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744. NuPlanetOne - 1/20/2007 4:07:50 AM No, not really Alistair. But I am going to dive into the pool match soon. The cool thing about fiction is little scenes suggest other little scenes. And definitely, Tony’s girl must return. At any rate, a few more loose ends to tie before I head back into the poolroom. Beyond that I will try to keep you guessing. 745. NuPlanetOne - 2/5/2007 4:43:41 PM Proof it existed chapter 4
“How you doin?” Vinnie Rocco said by way of a greeting as I approached the main desk area as he emerged from the door marked office. It confirmed for me that the mirrored panels and Vegas style globes discreetly hung about the place monitored via video everything going on throughout the complex. From the shape of the overhang above the main desk it was obvious that the office was up a small flight and had direct sight over to the snack bar and into the pool room. And I would bet that above that there were walkways to everywhere to peek in on every little thing.
Two guys stayed busy dealing with customers and nodded to Vinnie with the closest one handing him a phone. He told the phone he’d take care of it and tossed it near its cradle. The other guy hung it up without daring to look at Vinnie. I smiled at him. Vinnie waved me over to the area with all the bowling ball displays and told me to take a load off in one of the plush chairs in the mini lounge at that end of the reception desk. He opened the door to the office and stuck his head inside and yelled something upward ending with a stress on the word now, then calmly turned and shrugged his shoulders with his hands cupped at his thighs.
“Whadaya gonna do wit these fuckin’ melon heads?” He was right out of Hollywood casting. At least to the movie going public, anyway. Where I grew up the accent and stresses didn’t separate you from anybody. They all talked like Vinnie. The butcher, the mailman and the parish priest.
“Me? Nothin, you keep’em,” I said and brushed the top of the back of my fingers out from under my chin. He gave a heavy headed smirking nod and sat on the edge of a faux ornate leather sofa that hugged the short wall to the right of the office door.
“So. I told Louis anything you want Big Guy. Anything. Spell it out. He says, ya. See Marco. He’ll come by. So, name it my friend. Whatever you need.” He waved his hand in the air like he had just cast a spell.
“The Boss is gonna play a little pool. Louis picked out Tony. It could take a while. Set up a few rooms for later. Keep the girls away unless they get invited. Track down a 30 year old Sandeman Tawny Port. Room temp. And tip me off if Tony’s girl comes back in the building.” Vinnie got up and grabbed a pad off the desk and asked me to spell Sandeman. Then looked at me kinda cockeyed.
“Tony’s girl?” he rubbed the tip of his nose. “Darlene, the blond, right?”
“Right. The blond. Somebody say she wasn’t Tony’s girl?” It was starting to seem like everybody thought so.
“Ha? No. Who the fuck knows? Eh? Tony. We’re talking fuckin Tony here. Right? He’s always bangin something. O.K. What else?” He got over the request with the girlfriend thing.
“That’s it. I’ll tip off one of the boys here or at the snack bar as the night progresses. Is it safe to eat over there?” I swung my head quick that way and Ollie pulled his head behind a customer standing in front of the register. The grille girl was watching from inside the swinging doors and slid quickly out of sight. I turned back to Vinnie.
“What? The grille? Oh, ya. Good greasy shit. They got no brazjole, or managot. But nice burgers. Good fuckin Rueben too. But hey, next door we got everything. Cooks, or chinky food, delivered. Doesn’t matter. You name it.” He was totally pleased with himself. He gave a hand gesture toward Ollie.
“The snack bar guy seems a little on the goofy side,” I said and threw my right arm up and sent my thumb Ollie’s way like I was hitchhiking.
“Fuckin dope head. Gutta watch him like a hawk. Gino’s third cousin. The kid’s Grandpa was the Boss of everything once upon a time. Gino says he’s my fuckin problem. Little shit. I otta crack his fuckin brain open.” There was definitely homicide percolating in his eyes. Then stillness.
“Gino. He upstairs?” I made it sound like it didn’t matter. Like I was perfectly happy talking to the second in command, as it were. And to avoid a pause while his homicidal hormones were sautéing.
“Gino? Oh, ya. He’s around somewhere. He’ll be next door. Later. You know that fuckin guy. He’s like a ghoul. Bang! There he is. Outa nowheres.” He did a phony ducking response like something was coming at his head.
“And the old man in the pool room. Pappy. What’s his deal?” Again. I made it sound innocuous. It could mean I really didn’t know him, or of course I knew him, but what’s his status.
“Pappy? No problem there. He’s still retired. I think he gut his paws into some odds and ends, you know, just to make the ends meet up.” He made a face like a hound dog trying to look complacent. “Boat ways tho, nobody in his right mind would fuck with that guy, just on principle. Not even Gino.” He added shaking his head saying yes but meaning no.
“Who else is Tony banging these days, if I might ask?” As soon as I said it Vinnie’s eyes shot toward the snack bar but quickly back at me.
“Hey, c’mon, who the fuck knows. Why, what that fuckin meathead ova there say. Fuck him. T and Darlene are like two grapes on a vine.” He didn’t know where to take the idea. Or how to brush it off. Then his eyes opened wide. “Why, she part of dis business tonight?” Then a scrunched worried look.
“Her. Could be. Later. Don’t worry about it. And the kid didn’t say anything. Cause I didn’t ask him. Just tip me off if she shows.” I stood up and watched him bounce himself up. Spry. He had about two inches on me. 6’4, maybe 6’5. Twice as wide. He squeezed my hand without trying to hurt me. I made my way toward the pool room.
746. NuPlanetOne - 2/5/2007 4:44:33 PM There were two guys standing at the wrought iron railing talking back and forth about a hockey game. I went right by them and continued straight down a short hall toward two large glass doors that led outside into the side parking lot. To the left of the doors was another short hall with restrooms on either side and beyond that two big wooden doors with chrome handles. An intricate neon sign above the doors lit up the word lounge and bounced colors off and around a glossy gilding strip of sheet metal that ran along the top of the wall up to the restrooms. It created a surreal ambience around the lounge doors that would assure a drunk that he had made it safely back to Shangra La. I turned to the right of the exit doors and saw a door marked staff only. I went out into the side parking lot. To my left was the front of the building facing the main drag and off further up, as the road headed north, a parking lot width away, was the Motor Lodge. You would have to walk over there. Unless there was a secret passage. Or unless you were a ghoul.
I thought about that and went to my right and followed the building to its end at that side and decided the back wall of the poolroom ended at about that distance. I walked past the end a bit and studied two heavy metal doors with lighted exit signs and no door knobs that were spaced about twenty feet apart with the one furthest away marked receiving. It meant there probably was a back area behind the wall at the far end of the poolroom. There were no obvious cameras, so that meant they had the good ones. Anyone joining the party from out there would have to be let in. Unless they were leaving it.
I eyeballed the rest of the back of the building that stretched at least five hundred feet then climbed up a story, went on several hundred more feet, then turned the corner. That would be the health club. There must have been at least sixty cars parked behind it. Some of those were probably restaurant overflow. The restaurant fronted the health club. The area was well lit. People coming and going. I decided to check it out later then walked back to the side doors and headed back in. The two guys talking about hockey were gone. I went straight past the iron railing and over to the main desk and told the guy I had smiled at to light up table fourteen. He made a professional patronizing face then handed over a small wooden box with three balls in it. I went back to the railing and took my original spot and stood there.
Pappy was talking to the big assed guy who had somehow managed to wedge his whole ass down into the narrow plastic seat. An image of him taking his next shot with the chair clamped onto his butt jumped into my mind. And he looked like a guy that should have a chair clamped on his ass but he was smiling and enjoying whatever it was that Pappy was gibbering about. Switch was racking the balls and making an intense grimace as he lifted the rack off like he dared any off the balls to so much as breathe. One of the balls must have sighed because he jammed the rack over them and went paralyzed with his upper body and held it all down and steady like he was strangling an octopus and didn’t care how many arms were flailing before it died. Then he lifted it off with a sick grin and stepped back slowly and searched corner to corner and eased backward into his chair. He grabbed his pool stick and his crotch then hid behind the shaft and watched the balls. They were dead alright. This guy scared me.
Pappy said it was about fuckin time and broke open the new rack. Across to my left the kids were still playing eightball and two tables down on the right, after Pappy, my boy Tony had begun his mission. The table after them and the one between them and Pappy had racks of unbroken balls sitting ready, but no players. Rented buffers for leaning and watching. Louis looked like a grizzly bear napping with one eye open while still clutching the coats on his lap. The open eye noted my appearance then went back to watching Tony. The Boss was half leaning on the buffer table on that side chalking his cue. I looked past him into the far right corner and noticed the outline of a doorway with a lighted exit sign above it. The back three tables on that side were unlighted and the last four on the left side were lighted, but unused.
747. NuPlanetOne - 2/5/2007 4:45:18 PM I went down to my table which was midway between Pappy and Tony on the opposite side. I dumped the balls out of the box with a wrist jerk and let them sail around the table as I sifted through the sticks on the wall rack. It was a pretty decent collection. Well run pool halls have good house sticks. Serious players always scout out a house stick to break with and to use in an emergency or tricky situation where using vertical massé might damage their custom made pool cue. I dumped my coat on a plastic seat then rolled my chosen stick on the table to see if I could still pick out one by sight that was even and straight. It passed and I grabbed it up and went through the motion off holding it on the table and pretending I was getting ready to stroke a shot. I slid it through the fingers on my left hand fast, then real slow, then fast again. Then I pulled up and stroked it quick in the air a few feet above the table to feel for any unevenness after having leaned hard on it to practice my set position. It felt good so I chalked it quickly and snapped off a shot on one of the two white cue balls without looking to see where any of it went then stood the stick straight up and checked the tip. Solid. Fairly even. I spotted a ratty looking piece of steel wool in one of the built in ashtrays between the connected plastic seats and honed the shaft carefully to get that superfine sanded feel that meant all the factory varnish was gone. This time I ignored the crisp new cube of blue chalk that came in the box with the balls and rounded up a couple of used ones that were all broken in. I cleaned off the tip of the cue with spit on my finger then roughed it a little with the wool and chalked it properly.
“Wow! We gut a player ova here.” Pappy stood with his left arm hanging off the tip of his cue with his right arm crossed over that. He had taken in the whole warm-up routine, as I had expected, and stood shaking his head approvingly.
“Player? No, not quite. Even when I could play I wasn’t all that good.” I shrugged like I meant it. Then I stood there with my stick diagonal across my front, chalking with my right hand while an occasional squeal of nails on blackboard sounded as I ground tip into chalk to fit the tip perfectly. My left hand held the butt end and turned the stick opposite my right.
“Oh. But you played. I can tell. And Three-Rail. Nobody fucks with that game round here. Cept’ Tony. Hey T,” he yelled off in Tony’s direction. “We gut us a billiard player ova here.” All the eyes in the room hit me for an instant and Tony quickly shooshed Pappy, then after a minute he gave him a look and a head shake saying do not disturb. Pappy made a mock astonished face then turned it toward me and loosened it to a disinterested jeer.
“Easy now,” I cautioned quietly like I was respecting Tony’s suggestion. “I stopped plying years ago. Bad eyes. B player. Jumpy nerves.”
“Ya, wher’d you play? I knew all the players.” Pappy eyeballed me from head to foot. I gave a little whooping guffaw.
“That’s why you never knew me.” I added with a hoot.
“Ya. But you look familiar. Where you outta?” I knew he couldn’t place me. Back then I was just more scenery. But I had been in his joint quite a few times. He had 36 tables. Cash-in pinball machines. A bookie-joint and card parlor all under one roof. All the while running all the action north of Boston along with his hand in every pie along the east coast.
“Switch. Where do I know this guy from?” he lifted his right arm off the stick and motioned to the smoke cloud Switch was sitting in.
“Ha? What guy? Who?” Switch moved his head to either side of his pool stick and put his eyes on me. It was like a CAT scan. Negative. But he left the stick tilted to his right like he wasn’t hiding. “Don’t know,” he said matter of factly.
“Fuckin guy. He don’t tell you nuthin.” He tossed a piece of chalk from his left hand toward Switch and he watched it sail. It was going wobbly to Switch’s left, head high, and in a blink he snatched it like a lizard’s tongue that darted lightning fast out of a camouflaged background. His eyes moved to Pappy to me to Pappy. He kept the stick to his right.
“Come on. It’s your turn. Shoot the balls.” Switch put his eyes on the table. Pappy jerked around and studied the layout. I turned and got busy hitting my balls around. It was time to listen in on Tony’s business.
748. alistairConnor - 6/24/2007 6:05:39 PM I'm accumulating some fabulous material these days. Too bad I won't be able to use it. Not for ten years at least I suppose.
Otherwise I suppose, one needs to re-write it several times until the autobiographical dross floats out and leaves the universal essence. If anything is left.
Nu, I'm still holding my breath waiting for the rest! 749. arkymalarky - 6/24/2007 7:01:11 PM All right now, that's not fair. You dangle that in front of us and tell us we'll have to wait ten years and then separate fact from fiction? I say you write the first draft here. We won't tell. 750. wonkers2 - 6/25/2007 1:46:03 AM Shades of Minnesota Fats!
Arky is right, cough it up Alistair! 751. alistairconnor - 6/25/2007 10:03:31 AM Well, part of it is that I've been hanging out with women who need more in the way of psychiatric help than the banal psychotherapy thing. I have concluded I'm way out of my depth.
But now I'm in love with a woman of sound mind and body who happens to be an international terrorism expert. The possible fictional ramifications are of course endless.
I could tell you more but then I'd hafta killya. 752. NuPlanetOne - 6/27/2007 1:07:11 AM Alistair…funny thing is I too have accumulated so much, that is, toward the idea for my ‘Tony’ story. I’m only somewhere around 80 pages but the thing is coming together…so slowly. I was just going to blurt it all out and see where the pieces fell, but I figured if I am ever going to get serious about writing, I had better at least re-write as I go along. An unpolished polished first draft. But it has to be a full length rendition, I’m afraid. I’m thinking 350-400 pages. Fortunately, time does not seem to exist here in The Mote. 753. alistairConnor - 6/27/2007 6:49:28 AM Wow. Feel free to work on the drafts right here, that would be a real privilege... post it raw then re-write it... try stuff out on us.
Whatever suits you. Time does not exist, but I'm always impatient. 754. alistairConnor - 8/25/2007 12:00:29 PM Time for some new talent on this thread... come on people, you know who you are... do I need to start naming names? 755. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:31:57 AM Well then, it has been some time. But it is high time I continued with my novel here. I should point out that I have decided that the begining as I have it in here, will in fact be preceded by several chapters. I'm just not sure yet why, but some ideas I have about an ending will require some history and information that will tie it all together. Or something like that. Again, this really is first draft stuff, experimenting, even if I don't eventually change a whole lot. 756. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:33:01 AM Chapter 7
Nineball is at once elegant, violent, mesmerizing, thrilling, excruciatingly tense, yet wonderfully simple in the hands of a skilled shooter. There is not much to it, actually. Nine balls, a cue ball and six holes in a bed of slate covered by felt and cushions along four rails laid out on a perfect rectangle measuring 100 inches long by fifty inches wide, cushion to cushion. The player who breaks the balls must contact the one ball and force at least four other balls to hit a rail. The nine balls are racked in a diamond with the one ball on the spot at the far end intersecting the imaginary balk line from side to side from the middle diamond on each half rail of the long rail at that end. If he pockets a ball on the break he continues to shoot until he misses. If he commits a foul the other player takes over and gets to place the cue ball anywhere he chooses. The first one to pocket the nine ball wins and also retains command of the break. The balls are pocketed in numerical order but you may sink the nine at any time as long as you hit the object ball first. If you do not have a clear shot you can play a safety, that is, hit a piece of the object ball and then a rail, or rail, then ball then rail. Alternatively, you can just push out without hitting anything, but your opponent can force you to shoot again, or he can accept the position and take his chances. And this is where Tony splits the hairs of atomic nuclei.
It is in this process of exchanges during a series of push outs where the two players act as one analyzing simultaneously the layout and possible landings of the intended stroke. Your opponent walks about examining every possible angle and deflection he can imagine. You are in the other guys head and space, sometimes standing close enough to touch, and all the time aware that your opponent might be seeing something that you are missing. And having looked it all over together, though processing quietly by yourself, you can become convinced and actually certain that your opponent cannot be hiding an unseen advantage. Yet because you are sure that luck exists to a marginal degree, you allow for the possibility that he might, by accident, wiggle out of the space he has been wedged into. But your mutual examination of the possibilities and impossibilities assure you that, in fact, luck is his only opportunity to defeat you in this particular moment in the game. So the marginal possibility becomes what you will give him; there is no skilled way he can climb out of the hole. You look it over one more time and retreat. Or you take the bait.
757. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:33:46 AM And here is where Tony stops time. Here, the marginal degree is an entire universe. For him, it might as well be the space between stars, because what he sees in a grouping of tightly packed balls or balls scattered as solid obstacles blocking pathways, is an emotionless ordering of things. Confined even. Subject to simple physical and observational laws that once a trajectory is defined, because there are many, the real trick is in creating a leave, an image of a conceivable shot that your opponent will take a whack at. For if he is tempted, if he swallows the hook, then the disaster is now in his hands. In that case, Tony has shifted it from himself having to make unbelievable shots, to his opponent missing one. And to win that game becomes the result of another’s failure, rather than Tony’s superior skill. In effect, it is the base theory of hustling pool. Yet, a perfect version because it avoids telltale emotional detection. Tony appears to be grinding out his strategy; because he is. He is not occupied with sleight of hand or bullshitting discourse. He is watching only the ongoing sequences as he imagined them, at times worried even, that his calculations could be wrong. And as such, if anything, he can appear indecisive. And if an opponent wriggles free from a hook, he might spend several minutes afterwards rewinding time on the other side of his brain so that he would not forget the variable he had previously overlooked.
And of course, there is the execution. The stroke. The hand eye co-ordination and feel necessary to make it work. Seeing in several dimensions is one remarkable thing, but having the touch and control to manipulate those spheres, is quite another. It was rare that an individual had both.
“Nice shooting.” Tony said as he moved toward the side pocket and pulled up the seven ball and let it trickle gently down to the rack end of the table. He looked over at The Boss who stood chalking his cue at the opposite side while the kid playing eight ball rushed in and started racking the balls. He got a crisp buck a rack that Louis held between his fingers as the kid finished and spun away to his table, the long way, up and around. Just like a ball boy in a tennis match. Occasionally, either Tony or The Boss would wave him off and do the rack up themselves. The Boss would grab the buck from Louis and drop it on the kid’s table. Tony would just smile and leave the waving buck in Louis’ fingers that Louis dared Tony to grab onto. Louis didn’t smile, but there was a look in his eye that suggested he was highly amused.
758. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:34:24 AM “It was a good break. Never in doubt. No twos.” No twos meaning no two ways about it. Actually, No Twos was his nickname. Joey ‘No Twos’ DeLuca. Early on in his career he was an enforcer. Then, after overseeing collections and consistently managing a positive flow, he became a special capo of internal affairs. If there were discrepancies in financial areas surrounding money moving or laundering operations, he was your guy. He was so good at it that he became the money moving operation itself. If they sent him in and he determined something was amiss he sent back his now famous ‘ain’t no fuckin twos,’ and heads rolled. It is why, even a top dog like Gino might be shitting his pants and why The Boss was getting anything he wanted on this particular visit.
“Yep. Clean rack,” Tony said as he took a seat two down from Louis with his head nodding and his eyes darting a bit from side to side in recalculation. It was the third time I noticed the eye thing as if all of his other parts were locked on the mission but a separate scanner was busy sifting through data for something.
“Where we at Louis?” The Boss said in passing as he grabbed his house stick leaning behind the empty seat to Louis’ left.
“Four zip this race. Two zip total,” Louis said then threw his eyes toward Tony. Tony shook his head stiffly, shifted his upper body to his right elbow and agreed. Louis pulled a pen out of the inside pocket of his blazer with his left hand and pulled his right hand out from under the coats bunched on his lap and scribbled on a little pad that had been sitting atop the coats. He put the pen down to his left next to a little pile of one dollar bills and tucked his other hand back under the coats. Then he put the pen back in his blazer and pressed the pad into the coats so it would stick and went still with his bottom lip pursed up a bit.
“Two zip,” The Boss repeated as he slammed the cue ball into the diamond rack of balls at the far end of the table. All in an instant the snap propelled a few outer balls on the diamond with such speed that you only caught up with them once you had managed to determine the follow through of the cue ball. And The Boss played a power force follow stopping the cue for a nano second on impact after delivering the bang, then like a wounded bull the cue put its head down and charged on through the center of the retreating balls in search of a second strike. If it got a clean charge through the exploding pile and caught a ball coming off the rail still full of the initial slam, it could force that ball and itself to change direction and start an uncontrolled chain reaction, that not only increased the chances of the nine ball going in, but also could create a wider dispersion and more often than not, multiple sinkings. It is a risky break strategy because the cue ball is basically out of control, but when it works, it piles on momentum and feeds into a players confidence allowing them to find a temporary zone where any shot seems logical. The Boss was in that zone.
759. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:35:03 AM “Nice,’ Louis chirped with all the emotion of a store front Indian. Tony turned his head slightly and up and looked at Louis like he was trying to recognize someone from far away.
“Very nice,’ Tony said respectfully and tapped his stick butt on the floor.
“Very nice,’ The Boss repeated as if he had not heard Tony and was saying it in response to what he now had in front of him. Four balls went in on the break and the other five were sitting patiently out in the open like rescued sailors. The Boss chalked up and quickly pocketed them without saying another word.
“Three zip,” Louis announced and was putting the pen away again having scribbled the score even before The Boss had finished. The kid playing eight ball was already whizzing around the table collecting balls and sending them toward the rack he had tossed up near the spot. He grabbed his buck and was gone. The Boss reloaded his house stick and slammed the cue ball with a snap into the fresh diamond. Balls ricochetted wildly while amidst all the flying objects the nine ball was on a slow ride toward the corner pocket to The Bosses’ left. The six ball came at it from behind and in a split second was kissed by the three coming across from the side and the collision bounced the three into the side pocket and sent the six off the rail cross corner and it smiled as it banged into the corner pocket while just after it, the nine, never deviating from its steady roll, fell in on top off the six.
“Five zip,” Louis said weirdly then cleared his throat. “Five zip.” He said clearly. They were playing double on the break if the nine went in. It went in. Tony popped up and grabbed the rack.
“Let me change my luck,” Tony said and waved off the kid.
“By all means. But it ain’t luck my friend. No twos.” The Boss stared in at Tony like he was telling the next person in line some obviously bad news. Tony continued to rack the balls nodding his head then paused with the rack just above the diamond and stared for a split second at The Boss, forced a smile, hung the rack under the table, and stepped back as the cue ball rammed into the pile. Then he looked at me with a face that asked if I was up to something and I looked back with a face saying all was well.
“Luck,” The Boss declared, “is how a fool explains good fortune. Me. I make my own good fortune. That’s why a goddamn fool has no good explanation for failure.” Again, it was like he was talking to the situation in front of him. This time three balls went in on the break but the cue ball was stuck on the right side rail facing the stairs with two balls blocking it. He needed a shot on the three ball which hung in the pocket by the right corner down in front of Louis on the same side. He had a clean stroke on the cue to play it off the top rail to the opposite side rail then down to the three. He would have to hit the top rail to the left of the center diamond because the eight ball blocked out just enough space to forbid a simple two rail come around. This meant he would have to stretch the angle coming off the side rail by using some right hand spin. Easy enough, but the three was hanging very close to the rail by the pocket. If you hit it on the side away from the rail it would not go, unless you got a lucky double kiss which would bounce it in off the cue ball.
760. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:35:44 AM “Look at the hit, if you would, please, my friend.” The Boss stood staring down at the cue ball.
“You going around it, or straight up?” Tony asked without getting up. The Boss’ eyes went quickly down to the cue then circled around the table. I couldn’t be sure but I didn’t think The Boss had considered the forced massé because it never occurred to me either. Looking now, it was playable. If you curve it around the eight with a slightly raised snap it would slide off the second rail on a string down toward the three. All feel, of course, but it gave you the quarter inch to the left of the center diamond on that top rail. And that brought the cue ball down dead inside the three and would pinch it right into the hole. Tony was up next to him now.
“I’ll go straight up,” The Boss said while getting down to stroke the shot as Tony moved out of the space with the movement. He moved the cue smoothly in a controlled level stroke like he was going straight up then lifted his set position and his posture changed as if he was feeling out a possible masse. Then he stood straight and chalked the stick deliberately.
“Safe.” He said. “Watch the hit.” Tony hung at the rack end with an interested look on his face and The Boss got back down over the cue. He sent it directly up toward the corner pocket on his side with a little puff of a stroke and a nudge of left hand English on a slight left to right slant and it met the rail and came back down crawling steady on exactly the same line. You could count the revolutions as it tickled the rail a hair before the eight ball, tickled the eight, then nestled in behind it and stuck to the rail, buried. Perfect safety. I knew The Boss could play, but this suggested a level I was unaware of. Tony’s face no longer showed interest. His pupils were locked in a tight dance of a circle centered on the cue ball. He came around and leaned over the cue and then stepped away and looked on a line toward the corner pocket opposite the three ball on Louis’ right side.
“Good hit,” Tony said with a head shake and puckered lips, mocking exasperation, then a smile.
“I thought you might like that,” The Boss quipped as he came toward Tony and took a look at the line Tony had studied toward the far left corner. He forced a harmless, yet disbelieving smirk and moved down to Louis’ left and stood smiling back at Tony. Tony was standing with his head directly over the cue again and had a genuine look of bewilderment on his face. I was thinking he must be thinking it was too early to pull a rabbit out of his hat. Or, he was wondering why he was hired to hustle a guy who apparently knew it was a hustle. But on the other hand, if The Boss was as good as it now appeared he might be, the safety play might just be a message telling all those concerned that it wasn’t a hustle at all, but a real challenge. A dare. But why?
761. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:36:25 AM That is the pang of fear I got as I studied Louis and The Boss and looked at their expressions and posture for a sign or signal that all remained as it was before. I tried to catch Louis’ eye but both of his eyes went up and he grinned as he looked at The Boss. It was The Boss’ deal. Louis never said it wasn’t. I just assumed he was arranging some entertainment. I didn’t like the smell of it. It was going to be a long night. I had guaranteed Tony I had his back. That part seemed incidental and minor. I hated trusting Louis in the first place, and now I had two guys to keep safe and sound. Although, they could just be fucking with me, because they could, and hopefully Louis had me set up Tony just in case The Boss couldn’t actually beat Tony straight up. That had never happened, as far as I knew. And I thought everyone else inside the inside circles was aware of it too. I wouldn’t be able to tell if The Boss was that good. You would have to be that good to see it. Or better. It made sense that Tony already saw it which would explain the strange looks on his face. I had to know what he was thinking. Hopefully he might piss soon.
“What’s to like?” Tony said to The Boss after studying the layout from every angle. He was nodding his head and returning The Boss’ smile as he backed away from the cue and tapped his cue on the underside of the adjacent table. Pool room applause. His body language seemed playful now and the scene felt less tense. I exhaled and smiled and relaxed my butt onto the rail of my table. I caught the face of Pappy with a strained look on it staring at me from across the way. As soon as I returned the look he motioned with his eyes and a slight head jerk up toward the iron railing. There were a bunch of people now watching Tony’s game and I realized that all the tables had pretty much stopped their matches and stood quietly taking it all in. Same as me. On my glance at the group at the railing I had noticed a very attractive young lady looking wide eyed in my direction. Even from where I stood the green eyes of the grille girl were unmistakable. That sent my head and gaze back quickly in her direction. She made an ‘it’s about time’ grimace and motioned for me too come to her. Slightly befuddled looking I nodded and put up my index finger without fully turning her way. She then turned and headed away in the direction of the snack bar. I looked at Pappy and he was expressionless now watching Tony from over the buffer table next to his. Switch was in his favorite chair hiding behind his cue. His eyes darted my way quickly as I moved to go. He sent a plume of smoke out of the side of his mouth. I went after the grille girl.
762. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:37:08 AM Chapter 8
By the time I got up to the railing level and started toward the snack bar I could see Ollie was busy working the grille and another guy was off to his right pulling up a basket full of French fries. A well coiffed older woman was busy with a handful of people at the register. Her cap looked like a space pod that had landed softly on an ashen lunar surface without stirring a molecule of dust. Most of the tables were full of Saturday night bowlers having their evening gorge of grilled grease and boiled oil. A few kids flitted about doing a sugar dance holding cups of syrup flavored water and shrieking at nothing in particular. No grille girl. I looked past that scene and down toward the far end where the last lane hit the huge wall covered with league banners and local ads and just before the end wall I caught sight of her torso hanging out of a doorway. She waved me down.
As I walked I was thinking that the wall on my right must be the back part of a section of the restaurant and I was wondering why Sophina, that was the name on her snack bar badge, was drawing me to a secluded rendezvous. But then again, my life was full of secret rendezvous. My life was full of secrets. My life was full of shit. I was full of shit. Everyone involved all around me in this thing was full of shit and secrets. And as usual I had to sniff around and head butt the muck like a truffle pig and dig out the big secret. Even if the biggest secret, for a change, was that no one was paying me or assigning me to uncover the big secret. I had the secret up front, and I was getting paid to protect it. If I did the double-cross, my evolving big secret, I would have some serious heartless mother raping killers dedicated to mutilating my sorry corpse, who, like wild chimps, would probably then eat the carcass. Uncomplicated thugs with a very narrow imagination.
On the other hand, the Feds scared the living shit out of me. Creative and career killers with legal papers. No one to buy out or stand down. Guys and gals like me, my colleagues, as it were. And any one of them, like me, could be right in the middle of this and I wouldn’t know it unless there was an afterlife. A final recollection before I descended into hell. I stopped and put my back to the wall and brought up my right knee to brace myself and felt again for the gun that wasn’t there. Fuck the gun. If I needed a gun it wasn’t going to happen. I will only need a gun when I made it happen, if I could make it happen. I knew I needed help. No, I needed luck. I needed help. I needed focus. Put it together Marco.
Out in front of me the alleys were abuzz with a dizzying array of neon lit bodies lost in a panorama of action and repose. Heads peering up at electronic scorecards and hands stuck in bowling balls. Set position, running approaches, choreographed marches toward the release, groups sitting behind watching or chatting or jumping for joy. Towels waving. Whizzing spirals hooking into shiny white pins. Balls sprouting out of carousels and picked up and rubbed and inspected. Swooping gates gathering pins to fall off the edge of the waxed wooden surface. Smirks, total concentration, lackadaisical gutter balls. An hourglass of diversion and forgetting. Somewhere I had not been in a long time. The grille girl broke the trance. I looked down her way and she stepped into view and waved me down. I looked back out at the alley and pushed myself off the wall. She made sure I kept advancing then raised her eyebrows and ducked into a doorway. 763. NuPlanetOne - 11/15/2007 2:37:50 AM The door had a small sign saying ‘Private: No Admittance.’ I looked up and down and around the immediate vicinity and no one seemed to care. I caught sight of the square woman in the football coat coming out of the snack bar area and it looked like she frowned and beaded her eyes at me, but then again, I was ogling the new tray of food she was lugging. I grabbed the door knob. No give. Then gave the door one rap. The knob turned and the green eyes twinkled and I pushed my way in. The grille girl was striding down a brightly lit hall powered by a couple of legs that shot out of a short skirt and would have got a yelp out of a Trappist Monk celebrating a lifetime of celibacy and silence.
“Follow me,” she said jerking her face over her right shoulder. A face, it seemed, that might always be immersed in some vague, self contained, personal amusement.
“You bet,” I told those legs. She turned right into an open doorway.
“The private chamber,” I said as I eyeballed what appeared to be some version of a conference room. Banquet table with a handful of sturdy folding chairs placed around it in the center of the room. A room splashed with white fluorescence that would easily crack a make-up mirror obliged to reflect every wrinkle or blemish it received. Although, my new friend had little fear of such things as either her youth or pure confidence outshone any diminishing factors. But I could tell she was closer to thirty than twenty and I wondered why that mattered.
“You thirsty?” she asked waving a right hand that jangled as several gold hoops moved across a slender wrist with the motion. She was seated at the head of the table closest to me and threw her right leg up over her left as she spoke and I was hoping I didn’t watch that too closely as I let my head survey the rest of the room.
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