Instantly, Eddie felt a small tightening in his stomach, not unpleasant. They would be getting down to business now.
“All right,” Bert said.
Eddie, looking at Findlay’s hands, noticed that the nails seemed to be polished. Even after playing pool they were impeccably clean, perfectly trimmed, and slightly glossy.
Findlay beat him. The score was close, and Findlay did not seem to shoot any better, nor Eddie any worse; but Findlay made more billiards than he did. It cost Bert five hundred dollars, and Bert paid it silently.
Eddie lost the next game the same way. Findlay’s playing was still as affected, as silly looking, as ever; but he won.
And it was during that game that a very revealing shot came up, one that changed for him the whole aspect of the game. It was Findlay’s shot, and the balls were spread in a very tricky position. There was what appeared to be a simple, easy set-up; but actually the balls were arranged so that a last-minute kiss—a collision between the two wrong balls—would have been inevitable. A poor player would not have seen this, a player as poor as Findlay seemed to be.
But Findlay did not shoot the shot in the obvious, predictable way. He put a great deal of reverse English on the cue ball, skidded it into the side rail, across the table twice, and into the middle of the third ball. The shot did not look like very much; but Eddie immediately recognized it for what it was, and the recognition was a pronounced shock. It had been a professional shot, the shot of a man who knew the game of billiards very well.
“Well,” Eddie said quietly, “maybe I ought to sign you up.”
Findlay laughed softly, but did not say anything.
Eddie began watching him closely, and began to notice some things about his stroke. It seemed jerky and awkward, but on the shots that counted there was a slight smoothness that was not there on the others.
It was hard to take, hard for Eddie to swallow: he was being hustled.
After the game Findlay offered to fix them another drink; but Eddie said, “I think I’ll sit this one out.” He walked over to the bar beside Findlay, though, and leaned on it casually and watched while he fixed his drink. Something was going on in his mind, obscurely. Then, when Findlay was stirring the drink, he looked at him closely, looking at his eyes, and said, “You play a lot of billiards, Mr. Findlay?”
And when Findlay said, “Oh… every now and then,” in his supercilious voice, Eddie saw in his face what he had been hoping he would see. He saw self-consciousness and deceit. And over it all the general sense of weakness, of decay.
But he did not beat Findlay the next game. He started with confidence of his superiority, with calm confidence; but he lost. And the next one. This made him two thousand dollars—of Bert’s money—behind.
He had not spoken to Bert for several games. After losing the last one, he watched Findlay go behind the bar again and then he turned to Bert and said, “I’ll get him this time.”
Bert looked at him coldly. “How are the hands?”
He had not been thinking about them, and he became abruptly aware that they were hurting him severely.
“Not too good,” he said to Bert.
Bert kept looking at him; and then he laughed, softly. But he did not say anything.
And Eddie felt himself suddenly reddening. “Now wait a minute….”
“Shut up,” Bert said. “We’re leaving.”
For a moment Eddie’s head spun. Then he said, “All right. All right,” and turned back towards the table, beginning to unscrew the cue, to separate the two pieces.
And then he stopped. This was not right.
He turned to Bert, and looked at him. “No,” he said. “We’re not leaving. You’ve got me figured wrong this time. I can beat him.”
Bert did not say anything.
“I’m going to beat him. He fooled me. He fooled me bad because he knows how to hustle and I didn’t think he did. He probably fooled you too, if that’s possible—for anybody to fool you. But I can outplay him, and I’ll beat him.” And then, “He’s a loser, Bert.”
Bert’s voice was level, but it had no edge to it. “I don’t believe you.”
Suddenly, Eddie turned away from him, looking at the bar and at the fat obscene wooden figures on the bar. “All right,” he said. “Go home. I’ll play him on my own money.” Then he said loudly, to Findlay, “Where’s your toilet?”
Findlay inclined his head toward the stairway. “Upstairs, Mr. Felson. To your right.”
Eddie walked up the stairway, his feet heavy and lifeless under him, and into the huge, high-ceilinged parlor, now empty. He walked through it, on thick and silent carpet, and to the bathroom, from which a light shone.
The room was a small, old one, with lavender-striped paper on the walls. He walked to the toilet and seated himself on the edge of it carefully and for several minutes thought of nothing. Then he filled the lavatory bowl with hot water, took soap and a towel and began washing his face and hands, scrubbing at the creases in his face, getting the greenish dirt off his wrists. There was a brush sitting on the edge of the bowl and he cleaned his fingernails with this. Then he refilled the bowl with cold water and rinsed his face, hands, and wrists. There was a comb in his pocket and he used it to comb his hair, neatly and carefully. He rinsed his mouth with water from the tap, spitting it out into the bowl.
Then he sat down again and began bending his thumbs, slightly at first and then more. They hurt; but they did not hurt very much; not as much as he remembered them hurting a few minutes before. They did not hurt so much that he could not stand the pain, not at all. That’s one excuse, he said, softly. Then he forced himself to think of the times he had played three-cushion billiards before; there had been a great many times, over a period of many years. And Findlay was not very good. That was the other excuse. He got up and looked at himself in the mirror. His face was clear, youthful. And I’m not drunk. And then, still looking at himself, he said aloud, levelly, “You’re going to beat that son of a bitch downstairs. That’s because you’re Eddie Felson, one of the best.” Then he went out and back down to the basement.
When he came back into the room he felt clean, clear in the head. And he felt something else, very slight, a small almost undetectable sensation, a thin, nervous, taut sense. Of power.
Findlay was standing by the bar, elegantly slim, a drink in his hand; and his face, lit by the brilliant lamps over the pool table, looked as if it might crack at any moment, as if the thin smile on his lips would shatter first and then a long, jagged crack might appear under his eyes, spreading downward until pieces of face, like plaster, would chip and fall to the floor. And Bert still was sitting in his chair, solidly planted, like a wise vegetable, keeping his own council.
Eddie walked to the table and picked up his cue, holding it for a moment and looking carefully, with pleasure, at the polished shaft, the silken-wrapped butt, the white ivory point and the little blue leather tip. All of this time a small voice in him was saying, You’ve got five hundred and forty dollars. What if you lose the first game? But he did not listen to the voice, since there was no point in listening.
He looked over at Findlay, and then at the picture, the picture of a man and two women, pink and naked, on grass, over Findlay’s head; and then he grinned at Findlay. “Let’s play,” he said.
Findlay took the opening shot and made it, but missed the next one. Eddie stepped up to the table, bent down, sighted carefully, stroked, and made a billiard. Then he made another; and another. Then he played safe.
Before he shot, Findlay said dryly, “It looks as if you mean business this time.”