The Color of Money

by Walter Tevis

  “If you win,” Oliver said, clearing his throat, “I’ll split with you. If you lose you don’t lose anything.”

  Other people in the room had become silent, and what games were going on had stopped. Boomer was walking over to see, cue in hand.

  Eddie did not want to play Borchard, but there was no way to back out. He looked at him, at his heavy mustache, his chalk-smeared white shirt, his small hands. No one was unbeatable. “Okay,” he said.

  “Let’s lag for the break,” Borchard said.

  Eddie won the lag and smashed them open hard, but the nine didn’t fall. He ran five balls and then had to play safe, leaving the cue ball behind the seven and against the rail. Unworried, Borchard managed to hit the six on a rail-first and still not leave a shot. It was a pisser. Eddie looked around him for a minute. A pair of men in the crowd were making a bet, handing a pile of bills to a third man in a brown overcoat. The whole goddamned poolroom was watching the game, including the people at the bar. He bent and shot, playing safe again. The cueball rolled too far by inches. It was the thinnest of cuts and ruinous if Borchard should miss, but it was a shot. Borchard chalked up serenely, bent and stroked. His stroke was as smooth as ice; the six ball rolled across the table and fell into the corner pocket; the cue ball went completely around the table, stopping dead for the seven. Borchard clipped it in. Then the eight and the nine. A man from the crowd stepped up and began racking.

  Eddie went over and leaned against the empty table by Boomer. Boomer put his hand on Eddie’s arm. “Don’t let up on him.”

  Borchard rifled the cue ball; the nine, kissing twice, fell in. Eddie felt his stomach go tight. Borchard needed eight games now, and he had the break. Eddie’s edge was practically gone, in the first five minutes. “He’ll miss,” Boomer said. “You have to wait.”

  But Borchard didn’t miss. What he did was make four balls and then play safe, leaving Eddie the full table’s length away from the orange five ball—and the five ball an inch off the middle of the bottom rail. It could not be cut in. But the seven ball was sitting right in the corner pocket at the top of the table. Eddie took his glasses off and checked them for dust. They were all right. He looked at the seven again. All it needed was a tap. He took a deep breath, bent, and stroked at medium speed, with no English. The cue ball hit the edge of the five, cater-cornered itself out of the bottom corner and came diagonally back up the table, straight at the seven. It clipped it. The seven fell in. The cue ball kept on going, off the top rail and halfway back down the table, as the five came to rest a foot from the bottom corner pocket. Someone in the crowd whistled. A deep voice said, “That’s the ticket!” It was Boomer. Eddie, steadier now, shot the five in and then made the rest, pocketing the nine firmly in the side.

  While the balls were being racked he hefted his Balabushka, trying to concentrate on the break. Abruptly he thought of something. There was a rack of house cues on the wall to his left. He walked to it, looked at the printed numbers on a few of them and found a twenty-three—the heaviest pool cue made. Coming back, he handed the Balabushka to Boomer, chalked up the club of a house cue, stepped to the head of the table and slammed into the cue ball, feeling the extra weight magnified by the speed of his stroke. The balls crashed open and the nine fell in.

  On the next rack he did not get the nine; it only turned over a few times, but he made two of the others. Not looking at Borchard, he concentrated on the balls, using the Balabushka now, and smoothed them into the pockets one at a time. Dropping the nine was simple.

  “Like buttering bread,” Boomer said.

  “How’d you do at eight-ball?”

  “Six hundred,” Boomer said. “I put it on you.” He nodded toward the man in the brown overcoat who had been making bets.

  “Good bet,” Eddie said. “I can’t miss.”

  For three more racks he didn’t. He felt control of the game now, felt some of the clarity he had felt in bed the night before. He did not make the nine on the break again, but he made something each time and then ran them out. It was like straight pool: a matter of position, or confidence, of knowing that the game was, at bottom, shockingly easy.

  But on the fourth break, even with the smash he gave them with the twenty-three-ounce house cue, nothing fell. The three ball was headed for a side pocket but at the last moment the seven knocked it away. The nine had stopped two inches from the bottom corner.

  But the score was five-two. He needed only two more games. Borchard needed eight. While Borchard started shooting, beginning with an easy one ball, Eddie went to the bar, ordered a Manhattan, and looked over his shoulder to see Borchard pocket the nine on a combination. Five-four. The son of a bitch. Borchard broke, made a ball, began running. Two pairs of balls were frozen at different ends of the table; one of them should stop him, force him at least to play safe; but neither did. He caromed his cue into one pair as he pocketed the three ball, doing it with the ease of a straight-pool player, and separated the other two on the next shot. He ran out. Five-five.

  In the next rack he made the nine on his third shot, from a billiard off the three. On the next he ran them out after pocketing two on the break; and on the next he made the nine on the break. Eddie and Boomer said nothing. The score was eight-five. Borchard looked unstoppable. The crowd had become silent.

  Borchard stepped up, quiet and concentrated, and broke, making the seven ball. His position on the one was fine. He drove it in, made the two and then the three. The four ball was a cinch and the position on the five another cinch. Borchard looked at the four and hesitated. Then he bent and shot. He missed. He missed the four ball, hanging it in the pocket. He raised his eyes heavenward, dropped his shoulders and said, “Son of a bitch.”

  It had happened. It could happen to anyone. Eddie chalked his cue and stepped up. Borchard had left him an open table and a road map: the four, five, six, eight and nine, as easy as pie. And one more game after that. Borchard had choked or blinked or twitched or one of the things that every player sometimes did, and this was what he had left.

  Eddie shot the four in, killing his cue ball for the five. He made the five, then the six and eight. His position on the nine was dead-on. He clipped it in. Eight-six.

  He gripped the big cue hard and slugged with it, but the balls were sluggish and the nine barely moved. The one teetered and fell in. The two was tough—a table’s length away and the kind of backward cut Eddie hated. He looked at Borchard, who seemed expectant, and then at Boomer. Boomer winked at him, unruffled. Boomer looked certain enough. What the hell, Eddie thought, I’ll make the two ball. He looked at it again. It was a son of a bitch. For a moment he allowed himself to think of all the ways of missing it, but then, knowing it was deadly to think that way, put the thought out of his mind. He was not fifty years old for nothing. You did not have to think about missing. He would make the two ball. It would be a pleasure to make it.

  He stroked easily, and shot. The cue ball rolled down the table, hit the blue two ball with just the right amount of fullness and speed. The ball rolled diagonally away from the white ball and fell into the corner. The cue ball kept going. The three ball was frozen to the head rail. The cue ball came back up the table, slowing down, and set itself in line with the three. The room was silent.

  Eddie shot the three in, loosening even more, and the cue ball settled behind the four. He shot it in. Then the five. And the six, seven, eight. The nine, striped with pale yellow, sat near the spot where it had sat ever since the break. Eddie stepped up, chalked, and drilled it into the corner pocket. The sound it made, hitting bottom, was exquisite.

  “Well,” Boomer said, driving them back. “Twelve hundred dollars can change a man’s philosophy beyond belief.”

  “Don’t shoot craps with it,” Eddie said.

  “Eight-ball. I was born to play eight-ball.”

  Eddie had the twenty-five hundred in his pants pocket, and he pushed it down with his thumb. On the backseat lay the twenty-three-ounce cue stick which he had bought f
or ten dollars. “He had eight games. If we’d been playing even, he’d have won.”

  “Don’t you get philosophical,” Boomer said. “The man lost. You beat him.”

  There were six rounds to go in the losers’ bracket, and all of them were sudden-death. Eddie had three matches on Thursday and three on Friday. If he won. If he lost, that was the end of it. On Saturday night the one undefeated man would play the single player who had managed to come out of the losers’ bracket unbeaten. That would be the finals, for first and second place. Whomever the winner had beaten the day before would be third. Third place was seven thousand dollars and second was fifteen. First prize was thirty thousand, and a trophy.

  He got to bed at three, slept until eight-thirty and managed a quick swim and a whirlpool before breakfast, but there was no time for a workout. At ten o’clock he beat his man handily. It was over by eleven-thirty, and Eddie, not seeing Boomer around, headed straight for the Nautilus machines and gave himself a light session, just enough for a sweat, and then immersed himself in the whirlpool. The next game was at two. He would not practice today; he needed all he had for the two upcoming matches. He had beaten Borchard, and in the one match had made almost as much money as he had put into those quilts. For a moment he thought of Betty Jo Merser’s round black face with her lips pursed, liking her. So few women could do anything. The loss of those quilts—especially of the Fiery Furnace with its three children on a shovel and its bright flames—had hurt him as much as losing a pool game could hurt. And the quilts could not be won back. They were gone forever. It was best not to think about it. He eased the back of his neck against the warm tiles and let the churning water come up to his neck and chin, relaxing his shoulders. He let his legs float out in front of him beneath the water. The music of a string quartet came across the broad pool to his right with a delicacy like that of the light coming through the ferns beside him. He closed his eyes and felt himself drifting off to near-sleep. The young men could be beaten. He had beaten Borchard. Nine-ball was only pool. He had played pool all his life.

  He stayed in the whirlpool a long time and then dried off lazily and dressed. He had a sandwich for lunch, went back to the ballroom, warmed up for ten minutes on a practice table and then played and beat the man who had beaten him the day before, Willy Plummer. The score was ten-three and Eddie did not miss a shot. Plummer scored on the two breaks when Eddie made nothing, and he pulled a lucky shot out from one of Eddie’s safeties, but it was no contest. The next game was at nine that night.

  Back on a practice table Boomer was playing eight-ball with one of the tournament officials. When Eddie came by, he looked up from his shot and said, “Cooley got beat. At noon.”

  Eddie had not been paying attention to the pairings. “Who did it?”

  Boomer cut one of the striped balls into the side pocket. “Who do you think? Earl Borchard.”

  Eddie walked on to the hallway and then to the casino. To get out of the losers’ bracket, he—or somebody—would have to beat Cooley. After that was Borchard without a ten-seven handicap. For a moment, walking by the filled blackjack tables and then along a bank of slot machines, he felt weary. He felt like driving to San Francisco and taking the next flight home to Arabella. He went up to the room, which the maid had just finished making, and took a nap on clean sheets, falling asleep immediately.

  That night at nine, the match was close and Eddie missed two critical shots that could have cost him the game but didn’t. The man he was playing was more tired than he, and rattled. Near the end of it, Eddie left him an easy lie on the six; he ran the six, seven, eight, and blew the nine. Somehow Eddie expected it and had not even seated himself. He just stepped up, shot the nine ball in and went on to win the match. It was ten-thirty. He left the ballroom and went directly to bed.

  The game the next morning was also close; there was no one easy left in this tournament. More than half the players had gone home. Eddie was rested from a ten-hour sleep and a good breakfast; the kid he played looked as though he had been up all night and was trying to stay alive with Methedrine or cocaine. There were red lines under his eyes and the fingers of his bridge trembled when he shot. He kept combing his hair. Eddie beat him ten-six. There were two more to go—a game with somebody named Wingate at three, and then at nine, Cooley.

  He went to the sushi bar at lunch and had to wait in line. When he had gotten his food and was looking around for an empty table, a man across the room waved at him. He went over. It was someone he had seen around the tournament, although he didn’t know his name. “Have a seat,” the man said. There was another man at the table and two empty chairs. Eddie sat down. He didn’t feel like talking, but there was nowhere else to sit. “My name’s Oldfield,” the man said. “This is Bergen.”

  “Good to meet you both.”

  Oldfield finished what he was chewing. “Heard about you for years. Never saw you play before last night.”

  Eddie looked at him but said nothing.

  Bergen was a small man with a mustache and an unworldly look. His voice was almost apologetic. “Mr. Oldfield lost a bit of money. He was betting on Borchard.”

  “Borchard shoots a good stick,” Eddie said.

  “I know, I know,” Oldfield said. “I’m backing him in this tournament. I backed him last year.”

  “A lot of these kids don’t have a cent,” Bergen said.

  “I suppose not,” Eddie said. “How much did you lose?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Twelve hundred?”

  “Twelve thousand.”

  Eddie shook his head. “A lot of money.”

  For a moment he felt annoyed, as though Oldfield were blaming him. Oldfield stood up, and then Bergen. “See you around, Fast Eddie,” he said. “Enjoy your lunch.” The two of them left. Eddie finished his food, thinking. Other people had been betting money on the match. The man in the brown overcoat was holding a fistful of it, and there was money moving around elsewhere in the crowd. An old, old system existed called “two brothers and a stranger,” where two men would work together, one of them backing his friend’s opponent and then betting against the friend—the “brother.” If that was what Borchard and Gunshot had been doing, if they had been working together, Eddie was the stranger and his win meant nothing.

  He spent an hour after lunch in the gym and the whirlpool, then went to his room and changed into a fresh shirt and jeans. In the ballroom, pushing through the crowd standing between packed bleachers, he entered the playing area and found himself for a moment face to face with Babes Cooley. Babes was wearing skintight black pants over black pumps, and a white silk shirt. His face was flushed and his eyes bright. He was standing by Table Two; Eddie would be playing Number Three.

  “Good shooting last night, old-timer,” Babes said, smiling coldly. He was polishing the end of his cue stick with a white towel.

  “Thanks,” Eddie said.

  “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Eddie looked at him hard. “With twenty-five hundred,” he said, “I could hire somebody to break your right arm.”

  Cooley’s smile didn’t waver. “I’d beat you with my left.”

  Eddie walked to Table Two and took his cue out of its case.

  His opponent was a man in his thirties who looked like an Italian barber. Ross Arnetti. When the announcer introduced them to the crowd, Arnetti’s titles were impressively numerous, although they were all for second and third place. He had been runner-up in the World Open at straight pool twice, was third in the U.S. Invitational—also straight pool—and second in two regional nine-ball tournaments. The announcer called Eddie “one of the all-time greats making a fine showing at this event.”

  Eddie won the lag. As he stepped up to break, he heard the crash of balls on the table next to his and glanced over to see Babes Cooley starting up. Eddie had his twenty-three-ounce battering ram with him, and he gripped it hard now and drove the rack open. The nine died near the bottom corner, and the three stopped right behind
it. The five fell in. Eddie ran the one and two, sighted carefully and drilled into the combination. The nine fell.

  He had been disturbed a bit by the conversation at the sushi bar, but the hatred he now felt for Babes Cooley had wiped that out. Arnetti seemed like an amiable man, a solid professional; it would be hard to hate him. Eddie accepted the diffused hatred he felt for the young man on the table next to him and kept it; it gave an edge to his stroke and a clarity to his vision. He played beautifully; by the middle of the match he could sense the inner collapse of the man he was playing. Arnetti was straight-backed in his chair, but he held his glass of water limply, trying to look uninterested when Eddie glanced his way. For a brief moment after cinching the nine, Eddie felt sorry for him—held by the balls and nowhere to turn—but he shook it off. It was no time for mercy. He made the nine on the break in the next rack. The match ended quickly. Ten-four. The applause was loud. As he was leaving, carrying both cues, applause broke out again and he heard the announcer’s voice on the PA: “Mr. Cooley’s match by ten-six.” Eddie didn’t turn back to look.

  The dressing area was right inside the door to his room. As he came in he saw a gray duffel on the carpet with the zipper open. Next to it sat a portable typewriter. Then he noticed the sound of running water and saw that the shower curtain in the middle of the room was closed. He walked over and pulled it open. Arabella was sitting naked on the edge of the tub, her feet in the water, waiting for it to fill.

  “This is the biggest bathtub I ever saw in my life,” she said.

  “How in hell did you get here?”

  She looked up at him. “Flew to Reno. Took a bus. The maid let me in. Where were you?”

  “Shooting pool.”

  “This water feels wonderful on my poor feet. Did you win?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh boy,” Arabella said.

  “I play Cooley at nine tonight.”

  “Jesus,” Arabella said. “Can you beat him?”