But even that wasn’t so bad. What made Eddie more and more uncomfortable was that not only did both of these men look unbeatable—these kids who seemed to own the room they were in as they seemed to own the ballroom back at the hotel—but it seemed to him that they both shot pool better than Eddie himself had ever shot it. Even at his best, when he was in his twenties and pool was nearly all he knew in life.

  During the second half of the hour Borchard started pulling ahead, making the nine more frequently on the break or running the balls out, clipping them in and nudging them in, shooting fast and loose and never missing. Finally Cooley said, with uncharacteristic softness, “That’s enough for now,” and unscrewed his cue. Eddie looked at his watch. It was a little after midnight.

  As Eddie approached the front table, Boomer cut the eight into the side. He looked up to see Eddie, winked, reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a roll of money. He peeled off two hundred dollars and handed Eddie the bills. “I’m recovering my health,” he said.

  The other front table was empty now. Eddie told the man behind the bar to put him on time and then got his cue out and racked the balls for nine-ball. He broke them open and began running. It would take him five more matches to pull out of the losers’ bracket, and if he could do that he would still have to play either Cooley or Borchard. He shot hard, ramming the colored balls into the backs of the pockets. A couple of men came over, leaned against another empty table next to him and watched. He finished the balls, racked them, broke, ran them out. When he was racking again, he looked up to see Earl Borchard leaning against the other table, watching him. “You shoot them in pretty clean,” Borchard said in a country-boy voice as cold as ice.

  Eddie took the wooden rack away from the balls and slid it under the table.

  “Would you like to play nine-ball?” Borchard said politely.

  Eddie looked at him. “I don’t know.”

  “I understand you’re a straight-pool player. Maybe I could give you some weight.”

  “How much weight?”

  “I’ll play you ten to eight.”

  It was like a slap in the face. Eddie had never been offered a handicap before
in his life. “For how much?”

  “Five thousand.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Maybe your friends’ll help.”

  “What friends?”

  “Tell you what,” Brochard said, smiling coldly. “Ten to seven. How can you lose?”

  “I don’t have it,” Eddie said. The man’s smile made him furious.

  “I have.” It was another voice. Eddie looked behind him to see Gunshot Oliver. He was better dressed than he had been in New London, and did not seem drunk. He had his billfold in one hand. “I’ll back you,” he said. “I’ve seen you play nine-ball.”

  Eddie stared at him. He had thought of Gunshot as a broken-down old bum; here he was with a fat billfold, offering to put up five thousand dollars.