Eddie took a deep swing and blew the eight-ball rack open. The three and the seven fell in, but the cue ball stopped near the foot spot and didn’t follow through to rebreak the balls the way he intended. He looked over the spread, checking out the five other solids and then the eight ball, which had to be made last. There was no problem with any of them; on a table this small, they were all simple enough. He concentrated, took care, and ran them out.
“You shoot a good stick.” It was a different bartender from the one yesterday—a blond kid in a white apron. At four in the afternoon, two old men were huddled over boilermakers at the far end of the bar; Eddie was the only other customer.
“Thanks.” Eddie laid his cue stick on the table and walked over. “Let me have a draft.” He tried to be pleasant and casual, although he did not feel that way.
The kid drew one and set it on the bar. “I haven’t seen you here before, have I?”
“I came in yesterday.”
The kid nodded and began drawing a beer for himself. “You shoot eight-ball like a pro.”
Fats had told him not to hold back, to play his best stick, or nearly. Hold back ten or fifteen percent if it seemed smart. He had been practicing for an hour without holding back at all, as he had the day before. No one had shown any interest. The only problem was the oversize cue ball; you couldn’t draw it back right, and sometimes he snookered himself and missed the next shot. Otherwise it was like child’s pool. He fed quarters into the slot, retrieved the balls, racked them up, broke, and shot them in. The main thing was the sluggish cue ball; it took getting used to.
Eddie sipped his beer and then looked at the kid. “I understand you have some good players around.”
The kid grinned. He was about twenty-five and had a pleasant face. “I thought you might have that understanding. When I saw your cue stick.”
“I like to play for money.” It had been true once, anyway.
“There’s a guy called Boomer.”
“Boomer?”
“His real name, I think. Dave or Dwight or something Boomer. He’ll play you.”
“Would he play for a hundred dollars a game?”
The kid blinked. “If he’s got it.”
“Does he have a backer?”
“A stakehorse?”
“Yes. A stakehorse.”
“There’s a man with him sometimes who only watches.”
“Is he likely to come in soon? I mean tonight?”
“I don’t know.” The kid set his beer down and walked to the pass-through that led back to the kitchen. “Arnie,” he said.
A thin black face appeared at the opening.
“This guy wants to play pool with Boomer.”
The head nodded and glanced briefly at Eddie.
“Isn’t there a number to call?”
“In the register. Under the checks.”
“Okay.” The kid went to the register, opened it, lifted the bill compartment with one hand and shuffled through papers with the other. He found a folded sheet of notepaper and turned to Eddie. “Do I call him?”
Eddie felt a tightness in his stomach. “I’d appreciate it.”
“Son of a bitch!” Boomer said when he saw Eddie’s Balabushka. “I was dragged from the comfort of my home to play a man with a stick like that. May the Lord deliver me!” He took a red bandanna handkerchief from his back pocket and blew his nose loudly. “Protect me from men with Balabushka cue sticks.” He looked at Eddie’s face for the first time, squinting at him. “I bet you do trick shots.” His face was broad and red and heavily lined; he looked like some kind of wild-eyed field hand. A drug-crazed sharecropper. He wore a faded tan military shirt with epaulettes, and baggy corduroys that fell over the creased insteps of cowboy boots. It was hard to tell what his age was—anywhere from thirty to fifty—but he had a potbelly and wrinkles around his eyes. The eyes were a pale, unreal blue, and cold as ice. “I bet that Balabushka makes them balls dance around like agitated molecules.”
“It’s no better than the man behind it,” Eddie said.
“Jesus Christ,” Boomer said, “you look serious.” A few people in the crowd laughed. In the hour since the bartender called, fifteen or twenty people had gathered.
“Why don’t you get your stick out,” Eddie nodded toward the leather case Boomer was carrying, “and we can shoot pool.” He held his cue in one hand and had the other in his pocket; he hoped fervently that his nervousness didn’t show. He had forgotten how it was to play a man on his home table with his home crowd around him. And Boomer had taken possession of the tavern the moment he came in, with his loud voice and his boot heels clacking on the Kentile floor.
“If this stick don’t wilt for shame when it sees yours,” Boomer said. He opened the top of the case and slid out a two-piece cue. It looked plenty good enough—a Huebler or a Meucci. Probably a three-hundred-dollar cue. When he screwed it together he did so deftly, with a light and accurate touch that contradicted the roughness of his appearance. Eddie had seen that before in the old days. Rough-looking country men with soft hands and, when they bent over a pool table, the light touch of a jeweler.
“Eight-ball is what we play here,” Boomer said.
“A hundred dollars a game.”
“Oh my god,” Boomer said, “I am lying in my king-sized bed watching a rerun of ‘Magnum PI’ and the telephone rings and now here I am talking to a stranger with an upscale cue stick who wants to play pool for a hundred dollars. There’s no comfort in life.”
“Do you want to play?” Eddie said quietly. The man was getting what he wanted; Eddie was beginning to feel rattled.
“Wayland,” Boomer said to the bartender, who had been watching all this attentively, as had everyone else in the place. “Let me have a Drambuie on the rocks and a dish of potato salad.” Then, to Eddie: “Put a quarter in the table.”
They flipped a coin for the break and Boomer won it. He used a heavy house cue to smash the balls open, the way Charlie had taught Eddie to when he was a kid, and pocketed three of them. Then he switched to the jointed and ran the balls out. Eddie handed him two fifties. It was six o’clock. The crowd was getting larger; they leaned against the rails of the tavern’s other two tables and stood in the space behind them. The bar stools had filled with men who were now turned toward them, watching.
Boomer shot quietly, as Eddie expected he would, and almost as gracefully as Fats. His stroke was eccentric, swooping the cue stick over a long, wavering bridge, but he hit them solidly. And he was used to the heavy cue ball; on one shot he drew it back lightly by three feet.
“Winner breaks,” Boomer said, and went to the bar for a mouthful of potato salad and a drink. He came back wiping his mouth with a paper napkin, jammed the napkin into his hip pocket, took his cue and broke the balls. The table was three and a half by seven; after a solid break shot, the balls were distributed evenly all over it. Eddie had never played on a table like this before; he wasn’t sure how many games a man could run on it.
Boomer bent and sank his first ball, and then looked at the crowd around him. “I got to keep making these little fuckers,” he said. “If I give that Balabushka a chance, it’ll put me in the County Home.”
“It’s only a pool cue, Boomer,” somebody in the crowd said.