So it went for another week. That Friday Buddy managed to sleep through the first F-Test. Well, it wasn’t a shock; he had managed to sleep through every other 8:00 AM class he had signed up for. He even had the gall to complain that I didn’t wake him up, but I told him I wasn’t there, since I had my own classes to go to. Regardless, the sheer shock of the F-Test was finally sinking into my classmates, and a major party was planned down at the Rat that night. Lots of people were going to get stupid.
I had a beer in my room after class and then headed down to the Student Union, skipping out on whatever fresh hell the Dining Hall was preparing to serve up. I wasn’t quite hungry yet, so I wandered into the billiards room. All the tables were taken, so I found the one with what seemed to be the shortest line and plunked a quarter down on the table. The pool tables were coin operated. Once the balls went into the pockets, they fell into a track mechanism and would only be released by a quarter in the slot. Only the cue ball managed to escape this indignity, and I never figured out what magical method the table used to determine which ball was the cue ball. You placed a quarter on the edge of the table. When it was your turn, you put your quarter in and played for rights to the table with the previous owner. If you lost, the reigning owner of the table took on the next challenger. If you won, you were the new owner of the table.
The present king of the table was a loud mouthed sophomore, supported by his equally loud mouthed friend. They were playing as a team, alternating turns with the cue ball. There was some degree of skill present, but only enough to whip on somebody who had never played pool before. They beat, barely, two freshmen in a row, and then it was my turn.
“Lookie, lookie, fresh meat!” crowed the first guy, a tall and skinny guy in an RPI t-shirt and faded jeans.
“Just leave the quarter with us, little boy,” added his partner, slightly shorter and heavier, who was wearing a Led Zeppelin sweatshirt and jeans.
I smiled. These assholes weren’t just marginal pool players, they were also half drunk. Another freshman had queued up behind me and laid down his quarter. I turned to him and said, “Give me ten minutes, and I’ll take care of you, too.” The freshman grinned as the two sophomores started loudly mouthing off.
“Hey, knock it off and keep it down!” The manager of the billiards room/bowling alley yelled at them. They looked at him and shrugged but still were ragging on me in a lower tone. I ignored them.
We were playing 8 Ball. Normally we would have seen how close to a full rebound we could get with just a cue ball to determine who got to break, but these two clowns said the rule was that the owner of the table got to break. I didn’t care to push it, and despite a truly vicious break shot, the tall and skinny guy couldn’t sink a ball. I took my cue and promptly sank the 2 ball. “I have solids,” I commented, and promptly ran the 1, 3, and 7 balls before scratching on the 6. The other guy managed to get both the 9 and 10 balls before scratching. I then ran the 6, 4, and 5 balls before calling, “8 ball, corner pocket.” I nailed it with a flourish.
“Thank you very much,” I said with a smile. I nodded to the other freshman to come up and take his place.
“Fuck you!” said the first sophomore. “What are you, a hustler?”
“Nobody hustles us!” said his friend.
They both puffed up their chests and tried to crowd me off the table, but I just stood there and kept my mouth shut. They got loud enough that the manager came over and threatened to throw them out.
“He’s cheating! He’s hustling us!” said the first guy.
“Yeah!” agreed his partner.
Not the sharpest tools in the shed. I was trying to figure out how a four ball run was a hustle. I settled it by asking the freshman if he minded waiting another five minutes. He gave me a curious look and said it was okay by him.
I turned back to the manager. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll take these two on again. I lose, it’s their table; I win, they get lost.”
He chewed their asses another minute and then washed his hands of them. I broke this time, ended up with stripes, and cleaned them out in another couple of runs. They started bitching and moaning again, but this time the manager just yelled at them and pointed them towards the door. They wandered out with no good grace.
I joked about it with the other freshman, who perked up when the two sophomores left but still couldn’t break me. I will admit, he had more talent that they did. Next in line were a pair of upper classmen. They were dressed in matching red and gold fraternity shirts, with the Greek letters Kappa Gamma Sigma on the front. “I bet you’re feeling all sorts of brave now, aren’t you!” said the first one, a guy roughly my height and weight.
“Yeah, he’s feeling like it’s his table now,” agreed the second guy, a little shorter than the first.
“It costs a quarter to find out,” I replied, with a smile.
“Oh my, somebody needs an asskicking,” commented the first fellow. He pulled out a quarter and flipped it through the air to me. “You’re on.” He fished a cue out of the rack, rolled it on the table to see if it was warped, and put it back. It took him another two tries to find one he liked.
He must have really liked it a lot. I got nothing on the break, and he ran the table. I glanced over at the manager, who was grinning at me. “Sonny, you’ve just been hustled.”
“I guess so.” I turned back to the frat boys. “I guess you’ve played before.”
That set them both to laughing. “They’re the frat champions.” The manager pointed at a plaque on the wall. There were a number of small brass plates, one for each year, and the current winners were James Easton and Rubin Goldstein, Kappa Gamma Sigma.
I shook my head. “You two are these guys?” I asked, tapping on the plaque. They howled in laughter again. “Okay, so who’s who?”
The guy who played me grinned and stuck out his hand. “I’m Jim Easton. This is Boris.” The other student put out his hand.
I gave him an odd look. “Boris? The sign says Rubin Goldstein.”
“That’s my nickname. Come on, let’s get a beer. I’m buying,” said the second guy.
“You’re on.” I hung up my cue and surrendered the table to the next pair of students. We left the billiards room and settled into a booth. Jim and I sat down, while Boris wandered off towards the counter. “You stood up to those clowns pretty well,” commented Jim.
“Nothing to it. They were too drunk to play anyway,” I answered.
“Drunks like to fight.”
I shrugged. “Well, I wasn’t born with this nose.” I gave a lousy impersonation of John Wayne: “A man’s got to do what a man’s go to do!”
Boris came back with a pitcher of beer and three plastic cups. “What’s a man go to do?”
Jim said, “He was about to tell us how he busted his nose.”
I grinned. “My girlfriend’s parents came home early.”
Both Jim and Boris grinned wildly at that. “And were you being naughty?” asked Boris.
“Extremely. They kicked the shit out of me.”
“They?” asked Jim.
I gave them the condensed version of what happened, which led to howls of laughter and a lot of beer drinking. They asked for my name and what classes I was in, and were very surprised when I told them I wasn’t in any of the freshman classes. That discussion took us through the first pitcher of beer. Jim paid for the second, and we continued to talk for another half hour.