USK | Prose | Laidlaw

Shooters

If there was one thing Tommy Ray Lester was consistently good at, it was shooting pool. Everything else he had tried in his thirty-one years of drifting through various cities and towns across the good ole' U. S. of A. had been a series of disappointments to himself and those misfortunate enough to have befriended him. When he was in his late teens and early twenties it had been lonely or bored or adventurous gay men who had sought shelter in his striking good looks and toned, sinewy body. Then there where the older ladies who saw in him what their well-to-do husbands had once been, before the career or the scotch or the bellies. Then, when the scotch and the belly came his way, it was work that he had tried: shit jobs in warehouses and cold-calling triangle schemes; he even drove a school bus once in Peoria. Now he was shacked up in an SRO in Boston's Central Square with a Brazilian heroin addict who said he made her laugh.

"You always make Rosa smile," she would say with difficulty just before unclenching her fist and leaning back on the cot, presumably to dream of the lush, green rain forest she liked to describe to him in Portuguese when the rush passed. Tommy Ray didn't speak Portuguese but he would listen intently and then say in broken Spanish,

"To etas muy bonita, conchita." And she would always laugh.

The arrangement couldn't have been better: he didn't shoot dope and Rosa didn't drink. Rosa drew a check for disability as a result of too many nuthouse and several detox center stays. It was Tommy Ray who had taken her down to the Social Security building and helped her get the paper work started. After only eight weeks of Rosa's free blow-jobs, the creepy little bilingual clerk at the SSD section put his boss' rubber stamp on the application and the next month Tommy Ray quit his third shift job as a grill man and started copping dope for Rosa and playing pool for a living.

The checks came right to the hotel and, because Rosa was a card-carrying junkie, Tommy Ray was her official payee. The checks were made out to her but he had to pick them up at the front desk and co-sign for her to cash them. Then he had to get her dressed and cleaned up and she would fix and nod and talk in Portuguese and they would don shades and take a bus to the check cashing place. The check cashing place was only six blocks down Prospect Ave. but Rosa could take hours to walk that far, stopping at storefronts and babbling in Portuguese to no one in particular, so they got used to taking the bus.

On this particular day, however, Rosa insisted on walking - go figure - so Tommy Ray had to run interference with the shopkeepers who came out after a while and stood there staring them down. Tommy Ray knew they didn't need street people intimidating potential customers, so he was sympathetic, but only to a point.

"What the fuck are you lookin' at asshole? Haven't you ever seen a couple window shopping before? Take your wet-back ass back in your store before I break your fuckin' window."

Then Rosa did her nonsense Portuguese babble and suddenly there was a scene.

"I call police, I call police," the spic merchant yelled and Tommy Ray eased Rosa down the street.

Tommy Ray was in serious need of a drink and he was anxious to get to a bar. Rosa didn't give a fuck: she was high on that shit and would have preferred to stay in the room anyway, but they had the arrangement: they cash the check, he scores her a bag, he takes the money, and he comes home later with her next bag and that was that.

Finally, the check was cashed and Rosa was safely back in the room. Tommy ray had $650 for the month with which to hustle pool and stay drunk and all he had to do was keep her in dime bags of China White and clean up her puke from the shared bathroom down the hall. He had had worse situations. He felt confident that day: on the first of the month when he had big bucks he always won. He decided to splurge on a cab to Good Times, a pool hall out in Somerville where they had 52 tables and three bars and even batting cages. There were a few regulars who hustled there but they all knew each other and stayed out of one another's way. There were also many cocky college kids from Harvard slumming and thinking since they grew up with pool tables that they were good. All it took was losing a few games for drinks and talking philosophy and soon these bozos would be betting twenty a game.

That's were it was now - twenty a game, straight 8. The kids he was working now came from old money; they were studying finance and had their futures all mapped out. In two years they would slide into Daddy's firm and be gambling for much higher stakes on Wall Street. Tommy Ray was down sixty bucks and three Zimas but he had them hooked and he knew it. It was time to start winning. They insisted on buying one back and were taking a break.

"You guys are good man, I thought I could shoot pool. What, do you have a pool table in the dorm or something?" Tommy Ray bullshitted with humility.

"No, sir, I don't play much at all anymore, but my father used to entertain Minnesota Fats whenever he was in Martha's Vineyard," said Biff, trying to sound hip but not pulling it off.

"What about you, Andrew, where did you learn the game so well?"

"My father and Biff's father used to summer together and it was so boring on the Vineyard that all we did was play pool and smoke our fathers' cigars when they were out on the boat."

"Bravo," said Tommy Ray, trying to keep them on the hook. "Well, fellows, whose turn is it to get beat, cuz I am gonna win one if it kills me."

Andrew and Biff flipped a coin and Andrew won the toss. Good. He was the follower and Biff was the big shot. If Tommy Ray beat Andrew, Biff would feel compelled to put him back down in his proletarian place. Tommy Ray put his quarters in and racked 'em up. Andrew broke - a good break: the balls were all over the place and the 8 was sitting alone right near the front corner pocket. Andrew and Biff high-fived each other, as if coming close to an 8 ball break was an accomplishment. Fucking idiots.

"Damn, Andy, old boy, give me a chance, will ya?" Tommy Ray said, digging further into their inbred, blue-nosed egos.

It was time for the kill. Tommy Ray ran four balls and then intentionally mis-cued on an easy one.

"Shit!" He banged his cue on the table for added drama.

"Relax, old boy, you're doing better and the game is young," Biff chimed in from the sidelines.

Andrew made several shots but missed a cross-side and there were only three balls left for Tommy Ray, and then, of course, the 8 sitting pretty, near the corner. He sunk them all, making it look like luck, and slammed the 8 too hard - almost, but not quite, scratching. Tommy Ray made a big show of winning the game, knowing it would piss them off. He wanted them mad. When a man, or boy in this case, was mad, he couldn't shoot and soon would up the ante. It was Biff's turn and he had to rack for the first time that day. Tommy Ray sunk the 8 on the break and hopped up and down and pretended to be amazed.

"Did you guys see that! Did you see that? I got an 8 ball break! I've never got an 8 ball break! Holy shit."

Biff and Andrew conferred privately while Tommy Ray went to the john. On the way back he brought two Zimas for the marks and a Guinness for himself.

"Well, Andrew, I guess it's your turn, but how 'bout we settle up first?"

Andrew tossed a twenty on the table and Biff did the same. Now he was down only twenty and a few drinks. The time was ripe for the harvest. Biff made the mistake that Tommy Ray had been waiting for:

"Look here, Thomas, if it's all the same to you, I think I'll play you for a while. Old Andrew here has had a few too many."

Andrew had not had a "few too many" but Biff was the better shot and these young achievers just didn't like to lose at anything.

"OK, Biff, but you're going to give me a chance to get even, aren't you?" Tommy Ray asked, knowing full well what was coming.

"Certainly, Thomas. In fact, if you like, we could make it more interesting," Biff said, the greed now showing in his dull blue eyes.

"Well... It's your money, Biff. But I'm hot now and I don't think I can lose. But if you insist, name the number."

Biff's entire family's honor was at stake and Andrew was watching, so Biff did what Biffs do: he tried to buy his way out.

"Can you manage a hundred?" asked Biff, with a wink to old Andrew.

"Sure thing, Biffster, I just got paid," Tommy Ray said with bravado.

They were smiling now; the marks thought they had themselves a mark. Tommy Ray Lester pulled a new stick from the rack, chalked it up, and made three stripes on the break. Without a word he finished off his other four balls and banked the 8 ball into the side pocket. Something like perception finally showed in Biff's pretty blue eyes and Tommy Ray winked at him and let the bullshit chip away like paint on an old wooden house. As long as there were Biffs in the world Tommy Ray would never go broke. Stubborn dignity kept Biff on the hook for three more games before Tommy Ray determined that the boy had payed enough for the lesson of his young life. He slipped off to the john, took a satisfying piss, and strolled out the back door of Good Times, roughly three hundred and eighty dollars richer.

This had been a good day; he felt like going to the Newtowne, a dive bar in Porter Square where they didn't have a pool table and the bartenders and the regulars thought Tommy Ray was a laborer, but he had to get back to Rosa. She would be needing a fix right about now and Tommy Ray hated to think of her suffering. Rosa wasn't very good with money but she did delight in the winnings Tommy Ray would show her when he won. When he didn't, he would just toss her bag on the milk crate which had the Cure's Standing on a Beach album for a table top (he never gambled it all away, always keeping enough for at least one bag) and Rosa never mentioned a thing when he lost. He loved her for that, the unspoken casual trust between two losers.

Today, though, he was a winner - he had earned more in a few hours than most working stiffs earned in a week, and it was tax-free. Tommy Ray scored the H outside the little liquor and food store on the corner and was humming to himself as he used Rosa's food stamps to buy two big cans of Dinty More stew, (they had a hot plate in the room) and a Butterfinger for Rosa. He used cash to buy a 12-pack of Miester Brau, three packs of Winstons, and the Boston Globe. Tommy Ray liked to read the news and listen to the radio while drinking his beer and smoking his cigarettes. Rosa was a sweetheart but not very good company. They never had sex - that was the other thing he liked about their relationship. Rosa had been a classic Brazilian beauty once, but that was before the junk had taken its toll. Now she could still turn tricks if Tommy Ray had a bad month or got hustled himself, as is wont to happen now and again when you're on the grift, but she was a ten dollar blowjob at best and Tommy Ray was damn glad sex was not a part of their deal.

On his way into their building the manager hit Tommy Ray up for the fifty bucks he got once a month for looking the other way on the single room occupancy rule.

"You get the check cashed?" he grunted, a stubby hand already reaching for the fifty.

Tommy Ray didn't respond. He set his sundries on the counter, got out a fifty, crumpled it up and tossed it to the fat man. Fuckin' leech, what an unimaginative son-of-a-bitch he was, rotund, sweaty, motherfucker, drinking his rot-gut wine all day and night, never leaving the "office". Where was he when the communal crapper was stopped up? But Tommy Ray wasn't going to let old dickless harsh his gig, he felt too good, he was being responsible by coming home early with groceries, Rosa's fix, won money, and they would have a nice normal evening at home and tomorrow he wouldn't be too hungover and he would win again. He dreamed of making enough money to get out of this shithole but there were always people like the fat man taking their cut, Tommy Ray never indulged in self pity, after all he had a better situation than the clerk at the SSD or the fat man himself or the bus driver or the dull, dead faces who sold him cigarettes at the corner store. They all had someone to pay off, too, and they had to wake up in the morning while Tommy Ray often slept well past noon.

*	When he got into the room Rosa was nodding on the cot. He turned on the hotplate, opened the cans of stew, put the beer in the little half-fridge, and said, "Daddy won today, baby, I hooked a couple of Ivy Leaguers at Good Times."

He slid the money out of his money clip and threw it and the dope on the improvised table, cracked open a beer, and pulled the Butterfinger out of the bottom of the bag and turned to give it to Rosa. That's when he saw her rig sticking straight up from the crotch of her arm. For the first time in years tears streamed down his face like rain down a street with over-flowing gutters. Her sad black eyes were wide open like he had never seen them before. He knew she was gone without checking her pulse. He slumped down on the floor where he stood and drained the Miester Brau. He tried to wipe away the tears with his sleeve but they kept coming. He lit a cigarette and it burned down 'til it scorched his fingers and still the tears kept coming, they just kept coming...

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