The tournament would start at one, but the ballroom opened at ten. At a quarter till, Eddie was in his room exchanging his wet shorts for dry ones; he was at the ballroom door when it opened. He went to one of the practice tables, put the fifteen colored balls out on the green, screwed his cue stick together and began to shoot. His stroke was crisp and sharp, his eyesight clear. His body—clean, exercised and purged of its long sleep—felt tireless. He ran the rack, and then another. Some young men began a practice game on the other of the two tables behind the bleachers; he ignored them, clipping balls into pockets.
“…one of the all-time greats, Fast Eddie Felson!” the announcer said with forced enthusiasm. There was scattered applause. Someone whistled through his teeth.
This was the low bracket of the tournament, and Eddie was matched with a jeweler from Alameda who looked deadly earnest but could barely make three or four balls in succession. He wore steel-rimmed glasses, had a potbelly, and seemed never to have considered winning. Eddie beat him handily but without doing anything especially well. He needed more practice.
He hesitated several times before picking up the telephone and quickly punching out the Kentucky number. When she came on, the lack of tension in her voice surprised him; he was surprised again by the ease in his own. Maybe the distance in miles was working for them. He asked if there had been any word from the police.
“They say they’re looking,” she said. “But I don’t know what they can prove. If they catch him.”
“I don’t want to think about it.” He reached across the bed for a cigarette. “I won my first round.”
“That’s good news. How many do you have to win to be in the money?”
“If I beat the next man it’ll pay back the entry fee. Fifteen hundred dollars.” He hesitated a moment and then said, “I’ve got to get back down there and practice.” He could not think of anything else to say.
“Sure,” she said, too quickly. “Give me a call in a day or so and let me know how you’re doing.”
When he came into the ballroom, the second round had started. Babes Cooley was playing on Number One, and most of the crowd in the room filled the bleachers near that table. Eddie got as close as he could and watched for a moment, standing on the back row and seeing as well as he could over the heads in front of him. Babes was running a rack, concentrating quietly on his position. When he broke the balls the power in his lithe body was phenomenal; the rack of nine exploded like a meteor, like a firework, like a heavy atom split to fragments by a neutron. Babes waited for the remaining balls to stop moving, chalked up, bent down, stroked, shot them in.
Eddie turned, climbed down the back of the bleachers. He found a practice table. He put the fifteen balls on it and began shooting them in.
After a half hour, he looked up to see Boomer watching him.
Boomer was no longer dressed in workman’s clothes; he had on a bright yellow shirt and tight designer jeans. He was freshly shaved.
“Fast Eddie,” Boomer said, “don’t shoot the fifteen balls. Shoot nine-ball.”
Eddie stood up from the table and looked at him.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” Boomer said, “but it’s no good to shoot straights when you’re going to be playing nine-ball. Different games.”
“I know they’re different.”
“You stroke different, too. You don’t coddle the balls in nine-ball. You got to be firm with ’em.”
“I know that, Boomer,” Eddie said.
“Then get your head out of straight pool. Straight pool’s a dying game. I shouldn’t be telling you this. You want to be a gentleman straight-pool player, go right ahead.”
Boomer walked off to the other practice table, just left empty by another player. He racked the balls into the diamond and then took his cue from its case. “And when you break, forget your dignity,” Boomer said. “Don’t protect that Balabushka. Smash the fuckers.” He tightened his cue stick with a final twist. “Beats me why I tell people things like that.” He drew back and smashed the rack open.
Boomer was right. He had been protecting his cue stick while hardly being aware of it. He put away the six high-numbered balls and racked the other nine. Then he set the cue ball down on the line, gripped his Balabuska tightly at the butt, holding it farther back than he usually did, hesitated a second and let go. The balls spread wide. Two of them fell in. It was a good break, better than any he had made in New London. He could feel the power of it in his right shoulder as he swung.
When he was racking again he heard applause from the playing area and then the amplified announcer’s voice: “Mr. Cooley wins the match by a score of ten-three.” Eddie gritted his teeth and slammed into the rack. The balls flew apart. The nine rolled across the table and stopped just short of the corner pocket.
Something had gone wrong with the air conditioning in the ballroom. When Eddie left the practice table behind the bleachers and came around to the playing area, a heavy layer of cigarette smoke hung below the ceiling; the spotlights pierced it like sunshine through clouds. It was evening of the tournament’s first day. The bleachers were at last filling up. Cocktail waitresses circulated, taking orders for drinks. Eddie pushed through the people standing between the bleachers and looked over the playing area.
Above each of the five tables hung a yard-long metal lamp shade with a red Budweiser logo in the center and card holders on each side. A white-sleeved man stood on a stool and changed the cards at the middle table while another brushed the cloth with a heavy brush, cleaning off the chalk marks and talcum powder. The man on the stool put up a card that said MAKEPIECE, and then on the other side, FELSON. Eddie walked up and waited, holding his cue.
A moment later a tall black man in an impeccable brown suit walked up. He held out a huge hand to Eddie and Eddie took it. “I’m Makepiece.”
“Felson.”
“Fast Eddie?”
“That’s right.”
The referee put the stool away, slipped on his tuxedo jacket and straightened his tie. He put two white cue balls on the table and looked at Eddie and the black man. “We’re ready to lag.”
From loudspeakers came the announcer’s voice: “On table three, from Orange, New Jersey, runner-up in the Eastern States Nine-Ball Championship of 1983, Mr. Brian Makepiece!” There was mild applause. “His opponent will be the star of the Mid-American television series along with the late great Minnesota Fats—from Lexington, Kentucky, Fast Eddie Felson!”
The applause was slight. Earl Borchard was playing on Table One, and most of the crowd’s attention was fixed on him. “Star of Mid-American television.” Was that the best they could do? But he had no titles, not even as a runner-up in some regional tournament. All he had was the name, and sometimes when he heard it like that on a loudspeaker, he did not picture himself as being that person—Fast Eddie.
He bent to lag, and overshot. Makepiece won the break, stood erect at the head of the table, bent, and in a kind of swooping motion pounded the cue ball into the rack. The seven ball fell in. He pursed his lips in a scholarly way, studying the lie, then bent and shot in the one. A cool, detached black man. Eddie felt no threat from him. The idea was to keep calm, shoot the balls remorselessly, play safe when necessary and grind him out. Makepiece ran them up to the eight and mussed. When the eight jarred back and forth in the corner pocket and then hung up, he scowled at it and looked away. Eddie did not need to be an expert at nine-ball to see the man was a loser. He chalked up carefully and pocketed the eight. Then he dropped the nine in the side. On the break for the next game, remembering Boomer, he slammed into them with all his strength and made the nine. Two-zero. For the first time in nine-ball, he began to feel good, to see the multiple ways of winning a game not as a confusion but as an asset. He could make the nine on the break. He could make it after the break on a combination and, that failing, he could run the other eight balls from the table much as he might in straight pool and then pocket the nine. Looked at that way, the game was simple. He ignored the crowd that was ignoring him and bent to work. In an hour he had won by a score of ten games to two. His playing was not brilliant but solid. Makepiece lost his nerve during the fifth game, and the rest was mechanical.