“We break,” said the long-necked regular. He was shiny, with thin hair that looked like he wiped it back with his palms. He wore a leather vest, and a chain secured his wallet to his trousers.
Beyond the table, a paneled hallway led off to nothing. It was just a wall at the end of it, and an old console TV sitting there all covered with the dust of a thousand shows. Through a little window cut in one of the walls, you could see into a kind of kitchen area. There was a big stove in there and some sinks. A cook, or somebody in a white T-shirt, sat at a steel counter, counting cash out onto a sheet of aluminum foil.
“Then fuck it,” said Ziggy. His hand was twitching; the middle fingers kept snapping in toward the palm. He put his cue down and headed back for the bar, so he could sit down. He looked like he needed to. He wasn’t the steadiest.
“Awright,” said the regular. “You can break.”
“Break, Dan,” said Ziggy. Danny was only a few years older than me. Ziggy was our supervisor at the Dodge Main. Poletown, they called it. This was 1979. The winter was ending, but the rumors had just started that the Main was coming down. No one believed it. It’d been there since 1912. I heard it rolled off more than thirteen million cars in them sixty-seven years. The Dodge brothers themselves built it, after they left off working for Henry. It was like a city in there, its own fire department and hospital and roads and kitchens. You could’ve been born in there and grown up and stayed inside the whole time, never coming out, and lived just fine.
“Watch this,” Ziggy said to me. The tick beneath his eye kept time, the same time as the automatic riveter or the arm that whipped the planes of sheet metal into place. Danny broke. Three dropped, two solids and a stripe.
“Solids,” said Danny.
“Drop ’em,” said Ziggy. And Dan did: two more.
The long-necked regular sank a few. Ziggy sank two. The regular’s partner, a true hefty boy, and with a scraggy little mustache, missed altogether.
“Shithead,” said the long-necked regular.
“They call you Hamtramck Fats?” Ziggy said. Danny snickered, then cleaned it off and sank the eight.
“That’s a round,” said Ziggy. “Three rums.”
“Three?” said the regular. “Only two of ya’s playin.”
“Partner there,” said Ziggy. “Eddy. He drinks too.”
“Two plays, two drinks,” said the long-necked regular. He bought two. I went out to the bar and bought my own, and sat there to drink it.
Down at the other end were two girls. I saw them when we came in. One, whose grin was half-empty of teeth, nodded at me now. And she kept eyeing me. At least, I thought she did. The light from the window made it hard to see. I looked away from them but my head kept turning back, like they were pulling a string.
“Again,” I heard the regular say.
“Rack ’em,” said Ziggy. When I heard him break, I got up and stood in the open doorway between the bar part up front and the pool room in back. I leaned against the jamb, so I could see the whole place at once.
Ziggy’s break sank a couple. Solids again.
It went on. Ziggy and Danny cleaned up again, won by four balls. I kept turning my head away from the far end of the bar.
“Another round,” said Ziggy.
“You still got your last drinks,” said the regular.
“Back ’em up,” said Ziggy.
“Markers,” said the bartender. He’d been watching through a little window between the end of the bar and the pool room. He held up a quarter someone had painted red. “Trade these in for drinks.”
“Rack ’em,” said the long-necked regular as he paid for the markers. Hamtramck Fats racked.
It went on. A stack of red quarters grew up from the bar, leaned, split into two stacks. I couldn’t figure why they’d have so many red quarters.
“Use ’em,” said Ziggy to me. “Might as well.” I traded one in. Switched from rum to beer.
It went on. Ziggy and Dan let them win a game, handed them a couple of our quarters. “Keeps ’em biting,” Ziggy whispered to me. He’d come out to the bar to rest, and I sat beside him. He had on his UAW hat, and his shirt had a UAW patch on the sleeve. Many didn’t dress like that anymore, but Ziggy always did, every shift.
I looked at him, then the girls at the other end, back and forth. I could see him looking down at them too.
Then he said something about Elaine. She was a hot one we knew from the plant. A front office secretary. I knew her from high school.
“Call her,” Ziggy said. “You could sure use some of that.”
“She’ll be in bed by now,” I said. She hadn’t been interested in me at Hamtramck High, and she wasn’t interested now.
“All the better,” Ziggy said.
I fingered the stack of red quarters.
“You know what them’re for?”
“No.”
“Bars all have ’em. Nothing’s happening, they drop a few in the pool table or juke box or whatever to get things rolling. Then when the vendor cleans out the boxes, he knows what was the bar’s to start. Don’t count it against their percent.”
“Really?”
He nodded, then got up and went back to the table, and I heard another rack and break.
“Shit!” said Hamtramck Fats, and Danny was laughing.
They played again, again, and it didn’t get any better for the regulars.
“Here,” Ziggy said when it was over and the chalk dust had settled. He handed a couple more quarters to the long-necked regular.
“Big of ya,” the regular said. He retreated with Fats to their end of the bar, where the girls sat waiting for them.
“Fuck it,” Ziggy said.
Danny and I drank and Ziggy told us a story about a trucker he knew who bought it on a curve on I-75. “Twenty ton come down on him,” Ziggy said. “Took ’em four hours to saw him out.” His cheek jumped. “Five ton an hour.”
The two girls got up now and scooted down the bar. I was sitting between Ziggy and Danny. The girls sat one on each side of us, the half-toothless one by Ziggy.
“Drink?” Ziggy said. He flipped them each a red quarter. The one with half her teeth did all the talking. The other one wouldn’t say nothing. She had greasy hair and little zits all over her face you could only see close up. Dan was next to this one, the Mute, and he was flicking bits of napkin at her, watching how they stuck on her hair.
“You wanna drive us to Chicago?” said the half-toothless one.
“For?” Ziggy said. He slipped off his barstool and had to climb back on. A muscle in his neck started contracting and relaxing, pulling his chin around toward his shoulder and then releasing it.
“Cause it ain’t here,” she said.
“Maybe so,” he said. “Got a car?”
“You do,” she said.
“Eddy’s drivin,” Ziggy said. He pointed at me.
“Wanna drive us to Chicago?” she said to me.
I looked away. She pulled my eyes back and grinned in a half-toothless sort of way. I traded in another quarter and went back and started shooting around on the table. Couldn’t hit a thing. It was all spinning. I had no control over my arms. I killed my Blatz and traded in another quarter.
Then I heard the half-toothless one scream and slap Ziggy. I went around to watch. She and the Mute got up and went back down to their end of the bar. Ziggy and Dan were giggling. The greasy gal talked to the long-necked regular and Hamtramck Fats and all of them started looking at us. I stuck the cue in the crotch of my arm, like it was a gun I was cradling. I was ready. I was looking at them too. Couldn’t stop.
Ziggy and Danny each traded in another red quarter.
“Think you guys had enough?” the bartender asked.