He looked up. Cooley had sat down.
From then on it was simple. Eddie’s concentration and poise were unshakable. He made the nine twice more before a bad roll on the break forced him to play safe, and the safe he played was a mortal lock. Cooley could do nothing with it. Eddie wound up with the cue ball in hand and ran out the rack. On the next, he made the nine on the break and on the next he made it with a combination off the five ball. He was forced to play safe a few times, and Cooley managed another win, but that didn’t matter. When Eddie was breaking them, now people would shout “On the snap, Fast Eddie!” He could hear Arabella’s strong, feminine British voice among them, along with Boomer’s. “On the snap!”
He had entered that time zone he had nearly forgotten, where his stroke was not only dead-on but where his mind could somehow arch itself above his game and see the great simplicity and clarity of what he was doing on this green table with its spinning balls. Time passed without moving, until the PA system voice said, “Ten games to four. Fast Eddie,” and the applause washed over him, bringing him back.
He put the Balabushka away and then took his glasses off, fifty years old again. He had beaten them. He had beaten Borchard at nine-ball and now he had beaten this brash genius kid. Cooley had already left. Arabella was coming toward him from between the bleachers and so was Boomer. Boomer got there first and was hugging him, smelling of Drambuie and saying, “Those fucking kids, Eddie. Those fucking kids,” and then Arabella was coming toward him with her face glowing. He pulled himself away from Boomer and she hugged him.
Cooley had left, but now he was coming back. As Arabella stepped away from Eddie the young man walked up to him and held out a hand. Eddie took it. “Good shooting, old-timer,” Cooley said, smiling tightly.
“Thanks,” Eddie said, hating him.
“Earl,” Cooley said, “will whip your ass.”
“The last time I played Earl I beat him.”
Cooley looked at Eddie silently for a moment, his smile unchanged. “Two brothers and a stranger,” he said.
The finals would be at two. It was Saturday morning. Arabella sat on a weight-lifting bench and watched while Eddie did his workout. Then they swam and got into the whirlpool together. It was 9:00 A.M.
In the hot water she said, “Children in England learn a lot about America in school. The Grand Canyon, for instance.”
“So do we.”
“It’s not as exotic for you. In Third Form we had a picture of Lake Tahoe in our text. I remember it well.”
“I understand it’s right outside,” Eddie said, nodding toward the far wall.
“It’s the most spectacular mountain lake in the world. Thousands of feet deep, and the water extraordinarily clear.” She was sitting next to him on the whirlpool’s underwater ledge, and now she put her hand on his arm. “There’s a house called Vikingsholm at the edge of it. I’d like to go. Maybe we could have a picnic lunch.”
He had forgotten the lake itself over the past few days. When he looked out the window of his room, it was only to see the lights from the Hotel Sahara or the sky; the small patch of blue from the lake no longer registered.
“I want to be back at one,” he said.
“Of course. Can we go?”
“How far is the house?”
“I don’t know. The whole lake is seventy miles around.”
“Maybe you can get a brochure at the desk.”
“They don’t have brochures at the desk. They don’t want you going anywhere.”
It was a twenty-mile drive along a winding road. Several times Arabella cried out at glimpses of the lake itself, through dense pines and redwoods. He pulled over in a wide place and they got out to look. The water was bluer than the sky, and the sky, here where Nevada and California joined, was intensely blue. Snow gleamed on the mountains behind the water. The trees were so green they were almost black. The surface of the lake was like glass beneath them, a hundred or so yards down. Eddie, still thinking of Borchard, lit a cigarette and watched Arabella watch the lake. The air was thin and cold; he jammed his hands into his pockets, puffed on his cigarette and waited. It was a shock to be outdoors. It was a shock that this lake was here, was this big, this perfect. Somehow he felt threatened by it; it seemed less real than the casino at Caesar’s Tahoe, less real than the blackjack tables and the slots. Lakes like this belonged on postcards, with the pines, the cloudless sky, the snow on the mountains. He finished his cigarette, ground it out on the gravel at the edge of the road, looked down toward the water—at its uncluttered cold stillness—and thought of the blue Gulf of Florida and of Minnesota Fats. Fats had died a winner. It could be done. It was a question of balls.
Arabella came back from the turnoff’s edge, her cheeks red from the cold air. “It’s every bit as lovely as the textbook claimed,” she said, and put her arm through Eddie’s for a moment. Then she looked up at his face. “Let go of it for now, Eddie. Think about it later.”
It was too early for the tourist season, and the sign at the little parking lot saying VIKINGSHOLM had a smaller sign below it: CLOSED TO VISITORS. “Let’s ignore that,” Arabella said. They climbed over the chain and headed down the trail to the lake’s edge a half mile below. It was getting warmer now and the smell of the pines was strong. Every now and then they would pass a place near a turn in the trail where water gushed down the dark granite. Spring thaw. The way the lake was made. Two chipmunks scuttled along a fallen log, through ferns. Eddie and Arabella came around a turn and, below them, surrounded by enormous trees, was a house of stone and timber with a high, gabled roof. Fifty yards in front of it Lake Tahoe began.
“Sweet Jesus!” Arabella said, “I want it.”
The water, colorless except for the glitter of pyrites in the sand, lapped the shore with exquisite gentleness. They turned toward the house. To the right of the doorway, a row of casement windows overlooked the lake. “You could have breakfast in there and just look out,” Arabella said.
Eddie said nothing.
“It was built by a woman,” Arabella said.
“A woman with a rich husband.”
She looked at him. “Two rich husbands.”
There was a simple bench under a redwood a few yards from the house. They sat there and had Swiss-on-rye sandwiches, doughnuts and coffee. She had brought two beers, but Eddie refused his, wanting to keep his head clear. He leaned against the bark of the tree and tried to relax—tried to get pool balls and the bright green of the table out of his head, the feel of the Balabushka out of his right hand, the knot out of his stomach.
“When we started together,” Arabella said, “I think I was a help to you. You were low and you didn’t trust yourself. You didn’t want to tell me what you did for a living. It turned out I liked you shooting pool, and that helped you, didn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“The problem with me, Eddie, is that I’m good with men but not with myself. When I left Harrison, I was terrified.” She looked over at him, holding her plastic coffee cup. “Terrified. I’d had an easy marriage and enough comfort and I stayed in it for years after I ceased to give a damn about Harrison. Then I was in love with Greg for a while and that gave me a lift. Just to be able to attract a man as young and as bright as Greg. And then there was the accident.”
“I know.”