It was as if a smudge of night stepped out into the cool twilight of the pool hall. Big and round, she walked – she didn’t lurch, she didn’t struggle, she didn’t roll. Fats had a grace that froze Eddy in her tracks and made her incapable of doing anything but watch as Fats materialized from her hidden corner of TEVIS’S POOL & BILLIARDS. She moved as if on oiled bearings, as if she’d discovered the pure beauty of what walking could be, and was now demonstrating it to Eddy.
She was middle-aged, her dark face a play of round cheeks and dark, hooded eyes. Her hair was the purest black, cut so short that the shape of her perfectly round skull was showing. Fats wore an immaculate white cotton shirt, perfectly pressed and buttoned up tight to her dark throat. No tie, but instead a tiny cross hanging from a thin gold chain. At her wrists she sported gold and onyx cufflinks. Her pants were black, almost invisible in the shadows of the hall. She wore black and white men’s shoes that looked brand-new. The room was warm and getting warmer in the growing day, but Fats looked elegant, refined, immaculate, and cool. “Yes, Winthrop?” she said in a deep, drum-roll voice, naming the black man in the cage.
“Girl here is interested in a game of pool,” Winthrop said, with a tilt of his head to Eddy.
“Is that true?” Fats said, turning her dark face towards Eddy. Suddenly she smiled, showing a row of perfect white teeth.
Before Winthrop could answer, and before the allure of Daisy and another soft hotel bed could change her mind, Eddy said: “I heard you’re one of the best, Fats. I heard it in Oakland, I heard it in Chicago, I heard it just the other day on the train. I just want to see if it’s true.”
Fats slowly measured her, looking Eddy up and down as if sizing up a lobster in a tank. Under her dark-eyed gaze Eddy felt a surge of heat in her face and chest. She felt herself shrink under her scrutiny.
Someone put a small, very strong hand on Eddy’s shoulder. “Come on, Eddy. Come on back to the room with me,” Daisy said, her voice edged with tired anger. “It’s just a game, Eddy. Come on, it’s just a game.”
Eddy felt the anger thrill up her spine, tension bloom in her long arms: “Come on, fat girl. You wanna play or not?”
The smile returned to Fats’s face – but it was worse, much worse than her cool scrutiny. “Let’s play pool, Eddy.”
Eddy put her case on the table and carefully popped the tiny latches. “What we shooting for, Fats? Hundred a game?”
Fats nodded, a long, slow motion as if she had all the time in the world. “Let’s see your roll first, girl.”
Eddy smiled, showing sparkling, perfect teeth. From a deep pocket she pulled a fat roll, tossed it down onto the velvet. “Ten grand, Fats. Count it if you want to.”
Fats picked up the roll, weighing it in her chubby, dark hands, her face suddenly cool and earnest. Then she smiled, tossed it neatly back to Eddy. “Looks good, girl.”
They rolled to break; despite her humming nerves, Eddy got the opening. In her hand the cue was steady, a part of her body. Languishing before the virgin balls, she cocked and slid the pale pine along her fingers, driving the cue in a perfect strike – just enough, and no more, to snap the eight and four balls away to bounce gently against the cushions and return to the pack. No quarter taken, none given.
“Deal with that, fat girl,” Eddy said with a note of bravery she barely felt.
Fats smiled, showing the sparkle of a gold tooth. There is a mastery that disguises itself as bored, casual actions. Without looking, with a careless stroke, she smashed the pack – sending the right two balls into side and right corner pockets with hollow sounds of perfection.
Eddy could do nothing but watch her clear the table.
As the next to last ball fell neatly into a side pocket, a hand suddenly rested on Eddy’s shoulder, and a firm but soft voice whispered in her ear: “Come on, Eddy, let’s go back to the room.”
Eddy wanted to shrug off Daisy’s pity, her simple answer of a soft bed and a hot cunt, but she didn’t. The first burn of failure was too hot. Instead, she patted Daisy’s hand and said, “Maybe – but not yet.”
During their words, the last two balls had sunk neatly into pockets. Winthrop had emerged from his cage, swimming lazily through the murky depths of the hall, and had quietly racked them up.
“You’re good, fat girl,” Eddy said, stepping away from the wiry energy of her lover to peel off some bills from her fat roll, slap five of them down on the table. “You’re damned good. But you’re not the best.”
“Are you going to talk, or shoot pool, Eddy?” Fats said, her coal-dark face calm and inscrutable.
“I’m going to do what I came here to do, Fats; I’m going to show you the best damned pool player there is.”
With that, leaning into the shot, pine slick and fast between her fingers, Eddy made the first break – sinking the right two balls, neat and clean.
“I already own a mirror, Eddy,” Fats said with a frighteningly cruel smile as she signalled Winthrop for a cold beer.
Despite the deep sting, Eddy cleared the table and won the game. Then the next, and the one after that. She was on, she was there; right there, in that hall and in that game. Every ball obeyed her will, every shot was sweet perfection. It wasn’t the body scream of orgasm, or the thrill of Daisy’s nipple in her mouth, but it was the climbing glory of winning.
A hand, again on her shoulder. “I want you, Eddy,” the sultry voice, low and deep, whispered in her ear. “I want you, back in our room. Your fingers deep inside me, your lips on mine, my nipples hard, yours as well.”
“Not yet, not yet,” Eddy said, chalking the tip of her cue and smiling slyly at Fats.
“Eddy, you’ve won. Please, Eddy, come back to the room with me. Lick me, fuck me, suck me, put those sweet fingers in my cunt, my ass. I want you to come with me; I want to come with you. Don’t bathe, don’t shower, just spread your legs for me – I love the smell, the taste of your sweat, the perfume of your cunt. I want it all. I want it now.”
Eddy hesitated in the game to look down into Daisy’s burning, hungry eyes. There was so much hot and steamy stuff. But then she looked at the table, saw the balls still in play. “Not yet. Maybe later.”
Eddy won the next game – making it ten to six – but her edge slipped away in the middle of the one after that and Fats ran the table clean. Then the big black woman won the next, and the next after that. Eddy felt the world slip away, felt it vanish like chalk between her finger tips, like one of Fats’s balls falling into a deep, dark, bottomless pocket.
“Come back to the room with me,” Daisy said, whispering again in her ear. “Make my clit hard, make my juices flow. Make me scream and cry. I want to lay in bed half asleep and watch you, naked, walk to the bathroom for a drink – I love to watch your ass jiggle, your neat little tits jiggle when you walk. You’re so beautiful.”
She did okay with the next game. But as the seven ball sped towards the cushion Eddy felt the edge fade again; the ball bounced just short of the pocket and lazily rolled away, giving Fats the perfect opportunity to run the table.
“Come with me, Eddy,” Daisy said, arm wrapped around her, holding Eddy close. “I want you, warm and soft in my arms. I want you in me, on me, I want to hear the way your voice changes when you come, the way you breathe quicker and quicker till it just bursts out of you in a great, wonderful sigh of release. I want to feel your cunt grab my fingers, your muscles holding on tight as the come surges up and out through you. Come on, Eddy, this is only a game.”
Eddy stared at the table, hypnotized by the way Winthrop racked up the balls; nestling them together in momentary perfect geometry, waiting to be shattered apart and scattered across the table.