Eddie went over and leaned against the empty table by Boomer. Boomer put his hand on Eddie’s arm. “Don’t let up on him.”
Borchard rifled the cue ball; the nine, kissing twice, fell in. Eddie felt his stomach go tight. Borchard needed eight games now, and he had the break. Eddie’s edge was practically gone, in the first five minutes. “He’ll miss,” Boomer said. “You have to wait.”
But Borchard didn’t miss. What he did was make four balls and then play safe, leaving Eddie the full table’s length away from the orange five ball—and the five ball an inch off the middle of the bottom rail. It could not be cut in. But the seven ball was sitting right in the corner pocket at the top of the table. Eddie took his glasses off and checked them for dust. They were all right. He looked at the seven again. All it needed was a tap. He took a deep breath, bent, and stroked at medium speed, with no English. The cue ball hit the edge of the five, cater-cornered itself out of the bottom corner and came diagonally back up the table, straight at the seven. It clipped it. The seven fell in. The cue ball kept on going, off the top rail and halfway back down the table, as the five came to rest a foot from the bottom corner pocket. Someone in the crowd whistled. A deep voice said, “That’s the ticket!” It was Boomer. Eddie, steadier now, shot the five in and then made the rest, pocketing the nine firmly in the side.
While the balls were being racked he hefted his Balabushka, trying to concentrate on the break. Abruptly he thought of something. There was a rack of house cues on the wall to his left. He walked to it, looked at the printed numbers on a few of them and found a twenty-three—the heaviest pool cue made. Coming back, he handed the Balabushka to Boomer, chalked up the club of a house cue, stepped to the head of the table and slammed into the cue ball, feeling the extra weight magnified by the speed of his stroke. The balls crashed open and the nine fell in.
On the next rack he did not get the nine; it only turned over a few times, but he made two of the others. Not looking at Borchard, he concentrated on the balls, using the Balabushka now, and smoothed them into the pockets one at a time. Dropping the nine was simple.
“Like buttering bread,” Boomer said.
“How’d you do at eight-ball?”
“Six hundred,” Boomer said. “I put it on you.” He nodded toward the man in the brown overcoat who had been making bets.
“Good bet,” Eddie said. “I can’t miss.”
For three more racks he didn’t. He felt control of the game now, felt some of the clarity he had felt in bed the night before. He did not make the nine on the break again, but he made something each time and then ran them out. It was like straight pooclass="underline" a matter of position, or confidence, of knowing that the game was, at bottom, shockingly easy.
But on the fourth break, even with the smash he gave them with the twenty-three-ounce house cue, nothing fell. The three ball was headed for a side pocket but at the last moment the seven knocked it away. The nine had stopped two inches from the bottom corner.
But the score was five-two. He needed only two more games. Borchard needed eight. While Borchard started shooting, beginning with an easy one ball, Eddie went to the bar, ordered a Manhattan, and looked over his shoulder to see Borchard pocket the nine on a combination. Five-four. The son of a bitch. Borchard broke, made a ball, began running. Two pairs of balls were frozen at different ends of the table; one of them should stop him, force him at least to play safe; but neither did. He caromed his cue into one pair as he pocketed the three ball, doing it with the ease of a straight-pool player, and separated the other two on the next shot. He ran out. Five-five.
In the next rack he made the nine on his third shot, from a billiard off the three. On the next he ran them out after pocketing two on the break; and on the next he made the nine on the break. Eddie and Boomer said nothing. The score was eight-five. Borchard looked unstoppable. The crowd had become silent.
Borchard stepped up, quiet and concentrated, and broke, making the seven ball. His position on the one was fine. He drove it in, made the two and then the three. The four ball was a cinch and the position on the five another cinch. Borchard looked at the four and hesitated. Then he bent and shot. He missed. He missed the four ball, hanging it in the pocket. He raised his eyes heavenward, dropped his shoulders and said, “Son of a bitch.”
It had happened. It could happen to anyone. Eddie chalked his cue and stepped up. Borchard had left him an open table and a road map: the four, five, six, eight and nine, as easy as pie. And one more game after that. Borchard had choked or blinked or twitched or one of the things that every player sometimes did, and this was what he had left.
Eddie shot the four in, killing his cue ball for the five. He made the five, then the six and eight. His position on the nine was dead-on. He clipped it in. Eight-six.
He gripped the big cue hard and slugged with it, but the balls were sluggish and the nine barely moved. The one teetered and fell in. The two was tough—a table’s length away and the kind of backward cut Eddie hated. He looked at Borchard, who seemed expectant, and then at Boomer. Boomer winked at him, unruffled. Boomer looked certain enough. What the hell, Eddie thought, I’ll make the two ball. He looked at it again. It was a son of a bitch. For a moment he allowed himself to think of all the ways of missing it, but then, knowing it was deadly to think that way, put the thought out of his mind. He was not fifty years old for nothing. You did not have to think about missing. He would make the two ball. It would be a pleasure to make it.
He stroked easily, and shot. The cue ball rolled down the table, hit the blue two ball with just the right amount of fullness and speed. The ball rolled diagonally away from the white ball and fell into the corner. The cue ball kept going. The three ball was frozen to the head rail. The cue ball came back up the table, slowing down, and set itself in line with the three. The room was silent.
Eddie shot the three in, loosening even more, and the cue ball settled behind the four. He shot it in. Then the five. And the six, seven, eight. The nine, striped with pale yellow, sat near the spot where it had sat ever since the break. Eddie stepped up, chalked, and drilled it into the corner pocket. The sound it made, hitting bottom, was exquisite.
“Well,” Boomer said, driving them back. “Twelve hundred dollars can change a man’s philosophy beyond belief.”
“Don’t shoot craps with it,” Eddie said.
“Eight-ball. I was born to play eight-ball.”
Eddie had the twenty-five hundred in his pants pocket, and he pushed it down with his thumb. On the backseat lay the twenty-three-ounce cue stick which he had bought for ten dollars. “He had eight games. If we’d been playing even, he’d have won.”
“Don’t you get philosophical,” Boomer said. “The man lost. You beat him.”
There were six rounds to go in the losers’ bracket, and all of them were sudden-death. Eddie had three matches on Thursday and three on Friday. If he won. If he lost, that was the end of it. On Saturday night the one undefeated man would play the single player who had managed to come out of the losers’ bracket unbeaten. That would be the finals, for first and second place. Whomever the winner had beaten the day before would be third. Third place was seven thousand dollars and second was fifteen. First prize was thirty thousand, and a trophy.