When he left she gave him one hundred and seventy-two dollars, which struck him as an unlikely sum but certainly more than sufficient. He was pleased by the payment but roundly disturbed by his own performance, or lack thereof. Despite what he’d said to old Margaret, she hadn’t taken anything out of him but desire. Making love to any woman twice in one night was nothing for him. And to top it off, he hadn’t had any woman in better than two weeks.
So what was wrong?
It happened again the night after that. This was worse, because it happened the first time and he certainly couldn’t plead exhaustion. Nor could he rationalize his failure to himself. The woman involved was not unappealing by a long shot. She was a neat little number cheating on her husband and she had a body that couldn’t have been better.
But nothing happened.
Again he covered himself, this time in a different way. “Darling,” he warbled, “you must get bored with the usual run of lovemaking. I want to make love to you in a new and different way.”
She was all for it. She said something properly silly about variety being the spice of life and he gave her enough spice to fill a few hundred pepper mills. He satisfied her skillfully without revealing his impotence.
This may have satisfied her but it sure as hell didn’t satisfy him. It kept him from sleeping that night. He tossed and turned in his own bed all night long, and when he finally did drift off to a hazy sort of sleep it was beset by continual nightmares. He woke up exhausted, feeling as though he’d just finished running twenty miles with an eighty-pound albatross around his neck.
Bad.
Very bad.
Terrible.
He couldn’t figure it out. It couldn’t be that he was too old. Hell, he’d just turned all of eighteen. No matter how much loving-around you did, you didn’t get too old for it at age eighteen. It was senseless.
What was he supposed to do? Travel? Take a vacation? He’d just done both of those things and now he was up the creek in a lead canoe. An impotent gigolo. You didn’t get rich that way.
So what was he supposed to do?
He went to the library and read up on impotence. All he could find was that it was almost exclusively psychological, which was something he had already figured out.
Chapter Seven
“Hold on,” he said. “Right here is good enough.”
“This is only 93rd,” the cabby said. “Thought you wanted 96th Street.”
“This’ll do.”
He passed a bill to the driver, told him to keep the change, then opened the door and swung out onto the sidewalk. It was a bright, warm day — no clouds, a hot sun overhead. For several moments he stood still on the sidewalk, watching the cab pull away from the curb and continue north on Broadway, looking the old neighborhood over to get the feel of it once again after three or four months away from it, sniffing the air and getting his bearings. Then he crossed Broadway at the corner, then continued uptown toward 96th Street with his arms swinging at his sides.
The same old neighborhood, he thought. The same buildings, the same people. He wondered what he’d expected to find. Nothing much, he thought.
Why come back at all? That was a good question. The books would have dozens of answers. Symbolic search after his vanished past. A back-to-the-womb movement. An unconscious attempt to regain his previous footing now that he was slipping.
Hell with it. He was coming back to have a look at his old stamping grounds. To hell with the books. That was all he was doing and to hell with it.
He wore the jacket of his brown tweed suit with a pair of soft brown flannel slacks. He wore a tan sport shirt open at the neck. He walked easily, but as he approached the pool hall he felt his stride changing to the walk of the old Johnny Wells. He was turning into a jungle animal again, walking hungry. He felt old familiar lines of tension and wariness return to the corners of his eyes and to his mouth.
Home, he thought. He grinned wryly to himself and pulled open the outer door of the pool hall, then took the stairs two at a time. He was still in good shape — good living hadn’t ruined his physical condition at all. He hesitated at the top of the stairs, glanced through one door at a small bowling alley, then opened the other door and strode into the pool hall.
Nothing was changed. Cigarette butts were sprinkled across the wood board floor. A gnarled man stood behind the counter and smoked a cigar. Teen-agers leaned against the walls, bent over the green felt-covered tables, smoked and talked. Older men played billiards with the precision of mathematicians. It took Johnny a couple of seconds to get his bearings. He hadn’t been in a pool hall since he had left the neighborhood. A gentleman didn’t frequent a pool hall. A gentleman didn’t play pocket pool at all and if he played billiards it was in a home or a private club. He felt awkward standing there and covered his awkwardness by lighting a cigarette. He blew out smoke and felt a little more at home.
He looked around. There were plenty of familiar faces but he couldn’t put names to any of them. Ricky and Beans and Long Sam were not around He glanced at his watch. It was almost five. Maybe someone would drop around soon.
He walked to the counter and the gnarled man looked up at him. “Gimme a pool table,” he said. The man nodded shortly and told him to take table six.
He walked over to select a cue and thought that it was funny — he hadn’t said I’d like a table or A table please. Instead his speech had found its way back to four months ago. It fit the neighborhood again. Funny.
He found a heavy cue that didn’t seem to be warped. He rolled it on table six and saw that it was true. He racked the balls tightly, chalked his cue and broke the pack. He walked around the table, getting his bearings, then took an easy shot at the six, trying to poke it into the side, and miscued. He topped the cue ball and it dribbled off the side for a scratch.
He cut his next shot too thin and missed the pocket a full six inches. He shot several more times and missed each time, and he felt as though everybody in the place was staring at him. This he knew at once to be patently ridiculous. Few people at a pool hall waste their time watching other players. But he was embarrassed and more than a little disgusted by the way he was playing. He stopped to light another cigarette and smoked for a few minutes while studying the table and trying to settle down. Then he ground the cigarette under his heel and picked up his cue again, crouching over the table.
He sank two in a row, missed a tough bank shot, dropped another ball, then missed twice in a row. He kept playing and gradually his game came back to him. He still knew how to play — it was just a question of restoring the lines of communication between his brain and his hands. Piece by piece the lines returned. His cuts were more precise, his English better, his position more nearly accurate. He ran a string of five balls climaxed with a tough combination shot and felt a lot better.
He went on playing. The game took control of him — once he got better he stopped worrying about the people around him, about himself, about anything other than the game. He cleared the table, racked the balls, cleared and racked again and again. From time to time somebody approached him and suggested a game; each time he dismissed the new arrival without raising his head and went ahead with his practice. He did not get particularly good but then he had never been top-flight. He could give Beans a game and could take Long Sam most of the time but he was never a match for Ricky. He simply wasn’t that good.
He lost track of the time and merely played. Then, while he was lining a hard shot and gauging his position at the conclusion of the shot, a hand took hold of his cue. He whirled around, angry, and Ricky was there.