Random Memory #4

Walking into a bar in St Augustine one twilit July with my friend Gavin and noticing a pool table with Florida's answer to Fast Eddie Felson knocking balls around the baize. I asked if he'd care to shoot a stick with me, and, without looking at me, he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and said, "Cost you twenty." I shrugged nonchalantly, resigning myself to losing $20, and rolled a cue off the rack on the table as if checking it was “true.” We lagged for break and I lost, and he then potted 6 of his 7 balls in a few seconds, didn't have a clear shot on his 7th, so snookered me. I thought, "In for a cent, in for a dollar," and played the riskiest trick shots I could legally get away with. They all came off. (All the time I was thinking of a line of Paul Newman’s in The Color of Money: “Pool excellence is not about excellent pool;” so I walked the table as if I was bored to be playing some hick in a Hawaiian shirt.) As I was lining up for an easy shot on the 8 ball, my opponent picked the ball up, slammed it into the pocket, flicked a $20 bill onto the table, and shouldered his angry way out of the bar. Gavin and I then "owned" the table for the rest of the evening. Walter Tevis' epigraph in 'The Hustler' is from Andrew Marvell's ' The Garden': "... a green thought in a green shade."