The Color of Money
Walter Tevis
For Toby Kavanaugh, who taught me how to shoot pool.
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green thought, in a green shade.
ANDREW MARVELL
Chapter One
Where it faced the highway, the Sunburst was just another motel, but behind the main building sat a cluster of a half-dozen concrete cottages with tiny rock gardens. Condominiums. It was on one of the Keys, the one just below Largo. Driving down from the Miami airport, Ed had pictured a resort hotel with terraces and tennis courts, but this was old-fashioned. He parked beside a crimson hibiscus and got out into the Florida heat. Number 4 was the one across the gravel road, with a clear view of the ocean. It was late in the afternoon and the light from the sky was intense.
Just as he came up, the screen door opened and a hugely fat man stepped out. The man wore Bermuda shorts and carried a wet bathing suit; he walked to the edge of the little porch and began wringing the suit into the bushes, scowling. It was him. Old as hell and even fatter, but there was no mistaking the man. Ed walked up to the foot of the steps, shading his eyes from the sun. “You’re George Hegerman,” he said, pleasantly.
The fat man grunted and went on with his suit.
“We used to know each other, in Chicago….”
The man turned and looked at him. “I remember.”
“I’d like to talk business,” Ed said, squinting up. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable. It was extremely hot. “I could use a drink.”
The fat man turned and finished with the bathing suit. There was a wood bannister at one end of the porch and he hung it over that, spreading it out to dry. The suit was enormous. He turned back to Ed. “I’m going out in the bay. You can come along.”
Ed stared at him for a moment. “In a boat?”
“That’s right.”
Hegerman stood at the wheel, wearing only the Bermuda shorts and dark glasses; he piloted the small boat expertly toward the low sun. The water was flat and shallow and as blue as any water Ed had ever seen; the motor behind him made conversation impossible except for an occasional shout.
After a while Hegerman pushed the throttle forward and the boat jolted ahead, skipping over the surface of the water like a flat rock and bouncing Ed hard against the seat. He stood up like the other man and held a rail in front of him. The spray hit against his face and drenched his dark glasses. They began to pass small, humped islands made of some kind of tangled plant. “What’s that?” he shouted as they passed one, and the fat man boomed out, “Mangrove.” Ed said nothing, feeling stupid for not knowing. His shirt was soaked now and there was water in his shoes. He seated himself and tried to get the shoes off, but the boat was bouncing too hard and he couldn’t manage it. The water’s color had changed to a startling aquamarine. The deep, unclouded blue of the sky was dazzling.
Abruptly Hegerman cut the throttle back and the banging stopped. The motor sound changed to a purr. Ed got his shoes off. Ahead of them was a real island with a narrow beach; they were moving toward it.
Behind the beach stood a mass of trees, through which the sun filtered toward them. When they were a few hundred yards out, the fat man cut off the motor and they drifted. Then he opened a storage compartment in the seat beside him and carefully pulled out something black. It was a camera. He took a tubular black case from the same place, zipped it open and removed a lens that was over a foot long. He fastened it to the camera body. Ed set his shoes beside him on the seat, watching the fat man who had now erected a tripod on the deck by his seat and was screwing the camera to the top of it. Ed knew better than to ask questions; he kept silent and watched. The cigarette pack in his shirt pocket was unopened and had stayed dry. He opened it now and lit up, then peeled the wet shirt off, wrung it out over the gunwale and spread it out on the empty seat beside him. The fat man had his camera ready now, pointed toward the trees. His enormous bottom filled the back of the boat seat; he had only to lean sideways to have his eye at the viewfinder. Ed leaned back and smoked, waiting. There were ripples on the surface of the water and they glowed above their troughs with iridescence. Water lapped quietly against the side of the boat.
Abruptly there was a movement at the edge of the trees and three tall, pink birds came walking toward them like apparitions. The fat man leaned over and his camera began to click. The birds were astonishing; Ed had never seen anything like them. They walked gravely to the water’s edge, looked to the right and the left. The one in the middle took a few silent steps, its knees bending backward, raised its pink-edged wings, held its long neck straight out and fanned itself into the air. Its ghostly awkwardness gone, it was flying. The other two followed. As the third took off, Ed could see that its long bill was strangely wide at the tip, as though there were a bulb growing there. It gave the big creature a lugubrious, comical look, but when it was aloft like the others it flew like a dream. The birds circled the island once and then flew away to the left, lazily and silently, their necks extended straight out from their bodies like experimental aircraft. Ed felt goose bumps. The fat man kept taking pictures, following them until they were out of sight. When they were gone he leaned against his seat, laying a huge arm across the back of it. “That’s it,” he said in a gravelly voice.
“It was something,” Eddie said. He felt a lot better. Before the birds had appeared he was beginning to feel hustled; the whole thing was like a wild-goose chase. But they hadn’t been wild geese. “Herons?” he said.
“Roseates.” The fat man was dismantling his camera. When he got it stowed back in the compartment, he reached down to the deck beside him, lifted a cover and pulled out a bottle with tinfoil around its neck; he opened it and handed it back to Ed. The label read “Dos Equis”; it was Mexican beer. “Thanks,” Eddie said, and the man grunted. “Roseate spoonbills.” He reached down to a small green bottle and opened it. Perrier.
Ed grinned. “I remember you always drank imported beer.”
“I have a persuasive doctor nowadays.”
Ed took a long swallow from his beer. “What I want to talk about is a tour,” he said.
The fat man sipped his Perrier and said nothing.
“There’s a man with a cable TV company and he wants to put us on cable.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the fat man said.
“He wants us to go around the country playing each other while he films it for cable TV. It might go on ‘Wide World of Sports.’”
“ESPN? Home Box Office?”
“Mid-American.”
“What’s Mid-American? Where’s the main office?”
Ed took another swallow of his beer. “Lexington, Kentucky. It’s where I live now.”
Fats said nothing. He began dismantling his tripod. “I want to get back before dark.”
Going back, he went more slowly, seated behind the wheel. The water had turned dark and was as smooth as gelatin; it looked as if you could walk on it. The sun was behind them now. Ed took off his dark glasses. They moved toward shore, passing the mangrove islands, for several minutes before the fat man spoke. “I haven’t heard your name for fifteen years,” he said.
“I’ve been running a poolroom.”
“A waste,” the fat man said.
“It looked good at first. What do you think about this TV thing?”
“Tell me about it.”
“The contract gives us six hundred dollars each for an appearance, and twenty-five percent of residuals. That’s if ABC or somebody picks it up. And expenses.”