The TV men, two kids in T-shirts and jeans, had positioned themselves behind their cameras. “Keep the cables away from us,” Fats said to them. He was screwing his cue together; its butt was silver and the joint white. What was disorganized and confusing before, here around this red pool table in a parking lot, was now orderly. Fats tightened his cue, took a piece of pool chalk from his coat pocket and began chalking up.
A crowd of teenage boys began scrambling into the bleachers, lining themselves up in the fourth row. Out in the parking lot a dog barked. Two balls sat on the balkline. Eddie tightened his cue, slid the case under the table and took his position behind one; Fats stood behind the other. They bent and lagged. The balls rolled down, rebounded, rolled back up. Eddie’s stopped an inch from the cushion, but Fats’ ball was perfect—touching it. “Your break, Fast Eddie,” Fats said. There was a director’s chair at one corner of the platform. Fats racked the balls at the foot of the table, walked over to the corner and seated himself. Eddie stepped up to the head of the table, bent down, made his bridge and broke the balls safe. The cue ball hit the corner ball, jarred it loose, bounced off the two bottom rails and rolled back up the table. The two colored balls hit their cushions and returned to the triangle. It was a perfect break. A few people in the stands applauded. At least there were some who knew what was going on.
Fats walked up to the table and without even looking it over played safe, leaving Eddie much the same shot. They played it back and forth like that for a while until Eddie, squinting down the table at a blurred seven ball, missed the safety and left Fats open. He seated himself in the director’s chair and watched.
At the place in the Keys, Fats looked old and weary; Eddie had guessed him at seventy, at least. But here, with his impeccable suit and his quick movements, he seemed far younger than that. And his stroke was beautiful as ever—smooth, controlled and relaxed. He circled the table as he had in Chicago twenty years ago when Eddie himself was young and hungry and had wanted to beat this enormous man more than he had wanted anything before in his life. Eddie watched him now as he might have watched the performance of a gymnast or a magician.
Most of the people in the stands would not know a thing about straight pool, and the safeties would be incomprehensible to them; but they were watching intently. Fats moved at an even, graceful pace, bending for his shots and pocketing them without fuss. There should have been a referee, but it didn’t matter; Fats had the stage to himself and took it effortlessly. When he had pocketed fourteen balls, leaving himself a perfect break shot off the fifteenth, Eddie stepped up, racked the fourteen and sat down. Fats chalked his cue and went on shooting. More people came into the bleachers, silently. The TV cameramen dollied their cameras on rubber tires, pressed their faces against the viewers, walked quietly on their sneakers. Out on the parking lot, sunlight reflected from a car bumper would occasionally flash and dazzle; sometimes a person at a distance would shout to someone else; cars moved in and out. For a few moments a radio blared. Fats went on shooting and Eddie kept racking the balls and sitting again. It was beautiful to watch. He didn’t care who won.
The limousine took them to the airport for the flight to Cincinnati. Eddie leaned back into the dark velvet upholstery, into the silence and cold air. Fats sat next to him, his eyes closed. He was still wearing the suit jacket, and the tie was still neatly tied. Finally Eddie spoke. “I don’t see how you do it,” he said. “I was lucky to get sixty balls.”
Fats said nothing.
“In Cincinnati we’ll be in an auditorium,” Eddie said. “It should be air-conditioned.”
Fats kept his eyes closed, clearly resting. As they pulled into the Miami International Airport he turned over toward Eddie and said, “You need glasses.”
For a moment Eddie was furious. The fat man had spoken as though he were a child.
“Eddie,” Fats said later, on the plane, “you weren’t hitting them like you used to.”
“I was a kid then. Now I’m middle-aged.”
“Middle age doesn’t exist, Fast Eddie. It’s an invention of the media, like halitosis. It’s something they tame people with.”
“Maybe you’re right.” But Eddie didn’t feel convinced. The stewardess came with their drinks—a Manhattan for him and Perrier for Fats, and he busied himself with arranging his seat tray and then getting the cap off the little bottle and pouring the drink on top of the cherry in the plastic glass.
“I’m over sixty,” Fats said, drinking his Perrier. “When I was supposed to be middle-aged I ignored it and it went away. You slow down a little. You get smarter. That’s all there is.”
It wasn’t true. Not for him. He didn’t feel the way he had felt as a young man. He felt washed out, and frightened. “My pool game isn’t what it was.”
“Then practice.”
“I do practice.”
“How often?”
It was less than once a week. In his own poolroom, shooting pool bored him. He only shot balls around when there was nothing else to do with himself. He shrugged but didn’t answer the fat man.
Fats folded his hands across his enormous lap and closed his eyes. Eddie looked out the window, at the gray mass of clouds below them, and finished his drink. Pool did bore him. There was no excitement in it anymore. And the sharp young kids—kids who played nine-ball and one-pocket—annoyed him. Just their need to win radiated a chill into him. But what else was there? He had tried selling real estate, a field where his charm and looks might have helped him, and it had been terrible. You had to kiss the asses of people you didn’t even want to look at. The same with insurance. He had thought he was a hustler, and a good one, until he had tried the ordinary world of American business. It had turned his stomach and had frightened him. In five weeks of showing apartments and rental houses in Lexington, smiling and nodding and lying, taking inconvenient phone calls and answering querulous or bullying or misleading questions, showing places to people who he knew were only fooling around, he had made seven hundred dollars. Seven hundred lousy dollars, before taxes. It was no good and he quit it. But what else was there? These were hard times. International Harvester, the paper on his lap said, had closed down in Fort Wayne. People waited in line from before dawn for jobs Eddie felt he wouldn’t last at for a week. Machine-tool operator. Pressman. Sanitation worker. And he hadn’t finished high school. There was thirteen thousand in his bank account, and that was it. He would have to stop this drift in his soul or he would be unloading cabbages at the A&P.
On the other hand, here was Fats. Sixty-five, probably. He had no job, lived well, took pictures of birds, still shot first-class pool, ate beautifully and lived in the sun. He had probably never worked a day in his life. It could be done.
He looked over at Fats, whose eyes were open again.
“How did you do it, Fats?” he said. When Fats said nothing, Eddie finished off his drink and, feeling the alcohol now, went on. “My life is falling apart, Fats. My wife’s gone and my poolroom’s gone. My pool game’s down to half. Less than half. How in hell did you manage to avoid all that?”
Fats looked at him and blinked. “I went on winning, Fast Eddie,” he said.