He chalked his cue lightly, with three deft strokes. Then he said, “Five ball in the corner,” bent down, took careful, dead aim, and shot.
And the cue ball—for a moment an extension of his own will and consciousness—sped quickly down the table and clipped the edge of the five-ball, then rebounded off the bottom rail and smacked firmly into the triangle of balls, spreading them softly apart. And while this was happening, the little orange ball with the number 5 in its center rolled evenly across the table, along the rail, and into the corner pocket, hitting the bottom with a sound that was exquisite.
The balls were spread prettily, the cue ball in their center, and Eddie looked at this loose and lovely table before he shot and thought of how pleasant it was going to be to shoot them into the pockets.
And it was a pleasure. He felt as if he had the cue ball on strings and it was his own little white marionette, darting here and there on the green baize as he instructed it by the gentle prodding of his cue. Watching the white ball perform, watching it nudge balls in, ease balls in, slap balls in, and hearing the soft, dark sounds the balls made as they fell into the deep leather pockets gave him a voluptuous, sensitive pleasure. And in operating the white marionette, putting it through its delicate paces, he was aware of a sense of power and strength that was building in him and then resonating, like a drumbeat. He pocketed a rack of balls without missing, and then another and another, and more, until he had lost count.
And then, when he had finished cleaning off the table and was standing, waiting for the rack man to put the fourteen balls back together in their triangle, he realized that the balls should be already racked but they were not, and an absurd idea struck him: he might have already won the game. Fats might never have had a shot.
He looked over to the chair where Bert was sitting. Fats was standing there, beside Bert. He was counting out money—a great many hundred-dollar bills. Fats seemed to be taking an impossible amount of money from his billfold. Eddie looked at Bert’s face and Bert peered back at him, through the glasses. Someone in the crowd of people coughed, and the coughing sounded very loud in the room.
Fats walked over and set the money on the edge of the table, his rings flashing under the overhead lights. Then he walked to a chair and sat down, ponderously. His chin jerked down into his collar for a moment, and then he said, “It’s your money, Fast Eddie.” He was sweating.
He had run the game. He had made a hundred twenty-five balls without missing, and had shot in nine racks of fourteen balls each, making and breaking on the fifteenth ball each time.
Eddie walked to the money, the silent, bulky money. Instinctively, he wiped some of the dust from his hand on the side of his trousers before handling it. Then he took it, rolled up the green paper, pushed it down into his pocket. He looked at Fats. “I was lucky,” he said.
Fats’ chins dipped quickly. “Maybe,” he said. And then, to the rack boy, “Rack the balls.”
Out of the next four games Eddie won three, losing the one only when Fats, in a sudden show of brilliance, managed to score a magnificent ninety-ball run—a tricky, contrived run, a run that displayed wit and nerve—and caught Eddie with less than sixty points on the string. But Fats did not sustain this peak; he seemed to fight his way to it by an effort of will and to fall back from it afterward, so that his next game had even less strength than before.
And Fats’ one victory did not affect Eddie, for Eddie was in a place now where he could not be affected, where he felt that nothing Fats could do could touch him. Not Eddie Felson, fast and loose—and, now, smart, critical, and rich. Eddie Felson, with the ball bearings in his elbow, with eyes for the green and the colored balls, for the shiny balls, the purple, orange, blue, and red, the stripes and solids, with geometrical rolls and falling, lovely spinning, with whiffs and clicks and tap-tap-taps, with scrapings of chalk, and the fingers embracing the polished shaft, the fingers on felt, the ever and always ready arena, the long, bright rectangle. The rectangle of lovely, mystical green, the color of money.
And then when Eddie had won a game and was lighting his cigarette Fats spoke out grimly with words that Eddie could feel in his stomach. “I’m quitting you, Fast Eddie,” he said, “I can’t beat you.”
Eddie looked across the table at him, and at the large crowd of men behind him. There stood Minnesota Fats, George Hegerman, an impossibly big man, an effeminate, graceful man. One of the best pool players in the country, George Hegerman.
Then Fats came around the table, ponderously, gave Eddie fifty one-hundred-dollar bills—new ones, fresh from the bank—took his cue down to the front of the room, and placed it carefully in its green metal locker. He turned and looked back at Bert, not looking at Eddie. “You got yourself a pool player, Bert.” Under the armpits of his shirt were large dark stains, from sweat. For an instant, his eyes shifted to Eddie’s face, contemptuously. Then he turned and left.
Men began to get up from their seats and stretch, began to talk, dissipating for themselves the tension that had been in the room for hours. Eddie’s ears were buzzing, and his right arm and shoulder, although they were throbbing dimly, felt lightweight, buoyant. Vaguely, he wondered what Fats had meant, speaking to Bert. He turned and looked at Bert, smiling to himself, his ears still buzzing, his hand still holding the thick sheaf of new, green money.
And Bert sat small and tight. Bert the mentor, the guide in the wilderness, with the face smug and prissy, the glasses rimless, the hands soft and sure and smart—Bert. Bert, with the gambler’s eyes, reserved, almost blank, but missing nothing.
Bennington’s was almost empty already. It must have been very late. Eddie rolled the sheaf of bills into a fat cylinder and pushed this carefully down into his pocket, still looking at Bert. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Charlie, still sitting; and down at the front of the room Big John, the man with the cigar, was taking a cue stick out of the rack and inspecting its leather tip, thoughtfully. Behind Bert, Gordon, the big man with the glasses, the man who was always in Bennington’s, was still sitting, his hands folded in his lap.
Eddie grinned at Bert, tiredly. He felt very happy. “Let’s get a drink,” he said. “I’m buying.”
Bert pursed his lips. “I’ll buy,” he said, and then, “with the money you owe me.”
Eddie blinked. “What money?”
Bert peered at him a moment before he answered. “Thirty per cent.” He smiled tightly, thin-lipped. “It comes to forty-five hundred dollars.”
Eddie was staring at him now, the grin frozen on his face. Then he said, softly. “What kind of a goddamn joke is that?”
“No joke.” What had been barely a smile left Bert’s face. “I’m your manager, Eddie.”
“Since when?”
Bert seemed to be peering at him with great intensity, although it was impossible to tell exactly how his eyes looked behind the heavy glasses. “Since I first adopted you, two months ago, at Wilson’s. Since I started backing you with my money, since I taught you how to hustle pool.”
Eddie drew a breath, sharply. After letting it out, he said, his voice level, cold, “You little pink-assed son of a bitch. You never taught me a goddamn thing about hustling pool.”
Bert pursed his lips. “Except how to win,” he said.
Eddie stared at him, and then, suddenly, laughed. “That, you son of a bitch, is a matter of opinion.” He turned away and began unscrewing his cue, holding the butt of it tight to keep his fingers from trembling. “It’s also a matter of opinion whether I owe you a nickel.”