“Oh well. It’s just a friendly game, and I don’t want your money. Sure. We’ll make it $5, and then we’ll quit.”
I let him take four or five more, and from the way I was acting, you would have thought I had heart failure and a couple more things besides. I was plenty blue around the gills.
“Look. I got sense enough to know when I’m out of my class all right, but let’s make it $25, so I can break even, and then we’ll go have that drink.”
“That’s pretty high for me.”
“What the hell? You’re playing on my money, aren’t you?”
“Oh well. All right. Make it $25.”
Then was when I really started to shoot. I made shots that Hoppe couldn’t make. I banked them in from three cushions, I made billiard shots, I had my english working so the ball just floated around the table, I even called a jump shot and made it. He never made a shot that Blind Tom the Sightless Piano Player couldn’t have made. He miscued, he got himself all tangled up on position, he scratched, he put the one ball in the wrong pocket, he never even called a bank shot. And when I walked out of there, he had my $250 and a $3 watch that I had bought to keep track of when Cora might be driving in to the market. Oh, I was good all right. The only trouble was I wasn’t quite good enough.
“Hey, Frank!”
It was the Greek, running across the street at me before I had really got out the door.
“Well Frank, you old son a gun, where you been, put her there, why you run away from me just a time I hurt my head I need you most?”