She looked down at the watch. “I don’t know. Maybe you did the right thing.” Then she smiled, and the puzzled look disappeared from her eyes. “Anyway it’s a fine watch. I’m glad you gave it to me.”
He looked at her for a minute, her face, neck, and shoulders. She seemed very young. Then he stood up. “I’ll take you home.”
They walked silently, and he listened to the odd rhythm of her heels, the uneven cadence that the limp made. They passed the bus station, and he started to say something but did not. He held her arm, crossing the streets, and he felt excitement at it, the soft bare arm, warm and smooth in his hand. But she did not look up at him, nor did she respond to his pressure. He felt now as if something were wrong; and he did not know what to do. The drinks were wearing away, and the work of the last several days was beginning to catch up with him. It seemed to be a very long walk.
Climbing the stairs to her apartment was very difficult. His feet were burning and there was lead in his shoulders and, when he got to the top, there was vertigo. He realized, abruptly, that it had been a long time since he had rested. Somewhere, his sense of pleasure had dribbled away. Suddenly, he wanted very much to go back to the hotel and sleep for a very long time, to stretch out and become unconscious. A bed in a quiet room would be very fine. His head was aching.
She opened the door, but instead of going into the room stood in the open doorway, looking at him. Then she said, slowly, “If you want a drink you’ll have to get a bottle, Eddie.” Her voice was tired, but not unpleasant. “I only have a little left on hand.”
“Tuesday was the first of the month,” he said. It occurred to him that neither of them had acknowledged the fact that he had not brought his suitcase with him.
“I got my check,” she smiled faintly, wryly. “I had to use the liquor money for tuition. The fall semester.” She looked away from him, inspecting the doorknob it seemed. “You can get a bottle of Scotch if you’d like, and we can drink it.”
“In Coca-Cola glasses?”
She did not look up. “If you want to.”
He was looking at her face, fascinated by her skin, which seemed to glow in the soft light from the living room lamp. But he felt nothing, only a simple, admiring fascination, as if he were looking at the orange clown on Sarah’s wall, the one in the white frame. The clown that had once seemed ready to tell him something. “You didn’t finish your martini tonight,” he said.
“I know.”
“Maybe it’s a good sign,” he said gently, feeling almost as if it were someone else talking to her, as if he himself were already at the hotel, in bed, alone. “You don’t make a very convincing lush.”
“No,” she said, looking up at him now. “I don’t suppose I do.” And then, “Are you going to get the Scotch?”
“No,” he said. “I’m tired. And I have a big day tomorrow.”
“Are you coming in? There’s a little left in my bottle.”
He looked at her face, the wise and hard and puzzled eyes. “I’d better be getting back to the hotel,” he said.
She looked at his eyes, for the first time that night. She did not seem to be trying to find anything in them, just looking. Then she said, “Thanks again for the watch.”
“I’m glad you like it.” He turned and began walking down the stairs.
“Good luck, Eddie,” she said, calling softly to him, “for tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” he said. He continued down the steps slowly to the landing, listening for the final sound of her door closing. He heard nothing. Then, at the landing, he turned and looked back up. Sarah was still standing there, looking at him. The light was from the open doorway behind her and he could not see her face. “Sarah,” he said, his voice soft, strange, “I came very close to buying that ring….”
She did not reply, and he stood there, looking at her, for what seemed a very long while; but he could not make out her features. Then he turned and continued down the stairs.
He took a cab to his hotel, since he did not feel like walking. When he went to bed he did not fall immediately asleep.
21
Bennington’s had not changed. It was not the kind of place that would change. It was two o’clock in the afternoon when Eddie and Bert stepped from the elevator, walked across the hall and through the huge door. Inside, the room was very quiet. No one was playing pool and there was virtually no one in the place, except for a small crowd of eight or ten men sitting and standing against one wall.
Most of the men seemed familiar to Eddie. One of them, a very big, meaty-looking man with glasses, Eddie recognized as the poolroom manager, Gordon. He did not know any of the others by name, except for one of them. In the middle of the group, sitting, speaking to no one, was Minnesota Fats. He was cleaning his fingernails, with a nail file.
Gordon had looked up when Eddie and Bert walked in, and in a moment they had all stopped talking. Eddie could hear a radio playing, faintly, but nothing else. He looked at Fats. Fats did not look up. There was a very strange sensation in Eddie’s stomach; he would not have known what to call it. A polished voice on the radio announced something and then music began to play—a love song.
Bert kept walking and found himself a seat at the edge of the group. Several of the men nodded to him and he nodded back, but no one said anything.
Eddie had stopped beside a table in the middle of the room; he stayed there and began opening his leather case, carefully. While he was doing this he watched Minnesota Fats, not taking his eyes from the moonlike face, the shiny, curly hair, and the massive belly, now covered with tight blue silk—a pale blue shirt that fit so tight across Fats’ belly that it clung to it, folding only where the flesh folded, under the narrow belt. On his small feet, Fats was wearing immaculate little brown-and-white shoes, which rested delicately against the foot rail of the chair that held his magnificent, enormous butt.
While Eddie watched him, taking his cue stick from the case and then twisting the two ends together, Fats’ face made its regular, jerking grimace, but his eyes did not look up at Eddie.
Then Fats finished what he was doing, slipped the nail file into his breast pocket, and blinked at him. “Hello, Fast Eddie,” he said, in the no-tone voice.
The stick was together now, and tight. Eddie walked to Bert, handed him the case, and then, cue in hand, he walked over to Fats, stopping in front of him.
“Well, Fats,” he said, “I came to play.”
Fats’ face made the heavy, ambiguous movement that resembled a smile. “That’s good,” he said.
Not saying anything, Eddie turned around and began racking the balls on the empty table in front of the sitting men. When he had finished he began chalking his cue quietly and said, “Straight pool, Fats? Two hundred a game?”
From somewhere in the heavy mound of silk- and leather-wrapped flesh in the chair came a kind of short, softly explosive sound, a brief travesty of a laugh. And then, blinking, Fats said, “One thousand, Fast Eddie. One thousand dollars a game.”
It figured. It figured immediately; but it was a shock. Fats knew him now. Fats knew his game, and Fats was not going to fool with him, was going to try to put him down fast, on nerve and on capital. It was a good move.
Not answering, Eddie bent down and began tapping the cue ball with his cue stick, gently shooting it across the table and back. He kept his hands busy with the cue stick, to keep the fingers from trembling. He kept shooting the cue ball, back and forth across the table, and he thought of the two-and-a-half thousand dollars in his pocket, the dim pain in the fingers of his hands, the stiffness in the joints of his thumbs and in his wrists. And he thought about the money and nerve and experience and skill backing the grotesque and massive man who was sitting behind him now, jerking his chin, watching.