“Good morning,” Bert said.
Eddie spat mint foam into the basin. “Good morning yourself, sunshine.”
“Feel better?”
“Better than what?”
“Better than yesterday.”
“No. Worse. Why should I feel better?” He began rinsing his mouth out with cold water.
“No reason.”
“That’s a laugh.” He hung up his toothbrush and turned to look at Bert again, who was now washing his pink arms, deliberately. “You always have a reason.”
Bert tightened his lips in thought. Then he said, “I did, but I probably figured wrong. I figured your girl in Chicago was giving you a hard time, and that what you needed was what I hired for you last night.”
Eddie stared at him. Then suddenly, he laughed, “For Christ’s sake, you figure everything, don’t you? Only this time you wasted your money.”
Bert looked thoughtful, stepping out of the tub, dripping. “You don’t have a girl in Chicago?”
“I did have. I don’t know if I’ve got one now. Anyway, thanks, but Georgine didn’t work.”
Bert was drying himself and did not answer this. Then he went into the bedroom, sat on the bed, and started putting his socks on. Eddie began shining his shoes, still in the bedroom. Then Bert said, quietly, “You in love with that girl?”
Eddie stared at Bert for a moment, quietly. Then, suddenly, he began laughing….
Waiting for the elevator he offered to split the cost of the room and the girls with Bert, now that he had more money, but Bert would not take it. He had played poker until four o’clock and had, apparently, won a good deal at it. Also, he said he figured to make his profit when they got the game going with Findlay. “Okay,” Eddie said, “and thanks.”
They ate a big meal in the hotel dining room and Eddie had two cups of strong coffee, which made him feel considerably better, although his hands were still stiff and sore. He did not say anything about his hands to Bert.
They went into the poolroom after eating and there were a good many people there for that time of day, although few were playing. In the back of the room was a group of five men who were obviously jockeys—little hard-looking men with lean faces and sharp eyes. There were several groups of other men in the room, most of whom Eddie did not recognize.
“Is Findlay here?” he asked Bert.
“No. I’ll go ask about him.” Bert walked over toward a group of three men who were standing by the cash register. One of them greeted him, “Hello, Lucky,” to which he did not reply. It seemed a peculiar thing to call Bert. They began talking and Eddie could not hear what was being said.
He went over and took a seat near the jockeys, who were now being addressed by a thin man in a blue flannel jacket, whom Eddie did not recognize.
“Ignorance,” the man was saying. “It’s ignorance.” Eddie did not attempt to follow the conversation, but it seemed that the man was trying to explain that atmospheric pressure was what kept pool balls on a pool table—without atmospheric pressure they would all fly off into space—and that, moreover, this phenomenon had a great deal to do with keeping horses on race tracks. The jockeys seemed skeptical, a feeling which Eddie shared.
After a while Bert returned and said, “Nobody’s seen Findlay for a couple of days.”
“Oh?”
“He might be at the races. You want to go out?”
“You’re the boss.”
“That’s right,” Bert said. “I’m the boss.”
He had never been to a race track before—although, of course, he had bet the horses experimentally a few times—and at first it was quite interesting and exciting. There was the crowd, and the little windows, and the smell of horses, of women, and of money—most of all the money, which seemed to have a clean, outdoor smell to it, like a crap game in an open field.
But after the fifth race his feet were tired from the standing and he had become bored. He went into the bar, which was very horsy-looking and very crowded, and sat down. It was ten minutes before a waitress came, and during this time he looked at the people who filled the bar, most of them expensively, sportily dressed, and wondered where in hell they all came from and why, exactly, they were having such a good time. He could not fathom it. Gambling was something he felt that he understood, but to him gambling was betting on his own skill, or at least on an act in which he was personally involved, even matching quarters for drinks. This business of betting into rigged odds on somebody else’s horse, which probably looked and behaved like any other horse anywhere, seemed to be a high kind of folly—or at least a simple amusement. But probably some people won at it, besides the track and the bookies. He had known a man who claimed to make a living betting horses. It did not seem to Eddie to be a decent way to make a living, even if the profits were high.
He amused himself for a while by trying to separate the people in the bar into two groups—the real and the phony rich. And there seemed to be a middle group: “Chamber of Commerce” or something, half real and half phony. You could tell by the clothes they wore. The rich ones usually wore ugly or grotesque clothes; the phonies were flashy, too stylish, and the Chamber of Commerce dressed very much the way Eddie did himself. The clothes of very rich people seemed to be almost invariably ugly, in the way that hand-painted ties are always uglier than factory-made ones, especially when worn with a pearl gray suit with whip stitching and a white-on-white shirt. And then there were the tweedy ones, but only a few. Almost all the women looked good, even the middle-aged women. Many of these were of the tightly packed, manicured, and overdressed sort whom Eddie had always found perversely attractive, but about whom he knew nothing, except that they liked to display it in public places, such as race tracks. For a moment he thought of Sarah’s small breasts under her blouse, and he wondered what she would look like when she was forty. Probably tweedy and fat in the ass. Probably still living in an apartment and writing books. Maybe she would write one about him. A thin book, or a poem. Probably make her feel important, unusual, to be broad-assed and married to a college professor and to tell her friends about the pool hustler, the criminal, she had shacked up with once. But maybe that wasn’t right. He did not have her figured out that well.
A waitress finally discovered him. He asked for a double Scotch, and watched her legs as she waded her way back to the bar. Standing at the bar was an interesting-looking man and Eddie shifted his attention to him while the waitress gave the bartender his order.
The man was tall and slim, with the kind of pale, debauched and oddly youthful face that some men of forty or more have. He was obviously rich and possibly a fairy, or maybe that was only the youthful, sensual look, for he did not seem effeminate. He was wearing a dark suit—Eddie could tell by the way it held to his narrow shoulders that it was very expensive—and dangling from his free hand was a very fine and expensive-looking camera. He was talking to a loudly rich type with binoculars, and both of them were laughing, only there was nothing humorous in the young-looking man’s laugh.
The waitress returned eventually with Eddie’s drink. It cost a dollar and a half, and she tried to hustle him out of a fifty-cent tip by fumbling the change and looking harried. He stoned her out on that one, however, waiting for his money.
She had just left when a bell rang loudly, signifying the end to betting for that race, and most of the people began to leave the bar or crowd to the windows, watching the track. But the man with the camera stayed at the bar, hardly aware, apparently, of the race that was starting.