Much of the midgame was cut; while Arabella was pouring more wine the tape abruptly segued to Eddie’s big run—already thirty balls into it. He was shocked to see the change in himself on the screen. His stroke had been good before, but now it had a control that was visible even on television. His body was relaxed. His movements were as graceful as those of Fats or of Billy Usho. He looked sharp in his clothes. He could remember the good, near-dead stroke he had felt at the time of the run, could recall the sense of inevitability in the way the balls fell in, but he had no idea that he looked so good.
“Eddie,” Pat Skammer said, “you look wonderful” and some obscure, uncertain part of himself assented. It was a revelation. He looked as good as any pool player he had ever seen. The small Eddie Felson in front of him pocketing pool balls with precision and flair, walking confidently from shot to shot, was him. He sipped his white wine and watched himself. He would lose the game 150–112, but he could have won it.
“Do you play any more matches?” Roy asked.
“One. Next week.”
“What about ‘Wide World of Sports’?” Arabella said.
“Nothing.”
Finally Eddie missed, on the Sony in front of them. “Aww!” Pat Skammer said. Fats stepped up and began what would be his final run.
“I’ll beat him in Indianapolis,” Eddie said. “I’ll beat his ass.”
On Monday in the Rec Room, several of the players said they watched the game on TV and he looked great. One of them remembered shots that had been especially impressive. But when Mayhew came in and a student asked, “Did you see Mr. Felson on TV Saturday?” Mayhew scowled at him.
“I see more games in here than I want to see,” he said.
The airplane landed in a hush of snow—airport runway snow not yet soiled. Even the passengers were muted by it, waiting in wombish quiet for permission to stand and retrieve their luggage, then standing mute in the aisle as though the white outside the plane’s baby windows had charmed them to silence. This mood remained until assaulted by the Formica, Orlon and Muzak cheeriness inside the terminal building, bright as a liar’s smile. Eddie tucked his cue case under his arm, walking through this fluorescent limbo to Baggage Claim. Through windows framed in pitted aluminum, he saw giant toys of airplanes bearing familiar heraldry—Trans World, Delta, United—being tended in a field of white. He hurried. It was December 12; he was to meet Fats in two hours. He found his bag on the carousel, and then a taxi.
Despite the gray slush in the parking lot and the dense rows of cars whose owners filled the mall, his driver zipped along without delay. Eddie was over an hour early. The driver stopped at the entrance to an enormous J. C. Penney’s; on his way there he passed a restaurant with a sign reading TONY’S PIZZA—COCKTAILS. Eddie carried his bag and stick through Christmas-crowded aisles and tinkling music to the side of the store that faced the mall itself, a wide gallery with huge Christmas trees and an artificial creek. On the other side of an enormous aviary was a sign that read PARCEL CHECK and a row of lockers; he walked past sleeping macaws and a cockatoo, the floor of their cage littered with yellow popcorn, and put his things in a locker. Far down to his right, above the heads of a shifting multitude, a banner read FAST EDDIE MEETS FATS. He was pleased to see the top billing. This time he was ready. He would lock up Fats with safeties; and when he got a shot, would bear down on him as he had not borne down on him throughout this tour. Eddie turned and headed toward Tony’s. Fats was no unbeatable genius, no benevolent father either; he was an old man and, like anyone else, he made mistakes. Eddie would beat him.
Tony’s tables were full of women and the bar was empty. Eddie sat in the middle of it and ordered a Bloody Mary. There was, fortunately, no music in Tony’s; it smelled pleasantly of oregano and hot bread dough. The bartender was a good-natured young woman in a red sweater. He had drunk nothing on the airplane, and the pepper from the Bloody Mary burned pleasurably on his tongue. He liked the warm, pungent anonymity of this American place—liked being unidentifiable among middle-aged women. He sat in a suburb of Indianapolis but could have been anywhere at all; there was probably a Tony’s Pizza in Bangor, Maine, or in Honolulu that would be indistinguishable from this, with no character but what its designer had given it and a manufactured ambience that could have made it alclass="underline" the women with their children in booths eating pizza, the Budweiser clock on the wall over the bar, the red-sweatered blonde who served him drinks—part of some jolly TV commercial for, say, the telephone company.
In his jacket pocket was a page torn from a Rec Room copy of Billiards Digest that morning. He took it out now, spread it on the bar in front of him and read over the ad:
EASTERN STATES CHAMPIONSHIP
NINE-BALL EVENT
$7,000 IN PRIZES!!
FIRST PLACE: $2,500
ENTRY FEE: $350
DECEMBER 13, 14, 15
MABLEY’S BILLIARDS
NEW LONDON, CONN.
DEFENDING CHAMP:
GORDON (BABES) COOLEY
He would show it to Fats and ask him what he thought. He finished his drink and ordered another, letting the sweet warmth in his stomach spread, thinking of pool.
He was whistling when he got his cue case from the locker. He began moving through the crowd of Christmas shoppers down toward the banner.
When he arrived it was time to start, but Fats wasn’t there. The table was set up and ready—a Brunswick table for a change, with an honest green cloth. At least a hundred people were seated in the stands and another hundred were hanging around waiting for something to happen. But time passed and Fats did not show up. Eddie called the Ramada Inn and they rang Fats’ room, but no one answered. The shopping-mall manager tried Enoch Wax’s office in Lexington; Enoch had heard nothing from Fats. Eddie waited an hour, shooting a few trick shots to hold the audience and to give himself something to do. At three-twenty there was still no Fats and the bleachers were nearly empty. Eddie told the manager he was leaving, went back to Tony’s, had a drink and called a taxi to take him to the Ramada Inn.
“Mr. Hegerman checked in about noon,” the clerk at the desk said.
“Could you let me in the room?” Eddie said. He had tried the house phone and let it ring five times. Then he checked the bar, the restaurant, the coffee shop and came back to the desk.
“You’re Mr. Felson?” the clerk said. “Mr. Hegerman’s partner?”
“Yes. Could I have a key?”
“Sheryl will let you in, Mr. Felson.”
Sheryl, it turned out, was the woman with dyed hair at the cashier’s window. Eddie followed her across the lobby and down a long hallway. At Room 117 he took the key from her and opened the door himself.
Fats was in bed. He was dressed and in a sitting position, with his eyes open and his face frozen like that of an elegant waxwork. He was clearly dead.
On the plane back to Lexington, Eddie had four Manhattans. When he arrived at the apartment he was drunker than he had been in years, even though it didn’t show. When Arabella let him in it was after midnight and she was wearing the white panties and T-shirt she sometimes slept in.