by Walter Tevis
He would have to be back there in forty minutes, and he did not want to go back. For a moment he lay in the whirlpool feeling frightened and old. The hot water gushed and foamed over his body. Gradually the knot in his stomach eased a little. He listened to the water surging, began to hear the music from ceiling speakers, let his body go limp, feeling himself bob to the movement of the water. For a few minutes, miraculously, he fell asleep—or so near to sleep that he would not have known where he was.
***
When he walked back into the ballroom, the nine balls were in the wooden rack and the referee had put the lag balls out. Borchard was standing by the table. As Eddie took out his cue and put it together, the announcer introduced them to the crowd. Eddie barely listened to the words. His hands with the cue were steady.
His lag was perfect and his break overwhelming. The nine came off the bottom rail and rolled the length of the table. Although it did not go in, two other balls did. As he studied the layout a cameraman wheeled closer, while another kneeled a few feet away, pointing a camera up at Eddie’s face. Eddie ignored them. He ran the balls and pocketed the nine. The crowd was huge and its applause loud. Eddie lit a cigarette, watching the referee rack. Borchard was seated, looking at nothing in particular. Arabella sat in the stands, her face intent on the table; up above her, in the back row of the bleachers, sat Boomer. Eddie put his cigarette in the ashtray, picked up the twenty-three-ounce cue, and broke. The nine fell in the corner pocket. He went back to his cigarette while the referee racked. If you hit the balls right, they fell into the pockets. He broke and ran the rack, sending the cue ball around the table when necessary the way the younger men had done, not worrying about the speed of it or the possibility of a scratch. It stopped each time exactly where he wanted it to stop. Three-nothing.
But on the fourth break, though his power was there and the balls rolled energetically, nothing fell into a pocket. Nothing. Even worse, the cue ball stopped where the one ball was easy. Eddie stared at the table for a moment. There was nothing to do about it. He walked over to the chair and seated himself. Borchard got up.
The thing about pool was that no matter how up you were for it, no matter how ready your soul—as Eddie’s soul was ready—and no matter how dead your stroke, if the other man was shooting it made no difference. His arm ached to be making the balls himself but he had to sit, had to watch another man play pool.
And the other man’s game was inspired. Borchard—that delicate, quiet Eastern country boy with his heavy, drooping mustache and his crepe-soled shoes—seemed to have the balls on a string. He didn’t look at the crowd or the referee or at Eddie, but bent his entire attention on the nine balls and eased them one after another into the pockets with his cue ball always stopping exactly where it should stop. He chalked after every shot and his small eyes never left the table. The cameramen danced their slow dance in and out and around him and the table; the audience applauded louder and louder after each sinking of the nine ball; and Borchard’s expression and concentration did not change. He made the nine six times before a bad roll on the break made him play safe. The score was six-three. Borchard needed only four games. Eddie needed seven. Eddie stood up.
The position was terrible. The cue ball was snookered behind the seven. He would be lucky to get a hit on the one ball, let alone a safety. He looked at this, and for a moment felt like walking out of the room. Borchard stood a few feet from the table with a cold, inward smile on his youthful face, waiting for him to miss. It was a nightmare position and there was nothing he could do about it but poke at the cue ball and pray.
Eddie gritted his teeth, tightened the joint of his cue and looked at the shot. The lights on the overhead boom went out.
Someone in the crowd applauded and a few laughed. Eddie stood and waited. He looked at the speakers’ table; the tournament director sat there with a frown, talking on a telephone. After a minute he hung up and picked up the microphone and his voice came on the loudspeaker. “They say we’ve blown a fuse,” it said. “There’ll be a ten-minute recess.”
Several people in the crowd began to boo.
“We apologize for the delay,” the director’s voice said.
Borchard was making his way roughly through the standees. Men in the crowd were saying things to him, but Borchard did not look at any of them; his mouth was set in a hard line and he pushed through the mass of people with a kind of heedless urgency, as though late for an important meeting.
Eddie left his cue on the table and walked to the players’ restroom behind the bleachers. No one else was there; he stood alone in front of the wide, brightly lit mirror. His eyes were dull and his hair limp. He looked down at his hands: greenish pool-cloth dirt outlined the fingernails; a ground-in smear darkened the heel of his left hand. He turned a faucet on and watched the sink fill with hot water while he peeled the wrapper from a cake of soap. He turned off the faucet and began to work up a lather over the palms and backs of his hands, over his wrists. He began to rub hard, lathering each finger separately, abrading the dark stain on his left hand with the fingers of his right. He filled the basin, rinsed, washed again and rinsed again. He took the soap and worked it into his face, lathering around his nose and eyes, then did the back of his neck and under his chin. It was a relief. He let the water out, refilled the bowl, ducked down and began rinsing.
While he was drying with paper towels, the door opened and Earl Borchard came in. Borchard did not even look at him. He walked to the urinal against the wall on the other side of Eddie and stood there using it loudly, blankly facing the tiled wall a few inches from his nose. Eddie began combing his hair.
At the sound of flushing, he turned to see Borchard head into one of the marble stalls, slamming the door behind him. Eddie finished combing his hair.
He was putting the comb back in his pocket when Borchard came out of the stall, still not looking at him. He walked to the mirror, stopped next to Eddie, looked at himself, took out a comb. In the bright fluorescent lights, pink blotches were visible on his face.
Borchard was only a vain, edgy kid. Without his pool cue that was all he was. Eddie turned toward him and said, “Sometimes it’s a bitch.”
Borchard turned sharply. “I’m not your friend,” he said, barely moving his lips.
He looked away from Eddie and took a paper cup from the wall dispenser, half filled it with water, abruptly turned to Eddie again. “I’m going to beat your ass.” He looked down at the water in his hand and smiled, then turned back to stare unblinkingly into Eddie’s face. “This is going to beat you.” He parted his lips. On his tongue sat a wet drug capsule, green and black.
Eddie’s response was like a reflex. His open hand came up immediately, slapping Borchard full on the cheek, the way a parent slaps a smart-assed child. Borchard dropped the water.
The pill hit the floor, spun, and stopped a few feet away. Borchard stood transfixed, caught stupidly in his act. Eddie walked to the pill and crushed it with his heel. His back was to Borchard, but he felt no alarm. The kid would not hit him. He walked to the door.
“I’ve got more,” Borchard said as Eddie pushed the door open.
“Take a dozen,” Eddie said.
***
“Play will resume as soon as the players return,” said the voice on the PA. Eddie walked through the crowd and up to the tournament table where the lights now flooded the green again. The referee was standing with his hands behind his back, in position. Eddie stepped up to the table, elevated the butt of his cue stick and gently tapped the cue ball into the rail. It bounced out, rolled softly, clicked into the edge of the one and stopped. The one rolled a few feet and came to a stop exactly where Eddie wanted it to, leaving Borchard no shot at all.
It was a moment before Borchard walked up and the referee told him it was his shot. He came over to the table and frowned at the position for a moment. He did not look at Eddie. He grimaced, shook his head, and played the ball safe. Eddie returned it, leaving the cue ball far from th
e one.
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Go for it, Earl!” Borchard stepped up to it, bent and concentrated. He shook his head and then let go with his cue stick, shooting hard. The cue ball sped down the table, clipped the one ball but rolled too fast. It raced back up and split apart a pair of balls before stopping in a place where Eddie could make the one. It was difficult, but it could be made.
Borchard turned quickly, walked over to the little table and sat down.
Eddie, suddenly feeling young, leveled his Balabushka and, without hesitation, sliced the one in. Then the two and three. He could not miss. He bent to the four ball, cut it thin as a whisper and made it. He shot the five, six, seven, eight and then the nine, hardly hearing the applause as the nine ball fell. He leaned his Balabushka against the chair and took the heavy factory cue. The referee racked the balls. On the break Eddie made two and ran the rest. The referee racked and Eddie broke again. He shot them in one after the other. He seemed to float from ball to ball, and his vision of them beneath the white lights of television was as sharp as the edge of a steel blade. The balls rolled the way they should and fell into pockets the way they should. There was nothing to it.
As he stood ready to break, voices shouted, “On the snap, Fast Eddie,” and “Nine ball, Eddie, nine ball!” and he thundered the cue ball into them knowing the nine would go. It did. The referee racked again while the applause continued. Again he made the nine on the break and the crowd, distant from his mind but enveloping a part of his spirit, exploded in applause. He broke again, made two balls, ran the rack. Again, with the nine on a combination. No one could touch him; nothing could make him miss these balls—these bright, simple balls. He broke again, watched the cue ball settle behind the one; made the one, the two, the three, on up to the nine, slipping the nine ball itself down the rail into the corner pocket. And then, shocked, he heard the deep voice on the PA speaker saying, “Mr. Felson wins match and tournament,” the voice almost buried by applause. He blinked and looked around. The people in the bleachers were applauding, some of them whistling, some shouting. They began to stand, still applauding.
***
Eddie dove into the deep water, going straight down until, by reaching out a hand, he could feel the rough concrete of the bottom at twelve feet. He let himself rise slowly to the surface and bob. He shook his head, opened his eyes, saw Arabella sitting at the edge of the pool looking toward him. He flipped his body around in the other direction, and with long, slow strokes swam across the pool and into the stone-lined grotto at the far end of it. Stopping there, he could smell the wet stones. The water was shallow and warmer. There was soft, flickering light from a lamp underwater. He could not see Arabella now.
Thirty thousand dollars. He had beat them. First Cooley and then Borchard. There was a stone ledge near the water. He pulled himself out gently and sat there with his feet and calves in the warm water, his wet thighs solid against the rough stone, his body dripping. Fifty years old. He had beaten the kids. He let himself relax now, uncoiling the last bit of the knot that had filled his stomach throughout this day, and let the pleasure of it touch his whole body like a warm garment. There were goose bumps on his upper arms. He stretched and yawned, a winner. He had never felt better in his life.
“I’d like to drive all the way around the lake before we go back,” Arabella said after he swam over to her.
“First thing in the morning.” He eased himself out of the pool and sat beside her.
After a while the music on the PA stopped and a woman’s soft voice said, “The pool area will be closed in five minutes.” Eddie looked behind him at the clock over the doorway to the gym; it was five minutes to one. He was beginning to feel tired.
Arabella stood and began drying herself with a towel. “This place is like a church,” she said, looking around her at the huge concrete circumference of the pool and up at the broad, black skylight.
“I like it.” Eddie lazily took his feet out of the water and held his hand out for the towel. “Let’s get dressed.”
***
They came around a corner and there was the casino, its lights garish and somehow comforting. Three crap games were going strong; all the blackjack tables were in play; a crowd milled about in the vast area of the slot machines. It was, after all, Saturday night. “Do you want to try your luck?” Eddie said.
She folded her arms and hugged herself nervously. “I don’t know. I’m still in a daze.”
“Then let’s go to bed.”
She looked at him, smiling faintly, still hugging herself. They were standing at the top of a wide and shallow stairway that led down to the still-empty baccarat tables. “You really did win, didn’t you? You really did.”
They walked through the casino, where people and money circulated freely and at ease. Arabella put her arm through his. Tired as he was, his step was light. As they passed the last of the crap tables, a very old man was shaking the dice fervidly; now, with a broad, sweeping movement he threw them powerfully from the side of his hand out onto the long green. Eddie and Arabella stopped to watch them bounce and glitter under the bright lights. The number that came up was eleven. “Natural!” cried the old man joyfully, leaning forward to pull in a pile of bills.