“Certainly,” Roy said. He bent down, stroked, then stood up again. It was not a difficult bank, but Eddie felt he would miss it; it needed inside English to avoid kissing the cue ball. Roy bent down again, and to Eddie’s surprise used the inside English and made the two. The cue ball rolled over to the six.
Pat applauded. Looking at Eddie, Roy said, “Would you like to double the bet?”
“Sure,” Eddie said.
“That’s two rounds,” Roy said. He bent and shot the six ball in, and then the one. But after he made the one, his cue ball rolled too far, giving a bad lie on the three. He tried another bank, missed it, but the cue ball rolled by luck to the top rail. The striped balls were clustered at the other end of the table and it didn’t look as though anything could be made. “Well,” Roy said, “anybody want to bet a few dollars on the side?”
Eddie looked at him and said softly, “You don’t want to do that.”
There was an embarrassed silence for a moment, and then Arabella spoke up crisply. “I’ll bet you twenty dollars we win.”
“So that’s it,” Roy said. “Those instructions Ed gave you were a front. In fact you’re the United Kingdom pocket billiards champion.”
“You’ll find out,” Arabella said. “Put your money where your mouth is.”
Roy laid his cue stick on the table and slipped his wallet out of his jeans pocket. He took out two tens. Arabella was carrying a leather purse. She took out a twenty. “I’ll hold the stakes,” Pat said and took the money.
Eddie stepped up to the table. The only shot on was the eleven and it was a killer: it sat a few inches from the bottom rail and a long way from either corner pocket. The cue ball was nearly frozen to the top rail. Eddie leaned his stick against the table and put on his glasses. He picked up the cue and said, “I’ll go for the eleven,” and bent down.
“If you make it, I’ll eat it,” Roy said, kidding and not kidding.
“Fine,” Eddie said and drew back. Through his glasses the red stripe on the eleven was as sharp as the edge of a crystal wineglass. He stroked the cue hard and loose, smacking powerfully into the cue ball. The cue ball hurtled down the table, sliced the eleven paper-thin and bounded off the bottom rail, its path barely altered by contact with the eleven. As the cue ball came flying back up toward Eddie, the eleven rolled slowly, its red stripe turning over and over like a hoop. The white ball sped around the table, crashed into a cluster of balls and stopped. The eleven ball, still moving in its unhurried way, arrived at the mouth of the corner pocket, hesitated a moment at the edge, and fell in.
“Jesus Christ,” Roy said.
Eddie ran the rest and banked the eight into the side. Nobody said anything while he did it. Then he handed the rack to Roy. The thing about eight-ball was that you only needed to make eight out of the fifteen. When the balls were ready, Eddie slammed the cue ball into them, pocketed two and proceeded to run out the solids. He played it like straight pool and nudged the eight into an easy lie while making one of the earlier balls, and then pocketed it on a simple shot. During all this his cue ball never touched a rail. His position on every ball was perfect.
“Jesus Christ,” Roy said when it was over. “Do you need a manager?”
Arabella spoke up. “He’s Fast Eddie, Roy.”
“Come on….” Roy said.
“He’s Fast Eddie. You’ve been hustled.”
Afterward, when he was taking her home, Eddie said, “There are thousands of guys like him. They all play eight-ball.”
“How many are there like you?”
He hesitated. “Not many.”
“I should think not.” She stopped at the door of her building. “You looked anything but bored.”
“I wanted to beat him.”
“Maybe that’s the secret.”
He spent the next day practicing. His shoulder ached from the day before and by noon his feet were tired, but he took an hour break before lunch to work out in the gym and that made his shoulder and feet feel better. He drove directly back to the poolroom afterward and banked balls up and down the long rails for several hours. It was only when he stopped for a break at three-thirty that he realized the glasses were no longer a problem. He could see clearly and he no longer had to tilt his head in an uncomfortable way to use them.
He had not spoken to Martha for weeks and had no idea how long the last tables would be there before being sold. The Coke machine and the cigarette machine were gone. The telephone had been taken out. On the faded brown carpet with its cigarette burns and dust were large dark rectangles where the other tables had sat for fifteen years. It would be at least a month before the pasta-and-croissant place moved into the room; he knew they were having trouble financing. Martha’s lawyer’s ad, offering pool tables for sale, still appeared daily in the classifieds. He always checked it in the morning paper and it always tightened his stomach to see it: FIRST QUALITY POOL TABLES, IN EXCELLENT CONDITION.
There wasn’t any point in thinking about it. It had wiped him out for a week after the settlement, and that was enough. There was a certain pleasure in getting it done with, and another kind of pleasure in being out here himself with the blinds drawn and a Closed sign in the window, shooting balls into pockets. He kept it up until the pain in his shoulder came back and got worse than ever. But he felt better leaving the room than he had the day before. His game was sharper. The day had gone by quicker, even if he allowed for the workout at the gym. He would be playing Fats on Saturday in Denver. Maybe things would go differently.
It was another supermarket opening, outdoors like the first had been, but this time they played in front of packed stands and with three TV cameras. During the middle of the game, Eddie broke loose after a string of safeties and ran sixty before being forced to play safe again. When Fats stepped up to shoot, he said to Eddie, “You’re hitting them better,” and Eddie said wryly, “Practice.”
But Fats had already scored over ninety balls—fifteen or twenty at a time—before this, and when he stepped up he ran the rest of them out. The score was 150–112. There was no time for talk afterward; Eddie’s flight to Lexington via Chicago was leaving in an hour. Fats would be going to Miami a few hours later.
He planned to practice the next day in Lexington but woke with a sore throat and a tenderness in his joints that meant fever. It turned out he had the flu and was sick for three days. He called Arabella on the second morning, after Jean was out of the apartment. “I get over things like this pretty quick,” he said.
“It’s a nuisance anyway,” she said. “Can I bring you something?”
“Arabella,” he said, “I should have told you. I’m living with somebody.”
“That’s another nuisance.”
“It’s not a permanent thing, with Jean. I should have told you.”
“Eddie,” Arabella said, “I don’t have time to talk.” Her voice was like ice.
“I’ll see you around,” Eddie said, and hung up.
On the fourth day he was still weak, but he took his Balabushka and drove out to the poolroom. Nothing was changed on the outside, but when he unlocked and went in, there were no more pool tables. Not one. He stood there with his stomach knotted for a minute before closing the door and locking it. It was all over. He walked along the mall, past the A&P and Freddie’s Card Shop, and into the little bar-and-grill. They had just opened up and he was the only customer. “Give me a Manhattan, Ben,” he said to the bartender, seating himself. He still had the Balabushka in the case with him; he set it in front of him on the bar.