“Don’t let it tear you apart.” It was Boomer’s voice. Eddie looked up. There stood Boomer in shorts, slightly bowlegged, a Drambuie in one hand and another drink in the other. “I brought you a Manhattan,” Boomer said.
“The son of a bitch forgot how to miss.”
“It happens,” Boomer said. “The best thing for it is a drink.”
Eddie took the drink and Boomer got into the whirlpool. “The game of pool,” Boomer said, “has been the despair of my middle years. When I was twenty I thought it made me a man. I thought that beating other men at eight-ball was the meaning of life.”
Eddie sat up and took a swallow from his drink. “Maybe you were right.”
Boomer seated himself on the ledge beneath the water and stretched out his arms along the tiles at the side of the pool. “To tell the truth,” he said, “I’ve never found a philosophy to replace it.”
“I haven’t learned much since I was twenty,” Eddie said. He finished the drink and set the glass on the edge of the pool. “I’ve got to practice.”
“I’m going to the Golden Triangle,” Boomer said. “Why don’t you come along?”
“What’s the Golden Triangle?”
Boomer raised his eyebrows. “Where the action is.”
Boomer, who seemed to belong in a Mack truck, drove a dusty Porsche. It was strange to be outside again, although at night the main street of Lake Tahoe was something like a casino, with the lights, and the crowd on the sidewalks. Boomer drove them a mile or so and then abruptly pulled off onto a side street and parked. Neon on a plain brick building read THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE: BILLIARDS. They walked in.
It was a small, smoky place with eight pool tables and a short bar with beer signs behind it. At the back of the room a crowd surrounded the corner table, blocking it from view. On the one next to it, Makepiece was somberly shooting pool against someone Eddie did not recognize. Two other players from the tournament were playing bank pool on the front table. Each barstool held a man with a cue case. One of these smiled when he saw Boomer. “Hello, Boomer,” he said. “How’s the eight-ball game?”
Boomer frowned at him. “Play you for fifty,” he said.
The man unfastened his leather case and stood. One of the front tables was empty. They walked over to it. Boomer could not have much more than fifty dollars. He had better not lose the first game. Eddie followed and watched for a few minutes until Boomer sank the eight ball and racked them up for the next game. Eddie took two fifties out of his pocket and unobtrusively handed them to him. “Just in case,” he said, and went to the back of the room, where the crowd was. Two of the people watching recognized him and made way. He was able to push in far enough to see what was going on. Babes Cooley was bent over a shot; standing at the side of the table carrying his stick and watching was Earl Borchard. They were playing nine-ball. Both men were silent, intense, concentrated. Babes shot out the rest of the rack, pocketing the nine with care. Someone racked the balls. Eddie turned to the man next to him. “What’s the stake?”
“Five hundred,” the man whispered.
“For how many games?”
“Five hundred a game.”
Babes broke and made the nine. The man racked them again, Babes broke again, left himself snookered, played a delicate and perfect safety.
Eddie watched for an hour, while the lead went back and forth. He felt a growing dismay. They both played beautiful pool; both were in dead stroke. But even that wasn’t so bad. What made Eddie more and more uncomfortable was that not only did both of these men look unbeatable—these kids who seemed to own the room they were in as they seemed to own the ballroom back at the hotel—but it seemed to him that they both shot pool better than Eddie himself had ever shot it. Even at his best, when he was in his twenties and pool was nearly all he knew in life.
During the second half of the hour Borchard started pulling ahead, making the nine more frequently on the break or running the balls out, clipping them in and nudging them in, shooting fast and loose and never missing. Finally Cooley said, with uncharacteristic softness, “That’s enough for now,” and unscrewed his cue. Eddie looked at his watch. It was a little after midnight.
As Eddie approached the front table, Boomer cut the eight into the side. He looked up to see Eddie, winked, reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a roll of money. He peeled off two hundred dollars and handed Eddie the bills. “I’m recovering my health,” he said.
The other front table was empty now. Eddie told the man behind the bar to put him on time and then got his cue out and racked the balls for nine-ball. He broke them open and began running. It would take him five more matches to pull out of the losers’ bracket, and if he could do that he would still have to play either Cooley or Borchard. He shot hard, ramming the colored balls into the backs of the pockets. A couple of men came over, leaned against another empty table next to him and watched. He finished the balls, racked them, broke, ran them out. When he was racking again, he looked up to see Earl Borchard leaning against the other table, watching him. “You shoot them in pretty clean,” Borchard said in a country-boy voice as cold as ice.
Eddie took the wooden rack away from the balls and slid it under the table.
“Would you like to play nine-ball?” Borchard said politely.
Eddie looked at him. “I don’t know.”
“I understand you’re a straight-pool player. Maybe I could give you some weight.”
“How much weight?”
“I’ll play you ten to eight.”
It was like a slap in the face. Eddie had never been offered a handicap before in his life. “For how much?”
“Five thousand.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Maybe your friends’ll help.”
“What friends?”
“Tell you what,” Brochard said, smiling coldly. “Ten to seven. How can you lose?”
“I don’t have it,” Eddie said. The man’s smile made him furious.
“I have.” It was another voice. Eddie looked behind him to see Gunshot Oliver. He was better dressed than he had been in New London, and did not seem drunk. He had his billfold in one hand. “I’ll back you,” he said. “I’ve seen you play nine-ball.”
Eddie stared at him. He had thought of Gunshot as a broken-down old bum; here he was with a fat billfold, offering to put up five thousand dollars.
“If you win,” Oliver said, clearing his throat, “I’ll split with you. If you lose you don’t lose anything.”
Other people in the room had become silent, and what games were going on had stopped. Boomer was walking over to see, cue in hand.
Eddie did not want to play Borchard, but there was no way to back out. He looked at him, at his heavy mustache, his chalk-smeared white shirt, his small hands. No one was unbeatable. “Okay,” he said.
“Let’s lag for the break,” Borchard said.
Eddie won the lag and smashed them open hard, but the nine didn’t fall. He ran five balls and then had to play safe, leaving the cue ball behind the seven and against the rail. Unworried, Borchard managed to hit the six on a rail-first and still not leave a shot. It was a pisser. Eddie looked around him for a minute. A pair of men in the crowd were making a bet, handing a pile of bills to a third man in a brown overcoat. The whole goddamned poolroom was watching the game, including the people at the bar. He bent and shot, playing safe again. The cueball rolled too far by inches. It was the thinnest of cuts and ruinous if Borchard should miss, but it was a shot. Borchard chalked up serenely, bent and stroked. His stroke was as smooth as ice; the six ball rolled across the table and fell into the corner pocket; the cue ball went completely around the table, stopping dead for the seven. Borchard clipped it in. Then the eight and the nine. A man from the crowd stepped up and began racking.