Read Online Frag Box by Richard A. Thompson - Free Book Online
Authors: Richard A. Thompson
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practicing?”
“Three-cushion banks.”
“Wow. Tough stuff.”
He didn’t know the half of it.
I left the rack with eleven balls in it on a windowsill, putting only the cue ball, the eight, and three striped balls on the table. I picked the shortest cue stick I could find and chalked the tip until there was a little cloud of blue dust floating around it. Then I swallowed a slug of beer, put an unshelled peanut in my mouth so I could suck on the salt, and began.
I started out with a simple draw shot, hitting the cue ball below center and giving it enough backspin to go straight away from me, then change its mind and come straight back. It didn’t work very well. The amount of backspin I was able to give the ball was different every time. I pulled an emery board out of my pocket, turned my back to Lefty to hide what I was doing, and proceeded to rough up the cue tip. After that and some more chalk, it worked a lot better. I got in the habit of chalking after every shot, which everybody knows you should always do anyway and nobody ever does.
I did a dozen more draw shots, progressively increasing the angle of the cue stick with the horizontal. As it approached dead vertical, I could get the ball to come back beyond the place where it had started. Sometimes it skipped and bounced a little along the way and sometimes it wobbled a bit, but mostly it worked.
This was pretty exciting stuff. I wondered if they knew about it at MIT or Cal Tech.
It was also pretty trivial, compared to what I had come here to try. I took another slug of beer, shelled and ate a bunch of nuts just to stall a little longer, and finally got down to hitting the ball off-center in two directions at once.
That’s kind of a slippery concept, and it doesn’t do to think about it too much. But not thinking about it wasn’t working worth sour owl shit, either. I could get the ball to go away to the right and come back to the left or vice-versa, but there was no way I could get it to go away a little to the left and come back even more to the left.
I decided it was all a matter of point of view, and I tried the shot with the cue in the same place but with me facing a different way. That was a little better.
Finally, I set up all five balls in their original locations, closed my eyes for a moment, and meditated on the mystical state of being Minnesota Fats and a Zen archery master, all at once. Then I tried the massé shot exactly fifty times. I almost made it twice. The odds were getting better, though I seriously doubted if my muscles had learned a thing yet. I decided it was time for another beer.
As I was heading back to the bar with my empty mug, I was met by a short, pasty-faced blimp in a rumpled three-piece sharkskin suit and a striped dress shirt with a pin collar. He also had a hat that I don’t know how to describe. A real independent thinker. I hadn’t seen pin collars since the mid-nineties, or sharkskin since never mind when. And I had never seen a hat like that, though I thought it might have been what was once described as a pork pie.
“I was told I might find Herman Jackson here. Would that be you?”
“That would be me, yes.” And I was told a fat guy in a suit and a hat went down in the gulch last night. Would that be you? “And you are?”
“G. Harold Mildorf, Attorney at Law. My card.” He pulled a business card out of his vest pocket, showed it to me, and then put it back, just as the Persons in Black had done with their plastic ID cards.
“You have a client who needs a bond, Mr. Mildorf?”
“You mean a bail bond? Certainly not. I don’t practice criminal law. In fact, I try not to even practice civil law with people who might possibly be criminals. Is there someplace private where we could talk?” He looked at the cane-backed spectator chairs around the perimeter of the hall as if they might be about to attack him, his bushy eyebrows nearly meeting as he formed them into a frown.
“Lefty’s in the morning
“Three-cushion banks.”
“Wow. Tough stuff.”
He didn’t know the half of it.
I left the rack with eleven balls in it on a windowsill, putting only the cue ball, the eight, and three striped balls on the table. I picked the shortest cue stick I could find and chalked the tip until there was a little cloud of blue dust floating around it. Then I swallowed a slug of beer, put an unshelled peanut in my mouth so I could suck on the salt, and began.
I started out with a simple draw shot, hitting the cue ball below center and giving it enough backspin to go straight away from me, then change its mind and come straight back. It didn’t work very well. The amount of backspin I was able to give the ball was different every time. I pulled an emery board out of my pocket, turned my back to Lefty to hide what I was doing, and proceeded to rough up the cue tip. After that and some more chalk, it worked a lot better. I got in the habit of chalking after every shot, which everybody knows you should always do anyway and nobody ever does.
I did a dozen more draw shots, progressively increasing the angle of the cue stick with the horizontal. As it approached dead vertical, I could get the ball to come back beyond the place where it had started. Sometimes it skipped and bounced a little along the way and sometimes it wobbled a bit, but mostly it worked.
This was pretty exciting stuff. I wondered if they knew about it at MIT or Cal Tech.
It was also pretty trivial, compared to what I had come here to try. I took another slug of beer, shelled and ate a bunch of nuts just to stall a little longer, and finally got down to hitting the ball off-center in two directions at once.
That’s kind of a slippery concept, and it doesn’t do to think about it too much. But not thinking about it wasn’t working worth sour owl shit, either. I could get the ball to go away to the right and come back to the left or vice-versa, but there was no way I could get it to go away a little to the left and come back even more to the left.
I decided it was all a matter of point of view, and I tried the shot with the cue in the same place but with me facing a different way. That was a little better.
Finally, I set up all five balls in their original locations, closed my eyes for a moment, and meditated on the mystical state of being Minnesota Fats and a Zen archery master, all at once. Then I tried the massé shot exactly fifty times. I almost made it twice. The odds were getting better, though I seriously doubted if my muscles had learned a thing yet. I decided it was time for another beer.
As I was heading back to the bar with my empty mug, I was met by a short, pasty-faced blimp in a rumpled three-piece sharkskin suit and a striped dress shirt with a pin collar. He also had a hat that I don’t know how to describe. A real independent thinker. I hadn’t seen pin collars since the mid-nineties, or sharkskin since never mind when. And I had never seen a hat like that, though I thought it might have been what was once described as a pork pie.
“I was told I might find Herman Jackson here. Would that be you?”
“That would be me, yes.” And I was told a fat guy in a suit and a hat went down in the gulch last night. Would that be you? “And you are?”
“G. Harold Mildorf, Attorney at Law. My card.” He pulled a business card out of his vest pocket, showed it to me, and then put it back, just as the Persons in Black had done with their plastic ID cards.
“You have a client who needs a bond, Mr. Mildorf?”
“You mean a bail bond? Certainly not. I don’t practice criminal law. In fact, I try not to even practice civil law with people who might possibly be criminals. Is there someplace private where we could talk?” He looked at the cane-backed spectator chairs around the perimeter of the hall as if they might be about to attack him, his bushy eyebrows nearly meeting as he formed them into a frown.
“Lefty’s in the morning
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