“Got it.” Jonathan nodded and lit a cigarette. “Where’s Tonya been lately? You never bring her around anymore.”
“I don’t think you’ll be seeing much more of her.”
“Oh yeah? Sorry to hear it,” Jonathan said. He handed one of the house cues to Evan. It was old and warped, but Evan bent down and lagged the nine ball with it anyway. The first shot of the night always felt right, as though he was just picking up where he left off last time he played. To him, shooting pool was like getting back to a good book he hadn’t read in a few days. It was simply the world he preferred.
The cue’s tip struck the ball with a gentle thud. Evan watched the ball hit the bottom rail and roll back to almost exactly where he struck it from.
Evan disliked when people asked about Tonya. Especially people at the Crown. He had brought her there only a handful of times, but she was the kind of girl who made an impression, straightforward in everything. The first time they met had been like that. Evan was at Sullivan’s, an Irish place near the lake. He was drinking with a friend of his when he felt a tap on his shoulder. When he turned around there was Tonya, a pretty brunette with the slyest smile he’d ever seen, like she knew his deepest secret. She was holding a Jameson neat.
“I don’t know if this is how you take your whiskey,” she said, handing it to him, “but it’s how I drink mine.” And that was it. Tonya picked out the songs on the jukebox, and they danced drunken-clumsy for the rest of the night. A month later she moved in.
Jonathan took a cigarette from his pack and handed it to Evan. “So what happened?” he asked.
Evan considered this for a moment. “Same fight as always.”
“What fight was that?”
“Coming here. Places like here. She said it shut me off. That I didn’t really know her.” Evan felt the anger heating the pockets of his cheeks, stealing the luck from his now unsteady hands. “I knew her better than anybody,” he said. “I knew her that well.”
Jonathan raised his drink. “Here’s to bumps in the road,” he said. They touched glasses and drank.
Evan listened for a while as Jonathan talked about how things were at the shop. He heard Jonathan describe the falling orders, and his declining hours, but he could not concentrate. He had purposefully neglected to tell Jonathan that when Tonya left she also took her half of the rent money. Evan knew that when he finished talking Jonathan would spread the word that Evan was looking for a game, and he did not want to play with the air of necessity. Jonathan would not tell any of the others, but even he knowing would be too much. The number one rule, the one everybody claimed but few religiously followed, was not that you should always play sober, or always watch your opponent in action before the money was on the table. It was not even to make sure that you were having an on night before you bet, since even the best of players occasionally appeared to be amateurs for no conceivable reason. Pure and simple, it was to only bet what you could afford to lose, and as Evan pinched the tight roll of twenties, solid as a cue between his thumb and forefinger, he knew that the six hundred it made up was nowhere near expendable.
After a while Jonathan walked away. Evan watched him move through the smoky room, dodging players and waitresses effortlessly. Evan walked back to the bar and ordered another Railbender. He glanced down the long wooden surface and saw Augie Mitchell sitting alone at the far end. Augie was a staple at the Crown, a burly man with an expressionless face and a sprout of blackish hair which he combed across the pale expanse of his large pate. In his day, he was a player of formidable talents, but over time it became the drinks he returned for. Evan started coming to the Crown toward the end of Augie’s playing days. He watched him once, practicing nine ball alone at a corner table. For a large man he had a remarkably graceful stroke. The cue slid through his thick hairy fingers like a snake through tall grass. Only on the break did he reveal the power that resided in his heavy arms. He fired the cue ball toward the rack as though it was a cannonball exploding from the side of a battleship. Augie had lost his job as a foreman at the brewery and sold his Harvey Martin cue to a traveling hustler for cash. Evan heard that it got to be that Augie had to be drunk to play, and then he would miss things: shoot at the five when the four was still on the table, rack like he’d never done it before. When he wasn’t drunk his hands shook too bad for the long shots, for the delicate ones he’d once been expert at. He couldn’t cut or put English on the cue ball the way he once could, and he tore the felt when he tried to jump. It was rumored now that he did collection for a bad element in town, that for a price his services were available to anyone. Evan nodded at him and Augie raised his glass slightly. Since Augie no longer played, they’d never exchanged more than a simple hello.
Evan was almost finished with a third beer when he felt the man standing behind him. He turned and instantly recognized him. He was not a regular, but Evan had seen him in the bar several times drinking or practicing alone at one of the tables.
“You Evan?” he asked. His large eyes darted from Evan’s to the ground. The man was pear-shaped with a sizeable stomach and narrow chest. He wore a green sweatshirt with an oil stain on its left side. He leaned on one of the house cues and Evan thought it might suddenly splinter and break under the man’s weight. “Jon says you’re looking for a game.”
Evan nodded and held out his hand.
“I’m Frank.” The man smiled uncomfortably as though uneasy with the formalities. “I just got here. I’m back on number seven.”
Evan peered over the man’s shoulder. Resting on the green felt was the half wooden crate in which the balls were stored. Next to it sat a black leather shoulder-strap case. Evan looked back at the man and noted his sloppy appearance. His hair was a stringy blond nest, and his unshaven face looked almost dirty in the bar’s dim light. The Crown had rules on appearance and conduct. Ball caps were to be worn to the front, not backwards or to the side like some of the college kids had taken to doing. Cut offs and ripped clothing weren’t allowed, and chewing tobacco was strictly forbidden. But as slovenly as he looked, Frank wasn’t in violation of any part of the code.
“I don’t know, Frank. You pretty good?”
Frank’s uncomfortable smile gave way to an irritated gaze that seemed to fit him much more naturally. “You want to play or not?” he asked, jamming the butt of the cue impatiently into the bar’s wooden floor.
Evan smiled. When he played the college boys he let the balls speak for themselves. But when he was facing another player it didn’t hurt to work in a jab now and again. A little grind helped you to always seem in control, even when you were down.
“I’ll play,” Evan said. “Let me grab my cue and I’ll meet you.”
Evan placed a couple singles on the bar for Thomas and walked through the wooden divider to the back of the pool room. Along the back next to the bathrooms was a wall of lockers. The face of each was only about as large as a postcard, but they were deep enough to fit a two-piece cue taken apart. Evan had rented number thirty-four for years. It was along the bottom row, and he knelt to face it. He entered his combination, twenty-one, three, seventeen, and felt the gentle pop and then resistance as the lock released. He removed his cue. It was a McDermott Sedona made of Birdseye maple. There was a triangle leather tip and sixty eight inlays made of everything from ebony to oak. Evan bought it about half a year after he and Tonya got started. He managed to save seven hundred dollars and hadn’t thought twice about spending it on the Sedona. Tonya wanted him to buy a car.
Evan screwed the ends of the cue together and held it out at arm’s length like a sword. He peered down its curved surface and checked its trueness. He twirled it in his hands and admired its smooth finish and rough wrap for grip near its butt.