The Color of Money

by Walter Tevis

  Sometimes in bed with Arabella, he found himself making love with energy close to ferocity; but the release when it came was never adequate to the demands he was making on himself, on his fifty-year-old body. Once she said, “Take it easy, love. It’s not a contest.” Finished with sex, he would fall back in bed with his heart pounding and his mouth dry, satisfied and not satisfied. It had never been that way with Martha, as he had never run his own business with the energy he was putting into this anonymous, university recreation room. Only as a young man playing pool all night for money had he been able to find what he wanted in life, and then only briefly.

  People thought pool hustling was corrupt and sleazy, worse than boxing. But to win at pool, to be a professional at it, you had to deliver. In a business you could pretend that skill and determination had brought you along when it had only been luck and muddle; a pool hustler did not have the freedom to believe that. There were well-paid incompetents everywhere living rich lives. They arrogated to themselves the plush hotel suites and Lear jets that America provided for the guileful and lucky far more than it did for the wise. You could fake and bluff and luck your way into all of it: hotel suites overlooking Caribbean private beaches; blow-jobs from women of stunning beauty; restaurant meals that it took four tuxedoed waiters to serve, with the sauces just right, the lamb or duck or terrine sliced with precise and elegant thinness, sitting just so on the plate, the plate facing you just so on the heavy white linen, the silver fork heavy, gleaming in your manicured hand below the broadcloth cuff and mother-of-pearl buttons. You could get that from luck and deceit, even while causing the business or the army or the government that supported you to do poorly at what it did. The world and all its enterprises could slide downhill through stupidity and bad faith, but the long gray limousines would still hum through the streets of New York, of Paris, of Moscow, of Tokyo, though the men who sat against the soft leather in back with their glasses of twelve-year-old Scotch might be incapable of anything more than looking important, of wearing the clothes and the haircuts and the gestures that the world, whether it liked to or not, paid for and always had paid for.

  Eddie would lie in bed sometimes at night and think these things in anger, knowing that beneath the anger envy lay like a swamp. A pool hustler had to do what he claimed to be able to do. The risks he took were not underwritten. His skill on the arena of green cloth—cloth that was itself the color of money—could never be only pretense. Pool players were often cheats and liars, petty men whose lives were filled with pretensions, who ran out on their women and walked away from their debts; but on the table, with the lights overhead beneath the cigarette smoke and the silent crowd around them in whatever dive of a billiard parlor at four in the morning, they had to find the wherewithal inside themselves to do more than promise excellence. Under whatever lies might fill the life, the excellence had to be there. It had to be delivered. It could not be faked. But Eddie did not make his living that way anymore.

  Chapter Seven

  When he came home late one Friday in March, Arabella was gone and the place felt empty. Annoyed, he made a Manhattan in the kitchen and then walked into the living room. Something was wrong there too; it took him a minute to realize that the metal sculpture of the woman and dog, bought on that goddamned trip to Connors, was gone. It had sat beside Arabella’s green Korean chest since November. He had become fond of it, had bought a bottle of chrome bumper cleaner and shined it up. Originally, even five hundred seemed too much for the thing, but he had come to be proud of owning it. He looked now in the other rooms of the apartment, but it wasn’t there.

  He was making his second drink when he heard Arabella come in and hang her coat in the hall closet. “Where in hell’s my statue?” he shouted.

  “Take it easy.” She came into the kitchen. “Fix me one of those and I’ll tell you.” Her face was flushed and her eyes bright.

  He added more whiskey and vermouth to the pitcher and poured two drinks. “Let’s hear it.”

  “I sold her.”

  “What the hell? That was my statue.”

  “It was a gift for me.”

  “Maybe. How much did you get?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. Do you remember Quincy Foreman?”

  Eddie thought he remembered. An English professor, built like a linebacker. “How much did he give you?”

  “Eddie, there’s a lot of money in things like that.”

  She was wearing a corduroy skirt with pockets. She reached into one of these and pulled out a folded-over check. She unfolded it, glanced at it to make sure and then looked at Eddie.

  “Damn it,” Eddie said, “let me see the check.”

  She held it out. He took it and looked. It was made out on the Central Bank for twelve hundred and fifty dollars.

  “I tried for fourteen,” she said.

  “My my,” Eddie said. He was holding his drink in one hand and the check in the other. He set the drink down. “If we leave early in the morning we can get there by lunchtime.”

  “Get where?”

  “Deeley Marcum’s junkyard.”

  She was looking at him in frank surprise. “To buy another piece?”

  “To buy three pieces,” Eddie said. “Four, if we can get them for twelve fifty.”

  ***

  After stopping at the bank for Arabella to cash the check, Eddie drove out the Nicholasville Pike. “I’ll carry the money,” he said, and she handed the bills to him. Twelve hundreds and a fifty. He folded them over and stuffed them into his pocket, not taking his eyes from the road.

  In Delfield he stopped at the A&P for a six-pack of Molson’s, then headed straight for the junkyard. It was a quarter to twelve when they pulled up.

  He had decided what pieces he wanted before going to bed the night before. There were two short women that would fit in the trunk of the car and two that could go in back—one on the seat and one on the floor. Size wasn’t his only consideration; there was also weight. And he was fairly sure he knew which ones were better-looking than the others.

  There was another woman with a dog, standing just where his had stood. The old man had taken his suggestion. Eddie stopped to look at it a moment, noticing that the welds were better than on the first. Then he took the beers back to Marcum’s shack.

  This time Arabella tried to stay out of it while he dealt with Deeley—who, apparently, had just gotten out of bed. The old man washed his face at a dirty sink that sat next to his welding equipment, dried off with a handful of paper towels and took a beer from Eddie without thanking him. He took a long draw from the bottle, holding his head back and chugalugging, and wiped his mouth off with his forearm. He blinked at Arabella, ignoring Eddie. “I got a Heliarc coming down from Louisville,” he said.

  “Terrific!” Arabella said.

  “They say it’s a beauty. I’ll wait till I see it.”

  Eddie said nothing, opening himself a beer and taking a drink. It was a raw February day and it seemed strange to be drinking cold beer.

  Finally Deeley deigned to notice him. “How do you like that woman and dog? I mean the one you bought?”

  Eddie looked at him. “The dog could be better, but it’s all right. It should have had more balls.”

  Marcum raised his eyebrows slightly. “The dog was hard to do,” he said. “I’ve got more experience with women.”

  “Get yourself a dog,” Eddie said, “if you’re going to do dogs.”

  “A dog’s more trouble than a woman.”

  “Sometimes it’s trouble just to get out of bed.”

  Marcum stared at him a moment and then he began to laugh. He looked at Arabella. “Stay with this one,” he said. “He knows a thing or two.”

  “I’d like to buy four more,” Eddie said.

  Marcum blinked. “Four?”

  “Four more of your women. I’ll show you.” He led Marcum out into the yard and pointed out the ones he wanted: the Las Vegas Model, the Statue of Liberty, Little Bo Peep, and a cartoonlike one ca
lled Olive Oyl. When they came to this one, Eddie said, “I’ll give you a thousand for all four.”

  Marcum stared at him. “I can’t do that.”

  “I’m going to finish my beer,” Eddie said. He had left it in the shed. He turned and began walking that way.

  Marcum followed him silently, and when Eddie was drinking from the bottle he said, “Why do you want four?”

  Eddie said nothing.

  “Some people want to buy one of them, but when I tell what I expect to get, they get nervous. But nobody wanted four before.”

  “We’re going to try selling them.”

  “Shit!” Marcum said. “I thought you were up to something. I’m the one ought to be selling them to people, not you.”

  Eddie shrugged. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “You’re goddamn fucking correct I’m right.”

  “Who would you sell them to?”

  “Rich people in Louisville,” Marcum said. “Museums and galleries.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Original works like these don’t come cheap.” Marcum, still holding his empty beer bottle, gestured grandly toward his yardful of metal women.

  “How will you get those rich people in Louisville to come here and buy?” Eddie said.

  “I’ll go to them.”

  “From door to door?”

  “I’ll sell them to a gallery, if I sell them.”

  “A gallery won’t pay you as much as I will. They’ve got to make their profit and pay their overhead. You’ll have to get a truck to take them to Louisville.”

  Marcum’s face had developed a pout. “If I sell them, I won’t have anything here to show people. That’s my livelihood, charging admission.”

  “One dollar,” Eddie said, looking out at the yard. “I’ve been here twice and nobody’s come in while I’ve been here.”

  “They come in,” Marcum said. “Sometimes whole families at a dollar apiece. And I charge another dollar to take pictures.”

  “Then you’re doing all right.”

  “I’ve never touched a welfare check or a food stamp in my life.”

  “That’s a good thing,” Eddie said. “A man ought to be independent if he’s got a talent.”

  “In spades, Mister.”

  “I appreciate how you feel,” Eddie said. He reached down into his pocket and took out the folded stack of hundred-dollar bills, most of them new, and began counting them silently. He put the fifty into his jacket pocket, set the stack of twelve hundreds on the metal-topped table beside them and put a chunk of scrap metal on top of it to keep the bills from blowing off. “This is my last offer,” Eddie said.

  Deeley looked at the money and then at Eddie.

  “When you get that Heliarc,” Eddie said, “you can make more women. You’ve got plenty of raw material.”

  “And plenty of imagination,” Arabella said.

  “What about that fifty you put in your jacket?”

  “All right,” Eddie said, “it’s yours.”

  ***

  “We could go into the business,” Arabella said.

  “We are in the business. This car is a travelling museum.”

  “I mean we could open a gallery.”

  Eddie was silent for a minute while passing a truck. They were halfway back to Lexington, the sculptures in the seat behind them wrapped in the blankets and towels he had the foresight to bring along. When he got back into his own lane again, he said, “There wouldn’t be enough customers. We’ll be lucky to sell the four.”

  “They’ll sell,” Arabella said. “People have more money than you think.”

  “Wouldn’t we saturate the market with a dozen?”

  “I’ve thought about that, Eddie. There are other artists out here in the boondocks—or craftsmen or whatever. We could have variety. I’ve worked for that magazine three years, and I know about every Deeley Marcum in the state.”

  “Lexington is no art town. You have a few hundred possible customers at most. It’s like pool.”

  “It’s better than pool, Eddie. There’s a lot of money in Lexington, and people come down from Louisville and Cincinnati.”

  “I don’t know,” Eddie said. But a part of him was beginning to believe it.

  “There’s a folk-art boom just starting. You should see the ads I get from New York. They sell reproductions, Eddie, and they sell them for plenty.”

  “Lexington isn’t New York.”

  “There are a lot of people there who wish it was. Folk art is getting to be like croissants and pasta. There’s a whole class of Americans who want to get into the act, want to be au courant.”

  “I don’t speak French.”

  “But you know what I’m talking about. With what I know about the people who make things like these,” she reached back and put her hand on the head of a metal woman that protruded from a green blanket “and with your ability to drive a bargain, with what you already know about running a business…”

  He thought about it a minute. He had only planned to sell the four pieces from his living room. It had been fun bargaining with Deeley, and he liked the excitement of markup—of buying a thing for three hundred dollars and selling it for twelve. It was a lot like gambling on pool when you knew you were going to win. “Could we sell these in New York? To a dealer?”

  “That would be like Deeley selling them in Louisville. The thing about Lexington is low rent and low overhead.”

  It was beginning to sound good, although it still seemed foolish—dealing in art when he didn’t know a goddamned thing about art. “How much money do you have?”

  “Not much.”

  “How much would it cost to rent a place?”

  “Four hundred a month. Five, maybe.”

  “How long a lease in case we fizzle?”

  “I don’t know. Six months?”

  “A year, at least. We’ll have to paint the walls and put ads in the paper. Then there’s insurance and taxes and all those goddamned forms from the state and city and from Washington. And collecting the sales tax.”

  “You’ve been doing that kind of thing for twenty years, Eddie. You know how to handle it. I’m a good typist, and I’m good at filling out forms.”

  “If I put twelve thousand into it, can you find me enough art to buy?”

  “Oh boy, can I ever! We can get handmade quilts and carvings. There’s an old black druggist near Lancaster who does visionary carvings on wood panels.”

  He thought awhile before he spoke. “There’s an empty store a block off Main Street. Mandel Realty has it, and I know Henry Mandel. I’ll call him.”

  “Sweet Jesus!” Arabella said, staring at the road in front of them.

  “It might work,” Eddie said, “it really might.”

  “Holy cow!” Arabella said.

  They had been passing Holiday Inn billboards, and now up ahead of them on the right he saw the green sign for the motel itself. They were about an hour out of Lexington. When they got closer he could read the words HEATED INDOOR POOL. He began to slow down. “Let’s get a room.”

  “Eddie,” she said, “we’ll be home in an hour.”

  “I like the way things are right now.”

  ***

  He hadn’t felt like this in bed for years. They had a back room with a view of a snowy field and trees. He opened the draperies while she began taking her clothes off. It was a king-size bed. They lay on it and kissed. He found himself laughing for a while and she laughed with him. “A couple of art hustlers,” he said, and began kissing her again. Afterward, they rented disposable bathing suits at the front desk and had the pool to themselves for a half hour. She was a good swimmer—almost as good as he, and she did not worry about getting her hair wet. Then they got drinks at the bar, took them to their room. Eddie called Information in Lexington and got Henry Mandel’s number.

  “It’s silly,” she said while he was putting in the call. “You can call him free in an hour.”

  “Go dry your hair,” Eddie said.
“I know what I’m doing.”

  Henry wanted five seventy-five a month for the place, plus the cost of heating it. The lease would be eighteen months.

  “Too much,” Eddie said. He had dried off and was sitting naked in a chair. “I’ll give you four fifty on a twelve-month lease renewable for twenty-four at a ten percent increase.”

  “No way,” Henry said. “That’s a choice location.”

  “It’s one room and it’s been empty half a year.”

  “There are other people interested, Mr. Felson.”

  “Then rent it to them.”

  “They have problems right now. I’d like to do business with you.”

  “If you paint it I’ll give you four seventy-five.”

  “Paint it! For Christ’s sake, do you know what labor costs for that these days?”

  “Henry,” Eddie said, “this is still a recession and you know it. If you don’t rent that place to me, it’s just going to sit there while you pay taxes on it.”

  Henry was quiet for a moment. Arabella, who had been running the hair dryer, came back into the room. She was stark naked. She seated herself in the other chair and looked at Eddie.

  “Eddie,” Henry said, “I can buy you a few gallons of paint, but you’ll have to do the painting.”

  He took a deep breath. “I’ll come by Monday and pick up the keys. If the place is all right, we’ll sign papers in the afternoon.”

  “For eighteen months?”

  “Twelve, Henry. Twelve months.”

  When he hung up Arabella said, “You’re amazing.”

  “You look great in that outfit. Let’s stay over.”

  “What for?”

  “Honey,” Eddie said, “up till now we’ve just been engaged. This is our honeymoon.”