Gary V. Powell, Author

Nine Ball

by

Gary V. Powell

Copyright Gary V. Powell 2004 All Rights Reserved

"Let your hair down, baby, let's have a natural ball/'Cause when you ain't happy, life ain't no fun at all." - T-Bone Walker, "T-Bone Shuffle"

The $350 in Mitch’s pocket burned like molten steel. It could have been more, except he’d been run off the table by a guy who got lucky on a bank shot. It didn't matter--$350 wasn't bad for a night's work.

The man at the bar swirled the ice in his single malt Scotch. He wore a goatee, smoked thin, black cigars, and leered at Mitch like a predator with scent. Mitch sipped his beer, letting it play out.

"Mano a mano," the man with the goatee taunted. “That is, if you are a man."

"What the hell, kid," the bartender said. "Give him a chance. We've got a table in back for games like this."

"Maybe," Mitch said. His Uncle June had been the house shark at the Blue Moon Cafe. His old man was the best pool shooter he'd ever seen. Mitch himself was good enough to pay for law school with his stick.

The goateed man snorted "You want to play or not?" He laid a wad, a thousand, maybe two, on the bar.

Mitch shook his head. "I don't have that kind of money."

The bartender leaned in. "The house has your back, kid. I've seen you in here every Friday night for a month." The bartender counted off ten crisp $100 dollar bills.

“How you going to say no now?" The goateed man asked.

Mitch fought back smile. "I guess I'm not." He loved it when he hooked a big one.

* * *

Mitch had never been in this back room before, never played on this Players Table, but he'd seen plenty of back rooms in plenty of places. Mauve shag carpet graced the floor, dark faux wood paneling clung to the walls, and black naugahyde sofas backed up to a private wet bar.

Blue smoke hung in the air thick as gauze. People Mitch didn't know lurked in the shadows—a black transvestite and his/her date, two blonde girls, a few fast men. The bartender sat on a stool next to the goateed man who wanted Mitch's money.

They played nine ball for $5 on the one, three, five, and seven, and $25 on the nine. Mitch ran the rack the first three games before giving up the table to his opponent. The goateed man shot with a $500 cue inlaid with leather and pearl. He shot like Mitch's old man, legs wide apart, right hand loose around the butt-end of the cue. He used economical strokes that kept him off the rail and set him up three shots ahead. He ran four racks of his own, before leaving Mitch with a long green for the six.

"Mickey Mouse could punch out of that," the man taunted when Mitch took the table.

He'd heard that phrase before—the one about Mickey Mouse. Heard it from his old man. But a lot of players tried to get under your skin.

Mitch eyed that six. If he put it away, it would leave him with the seven on the side and eight and nine back at this end. If he missed, the goateed man would own the table. He could lay the cue ball up on the rail, but no man ever won a thousand dollars off another man by playing it safe.

Mitch took his shot.

* * *

New Orleans at 5:00 AM was all his dreams reduced to doubt.

Drunks lay in doorways. An old woman squatted to piss over a gutter. Specks of dust floated in the listless air. The whole city hunkered down, ennui heavy as a post-coital dream. And, the day's heat still hours off.

Lacking even change for the street car, Mitch shuffled through the Quarter, up to St. Charles, and started the long trek to Eileen's place. They'd busted him all right, the bartender and the goateed man from Baton Rouge who turned out to be the bartender's brother. Three grand, not all that much, but it might as well have been a million.

They wanted their money, every cent of it by Tuesday night. Four days. A hard looking man who was the bartender's friend had threatened him, showed him a long knife with duct-tape on the handle.

Eileen was sleeping. He could hear her breathing from the bedroom, could make out the curve of her hips through the knee-length blue slip she slept in when he wasn't there. From the look of things, she'd studied late. Case books--Torts and Contracts--lay open on the kitchen table.

Mitch crossed the room, put on T-Bone Walker’s Witchita Falls, let himself onto the balcony, and lit a smoke. T-Bone Walker, king of the old-time blues. T-Bone Shuffle, Call it Stormy Monday (Tuesday’s Just as Bad). Old T-Bone, he’d seen his share of rough times. Good times too. Oh, how he’d burned up those Parisian nights.

Mitch stared into the pink and azure sky. This was why guys robbed 7-11s, why they stole from their friends. But that wasn’t his style. He just needed a stake. That was all. A stake and a good game. He was too well known in New Orleans, but there were places in Algiers where men played for money--lots of money--if he could just get a stake.

"Mitch..." It was her voice through the screen door. The way her hair fell across her face, the way her breasts showed through that clingy blue slip, the way she sounded hoarse and sexy in the morning, made him want her more than he'd ever wanted anything in his life.

If he could just get that stake.