“That’s right,” Eddie said.
When Findlay shot, he did not take quite as much care with the elaborate procedure, although he still rippled the little finger as he made his preliminary strokes. But he made a billiard, and then another. He missed the third by less than an inch.
It looked as if he meant business too and Eddie thought with exultation, This is the clutch. I was right. And he stroked with care. He made one billiard, but he missed the next, by a heart-breaking, last-minute kiss.
They played it safely and with great attention to detail, and Eddie played the best game of three-cushion billiards he had ever played in his life. But when it was over, Findlay had won. He had won by only two points, but when Eddie handed him the five hundred dollars he had to look at him and say, “That’s all of it. I’m broke.”
Findlay’s eyebrows rose gently, and Eddie could have kicked him in the stomach for the gesture. “Oh,” he said, taking the bills and smoothing them out with his fingers, “That’s unfortunate, Mr. Felson.”
Eddie looked at him coldly. “Who for, Mr. Findlay?” He began unscrewing his cue.
Then Bert, who was sitting behind him, said, “Go ahead and play him, Eddie. For a thousand a game.”
Eddie turned slowly, looking at Bert’s face, searching, for a moment, for a trace of a smile. There was no smile, nothing. “What brought you to life?” he said.
Bert pursed his lips, looked at Findlay, looked back at Eddie. “I think maybe the odds have changed,” he said.
“What am I—a race horse?”
“In a sense, yes.”
“Well, now,” Findlay said, “it seems as if you might know something, Bert. You’re making me think I should be careful.”
“A raise in the bet usually has that effect,” Bert said.
“And you know something?”
Then Bert smiled, very slightly. “It’s like in poker, Mr. Findlay. You’re going to have to pay to find out.”
Findlay stared at him a moment and then made a gesture with his hand. “Perhaps I won’t have to pay at all, Bert,” he said. “Perhaps I know something too.”
Bert was still smiling. It was exactly as if he were sitting behind a large, round table, holding five pasteboard cards in his small, pudgy hand.
“Let’s find out,” he said.
Eddie was still looking at Bert and, for a moment, he felt as if he would like to pat him on the back, buy him a drink, or something.
And then Findlay was saying, “All right, Bert, we’ll find out. For a thousand a game.” He finished his drink and set it down, carefully, on the edge of the bar, next to the piece of sculpture.
Then Findlay pointed a thin finger at the belly of the man in the little group of intertangled people—a little, paunchy belly with a deeply carved navel that caught the bright light from over the pool table—and said, “Have you noticed, Bert—this fellow here bears a striking resemblance to you. It seems almost as if you might have modeled for the artist.”
Bert pursed his lips. “It’s possible,” he said.
For the first time that day, Eddie laughed. He laughed loudly and long. Then he said, “You’re a comedian, Bert. A real comedian.”
Findlay stared at him amusedly while he laughed. When Eddie had finished he said, “Let’s play billiards, Mr. Felson.”
From the first shot Eddie knew he had him. The three balls were standing out on the green now like jewels—machined, honed and polished gems, and the feel of the balls had come to him completely. And the long table—he liked the long table now, liked the long rolls of the heavy balls, the inexorable way that he could make them roll, ponderously, down the table and across, banking off the rails and into other balls. It was a fine game, a sedate, chesslike game, and he saw it now for what it was, a game that he could understand and control and that he would, eventually, win at.
He won. And he won the next game. And, after that one, a very close and tense game, he began to hear the little reasonable voice that said, You can ease up now, it isn’t that important, and he forced the voice to shut up. And doing this, forcing himself to bear down even harder, to concentrate even more, it began to be clear to him that what Bert had said about character was only a part of the truth. There was another thing that Bert had only partly seen, had only partly communicated to him, and this was the fixed, unvarying knowledge of the purpose of the game—to win. To beat the other man. To beat him as utterly, as completely as possible: This was the deep and abiding meaning of the game of pool. And, it seemed to Eddie in that minute of thought, it was the meaning of more than the game of pool, more than the five-by-ten-foot microcosm of ambition and desire. It seemed to him as if all men must know this because it is in every meeting and every act, in the whole gigantic hustle of men’s lives.
The squirrel’s voice, the voice of his own cautious, uncommitted ego, had told him that it wasn’t important. He looked at Findlay, at the vain and sensual face, the sly, homosexual eyes; and it seemed astonishing to him now that he had not seen how necessary it was to beat this man. For it was important. It was very important.
It was important who won and who did not win. Always. Everywhere. To everybody…
After Eddie had won the third game, the third thousand-dollar game, he began to see a strange and wonderful thing: Findlay started to crumble.
He began to drink more and sit down more between shots, and when he got up to shoot there was a kind of haughty weariness in his movements. Occasionally he laughed, wryly—Sarah’s kind of laugh—and Eddie could hear in Findlay’s laugh the words, almost as if they were spoken to him, It doesn’t make any difference. It doesn’t make any difference because, no matter who wins, I’m better than he is. And Eddie knew that he was seeing now what Minnesota Fats had seen when he himself had fallen apart under pressure and self-love. It was a fascinating, a disgusting, frightening, and contemptible thing to watch. And Findlay did not quit, and Eddie knew now that it was because there was no way for him to quit, that he was being drugged, was drugging himself into playing, game after game, as if something were going to happen, as if it were going to turn out that, somehow, it was all untrue, and that he, Findlay, had somehow come out of it all serene and happy and important.
Findlay crumbled, fled, fell, oozed, and became disjointed; he became petty, vain, and ridiculous; but he did not quit for a long time. When he did quit it was almost nine o’clock in the morning and he had lost a little more than twelve thousand dollars.
Leading them upstairs, he smiled wanly at them, and said, “It’s been an interesting evening.” He looked very old, especially in the face.
Eddie looked at him for a moment, intently; and it seemed that there was something pathetic and yet eager in the faint smile on Findlay’s thin and now almost bloodless lips. Then he looked away. “It sure has,” he said.
They left the house then, walking out, shockingly, into sunlight and the smell of wet grass….
Before Bert started the car he counted off for Eddie his share of the money—three thousand dollars. The bills were beautiful with the old magical color; and Eddie, whose senses still seemed so acute that there was nothing that could not be seen by him, responded with sensitivity and depth to the fine, impeccable lines of engraving, the sharpness of detail, and the excellent, tasteful numbers in the corners of the bills. Then he put the money in his pocket.
Outside the window, in Findlay’s drive, the air was clear and cool, with a faint mist. The sun was bright, but low. There were birds, discordant, adding to the sense of unreality. Eddie could see orange and yellow tinges on the leaves of trees, and could feel an edge in the air. Summer was ending. It was a fine and strange morning, full of imminent meaning.