16
Leon, Prince, and I are at Jimmy’s Place playing round after round of knockout pool. Knockout is this perfect way of a game in which three players split up the numbered balls evenly amongst themselves and, in rotation, each try to clear the table of the enemy numbers while leaving only their own as survivors. When we were younger, we used to be able to fleece out-of-towners into decent money by beating them at pool. It was never enough to break rich, but plenty enough to take care of some free pints or pitchers. That was years ago, though, and there are fewer out-of-towners than ever around here, and even fewer people from Johnston naive enough to give us a game anymore if there was money on the line. So, we played against each other. We found ourselves in deep bets on some nights and on others, no bets at all apart from pride, but what a thing pride tends to be.
We’re in the trenches of our sixth straight game of the evening, drinking beers and getting more locked in by the second. Someone paid to play songs from Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti on the juke, and we’re pocketed. It’s one of my favorite albums of all time, and I gotta tell ya, when I’m playing pool in a dark bar with a Zeppelin album overhead, and the only light is that of the muted lantern hanging above the green felt, existence becomes the game and the game becomes art. These are some of my favorite nights, where everything else in our lives seems to vanish.
I grew up in the bar playing pool with anyone that would give me a chance. My dad taught me the ins and outs, in part, I think, so I could have something to do while I waited for him to finish drinking.
“It’s not like life, son. It’s more gentle than that.”
I’d watch him lean nearly perpendicular to that green table and become so focused and peaceful.
“Come here, Cash, what do you see?”
And he’d line me up right behind the cue ball. He’d adjust my angles ever so slightly and I’d let the stick fly through my eager hands.
“Natural,” he said once.
The word filled me with an unshakeable confidence. It was the closest he’d ever come to complimenting me. The look on his face when I beat the grizzled frequenters of Jimmy’s was what I’d later describe as pride. I didn’t know it then. All I knew was that look made me feel love in my chest, and I became the best damn pool player in town because of it. That warm magic feeling a father can instill in a son simply by smiling at him is powerful. Nowadays, Prince and Leon may not admit it, but if you pressed it and shook ’em to honesty, they’d tell you I’m the best damn pool player in the whole Midwest. The talent never really got me anywhere, but I suppose it got me little moments along the way.
Tonight, we’re almost completely to ourselves. There’s a wallflower couple in the far back left-hand corner, the husband being the one who pumped the Zeppelin. He pops a peanut in his mouth and her fingers tap the wood next to her glass. I’ve never seen them before. There’s a few bikers trading war stories with a couple truckers, Jerry and Mick, who ship all sorts of dairy products throughout the country.
Those two pals were always in here, gathering the bravery to approach another journey, missing their families and not knowing where the road would end or if it ever would.
“It’s long hours, but Cash, it ain’t all bad. There’s worse, I’ve seen worse. Much worse. Your pops had it worse,” Jerry gruffed one night, putting his hand on my shoulder and drunkenly confessing how much he missed my dad.
It could be worse . People were always saying that around here. Any time out of town bikers found their way into Jimmy’s, I always tried to be as natural as possible while keeping an ear geared towards their rumblings. As far as I saw it, all the truckers and bikers of America were winding and weaving across the sprawling continent like heroes in search of what I called the great something . I often found myself wondering if any of them had found it, and if so, did they ever report back? Or were they lost out there forever, stolen by promise? Perhaps I’d join up with them someday and go searching for it myself.
I’m lining up a long shot in which I have to graze the cue ball off the rail and send Prince’s 9-ball into the right corner pocket to secure victory when “Kashmir” starts playing on the juke and I know everything is indeed right in the world after all. We will return, absolutely, when the dust floats high in June. The stick moves through my hands, and I follow through, just like my father taught me. White ball caresses green felt, 9-ball spins to corner pocket. I sink it. Prince and Leon don’t react because they expected it. Prince leans his stick against the table.
“Are we going to fuckin buy this place or what?” he asks.
Leon turns the red chalk over the tip of his stick and he glances up, eyebrows raised. It dawns on me that Leon hadn’t been there the other night when Prince and I drunkenly agreed that the whole thing was finally starting to make sense and the timing was right.
Leon goes, “Saul finally selling?”
Prince gets serious for a second and takes a glance over to Saul behind the bar, lost in a pour and out of earshot. “He hasn’t said it but look at the guy.” And then Prince lays the whole pitch out there for Leon, as he once did for me. He gives all those lines about Saul not enjoying it or loving it anymore. “Hell, I need a change too, ya know? Don’t you two feel it?”
“I feel it.” Leon says.
“We’ve got the money, yeah? If you and Mo aren’t sure Leon, look, I can front it and we’ll still split it even. You’ll get me back when you can. Cash is in, tell him man.”
“I’m in, yeah.”
It’s so entertaining watching Leon as he listens to Prince. His eyes squint a bit and the lines on his forehead coalesce into such focused thought. Every word that comes out of Prince’s mouth is so important to Leon. I laugh to myself as Prince rants. I take a nice large gulp of Budweiser and wonder who these two would be to one another in the whole jungle of friendship if I was out of the picture. They’re such a magnificent contrast. I let out a refreshed breath and feel damn near transcendent. The drunkenness clicks and I realize that I’m sensationally happy to be alive. I’m so thankful for my friends and how hilarious they are together, the beautiful odd sort of partnership they have. Prince starts laughing as Leon crosses his arms in contemplation.
“Don’t just stand there man, speak!”
Leon smirks and shakes his head.
“You haven’t stopped talking for one fucking second pal and ya know it.”
They loved one another to no end. If I wasn’t around, they’d be as straight dedicated pals as can be. They’d sure have an interesting time of it, anyway.
Leon often stares at Prince exactly how he’s staring at him now, almost as if he were some kind of ethereal being. He’s always claimed to have very little understanding of Prince’s fine clockwork, all the knobs and levers inside his head, and so when he listens to him speak, it’s with a pure, childlike fascination and willingness to learn. They’ve been friends for twenty years and Leon still insists there is more to understand. I remind him that he knows all there is to possibly know about Prince. He knows his soul and everything else about him, but Leon insists there’s always more, and I have to admit I do find that to be a pretty inspiring way to view things.
Prince continues, “Right man? Right ? I can see you see it man. It’s time. It is. What do you think?”
Leon stands there and nods. He’s listened to Prince’s ideas with about as much attention as one human could ever offer another. I’m getting more drunk and need a smoke. Leon goes, “Man that’s fucking great.”
“It is fucking great, right?” Prince says.
“Fucking great.”
Leon shakes his head in amazement and then gets back to racking the balls as I laugh out loud. That’s all they said to each other after all of that. After a five minute eclectically crazed burst of passion and promise. An entire monologue was given. Fucking great. God it makes me laugh. They hit it right on the head. Nothing else really needed to be said, but how were they always so sure? Those two didn’t need to explore the possibility that some extra banter and details were possible. My boys are straight to the point when it matters most. When they’re sure, they’re sure.
Leon continues racking and I say to Prince, “We should draw it up, ya know, plans wise and propose it to good Saul next week, yeah?”
Prince nods his head to the music, wheels turning, “Okay. Shit. Yeah, okay. Let’s do it.”
And it was really that simple. We’re all high up and buzzed, but I can feel in my soul that it’s real. We’re gonna make a run at it. I smile wildly off the kick of potential. What a feeling, staring down the barrel and finding the frontier of some higher calling. The road is revealed, and we are confident and sure footed, forward leaning. My God.
Leon finishes racking and goes, “Hit ’em Cash.”
I twirl the stick in my hands. I know that I’m going to break the fucking paint off the balls.
Ma used to take me to the theater, and if you’ve ever been to a play you’ll know what it’s like in that first moment. All the theater goes dark for a magnetic second or two. Then, all of a sudden, the lights go up. An actor is on the stage, and you catch them in that suspended, eternal moment of time. They’re right in the heart of it. This single, most important second of their lives when the real story begins. In the theater, it is always an extraordinary moment. You catch the characters in the calm of the storm, and you know that everything from that moment on is going to be essential and riveting because that’s the slice of life that all those plays are about.
The polished wood of my pool stick reflects the lamp light above, Zeppelin is in crescendo, and I’m in the pocket with my best friends in the world. I let the stick fly, and it cracks like lightning. It’s a familiar, nostalgic sound I’ve heard a thousand times, except this time, it’s different. Everything’s different because this time, well, it’s the start of the show. The front door swings open and there she is, walking in. I don’t even watch the balls as they break. It’s the first magic moment on stage.
She’s wearing tight blue jeans again and a baggy beige shirt that’s a bit dirty. It has the word hero scribbled across it in faded white lettering. She has a few bands on her wrists, bracelets of leather and metal alike, and her hair is in that ever-sleek ponytail. She walks right past us, rerouting around Prince as he makes an oh shit sort of raised eyebrow face at me. She goes straight to the bar without so much as a glance my way. Captivated, I watch her make the entire slow-motion trek, her hips in slight swivel and her shoulders free. She puts her elbows on the bar, curls her hands together and waits. Everything other than her image fades into the background. She’s outlined in soft bar light, head to the side, looking around, I believe, for Saul, but he’s nowhere in sight.
I turn to the guys and hand my pool stick to Leon. I don’t stop to explain. I down the rest of my beer and set the glass on the wooden rim of the table. I move before my mind has a say. These are the moments. There’s no way in hell I let another one slip by. I’m carried on the wave of a slight drunken courage. The bravery of Budweiser and my belief in destiny. I clear my throat and run my hands through my disheveled hair. I approach on the right and I join her, standing at the bar, and though there are a million options afforded to me through language I say, “Hey.”
The word comes out and hangs in the air for what feels like an eternity. So long, in fact, that I begin to question if I’d actually said it out loud. Her right thumb taps steady on the back of her other hand and at last, she turns slowly, and I mean slowly . Her eyes meet mine for the first time. The depth of green is striking. There’s a calm knowing about her eyes. They’re alluring, mysterious, and they’re framed by those freckles I had only seen from afar. I realize now their divine arrangement. Hidden in their pattern is likely the truth about God and everything else. She stares at me like that for the longest second of my life before a small smile finally spreads softly across her lips.
“Glad to see you’re alive.”
So, it was true after all—my conclusions from that embarrassing moment in the baking sun, hungover and sick on the sidewalk. She had been there, and she’d left. It wasn’t some figment of my distorted vision and longing.
“You recognize me?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How?”
“How?”
“Yeah, how?”
“I’ve seen you before.”
“Here?”
“Why? Are you in here much?”
“Sometimes.”
“Hmmm. No, I don’t think it’s from here.”
“Well, I’ve seen you in here.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right. Twice.”
“Are you following me?”
“You left me on the sidewalk?”
“Ah. The sidewalk. Yes. That’s it.”
“You left me on the sidewalk.”
“Did I?”
“You did, yeah.”
“I did not leave you on the sidewalk,” and she says it with such a definitive air that I almost believe her. Obviously, she had left me there, for reasons unknown, but still, she denied the claim with such boldness that I have half the mind to relent and let the whole matter rest. There’s an air of amusement in her defiance. Perhaps she thinks I don’t notice those kinds of things, but I do. I also notice when she looks down at her hands the small golden hoop earring swaying from her ear. She has a few piercings there. The hoop, a plain subtle bar, and a tiny cross near the top, all gold. Her painfully perfect face is sculpted with precision, her jaw defined and running center to her chin, symmetrically aligned and shadowed beneath her fine lips, the bottom just a little fuller than the one above it. She scrunches her nose, the soft tip moving ever so slightly off the slope.
“Oh, you didn’t?”
“I made sure you were okay.”
“Ah. Thanks for that.”
“I did. Mario rushed out to you right away.”
“You know Mario?”
“I do.”
“How?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah, actually—”
“Why are you passing out on sidewalks is the real question.”
“It’s not something I do often.”
“Coulda fooled me.”
“I wish you hadn’t seen that.”
“I’m glad I did. Don’t worry, you looked good, like you’d practiced.”
“No kidding? I appreciate that. Pretty bold leaving me there though. I coulda been dead.”
“You’re kind of dramatic, huh?”
“No, not really.”
“Look, you fell and that was, I admit, a little scary, but Mario came rushing out right away and had you and I was there ya know, for a second, I saw you come back to and all. You just passed out. You were in and out man, it’s not like you were on death’s door. I was in a rush.”
“In a rush.”
“Yeah.”
A thousand questions battle for a turn on my tongue, but I find her whole demeanor disarming. Not only am I completely thrown by her beauty, but she’s extraordinarily certain when she speaks. She has the unique ability to make everything she says sound like the truth. In her conviction, I can tell she’s seen many fights, and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn she’d won every one of them. She’s right. The real question is why the hell am I passing out cold on sidewalks. It’s not her fault I didn’t wake up with her holding my hand.
She wipes a few loose strands of hair out from her eyes and says, “Anything else?”
And no question seems to matter more than “What’s your name?”
“What’s my name?”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“What’s it to you?”
“I’d like to know.”
“What’s yours?”
“I’m Cash.”
“Cash.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m Rose.”
“Rose.”
“That’s right—”
“Rose.” And I’m impossibly on fire, totally entranced. She looks around at the bar one more time and says, “Where the hell is Saul?”
“You know Saul?”
“Yeah, I know Saul.”
“How the hell do you know Saul?”
“Long story. Hey, can you do me a favor?”
“Sure.”
“If you see him tonight, would you tell him I stopped by? I don’t have time to wait around forever.”
“You have somewhere to be?”
“You’re a questions man, huh, Cash?”
“Not really.”
“Just tell him I was here if you see him, please.”
She gives one more glance around, taps her fingers on the bar and whispers to herself a tired, “Okay.” She looks at me one last time and says, “Cash.”
“Rose.”
She heads back the same way she came.