The Hustler

  He paused. “That’s right,” he said. Then he walked in, set his things down in an empty chair, and began looking around the room. Inside now, he could see that there were two bedrooms. The living room was very big and expensive-looking. The carpet underfoot was thick.

  “My name’s Georgine,” the blonde said. “Have a seat.”

  “Have a drink,” said the other. She had brown hair and was prettier than the blonde.

  “She’s Carol,” the blonde said. “Carol, meet Eddie.”

  “Hi,” Carol said, smiling. Her teeth were somewhat uneven and she wore too much lipstick, but she was pretty.

  “Hello,” Eddie said, sitting in one of the armchairs. He wondered if Carol’s bosom were real. Probably not, but nice if it were. Also the blonde’s—Georgine’s. Georgine walked to the bar and began pouring him a drink. She was wearing a black silky dress and it seemed that her butt might split it at any moment, but it did not. Her shoulders, he noticed, were round and very smooth, with a nice color to them. He wondered if they painted or powdered their shoulders, or if that was the way they looked naturally.

  The blonde gave him the drink and then went back to the couch to sit down. She put a cigarette in her mouth, and when Eddie made no move to light it for her, shrugged her shoulders and lit it herself, with a match.

  Eddie tasted his drink, which was strong. Then he leaned back and said, “You girls welcome all strangers in town this way?” He was watching the blonde’s bosom as he said this, speculatively.

  The brunette seemed to think this remark was very funny. When she had stopped laughing she said, “We’re friends of Bert’s. Didn’t he tell you we were coming up? I mean, he told us you were coming.” She seemed to think this was funny, too.

  “Somehow, honey,” he said, “I didn’t get the word. But now I’ve got it I’m glad to hear it.” He was not certain how he felt about all this, and with Bert it didn’t figure. Anyway it was interesting enough.

  “I’m supposed to be your date,” the blonde said.

  “I’m glad to hear that too,” he said. It occurred to him that the blonde had already drunk too much.

  After a few minutes Carol turned the radio on and got dance music and when he finished his drink Georgine fixed him another.

  And then Bert came in, looking very neat and collected but his face slightly flushed. “Hello, Georgine,” he said, “Carol.” Then to Eddie, “How’d you come out?”

  “Fair. You were right about him. How did you make out?”

  “All right.” He took off his glasses and began wiping them with his handkerchief. “Fix me a drink, Carol, will you?” Eddie noticed an unfamiliar looseness in his voice. Then Bert smiled at him. “As a matter of fact I did very well. The game’s still going on.”

  Then, when the girl brought Bert his drink he did a surprising thing. An amazing thing. He pulled the girl down beside him gently, took her chin in one hand and said, “Honey, you look great tonight.” Then he laughed. Eddie had never heard Bert laugh like that, and he found it shocking.

  Eddie watched him while he finished his drink. Then Bert set his glass down, stood up, and began dancing with Carol. He danced too precisely, but well.

  “Come on, Eddie, live it up,” he said.

  For Christ’s sake, Eddie thought. Then he laughed himself. “Okay, Bert,” he said. “You’re the boss.”

  Georgine had come to sit by him on the arm of the chair. “You wanta dance?” she said.

  “I’m a lousy dancer.”

  “That’s the kind I like,” she said. Then she pulled him up from the seat and he took hold of her and began moving around in approximate time to the music. She stood so close to him, however, that he could not do even that very well, and he finally stopped trying to move his feet and just held her and swayed. She seemed to go for this. She was all round protuberances, all of them very warm, all moving, and she rubbed against him a good deal. After a while this had the intended effect, and he was forced to sit down, pulling her into the seat beside him. He started to kiss her, and then stopped. Something was not right. “Get me a drink, will you?” he said.

  “Now?”

  “That’s right. Now.”

  She got it and he drank it. Then he leaned around and kissed her.

  Instantly her tongue was in his mouth, straining at his throat. And instantly he found his hand inside her dress. She smelled strongly of whiskey and of perfume.

  She pulled back from him slightly. “You wanta go to bed now, honey?”

  “What do you think?” He got up, taking her by the arm. Walking, he found, was difficult.

  But in the bedroom she began doing something he did not like. She sat on the side of the bed and began methodically undressing, finishing her cigarette as she did so. She eased her stockings off quickly and neatly, set them beside the bed, then unzipped her dress. He did not like that. But he said nothing and just watched her….

  ***

  When they had finished he put his clothes on and went into the living room, which was empty. A hillbilly voice on the radio was pimping for a cut-rate jeweler’s, “Just ninety steps from Main Street.” The man sounded like a fool. The door to the other bedroom was closed. After he had mixed himself a drink and sat down he could hear them, Bert and the other girl. He could not imagine what Bert would look like in bed. Probably like everybody else looks, like some kind of awkward, sweating idiot. He wondered if Bert took his glasses off. Then he tried listening to the music, which had started again.

  The blonde laid a hand in his lap, warm.

  “No,” he said.

  “Later, maybe?” She was trying now to look at him lovingly. Apparently the pitch was that he had won her over by his little performance in bed. A commonplace hustle, probably always good for a second round. He wondered if Bert had paid them for the night, or only for each time; he did not know how such arrangements were made. This was a big-time arrangement: a hotel suite and two rented whores in party dresses. Or “call girls”—he had read that term somewhere, in a newspaper. The big-timers had call girls. You made a phone call and they came out. Very refined women. High class. He looked at Georgine for a minute, looked quizzically, drunkenly, at the smile she turned on immediately when she saw him watching her. Georgine was probably a call girl, the kind the newspapers wrote about. And here he was, Eddie Felson from Oakland, California, with this high-class, big-time whore, in a hotel suite in the middle of the horse-race country. Here he was, in Kentucky, hustling the hustlers, winning big money—Christ! He had hustled an old man, once, for a dime a game, back in Oakland, the year after he had quit high school. Now he was drinking expensive whiskey and having this expensive, high-class, big-time woman all for his own.

  He looked at Georgine again and decided that he would have another drink. He needed one.

  Bert seemed to take forever. Finally he came back into the room, his face red. He poured himself a small drink, looked at Eddie, pursed his lips thoughtfully, and then went to the bathroom where he began washing his hands and face.

  Abruptly Eddie laughed, loosely. “Like Minnesota Fats?” he called at Bert. “Getting ready for the clutch?”

  Bert came out of the bathroom, drying his face on a towel. “You might say that,” he said, “but not,” nodding toward the bedroom, “in that game.”

  “They say it’s a good game.”

  “It’s one of the best. But so is cards. And they’re still playing upstairs.” He began combing his hair, carefully.

  Carol came out of the other bedroom barefoot. Her hair was mussed. She took Bert by the arm and said, “You’re not leaving, honey? The night’s young.”

  “That’s right,” Bert said, and then to Eddie, “and you better get some sleep. I got plans for you tomorrow.”

  “You had plans for me tonight,” Eddie said, noticing with detachment that his voice was thick.

  “All work and no play…” Bert said, leaving.

  The girls went into the bathroom and began washing up and Eddie be
gan working on another drink, although he felt that he shouldn’t be drinking it. The lights in the room were too bright. He noticed that the fifth of bourbon he had bought was still sitting, unopened, in the chair. Like the fifth he had bought in Chicago more than a month ago. It had sat around for a week before he had given it to Sarah. But, then, that had been a fifth of Scotch. A high-class drink. And this was a bottle of bourbon. He stared at the bottle of bourbon for a long while, but made no move to get up from the couch and pick it up. He was still staring at it, drunkenly and stupidly, when the girls left and he told them tonelessly, good-by.

  18

  When he awoke the next morning, shortly before noon, his hands ached and there was a dull pain as though there were something alive and damp at the base of his brain. Walking into the bathroom he felt top-heavy and alone, and it was necessary to hold a cold washcloth at the back of his neck for some time before he felt that his blood was circulating again. Then he took a shower, tried to shake off some of the thickness in his head and to suppress the hard, aching feeling in his stomach, and then he woke Bert, who was in the other bedroom.

  Bert woke easily but said nothing. Like Eddie he headed immediately for the bathroom, where he remained a long time. After he had dressed, Eddie came in to brush his teeth and found Bert sitting in the tub, a fleshy and solemn monarch, contemplating his genitals. Eddie began brushing his teeth.

  “Good morning,” Bert said.

  Eddie spat mint foam into the basin. “Good morning yourself, sunshine.”

  “Feel better?”

  “Better than what?”

  “Better than yesterday.”

  “No. Worse. Why should I feel better?” He began rinsing his mouth out with cold water.

  “No reason.”

  “That’s a laugh.” He hung up his toothbrush and turned to look at Bert again, who was now washing his pink arms, deliberately. “You always have a reason.”

  Bert tightened his lips in thought. Then he said, “I did, but I probably figured wrong. I figured your girl in Chicago was giving you a hard time, and that what you needed was what I hired for you last night.”

  Eddie stared at him. Then suddenly, he laughed, “For Christ’s sake, you figure everything, don’t you? Only this time you wasted your money.”

  Bert looked thoughtful, stepping out of the tub, dripping. “You don’t have a girl in Chicago?”

  “I did have. I don’t know if I’ve got one now. Anyway, thanks, but Georgine didn’t work.”

  Bert was drying himself and did not answer this. Then he went into the bedroom, sat on the bed, and started putting his socks on. Eddie began shining his shoes, still in the bedroom. Then Bert said, quietly, “You in love with that girl?”

  Eddie stared at Bert for a moment, quietly. Then, suddenly, he began laughing….

  ***

  Waiting for the elevator he offered to split the cost of the room and the girls with Bert, now that he had more money, but Bert would not take it. He had played poker until four o’clock and had, apparently, won a good deal at it. Also, he said he figured to make his profit when they got the game going with Findlay. “Okay,” Eddie said, “and thanks.”

  They ate a big meal in the hotel dining room and Eddie had two cups of strong coffee, which made him feel considerably better, although his hands were still stiff and sore. He did not say anything about his hands to Bert.

  They went into the poolroom after eating and there were a good many people there for that time of day, although few were playing. In the back of the room was a group of five men who were obviously jockeys—little hard-looking men with lean faces and sharp eyes. There were several groups of other men in the room, most of whom Eddie did not recognize.

  “Is Findlay here?” he asked Bert.

  “No. I’ll go ask about him.” Bert walked over toward a group of three men who were standing by the cash register. One of them greeted him, “Hello, Lucky,” to which he did not reply. It seemed a peculiar thing to call Bert. They began talking and Eddie could not hear what was being said.

  He went over and took a seat near the jockeys, who were now being addressed by a thin man in a blue flannel jacket, whom Eddie did not recognize.

  “Ignorance,” the man was saying. “It’s ignorance.” Eddie did not attempt to follow the conversation, but it seemed that the man was trying to explain that atmospheric pressure was what kept pool balls on a pool table—without atmospheric pressure they would all fly off into space—and that, moreover, this phenomenon had a great deal to do with keeping horses on race tracks. The jockeys seemed skeptical, a feeling which Eddie shared.

  After a while Bert returned and said, “Nobody’s seen Findlay for a couple of days.”

  “Oh?”

  “He might be at the races. You want to go out?”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “That’s right,” Bert said. “I’m the boss.”

  ***

  He had never been to a race track before—although, of course, he had bet the horses experimentally a few times—and at first it was quite interesting and exciting. There was the crowd, and the little windows, and the smell of horses, of women, and of money—most of all the money, which seemed to have a clean, outdoor smell to it, like a crap game in an open field.

  But after the fifth race his feet were tired from the standing and he had become bored. He went into the bar, which was very horsy-looking and very crowded, and sat down. It was ten minutes before a waitress came, and during this time he looked at the people who filled the bar, most of them expensively, sportily dressed, and wondered where in hell they all came from and why, exactly, they were having such a good time. He could not fathom it. Gambling was something he felt that he understood, but to him gambling was betting on his own skill, or at least on an act in which he was personally involved, even matching quarters for drinks. This business of betting into rigged odds on somebody else’s horse, which probably looked and behaved like any other horse anywhere, seemed to be a high kind of folly—or at least a simple amusement. But probably some people won at it, besides the track and the bookies. He had known a man who claimed to make a living betting horses. It did not seem to Eddie to be a decent way to make a living, even if the profits were high.

  He amused himself for a while by trying to separate the people in the bar into two groups—the real and the phony rich. And there seemed to be a middle group: “Chamber of Commerce” or something, half real and half phony. You could tell by the clothes they wore. The rich ones usually wore ugly or grotesque clothes; the phonies were flashy, too stylish, and the Chamber of Commerce dressed very much the way Eddie did himself. The clothes of very rich people seemed to be almost invariably ugly, in the way that hand-painted ties are always uglier than factory-made ones, especially when worn with a pearl gray suit with whip stitching and a white-on-white shirt. And then there were the tweedy ones, but only a few. Almost all the women looked good, even the middle-aged women. Many of these were of the tightly packed, manicured, and overdressed sort whom Eddie had always found perversely attractive, but about whom he knew nothing, except that they liked to display it in public places, such as race tracks. For a moment he thought of Sarah’s small breasts under her blouse, and he wondered what she would look like when she was forty. Probably tweedy and fat in the ass. Probably still living in an apartment and writing books. Maybe she would write one about him. A thin book, or a poem. Probably make her feel important, unusual, to be broad-assed and married to a college professor and to tell her friends about the pool hustler, the criminal, she had shacked up with once. But maybe that wasn’t right. He did not have her figured out that well.

  A waitress finally discovered him. He asked for a double Scotch, and watched her legs as she waded her way back to the bar. Standing at the bar was an interesting-looking man and Eddie shifted his attention to him while the waitress gave the bartender his order.

  The man was tall and slim, with the kind of pale, debauched and oddly youthful face that some m
en of forty or more have. He was obviously rich and possibly a fairy, or maybe that was only the youthful, sensual look, for he did not seem effeminate. He was wearing a dark suit—Eddie could tell by the way it held to his narrow shoulders that it was very expensive—and dangling from his free hand was a very fine and expensive-looking camera. He was talking to a loudly rich type with binoculars, and both of them were laughing, only there was nothing humorous in the young-looking man’s laugh.

  The waitress returned eventually with Eddie’s drink. It cost a dollar and a half, and she tried to hustle him out of a fifty-cent tip by fumbling the change and looking harried. He stoned her out on that one, however, waiting for his money.

  She had just left when a bell rang loudly, signifying the end to betting for that race, and most of the people began to leave the bar or crowd to the windows, watching the track. But the man with the camera stayed at the bar, hardly aware, apparently, of the race that was starting.

  Eddie listened for the sound of the bugle, then the noise of the horses running, which came a minute later, and with it the shouting and a few frenzied screams, the half-hourly orgasm. Then he finished his drink.

  Bert came in, found him, and sat down.

  Eddie stretched, and lit a cigarette. “How’s it going?”

  “Fair.”

  “You win on that one?”

  “Yes.”

  Eddie shook his head. “You always win, don’t you?”

  Bert looked thoughtful. “As a general rule, yes.” He glanced toward the bar. Immediately his eyebrows rose. “Well,” he said, softly, “look who’s coming!”

  It was the thin man whom Eddie had been watching. He walked up to their table and sat down, lazily. Then he smiled at Bert. “Well, hello,” he said, his voice soft, unctuous. “Haven’t seen you in a long time.”

  “Hello,” Bert said, pursing his lips in a faint smile. “I haven’t been around here for a long time.” And then, “I’d like you to meet Eddie Felson. James Findlay.”