A smoky haze filled the bar. There was the background shouts of the regulars cheering on the football game, and staccato clacks from breaking balls at the
pool tables added an uneven rhythm to the music of happy hour. Meandering past the pool tables and up to the bartender, I ordered my usual to drink while awaiting my partner and adversary.
Ten minutes later, he walked in the bar, stopping at the entrance to survey the scene. Tall and lanky, he held a similarly shaped case at his side. A small glimmer in his eyes and his quickened movements told that he just found for what he was looking. Then he made his way to an empty pool table in a darkened corner of the bar. I ordered a second drink and carried it with the rest of mine over to him.
Wordlessly, I handed it to him. He finished off the pint in one gulp, then set the empty glass on a nearby pub table next to the rectangular case he brought with him. Unzipping the case, he revealed two pieces of a cue which he reverently pulled out and screwed together.
Setting my half-full glass next to his empty one, I selected the least beat up cue in the rack on the wall. Deep gouges were cut into it from years of frustrated players hitting it against the bumpers of the pool tables. With such shoddy equipment, surely I would lose this game, as usual.
I allowed my opponent to break the balls, watching in awe as five of the colored balls slipped into the pool table pockets. Dismayed, I scratched on my first attempt, but on my next turn, I managed to put a striped ball into a pocket, then another, and another. Soon, miraculously, I had managed to catch up to him, and we both had one ball left besides the eight ball.
“How about a little cash on this one? To make it more interesting?” He asked me, pulling out his wallet. I shrugged, thinking that he could not want to wager that much money.
I agreed to whatever he wanted to bet. To my dismay, I found myself staring down at a fifty dollar bill on the bumper of the pool table. Thinking back to my wallet, I realized that all I had was a five dollar bill. Even the drinks that I ordered I had put on my tab. I told him that I did not just want to just leave my money on the pool table, and would give it to him only in the unlikely event that he won.
My turn. I hit my last striped ball into a pocket. A crowd had started to gather. All that stood between me and a beating was the eight ball. If I made it in, there was no worry, but if I missed my opponent would win and the crowd would force me to pay the fifty dollar bet before I left, one way or another. I hit the cue ball with my stick, and held my breath as it set the eight ball into motion. The ball moved slowly across the pool table. Too slowly, I thought. It crept to a stop at the edge of the far corner pocket. Then a gust of air from the opening door blew over the crowd and tipped the eight ball in. I had one.
Letting my breath out quickly, I snatched his fifty dollar bill from the bumper, replaced the pool cue and hurried out past the
pool tables to the door and into the winter night.
