Marcum looked at him angrily. “I couldn’t take less than a thousand.”
Eddie shrugged, picked up the bills and put them in his pocket.
“Just a minute,” Marcum said softly, “just a goddamned minute…”
“I had no idea you carried so much cash,” Arabella said. She was holding the metal dog in her lap as though it were a real puppy. The chromium woman lay on the backseat.
“Cash brings things into focus.”
“It seems wicked.”
“The man’s broke. Five hundred will keep him in Molson’s Ale till the Fourth of July.”
“Poor Deeley,” Arabella said. “Poor Deeley.”
It took them another hour, going eastward along Interstate 64, to reach Connors. During the election campaign there had been a flood of Democratic television commercials showing shuttered factories and dying mill towns; Connors looked like one of those commercials. Eddie turned off the four-lane, rounded the cloverleaf, pulled up at a stop sign, and there it was: tin storefronts embossed to resemble stone, Kay’s Luncheonette—a converted ranchhouse with dusty African violets in its picture window; small buildings of sooty concrete block bearing neon—BURTON’S DRIVE-IN LIQUORS, BILLY’S PACKAGE STORE, IRENE AND GEORGE’S BAR AND GRILL. As seen from the highway, the town’s periphery was shut-down coal tipples and gray factories with empty parking lots; its center was the four-way stop sign where Eddie’s car now sat.
He pressed the accelerator and went through the intersection.
“It might be fun,” Arabella said.
Eddie said nothing, and drove along the main street until he saw the sign directing them to the motel. He followed the route grimly and found the motel at the edge of town, with a view of the interstate highway they had just left. The Bonnie Brae Inn—TV, Pool, $22.00 DBL. He pulled into the near-empty parking lot, by the sign saying “Office.”
“This is it?” Arabella said.
“Unless we go to Huntington, West Virginia.”
“And you’d commute. Is there anything interesting in Huntington?”
“There’s a Chinese restaurant.”
“Let’s try it here,” Arabella said cheerfully.
The room wasn’t too bad. Eddie carried her Selectric in from the car, set it on the round table by the window and plugged it in. There was a straight-back chair by the dresser, and she brought that over, put a sheet of paper in the typewriter and typed a few lines. “It’ll be fine,” she said, looking up at him.
“I’ll get the other things.” He took the box from the car trunk with the Vesuviana, the can of espresso, the loaf of bakery rye, the cups and spoons and the hot plate, the half-dozen books and the big bottle of dry white wine. Then he brought in the woman and dog made from car bumpers and set it by the window. The view was of a barren field with dark hills in the distance, but the light was good. He began checking things out. The television worked; the mattress was firm; the carpet underfoot was thick. Arabella had taken off her shoes and was walking around.
“I ought to carpet my apartment, Eddie,” she said. “It’s fun to go barefoot.”
“The statue looks good,” Eddie said. “I’ll give you a call if I’m going to be late.”
The bar at the Palace had one of those big-screen projection TVs; a quiet row of men in working clothes were watching a Rock Hudson movie on it as he came in. He stood at the bar, ordered a beer and looked around. Behind him sat two coin-operated tables, with no players.
“I’m looking for a man named Ousley,” he said when the bartender gave him the bottle.
“Ousley?”
“He plays pool for money.”
The old man sitting next to Eddie looked up. “If it’s Ben Ousley you want, he’s gone to California. Two years back.”
“You a pool player?” the man on the other side said, reaching out shakily to touch Eddie’s cue case.
“I’m looking for a game.”
“Used to be some big games in here,” the first old man said.
A younger man down at the end of the bar spoke up. “Norton Dent,” he said clearly. “He’ll play you.” Eddie did not like the tone of his voice.
“Fine,” Eddie said. “Where is he?”
“He might be in tonight,” the young man said, looking down the bar at Eddie. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Can you call him?”
The young man looked away. “No. You’ll have to wait.”
Eddie shrugged. There was a quarter change from his beer. He put it in the table, racked the balls, opened his cue case and took out his cue. When he was screwing it together he looked up to see that most of the men at the bar were ignoring the movie; they had swiveled in their seats to watch him. It was somehow unnerving, being stared at by these lean old men in blue and gray shirts. They watched impassively from small eyes set in seamed faces, like a photograph from the Great Depression.
He broke the rack and began to shoot, banking the balls. The table was easy. His stroke was smooth and certain and he made clean shots, bringing them sharply off the cushions and into the pockets. It was a matter of getting the feel of the table under pressure, and keeping it. He had almost forgotten that, over the years. He ignored the men watching him, neither grandstanding for them nor missing deliberately to deceive them; and he banked the balls in prettily with his glossy Balabushka. It was reassuring to come into a strange place like this, with its dim hostility, and fall immediately into perfect stroke.
He came to the bar and got two dollars’ worth of quarters. The movie was still on, but no one was watching. They were all looking at him. He got the change and went back to the table.
By six in the evening, the bar was full of men, but no one wanted to play. There was a grubby washroom, and he cleaned the table grime from his hands as well as he could before taking his cue apart and putting it back in the case.
The young man was still at the end of the bar, still drinking Rolling Rock beer. He didn’t turn around when Eddie came up to him. “I’ll be back at eight-thirty,” Eddie said. “If your friend comes in, tell him I’m looking for him.”
“He’s no friend of mine,” the man said, staring at his beer bottle.
“Eight-thirty,” Eddie said.
The young man turned around and looked up at him with a cold, inward stare. “I’ll tell him your name. If you’ll tell it to me.”
“Ed Felson,” Eddie said. “I’m called Fast Eddie.”
The young man turned back to his beer.
“I did eight pages on Deeley and watched ‘Search for Tomorrow.’ Or maybe it was ‘Search for an Abortionist,’ considering the overall tone.”
“You had a better day than I did.”
“It wasn’t bad. I took a walk down the road and found a drive-in movie.”
“Maybe we can go tonight. The man I’m waiting for may not show up.”
“Debbie Does Dallas,” Arabella said. She was pouring them each a glass of white wine from the big bottle, using the motel’s plastic glasses. “I suspect it’s about oral sex.”
“Sounds like a winner.” Eddie seated himself on the bed next to a pile of Arabella’s papers and took the wineglass. “We’ll stay through tomorrow. The player I was looking for, the one Fats told me about, isn’t in town, but there’s one other. He’ll be in tonight or tomorrow.”
Dent was there when he came in. He was a huge, soft-looking man in his thirties, with sideburns and a gray T-shirt with the words EAT ME. He was shooting balls on Eddie’s table, using a cheap jointed cue with a scarlet butt. The young man was still sitting at the bar. The TV was off. On the jukebox Bobbie Gentry sang “Ode to Billy Joe.” A couple of the old men had their heads on folded arms at the bar. “Here he is,” the young man said coldly to the big man at the table. “Fast Eddie.”