Scorpio Love

by S. Tamanaha

  As they were finishing up their meal, a tall, slightly heavy set man walked up to their table.

  “Any of you guys want to shoot some pool?” he asked.

  “Come on, Mike,” Billy said. “Stop trying to hustle us, okay? Go find some new blood.”

  “How about you, Jack?” he asked then.

  “Sorry, don’t know a thing about pool. Darts and bowling. Why don’t you let my wife, Susan, play? She used to play a little in college.”

  “Johnny, I haven’t played since college,” she said in a low voice. She looked up at the man. “It’s all right.”

  “It’s just a friendly game. We only play for drinks,” Mike said smiling. “Come on.” He turned and started walking back to the pool tables before she could refuse again.

  “Go on. It might all come back to you,” Johnny encouraged her, smiling.

  She was surprised at Johnny’s insistence but she gave in and stood up to remove her jacket. She leaned in to Johnny as she handed it to him for safekeeping. “Please remember that you insisted on this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Men don’t like losing to women, especially in a bar in front of other men,” she said. “So if I do win, they’ll want to keep challenging me. I just wanted to relax, not work.”

  Johnny smiled. “Is that what pool is—work?”

  “It can feel like it sometimes,” she replied.

  She walked over to the pool table where Mike was racking the balls then found herself a cue stick that wasn’t too warped and checked the ferrule and the tip. Mike was using his own cue stick.

  “Call it for the break, pretty lady,” Mike said as he flipped a coin.

  “Tails,” she replied.

  He uncovered the coin. “Sorry, heads. My break.”

  She shrugged and stood back. He broke the pile hard and dropped two balls, both striped, into the pockets. He smiled and started shooting. He sank three balls and then missed on his fourth shot.

  She studied the table as she stepped up and chalked her cue stick. Then she started shooting. Her touch was soft, smooth. She chalked up after every shot, never taking her eyes off of the table, planning her strategy. One by one, she dropped the balls and positioned the cue ball for the next shot.

  “Check it out,” Billy said, nudging Max who was already watching. A few other people had started noticing as well and were beginning to congregate near the table. As Johnny watched Susan, he found himself amazed once more at this side of her that he had never seen. It was as though she had stepped into another zone. She seemed unaware of the small crowd that was gathering and was completely focused on what she was doing. On her last shot, she threw heavy right English on the cue ball to bring it back to the end of the table where it lined up perfectly with the eight ball. The crowd murmured.

  “Corner pocket,” she said, indicating the pocket with her stick. Then she took the shot and stopped the cue where it made contact with the eight ball. The game ball fell into the pocket and the small crowd applauded. Only then did she seem to step back out of her zone. Mike shook his head and, contrary to the reaction that she received from most men that she had beaten in the past in a bar, he shook her hand.

  “Damn, girl, you can shoot,” he said, smiling. “But I thought you said you haven’t shot for a while. I’m not being hustled am I?”

  She smiled as she returned her cue stick to the rack and walked back with him to her table. “I haven’t shot for years. It’s just that I used to shoot on a regulation sized table. This bar table made it a little easier. And please, you don’t have to buy me a drink. I’m only drinking a soda anyway.”

  “No, I insist on paying my debts. But I’ll tell you what. I’ll buy your entire table a round of drinks if you can beat my kid brother over there. Make it two out of three.”

  “Go on, do it,” Billy urged.

  She looked at Johnny. She had warned him. She knew that he wasn’t sure what to say. His friends wanted her to play and it had been his idea in the first place.

  “Okay,” she agreed. “But win or lose, I’m done for the night after that. I came here to relax with my husband, all right?”

  “Okay,” Mike agreed, grinning. “I’ll set up the table.”

  The man that Mike brought to the table shared his height and coloring but was younger, in his early twenties. “This is my kid brother, Stan. He’s the real pool player in the family,” Mike said.

  As the winner of the last game, she was given the break. A solid ball dropped. She ran the next five and then misjudged the speed of the ball on her sixth shot. The ball hit the pocket but ricocheted back and forth and didn’t drop. Stan stepped up to the table and began shooting. It was obvious to her that he was a much better player than his brother. He didn’t slam in his shots and he was fairly good at positioning. He ran the table and won the first game.

  On the second game, he broke the pile, dropping a high ball and began shooting. When he couldn’t get to his fifth ball, he tried to play it safe—positioning the cue ball so that she wouldn’t have a good shot. It didn’t faze her. She executed a bank shot and dropped her first ball. After that, she ran the rest of the table. They were even.

  Now it was her turn to break. She broke hard and dropped three balls. Two striped and one solid. There was a fairly large crowd now watching the game. She began to shoot. She noticed early on that the eight-ball was touching one of her balls in such a way as to make shooting her ball into a pocket impossible. She had to separate the two balls in order to get a clear shot. She knew that Stan was aware of her predicament. If she missed that shot, he would have a clear table. On her fourth shot, she drew the cue ball backwards strongly. It hit the eight ball and her ball and kissed them apart. That gave her a clear shot at her last ball. The crowd murmured.

  “Son of a bitch,” she heard Stan say.

  Her final shot was going to be difficult however. After the kiss shot, the eight ball had rolled to a bad position. At first glance, it appeared that she had a clear shot but, upon close examination, the eight ball was in fact blocked by one of Stan’s balls. The other balls on the table prevented her from banking the cue ball and she couldn’t masse the shot, she decided, because there wasn’t enough room for the curve. Her only chance was to execute a jump shot which was not her best shot and hard to do with a cue stick that made her feel as though she was shooting with a tree branch. She chalked up and studied the angle intensely.

  “Corner pocket,” she said, pointing to the pocket.

  “No way,” she heard Mike say.

  She shifted her grip for an overhand stroke, tiptoed and positioned herself above the ball and concentrated. Then she struck the cue ball solidly and it jumped over Stan’s balls and contacted the eight ball perfectly. The eight ball rolled and fell into the corner pocket. The gathered crowd applauded.

  Stan, she could see, was a little upset but Mike just laughed. “I guess you met your match, little brother,” he said good-naturedly, slapping Stan on the back.

  “Hey,” Mike called out to the waitress, “round of drinks for her table.”

  She put away her cue stick and was about to return to her table when Stan stepped up to her. Johnny was watching carefully, just in case there was trouble. He didn’t like the look on Stan’s face. Then Stan did something unexpected.

  “Mind showing me how you did that shot?” he asked.

  Susan smiled, relieved. “Sure.” She spent the next few minutes explaining the mechanics of the shot to him and a few other men who had gathered around her. After several minutes, Stan was able to execute the shot and he was smiling. When she returned to the table, Billy, Max, and Johnny applauded her.

  “Jack never told us that you were a shark,” Billy laughed.

  “Actually, Johnny’s never seen me shoot pool before,” she said. She noticed the look in Johnny’s eyes but this time, she wasn’t quite sure what he was thinking.

  “Wait until the guys at the studio hear about this,” Max said. “They’re gonna w
ish they came tonight. That guy Mike has hustled most of us out of free drinks.”

  “What’s wrong?” she asked Johnny when Billy and Max got up to play some darts.

  He smiled a little. “Nothing’s wrong. I’m amazed. I’m still being surprised at the things that you can do. But now I know why you feel that it’s work. I’ve never seen you look so intense, so focused.”

  She smiled a little, almost sadly. “It’s the reason that I took up shooting pool,” she said. “There were a lot of things on my mind and I couldn’t get my mind to rest. I found that when I shot pool, I kind of stepped into another place. It was just me and the table. All I thought about then was playing the game and my other thoughts would disappear—for a while anyway. It became like a drug almost. Every weekend, my friends and I would go to the pool hall and we’d shoot for five or six hours straight sometimes. And for five or six hours, I wouldn’t have to think about anything else. Then some professional gamblers saw me shooting and they offered to ‘groom’ me.”

  “What does that mean—‘groom’ you?” Johnny frowned.

  “They wanted me to go to bars like this and hustle guys for money because, like I said, most guys don’t like losing to women and they won’t quit. They’ll keep playing and what would start as a game for drinks would end up being a game for money.”

  “You did it?” Johnny’s frown grew deeper.

  She shook her head. “I quit shooting and sold my cue stick to a friend of mine. I didn’t want to play for money. I didn’t want to hustle drunk guys out of their cash.”

  Johnny took hold of her hand. “What was bothering you so much that you felt like you had to escape?”

  “My mother, my father, my two jobs, school—everything. I’ve always felt so different from other people but right around that time, being different really bothered me. I began wondering whether something was wrong with me. That’s kind of why I got married, you know? Because I thought it would make me feel normal. Instead I felt my soul starting to die. So I left and made up my mind to just accept the fact that I was different. Once I stopped fighting against who I really was, it was okay.”

  Johnny squeezed her hand gently. “I’m glad you decided to be yourself,” he said. “I love that person.”

  She smiled. “I’m glad too. Otherwise I would never have met you.”

  “Hey, don’t you two get enough of that at home?” Billy asked, returning to the table for his drink. “Come on, Jack, we’ve got a dart challenge going over here. You don’t happen to play darts too, do you?” he asked Susan.

  “I couldn’t hit the side of a barn,” she said, and then smiled at Johnny. “Go on. Kick their butts.”

  He smiled, gave her hand another squeeze, and then got up and joined the dart game. He was very good and, as she predicted, did win the game. The three men returned to the table to quench their thirst. Then the karaoke started.

  “Oh, God,” Max moaned. “Please have good singers tonight. It just throws my game off when I have to listen to people shouting into a mike all night long.”

  The first singer got up and started performing “Sweet Home Alabama”—loudly.

  “See what I mean?” Max took a swig of his beer. “Jack, why don’t you go up there and show them how it’s done?”

  “No thanks. I don’t know any karaoke stuff and I just want to kick back tonight.”

  “Oh, why don’t you just go and do your Travolta thing?” Billy asked. “Maybe you’ll stop bitching.”

  “It’s a duet,” Max said sourly. “The last time I asked some chick from the audience to sing with me, she was god awful.”

  “Maybe you should have been checking out her vocal cords instead of her ass before you asked her to sing,” Billy said, grinning.

  “Screw you,” Max retorted.

  “Hey, do it with Susan,” Billy said then. “You sing, right? Jack says you’re good.”

  “Which song is it?” she asked.

  “‘You’re The One That I Want’. From Grease.”

  “I know the song, but I’ve never done it in karaoke,” she said.

  “Go ahead and try it,” Billy persisted. “It can’t be worse than that other woman. Or the two or three before that.”

  Susan looked at Max. She could see that he wanted to. “Can you sing it in a slightly lower key?” she asked. “Olivia Newton-John’s key is a little too high for me.”

  Max shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Okay, we’re in business.” Billy grinned and went up to the bartender to put in the song. Susan told him to request that the song be played “two down”.

  Susan leaned over to Johnny. “Why’d you tell them that I sing?” she asked.

  “Because I’m proud of what you can do,” Johnny smiled. “At least you’re not singing ‘Fever’. I don’t want to have to get into a fight tonight.”

  She laughed. “Well, I hope that I don’t embarrass you because I’ve never done this song before.”

  He smiled. “You could never embarrass me.”

  When the host called her and Max up to the small, low stage to perform the song, she was unprepared for how animated Max was. He even imitated the way John Travolta fell to the ground after singing the first verse. She looked over at Johnny with surprise in her eyes and laughed. Then she began to sing and Max was surprised and happy. He gave a thumbs up to Johnny from the stage. Their voices blended well together. Then her solo came up.

  “If you feel great affection you’re too shy to convey,” she sang in that sexy voice. “Meditate in my direction. Feel your way.”

  The men in the audience whistled and Max imitated Travolta’s whooping. When it was over, the crowd applauded and cheered and Max returned to the table with a grin on his face. Billy and Johnny both gave him a high-five.

  “That was so kickass!” he exclaimed. “Jack, we’ve got to do this again. I finally found someone who can sing that song with me.”

  “Well, you know what my schedule is like,” Johnny said. “But whenever we have time, sure, we’ll join you guys again. Maybe during hiatus.” He knew that she didn’t enjoy karaoke bars as a weekly thing and he didn’t want it to be that way either. He enjoyed their private time together. But he was happy that they wanted to include her on their outings and he liked having her with him. He had enjoyed himself more during this night out than during any other time that he had gone out with the people from the studio.

  “What else do you know?” Max asked.

  “You’re a good singer and so entertaining,” Susan said. “Why don’t you go up and do one by yourself so that I can sit here and enjoy you?”

  “Yeah, Max,” Billy said. “Why don’t you?”

  “Shut up,” Max said.

  “See, Max only feels comfortable if someone is up there with him,” Billy explained. “Put him up there by himself and he chokes.”

  She understood. “I’ve got lots of friends who feel like that,” she said. Then she had an idea. “Do you know any Elvis songs? Or is Elvis too corny for this place?”

  “Are you kidding? They love Elvis,” Max said.

  “Well, I used to sing backup on some Elvis songs. I can go up with you and just do the backup and you do the song,” she suggested.

  “What song?”

  “Do you know ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ or ‘All Shook Up?’ I know the backup for those.”

  “I can do ‘Don’t Be Cruel’, I think,” Max said.

  “We can try it if you want. I just hope the backup on the karaoke disk is the same as we used to do.”

  “This I gotta see,” Billy said and went to put in the song.

  “Have you got shades?” Susan asked Max.

  Max pulled out a pair from his jacket pocket.

  “If they’re not too dark, put them on. And your jacket. It’ll look retro and you won’t feel as nervous,” she said.

  “What messes me up sometimes on new songs is the beginning,” Max said. “Once someone gives me the right key to start off on, I’m okay.”
r />   “We can start together,” she said. “Then you take it.”

  When it was their turn again, they got on the stage and, as promised, Susan started the song with him. Once Max was into the song and on key, she stepped back and off to the side and just did the backup. Max sang unabashed and imitated Elvis’ moves and the crowd clapped and cheered. At the end, she applauded him along with the audience. He was beaming.

  When they returned to their table, Billy and Johnny gave him a high five again.

  “You were terrific,” she said to Max. “You don’t need anyone up there with you. Really.”

  “I’m glad you started me off,” Max said. “And you were right about the glasses.”

  “A couple more times and it’ll be automatic for you,” she assured him.

  “Come on, Elvis,” Billy said. “We’re up again for darts. Come on, Jack.”

  Billy and Max got up and as they made their way to the dart boards, several people were slapping Max on the back and giving him high-fives. She could see that Max was feeling very good about himself. She smiled. When she looked over at Johnny, he was smiling at her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Remind me to tell you later,” he said as he got up to join the dart game.

  Before she and Johnny left, Billy insisted that she sing another song on her own. She agreed and selected one just for Johnny.

  “I can’t sing country the way it should be sung,” she said to the audience before the song began, “but I love this song and I want to dedicate it to my husband.” It was George Strait’s “I Cross My Heart”. As he watched her on the stage singing the song to him and listened to the words, Johnny once again felt overwhelmed by the love he felt for her.

  They left the bar and grill around eleven, later than they had planned to. As they drove home, he took her hand and held it. “That was a beautiful song,” he said. “And you sounded beautiful singing it.”

  “I can’t sing it very well,” she said quietly. “It’s actually better suited for your voice. But I wanted to sing it to you because it’s as though someone wrote those words just to express how I feel about you.”