Had to split this into 2 posts. Here's part 2:
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The next week, as he bent for the 15 for the third time in the session so far, he caught the figure of Gant in the corner of his eye, his white uniform bright against the blue and green background of the cover photograph.
“Do you think you can know the secret if you never play a game with anyone?”
Paul had no time to reply, as he heard the outer doors open and close. 2 men entered, holding cue cases similar to his own. One was short and fat in a distinguished way, almost totally bald and with a kindly face. His partner was tall with wild white hair and must have once been some kind of athlete, still with a broad chest and straight back, but whose stringy arms showed little of the muscle that they must have once possessed.
“How’s it going young man?” said the short round man with the kindly face. “You just practicing?”
“Actually I am, but I’d like to play.”
So he started playing games with the residents. He found there was a small but dedicated core of players, and that most of them liked 3 or 4 handed games better than just one-on-one. As one remarked to him with chagrin, he didn’t like playing with just one person as all that standing and walking around the table too much for him. They played 8 Ball, like he had with his friends in bars, but unlike his friends he knew as little as he did about Pool, his partners in the Billiard room taught Paul how to call his shots properly, how to play safe and how making the easy balls early in the rack without a plan to make the rest was worse than making no balls at all. He found every so often he’d line up on a shot and realize it was just like one from the line-up exercise, and he’d just drop into the routine, a smooth confident stroke sending the object in the pocket and the cue ball round 2 rails to the next ball. Sometimes he’d catch his opponents nodding in approval when he made those shots.
He began joining the serious games that would form in the early evening, where they played for a few dollars a game, which was “just enough to make it interesting.” Certainly everyone took the winning or losing of those dollars seriously, so he learnt to as well. Occasionally a player called Eddie would arrive and insist on raising the bet. If it was $2 he’d make it $4, if it was $4 he wanted to make it $10. Eddie liked to hover in the doorway so he could step out for a drag of his cigarette whilst glaring at his opponents if they were shooting well, or at his partner if he was not. One afternoon he arrived when 4 were already deep into a game with Eddie looking on. “Come on, we’ll play over here. $5 OK?” He was already racking the balls without waiting for an answer.
Eddie had lost 6 games when he asked him if he played 9 Ball. Paul had never seen anyone play in person, only some women one day on TV. “You’ll have to explain the rules to me.” So Eddie explained 9 Ball and won 3 games before Paul started to get the feel of it. Playing the balls in order was just like his exercise, but he had to make them from all over the table not just the middle. He had to move the cue ball back and forth a lot more, cutting balls hard down the rail to get the cue ball around where he needed it.
When he ran an entire rack of 9 Ball, like before when he’d been playing the exercise, he did not feel the game was really over, he just wanted to have the balls setup again for another break and to do it better this time, to not get out of line and have to play a long bank on the 8 to get in position for the 9. When Eddie had lost 10 games of 9 Ball he asked him where else he’d played. “Only here, with you guys.” Paul replied. As the evening petered out and the men left one by one, Paul stayed to practice 9 Ball. He kept setting up the rack, trying different break angles and speeds. He started putting all the odd numbered balls down one end of the table and all the evens at the other to force himself to play the back-and-forth position shots all the time.
He went back to a large bright new book store on the edge of town and took to a table in their café the 6 books they had in stock on Pool. The one he purchased was a modern book with much better pictures that concentrated in great detail only on 9 Ball. He even liked the title; “Play Your Best 9 Ball”. No one had ever encouraged him to be his best at anything he actually liked doing before.
The next time he saw Eddie they went straight into 9 Ball. “You break” Eddie told him. Paul broke and ran three racks. “You busy this Saturday?” Eddie asked him as he peeled another $5 bill. Paul told him he’d let him know, fully intending to have a good excuse ready by then. Eddie had an angry intensity that disturbed him, and faded tattoos on his arms that he had no desire to know where they had come from.
The cleaning crew came and went. Paul assured them he’d lock up when he was done and went back to his practice. At 1 a.m. there was absolute silence except the noises made by Paul. His shoes on the thin carpet as he moved in line with his next shot, followed by the dry whisper of the chalk on the tip of his cue. Then the almost silent swish as his cue stroked forward, the quiet pop as the tip hit the cue ball, the much louder crack as the cue ball hit the target ball. There was the low rumble of the balls moving across the felted slate surface, and then the sound he waited for, frozen in his stance, the sound of the ball hitting the back of the plastic pocket, swirling around in it’s maw for the briefest moment before dropping with a click into the balls below.
And then his voice was there again. “You think you can learn the secret if you play in here the rest of your life?” This time Paul had no need to answer the rustling magazine, or question the presence of the shined shoes, leather soles barely scuffed. He already knew the answer.
So Eddie started taking Paul to serious Pool Halls. He explained a serious Pool Hall was not just a social venue, not just a bar with Pool tables for drunk kids to play on. This was where real Pool was played. This was where large sums of money was staked, reputations earned and a niche found for every person in the pecking order. Were you a friendly easy mark with a low tolerance for financial loss who just liked to play? Were you keen to throw money around to feel like a big shot? Did you play to finance other worse habits, driven by the need to spend quantities of money on a daily basis that no honest wage could earn? Could you never realistically judge your own talent, leading you to endless matches against stronger and stronger opponents to create a wall of denial around your ego?
“It’s too big, it’ll never fit” said his Grandfather as the delivery men maneuvered a large fridge into the doorway of his house. “Don’t worry, I measured it, it’ll fit fine.” The men rested it in on the faded oriental carpet and went to remove the old unit. Heinz cautiously sniffed the brushed steel panels of the fridge, looked up for a moment, then settled down in a sunlit corner.
“You ought to move out if you can afford stuff like this now.”
“Come on Grandpa, don’t be like that. I like it here.”
“Don’t know why, you never see the place. Never knew the Clubhouse was kept open so late.”
“I told you, I’ve been playing with the guys at that big club in LA. Sometimes I lose, but lately I’m winning a lot more. I know it doesn’t sound right to you, but it feels right to me. There’s a big tournament coming up, all the best players will be there and I’m already entered.”
His grandfather said nothing else as the plastic hose was carefully routed behind the counter to the water pipes below the sink.
The big tournament came. Paul lost every match he played. He sat up close and watched the best players in the country dissect their racks like hard smooth machines. They might laugh and curse as they played, or say nothing and just grimace at every ball, or hold their faces as blank as paper whilst their arms swung in wide beautiful curves, but they all tore down every barrier they had between them and the 9 ball with an intensity he’d only glimpsed amongst his previous opponents. So every day he spent in the Billiard room, practicing now continuously, tuning out the 4 handed 8 Ball games, not caring that Henry had just made a really tough bank shot, or that Craig had deliberately caromed into his opponents’ last remaining ball, forcing them to play safe on the 8 when they thought they had the game sown up, or that Dave’s partner had played absolutely the wrong shot just like he always found his partners did.
It took 3 more tournaments before he found himself in the finals. He knew by now the intricacies of the double-elimination chart, knew how players moved through it in mapped precision like the numbered pool balls, bouncing around the table to line up again and again for a new shot. In this tournament he’d been beating great players, players whose names he knew from the shots mapped out in “Play Your Best 9 Ball”. The loser’s bracket was emptying out, and it was very clear who was coming through to face him. “You know he’s won the US Open 6 times? No one else ever done that, not even Mosconi.” the tournament director told him as marked up the latest results.
“Mosconi didn’t play 9 Ball, he called it a novelty game.” Paul replied.
“True, but no one plays Straight Pool tournaments any more. You know you shoot old fashioned? Think you can take him in the final?”
A “Yes” was on Paul’s lips before he even thought, the trained instinctive response, the bravado he’d learned playing in serious Pool rooms for serious money, forcing every doubt and fear down as far below the part of him that picked the shots and stroked the cue as he could. But the name had been mentioned, and there at the bottom, below the money and the fear was the hole where he kept no secret, where that secret should have been, shoring everything else up above it.
“Well you’ve got a few hours to get yourself together. Finals will be starting at 9 tonight on table 1.”
He had no idea who was still playing as he pulled out of the parking lot. He could hear the crack of the break over and over as he drove back to Seapine, could see the flying balls as he flung open the inner door of the Billiard room. The man at the table lowered the magazine, Mr. Gant’s oddly angled profile disappearing as he did so. Paul stared at the slim dapper face, the neat hair and the bright eyes he knew would be there. “I did everything you said.” Paul began before he knew he even intended to say anything, and once he started he knew he could not stop.
“I learned to shoot. I learned to hold the cue right, to stand right, to play position, to get out when I can and duck when I have to. I learned to gamble and win despite it not because of it. I learned to compete against the best players I could because I couldn’t stand to stop moving forward. I’ve beaten champions, but still you won’t tell me the secret.”
“Can you beat him?”
“If I get balls on the break and spread them good, if I keep down and play smooth, if I get out of his safes without selling out, if I play every 9 ball the same as every 1 ball, if I make every ball I know how to make. Yes, I can win.”
“Well then, go and beat him. Then you come back here and tell me the secret, because I’d love to know it too. I only ever learned how to win.”
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The next week, as he bent for the 15 for the third time in the session so far, he caught the figure of Gant in the corner of his eye, his white uniform bright against the blue and green background of the cover photograph.
“Do you think you can know the secret if you never play a game with anyone?”
Paul had no time to reply, as he heard the outer doors open and close. 2 men entered, holding cue cases similar to his own. One was short and fat in a distinguished way, almost totally bald and with a kindly face. His partner was tall with wild white hair and must have once been some kind of athlete, still with a broad chest and straight back, but whose stringy arms showed little of the muscle that they must have once possessed.
“How’s it going young man?” said the short round man with the kindly face. “You just practicing?”
“Actually I am, but I’d like to play.”
So he started playing games with the residents. He found there was a small but dedicated core of players, and that most of them liked 3 or 4 handed games better than just one-on-one. As one remarked to him with chagrin, he didn’t like playing with just one person as all that standing and walking around the table too much for him. They played 8 Ball, like he had with his friends in bars, but unlike his friends he knew as little as he did about Pool, his partners in the Billiard room taught Paul how to call his shots properly, how to play safe and how making the easy balls early in the rack without a plan to make the rest was worse than making no balls at all. He found every so often he’d line up on a shot and realize it was just like one from the line-up exercise, and he’d just drop into the routine, a smooth confident stroke sending the object in the pocket and the cue ball round 2 rails to the next ball. Sometimes he’d catch his opponents nodding in approval when he made those shots.
He began joining the serious games that would form in the early evening, where they played for a few dollars a game, which was “just enough to make it interesting.” Certainly everyone took the winning or losing of those dollars seriously, so he learnt to as well. Occasionally a player called Eddie would arrive and insist on raising the bet. If it was $2 he’d make it $4, if it was $4 he wanted to make it $10. Eddie liked to hover in the doorway so he could step out for a drag of his cigarette whilst glaring at his opponents if they were shooting well, or at his partner if he was not. One afternoon he arrived when 4 were already deep into a game with Eddie looking on. “Come on, we’ll play over here. $5 OK?” He was already racking the balls without waiting for an answer.
Eddie had lost 6 games when he asked him if he played 9 Ball. Paul had never seen anyone play in person, only some women one day on TV. “You’ll have to explain the rules to me.” So Eddie explained 9 Ball and won 3 games before Paul started to get the feel of it. Playing the balls in order was just like his exercise, but he had to make them from all over the table not just the middle. He had to move the cue ball back and forth a lot more, cutting balls hard down the rail to get the cue ball around where he needed it.
When he ran an entire rack of 9 Ball, like before when he’d been playing the exercise, he did not feel the game was really over, he just wanted to have the balls setup again for another break and to do it better this time, to not get out of line and have to play a long bank on the 8 to get in position for the 9. When Eddie had lost 10 games of 9 Ball he asked him where else he’d played. “Only here, with you guys.” Paul replied. As the evening petered out and the men left one by one, Paul stayed to practice 9 Ball. He kept setting up the rack, trying different break angles and speeds. He started putting all the odd numbered balls down one end of the table and all the evens at the other to force himself to play the back-and-forth position shots all the time.
He went back to a large bright new book store on the edge of town and took to a table in their café the 6 books they had in stock on Pool. The one he purchased was a modern book with much better pictures that concentrated in great detail only on 9 Ball. He even liked the title; “Play Your Best 9 Ball”. No one had ever encouraged him to be his best at anything he actually liked doing before.
The next time he saw Eddie they went straight into 9 Ball. “You break” Eddie told him. Paul broke and ran three racks. “You busy this Saturday?” Eddie asked him as he peeled another $5 bill. Paul told him he’d let him know, fully intending to have a good excuse ready by then. Eddie had an angry intensity that disturbed him, and faded tattoos on his arms that he had no desire to know where they had come from.
The cleaning crew came and went. Paul assured them he’d lock up when he was done and went back to his practice. At 1 a.m. there was absolute silence except the noises made by Paul. His shoes on the thin carpet as he moved in line with his next shot, followed by the dry whisper of the chalk on the tip of his cue. Then the almost silent swish as his cue stroked forward, the quiet pop as the tip hit the cue ball, the much louder crack as the cue ball hit the target ball. There was the low rumble of the balls moving across the felted slate surface, and then the sound he waited for, frozen in his stance, the sound of the ball hitting the back of the plastic pocket, swirling around in it’s maw for the briefest moment before dropping with a click into the balls below.
And then his voice was there again. “You think you can learn the secret if you play in here the rest of your life?” This time Paul had no need to answer the rustling magazine, or question the presence of the shined shoes, leather soles barely scuffed. He already knew the answer.
So Eddie started taking Paul to serious Pool Halls. He explained a serious Pool Hall was not just a social venue, not just a bar with Pool tables for drunk kids to play on. This was where real Pool was played. This was where large sums of money was staked, reputations earned and a niche found for every person in the pecking order. Were you a friendly easy mark with a low tolerance for financial loss who just liked to play? Were you keen to throw money around to feel like a big shot? Did you play to finance other worse habits, driven by the need to spend quantities of money on a daily basis that no honest wage could earn? Could you never realistically judge your own talent, leading you to endless matches against stronger and stronger opponents to create a wall of denial around your ego?
“It’s too big, it’ll never fit” said his Grandfather as the delivery men maneuvered a large fridge into the doorway of his house. “Don’t worry, I measured it, it’ll fit fine.” The men rested it in on the faded oriental carpet and went to remove the old unit. Heinz cautiously sniffed the brushed steel panels of the fridge, looked up for a moment, then settled down in a sunlit corner.
“You ought to move out if you can afford stuff like this now.”
“Come on Grandpa, don’t be like that. I like it here.”
“Don’t know why, you never see the place. Never knew the Clubhouse was kept open so late.”
“I told you, I’ve been playing with the guys at that big club in LA. Sometimes I lose, but lately I’m winning a lot more. I know it doesn’t sound right to you, but it feels right to me. There’s a big tournament coming up, all the best players will be there and I’m already entered.”
His grandfather said nothing else as the plastic hose was carefully routed behind the counter to the water pipes below the sink.
The big tournament came. Paul lost every match he played. He sat up close and watched the best players in the country dissect their racks like hard smooth machines. They might laugh and curse as they played, or say nothing and just grimace at every ball, or hold their faces as blank as paper whilst their arms swung in wide beautiful curves, but they all tore down every barrier they had between them and the 9 ball with an intensity he’d only glimpsed amongst his previous opponents. So every day he spent in the Billiard room, practicing now continuously, tuning out the 4 handed 8 Ball games, not caring that Henry had just made a really tough bank shot, or that Craig had deliberately caromed into his opponents’ last remaining ball, forcing them to play safe on the 8 when they thought they had the game sown up, or that Dave’s partner had played absolutely the wrong shot just like he always found his partners did.
It took 3 more tournaments before he found himself in the finals. He knew by now the intricacies of the double-elimination chart, knew how players moved through it in mapped precision like the numbered pool balls, bouncing around the table to line up again and again for a new shot. In this tournament he’d been beating great players, players whose names he knew from the shots mapped out in “Play Your Best 9 Ball”. The loser’s bracket was emptying out, and it was very clear who was coming through to face him. “You know he’s won the US Open 6 times? No one else ever done that, not even Mosconi.” the tournament director told him as marked up the latest results.
“Mosconi didn’t play 9 Ball, he called it a novelty game.” Paul replied.
“True, but no one plays Straight Pool tournaments any more. You know you shoot old fashioned? Think you can take him in the final?”
A “Yes” was on Paul’s lips before he even thought, the trained instinctive response, the bravado he’d learned playing in serious Pool rooms for serious money, forcing every doubt and fear down as far below the part of him that picked the shots and stroked the cue as he could. But the name had been mentioned, and there at the bottom, below the money and the fear was the hole where he kept no secret, where that secret should have been, shoring everything else up above it.
“Well you’ve got a few hours to get yourself together. Finals will be starting at 9 tonight on table 1.”
He had no idea who was still playing as he pulled out of the parking lot. He could hear the crack of the break over and over as he drove back to Seapine, could see the flying balls as he flung open the inner door of the Billiard room. The man at the table lowered the magazine, Mr. Gant’s oddly angled profile disappearing as he did so. Paul stared at the slim dapper face, the neat hair and the bright eyes he knew would be there. “I did everything you said.” Paul began before he knew he even intended to say anything, and once he started he knew he could not stop.
“I learned to shoot. I learned to hold the cue right, to stand right, to play position, to get out when I can and duck when I have to. I learned to gamble and win despite it not because of it. I learned to compete against the best players I could because I couldn’t stand to stop moving forward. I’ve beaten champions, but still you won’t tell me the secret.”
“Can you beat him?”
“If I get balls on the break and spread them good, if I keep down and play smooth, if I get out of his safes without selling out, if I play every 9 ball the same as every 1 ball, if I make every ball I know how to make. Yes, I can win.”
“Well then, go and beat him. Then you come back here and tell me the secret, because I’d love to know it too. I only ever learned how to win.”
