The Hustler

by Walter Tevis

  The apartment was shabby, but there were some nice touches to it, and he noticed these. All the hotel rooms he had lived in during his ten years of hustling pool had made him more, rather than less, interested in the way a room was furnished. In front of him was a long low coffee table, its top of white marble, its legs of elaborate, filigreed brass. The walls were of gray, cracked plaster, but on one of them, over a painted brick fireplace with broken bricks, hung a huge picture in a white frame. The picture was of a sad-looking clown in a bright orange suit, holding a staff. Eddie looked at this carefully, not understanding what it meant, but liking it. The clown looked mean as a snake.

  There was one big window, with white curtains edged with gold; and a cheap, painted bookcase in the same colors. Books were everywhere, in bright jackets—on the coffee table, in the seat of an armchair, stacked on what must have been a dining table. Around the edges of the rug the floor was painted with the ugly brown paint that people paint floors with. It reminded him of his mother’s home in Oakland; linoleum and painted wood, and the refrigerator on the back porch.

  Apparently, the place had three rooms. The big living room, the tiny kitchen in which Sarah was now fumbling with the ice cubes, and what was obviously a bedroom, its door half open, leading into the room he was in.

  When she handed him his drink she looked at him and said, “Eddie, don’t make a pass.”

  He did not answer but took the drink and began sipping it. Suddenly, he cursed himself silently; he had forgotten about the fifth at his hotel room. He would need it; the pint would soon be gone.

  She was sitting now, watching him with a blank look, holding her knee, abstractedly rubbing the edge of the glass against the side of her neck. The light in the room seemed gray and her arms were white. There was a delicate and fine line of a blue vein in her wrist, branching gently on the white skin of her inner forearm. The skin at the side of her knees was white, too, smooth as if stretched taut, as if it would be resilient to the touch. Above her knee, below the edge of her skirt, was a fine line of white lace.

  Well, here we go, he thought, fast and loose. He got up slowly, setting his drink down.

  “Don’t, Eddie,” she said. “Not now.”

  The chair she was sitting in had broad arms. He sat on one of these, letting his arm fall across the back of the chair. He set his free hand on her shoulder, lightly. She turned her head down and away from him. “Eddie,” she said, “I didn’t mean this when I asked you to come up.”

  “Sure,” he said, “I didn’t either.” Then he put the palm of his free hand against the side of her face, and bent down and kissed her on the mouth. Her cheek was warm against his hand and her hair brushed against his forehead, smelling of whiskey. Her lips were hard. She did not kiss him back. He pulled away from her awkwardly, immediately angry. Then he got up and stood for a moment, facing the kitchen, and finished his drink. He set the glass down, and turned to look at her. She was staring at her whiskey glass. He could not tell what her expression meant.

  There was only one way to play it from here—and that was a long shot. He did not look at her again but walked out the door, hesitated, and began going down the stairs.

  And then when he had come to the landing he heard her voice, calling softly, “Eddie,” and he turned and walked slowly back up the steps. She met him inside the door, standing, her mouth slightly open, her hands at her sides. Her voice was soft, nervous. “You win again, Eddie.”

  He pushed the door shut behind him. Then he reached out and put one hand behind her back, pressing gently against her silk blouse, his fingertips quivering slightly against invisible, taut straps. He cupped the other hand over her breast. Then he bent forward slowly, mouth open, into her warm, quick, shallow breath. Her mouth against his was like an electric current. It had been a long time….

  10

  Her voice awakened him, saying, “We have no eggs.” He looked around, dazed. Red neon came in the window, dully. The sky was black, tinged with the lights. He could smell coffee. He rolled over; Sarah was gone from the bed. And then in a moment he saw her come padding, limping in from the kitchen, wearing a white flannel bathrobe and furry slippers, her eyes swollen from sleep. She stopped in the doorway a moment, then came and sat beside him on the bed. “We have no eggs,” she said. “Do you have money?”

  He reached out a hand and laid it on her arm. “Get in bed,” he said.

  She looked down at him with gravity. “I want breakfast,” she said. “Where’s your money?”

  He rolled over. “In my pants pocket. Buy anything you want. Buy a coffee cake, the kind with pineapple on it.”

  “Okay,” she said. He let himself fall back into sleep….

  She got him out of bed when she came back with the sack of groceries; he dressed while she was frying the eggs. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, putting his shoes on, feeling good, when she said from the other room, “What do you do, Eddie? For a living?”

  He did not answer her for a minute. Then he said, “Does it make any difference?”

  She didn’t say anything further, but in a minute she was at the door, looking at him. “No,” she said, and then, back in the kitchen, she laughed wryly, “I should be glad I’ve got a man.”

  The eggs were poorly cooked and the coffee was worse than restaurant coffee. The coffee cake was good. He was hungry and did away with it all. Then, when he finished, he looked at her and said, “I have to go out. Suppose I pick up some salami and come back in about four or five hours?”

  “Sure,” she said, “and bring some cheese.”

  He decided, suddenly, that there would be no use edging around with it. “I’ve got a suitcase….”

  She looked at him a moment and then shrugged, “Bring it. I expected you to.”

  It was so simple that it came as a shock. “I wasn’t sure…” he said.

  “Look,” she smiled, “no strings—okay?”

  He hesitated a moment, and then grinned at her. “Okay,” he said.

  ***

  In the morning she had to go to class, at ten o’clock. After fixing himself a cheese sandwich, he went back to bed and lay there thinking, first about himself and then, gradually, about the reason that he was in Chicago in the first place.

  He thought about the profession of hustling pool, and about the men in it, feeling somehow, that he must organize what he knew, must find out his position in the system, now that he was on his own and almost broke, in Chicago, in the summer….

  ***

  As Charlie had told him and as he had learned himself, in snatches—always, before, at a distance—there are two kinds of hustler, two kinds of gambler: the big-time and the small. Their sources of income are vastly different. The income of the big-time gambler is limited in range, although never in amount. And his expenses are high. The small-time men—the scufflers, musclers, dollar jumpers—prey in nibbles: on unwary but seldom wealthy drunks; schoolboys who aspire to what they take to be manhood; middle-aged men who aspire to what they take to be youthfulness; and the smaller scufflers, musclers and dollar jumpers. They live the obsequious, frustrating life once allotted to the petty courtier, now seen in its purest form in the two-dollar tout and the professional drink cadger. Such men occasionally engage in small con games—although seldom; all con men gamble, but few gamblers con—or they attempt to ride on the great money bus, Sex; usually trying for the taillights or bumper, through part-time pimping, the sale of various obscene artifacts, even through gigolo work, all of which are professions grossly underpaid.

  Some of this small-time money—the greasy money—is filtered up to the big-time gamblers, the true professional men; but only—as Eddie was beginning to find out—seldom, and then in small amounts. The main sources of the big-timer—like Minnesota Fats—are only three: the well-to-do sportsman, the big con man, and the other big-timer. The well-to-do sportsman comes in two breeds: the tweedy philosopher with a gun collection and money, and the Miami Beach industrialist, with friends in th
e Senate and money. The big con man is hard to recognize, except that he is always personable and intelligent; but when he has money he has plenty, and he likes to lose it. And the other big-timer is somebody you don’t seek out when all you need is money. Games between full-scale, professional gamblers always have things at stake which are not as easily negotiable or recognizable as cash. It’s said that when whales fight whales it is never merely because one is hungry. And that makes sense; the sea is very full of smaller fish.

  But these factors were working against Eddie, who, by nature, by skill, by ambition, by everything except income and experience, was a big-timer; and who was beginning to feel that he must have a thousand dollars before he was anything at all. In the first place it was summer. Wealthy sportsmen are seldom in the big northern cities in the summer; they are sunning or shading themselves in places created especially for wealthy sportsmen. And the con men are with the wealthy sportsmen, usually buying them drinks. Most of the big-timers are following the races—horse, boat, automobile—or the sportsman and the big con. (This makes a sort of procession: sportsman, con, gambler; with money in the lead, as is only fitting and proper.) True, some big gamblers remain behind, like Minnesota Fats. Either they have business connections at home, or they do not find it necessary to leave town in order to find action. A man like Minnesota Fats needs no agent; he attracts—as Eddie knew well—his own clientele.

  Summer was against him, in Chicago. Also against him was the fact that now he had announced his presence in town and his high talents so clearly, in the one big game, it would be impossible for him to enter any major poolroom—any big-timers’ room—without being spotted. He would go back to Bennington’s; but not until he had money. And he had been depending on a manager, Charlie, for too long. Without Charlie his only hustle was to talk himself into a game and squeeze out what he could. He was good at the talking in part—was, in fact, phenomenal—but found the squeezing difficult. He had lost some of the touch—and all of the enthusiasm—for it….

  ***

  After Sarah had come back from school and had taken him to bed, they talked, lying together, barely touching. He did not tell her much about himself, did not feel that he had to. He told her that his father was an electrician, his mother dead, that for a long time he had made his living “one way or another.” She asked him what that meant, but he did not answer her. He did not want to say, “I’m a pool hustler. I intend to be the best goddamn pool hustler in the business,” so he said nothing.

  Her father and mother had been divorced for a long time. Her father, a moderately wealthy man, a car dealer of some kind, was remarried and living in St. Louis, where she had been raised and had gone to school. The first of every month she got a check for three hundred dollars from him.

  Her mother lived in Toledo; they had not seen each other for five years. She spoke several times of herself as an alcoholic and as if they, she and Eddie, had some kind of contract of depravity between them. He did not like this; it was phony and mildly embarrassing. But, if she liked to think of herself that way, as harder, more dissolute than she actually was, it did not really make much difference. Maybe she would outgrow it. Maybe the kind of treatment that he was giving her would make for a change.

  When he left the apartment he walked for a while, not heading for any particular place, but wanting to walk and to think.

  Finally he came to the poolroom where he had won the forty dollars at snooker. He did not like the place; its walls were too bright, with glaring white tile like a subway station and bright incandescent lamps; but he had done well there before.

  He did not do well this time. There was nothing happening, nothing at all. But then, he had something to go home to….

  ***

  He did not often think of Minnesota Fats and of the game they had played, not explicitly; but he would think around the edges of it—the whole forty hours of it were now compressed in his mind into a single event, as if it had all happened in an instant, so that the memory was a kaleidoscopic picture of the fat man with the rings on his fingers and of the moment when the high ceiling of Bennington’s had spun, slid, and fallen on him, and of himself lying on the floor with the sound of the cue ball crashing in his dulled ears and his money and his victory gone. And, without detailing the events in sequence, his mind could skirt around the whole thing, licking at its edges, probing at it, wanting to twist it, ease it, pull it, jerk it out, as the restless tongue probes at a strand of food wedged between the teeth; or the fingers, working of their own volition, toy with the scab that overlays a cut.

  And there was beginning to be a feeling of restlessness, the unformulated knowledge that he must be setting about his business, that there were things he had to do. There was money to be won, capital to be earned. And there was the need for practice….

  ***

  It was several days later that he got into a poker game, got into it because he was becoming desperate for action. It seemed impossible to locate a pool game that had any chance of becoming worthwhile.

  It was in the middle of an afternoon. He was in the little poolroom near the Loop, on Parmenter Street, trying to find some kind of game, any game at all. There was nothing doing, nothing whatever. There were only four men in the pool-playing part of the place, and all of them knew him. He offered to play one of them a handicap game where he would shoot with one hand in his pocket—jack-up pool—while the other man shot the usual way. The man laughed, pleasantly enough, and shook his head. “You’re outta my league, mister.”

  The door to the back room was open and Eddie wandered back, not thinking of anything in particular, feeling disgusted with himself, irritated. He felt, for a minute, like giving the whole thing up for the day and going back to Sarah’s apartment and drinking with her. But there was something about that idea that made him uneasy. He looked around the room he was in; it was the first time he had been back there. Five men were sitting around a circular table covered with the faded green felt that could only have been a worn-out pool cloth, quietly playing cards. There were no other chairs in the room. He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall.

  The other men seemed hardly to notice his presence, and he watched them idly. It did not seem to be a very interesting game. The limit was fifty cents; and the bets were not running very high or very fast. But one of the men in the game caught Eddie’s attention. There was something vaguely familiar about his face—although it was a totally unremarkable face—and the way he played poker seemed interesting. One man in the game was drinking whiskey from a highball glass; two had coffee cups in front of them; but this man had a glass of milk on the table, and he would sip from it carefully after every hand. Also, although he did nothing sensational, he seemed to be quietly winning; and the other men, very terse with one another, spoke to him with respect. They called him Bert.

  He sat upright, straight in his chair, a fairly small man of normal build, maybe a little heavy around the waist, although that appearance could have been caused by his sitting. His features were regular, slightly womanish if anything, for his skin was fair, and his cheeks mildly pink. His hair was brown, very fine, and freshly trimmed. He wore steel-rimmed glasses. There was something prim about him, about the set of his pale, thin mouth and the careful, almost prissy, way he handled the cards. And, although the face was ordinary, there was something very odd about it that puzzled Eddie until he realized that Bert’s hair was so fine that he seemed not to have eyebrows.

  He had not intended to get in the game—he knew very little about poker—but when one of the players quit, complaining that he had to meet his wife, Eddie found himself slipping into the empty chair and calmly asking for chips. He immediately found himself in possession of the first two winning hands: two little pairs followed by an eight-high straight. For a moment he suspected a hustle; but he knew enough about poker to be able to discount that after a few minutes’ careful watching; and he quickly became wrapped up in the game, enjoying what was his first actio
n in several days. But he played wildly, lost a few critical hands, and, when the game broke up at supper-time—it seemed to be an extraordinarily casual game compared with the poker he had known before—he had lost twenty dollars, which he could not afford. Bert, who had been quiet and meticulous throughout, had won about forty or fifty, as well as Eddie could estimate, since he had started playing.

  The other men left the poolroom, but Bert went into the front and seated himself at the bar, and when Eddie started to leave—the pool tables were now empty—he said, affably, “Have a drink?”

  Eddie felt a little irritation in his voice. “I thought you only drank milk.”

  Bert pursed his lips. Then he smiled. “Only when I’m working.” He made what seemed for him an ambitious gesture, making his voice friendly. “Sit down. I owe you a drink anyway.”

  Eddie sat down on a stool beside him. “What makes you owe me a drink?”

  Bert peered at him through the glasses, inquiringly. It struck Eddie that probably he was near-sighted. “I’ll tell you about it sometime,” he said.

  Irritated by this, Eddie changed the subject. “So why drink milk?”

  Bert asked the bartender for two whiskies, specifying a brand, the kind of glass, and the number of ice cubes, without consulting Eddie. Then he peered at him again, apparently to give thought, now that that was taken care of, to his question. “I like milk,” he said. “It’s good for you.” The bartender set glasses in front of them on the bar and dropped in ice cubes. “Also, if you make money gambling, you keep a clear head.” He looked at Eddie intently. “You start drinking whiskey gambling and it gives you an excuse for losing. That’s something you don’t need, an excuse for losing.”