The Danger of Being Me (15 page)

"We've only been here for about twenty minutes," she said as we approached a door set into the far wall.

Amber reached for the handle, and I felt my heartbeat quicken in my throat.  I glanced to her, and felt suddenly, hopelessly, out of place.  With her; with Prophecy Creek; with the entire human race.  I felt unprepared to face her friends.  Like some mutt sniffing up Amber's ass.

I was suddenly sure that my screenplay could use another fine tuning before the shoot on Saturday.  But then she glanced at me, and she flashed that soft smile of hers, beauteous and genuine and setting me to rights.

She turned the doorknob, and we stepped into a dusky psychotropic chamber.  Phosphorescent pinks and greens and yellows stood out against a psychedelic dreamscape, like something out of a Steven Lisberger movie.

Amber pulled the door shut behind us.  The words on her t-shirt flared under the lights, the French-tips of her manicured nails glowing hotly.  My vision adjusted, and I followed Amber into the darkness, followed the swing of her hip and the gleaming metal studs of her belt.

She led the way to a table marked with the numerals
19
in incandescent orange on its side.  Five teenagers clustered around the billiard green.

Amber pointed out a girl on a barstool and a guy standing between her knees with his hands on her waist.  "Donovan Blake and Bellona Meyers," she said.  Meyers gave me a short two-fingered wave.

"The guy who's playing Cyrano on Saturday?" I asked.

Amber nodded.  "The very same."

Blake nodded to me, flashing a bleached smile that glowed in the blacklight.  Amber pointed toward a dark-haired girl with shockingly green eyes, and told me, "my cousin Erin."  Erin smiled at me as Amber gestured to a girl and a guy stooped over a corner of the table, measuring a shot – "Lucas Archer, Caroline Davis."

Then she told them, "everybody, this is – "

"Michael Everett," I finished for her.

"Nice to put a name to the face," Archer said.  "You did a really nice job on that retrospective edition of the Student Spotlight in January."  Then he jerked his cue stick, sending the luminescent white ball screaming across the felt and into the eight-ball. The cue ball slammed the black ball into the corner pocket with an authoritative
snap
. Archer stood as the girl at his side stepped around the table to find her own cue stick. He grinned as he said, "That's game."

"That's twenty-three shots in a row," Erin said.

"I'm telling you," Blake said.  "He's juiced on Adderol."

Archer shook his head.  "Simple Euclidean geometry peppered with a dash of chaos theory."

"We get it," Meyers said, "you're a fuckin mathlete."

Amber laughed at that, and I had to grin at the sound.  I couldn't help myself.  I glanced to her as she retrieved her bottle of water, then looked to Archer as he watched me.  Then I rounded the table toward a rack of cue-sticks.

I looked over the assortment, and settled on a 56-inch graphite cue.  I turned back to the table, spotted Amber.  She smiled at me across the table, and I leaned back against the wall to Erin's left, like I'd never felt more at ease than with these few, these happy few, this band of strangers.

I watched as Amber collected the billiard balls from the undercarriage, stacking them back in the rack.  She glanced up at me, caught me staring, and asked, "you know how to play Cutthroat?"  I shook my head as she centered the rack.

Archer passed me, grabbed a bottle of soda off a table.  "No problem; easy game," he assured me, taking a drink.  "You'll pick it up."  He stepped to the corner of the table and found Davis, slipping his fingers into her jeans pocket as she passed off her cue stick.  "I'm sitting out this game."

Davis pressed herself against Archer, laying her lips on his neck, then crossed to a chair against the wall.  "You want in?" she asked Erin, and the shorter girl stood to take the free cue stick. Amber rounded the table again to find me, handing off the cue back to Blake as he stepped to the narrow end opposite the triangle of billiard balls.

"Three teams, for three sets of five balls," she told me, and Blake rocketed the cue ball to break the rack with a rapid-fire crash.  "Lows, middles, and highs," she said as the nine-ball tipped off the rail and into the corner pocket.  "Donnie and Bell are not middles."  Meyers climbed down from her barstool and surveyed the table.

After a moment, she lined up a side-pocket shot and missed.  The three-ball chipped into the rail, caromed across the felt, chain-reacting across the table.  I saw Archer's eyes following the erratic butterfly effect.

The chaotic ballet finally came to rest, and Amber scrutinized the plays.  "The idea is to sink the ten balls that aren't ours – " she paused just long enough to snap the cue ball into the fourteen-ball for a clean side-pocket shot " – before anyone else can sink the five that are."  She stood then, and grinned at me. "Have at it, Mr. Everett."

"Simple," I said with a grin of my own as I felt my heartbeat quicken again inside my throat.

I looked over the table, found a shot down the long rail, lined up.  I blinked stale smoke out of my eyes, bent low over the felt.  I drew back the 56-inch graphite cue stick, refusing to think too precisely on the event.  Better to act than to think.

The tip of the cue struck low of center. The white ball drew away in slow-motion.  The blue chalk mark arced end over end as the ball rifled along the rail, slapping into the six-ball and driving it into the corner pocket. The cue stopped on impact, spinning on its own axis.  I glanced up to find Amber, but saw Archer first, still watching the cue.

"That makes us low set," Amber said, her caramel eyes glittering through the dimness.  I stood back from the table, gave her room to find her move. She settled on a rebound shot off the narrow rail and missed, turning the table over to Erin and Archer.

Amber settled back into the plush chair next to Davis, and I saw her heels flashing in reaction to the blacklight, the platinum glitter blazing like solar flares.  I crossed to the chair, settling onto one wilting arm, propping myself up with my pool cue. "Those are the cutest damn shoes," I told her.  Archer knocked our five-ball into a side pocket. "They're kinda like slippers masquerading as heels."

She flicked the toe of one heel, looking at them like she'd never paid them much attention. "Yeah," she smiled. "They're the only pair of comfortable heels I own."

I heard another laugh, and turned to see Blake looking over the table at me. "You're just about as gay as a straight man can be, there, aren't you?"

The air around me stiffened, and I felt that scarlet flush creep out of my collar.   Then Blake laughed.  "That's what I call a joke," he said, smiling.  "I'm apt to make a few more before the night's out."

I laughed as Erin said, "Blake project his own inclinations onto others."

"Oh no," Meyers insisted.  "This is a fine specimen of the North Atlantic bushman. And besides," she added as Erin lined up and sank the twelve-ball.  "I don't leave him enough energy to go experimenting."

"I think I just learned more about the two of you then I really wanted to know," Davis said, coughing out a laugh.

"Didn't mean to offend your finer sensibilities," Meyers said sweetly.  Then she added, "But we fuck. A lot."

Archer nicked the cue, rattling the stick in his hand. The ball spiraled awry and wound up in the side-pocket.  He looked up to Meyers, blinked at her, then turned to Blake, who nodded with a broad grin.  Archer looked to each of us before turning back to Meyers.

"Sorry," she said, smiling sweetly. "Did I distract you?"

Amber and I took the first round of Cutthroat.

Then we restructured teams, with Meyers and Erin claiming the second round.  The thirteen-ball had barely finished rattling around its corner pocket when Erin rounded the table, handed her cue stick off to Blake and announced that she needed to get some fresh air.

"I need a drink," Amber said, collecting her empty water bottle.  She looked to me, asked, "you want anything?"

"I think I do," I nodded.

Amber's smile flashed in the light.  She turned to the group. "Anybody else?"

"A fresh Sprite?" Archer called from across the table.

I answered: "Got it."

Amber made for the door.  I followed by half-a-step as Archer said, "Anyone in for a round of nine-ball?"

"Shotgun rules?" Blake asked.

"Is there any other way?" Meyers scoffed.

Davis, Blake, Archer and Meyers paired off into their original couples.  Amber pushed through the door, and we slipped back out onto the main floor again.

Incandescent light thrashed against my eyes, and I blinked hard.  Amber cut up the aisle, angling toward the vending machine to the left of the glass doors.  She fished a handful of crumpled bills from her pocket, smoothed one out, fed it into the machine.

A soda bottle clunked into the tray as I pulled up beside her.  She fed another bill into the slot, pressed a second button.  She scooped the first bottle out, waited for the second to drop, then grabbed it as well.  I slipped a dollar of my own into the machine, made my selection.

On the far side of the vending machine, beside an industrial garbage can housing a colony of horse-flies, stood a replica Wurlitzer jukebox. Before Amber turned to head back to the Blacklight Room, I stepped to the jukebox.  Some giddypop anthem drew to a close through the overhead stereo, and I scanned the titles, finding a song worth listening to.

I dug a handful of change out of my pocket, plucked a quarter free, dropped it in the slot.  I punched in the digits for my selection – #1021 – and the 98 Degrees single gave way to a heady syncopation of thundering percussion, ragtime piano, and screaming horns. Twenty seconds into the instrumental introduction, a sandy baritone emerged.  I couldn't help smiling.  I glanced to my right and found Amber waiting, watching my expression, smiling.

"This," I told her, "is music."

She laughed. "Now you're just showing off."

My smile twitched.  Dizzy déjà vu flooded through me as I thought of a December evening when Steve Perry had crooned over Neal Schon's nimble guitar riffs, speaking of a girl who loves to laugh and loves to sing.

A girl who does everything.

2.

Neal Schon's nimble guitar riffs rained from the overhead stereo.  Steve Perry spoke of a girl who loves to move and loves to groove.  A girl who loves the lovin' things.

I leaned over the long rail of a table near the front of the Morris, one foot on the floor.  I angled the cue stick behind my back, lined up an awkward corner shot, all in hopes of impressing the first girl who had ever asked me out.  I had committed to the shot, after all. I wasn't about to back out now. Not with Helen Regan watching.

She grinned at me. "Now you're just showing off."

I laughed, because she was right. "Mayhap," I said, trying to sound nonchalant. Helen watched me, as if this convoluted play might determine the course of the entire evening. So I took the shot. Better to act than to think.

The tip struck high. The stick rattled in my hand. I watched the cue ball drive the seven ball into the rail half-an-inch to the left of the pocket. Then the cue followed the seven, clipped it on the ricochet, and knocked it into the pocket. I stood away from the table, propped myself up with the pool-stick, grinning at Helen across the table.

"That was exactly how I wanted that to look."

She nodded seriously. "`Course it is."

I laughed again, and surveyed the table. I had gone on a four-shot run. The only ball left me to sink was the eight, which sat tucked into the adjacent corner, flanked by a small battalion of striped balls. I scrutinized my options as Steve Perry gave way to Michael Aday, who remembered every little thing as if it happened only yesterday.

I could use the thirteen-ball in a combo, or jump the cue-ball and hope for a clean strike. Short of that, I could only break up the cluster and take whatever shot I might get next time around. Assuming, of course, that I didn't scratch, and that Helen didn't run the table.

"Don't tell me," she said, grinning, "that you're going to a let a six-ounce chunk of Bakelite get the best of you." She eased toward the corner where the eight-ball rested. "No way one little shot's got Fast Eddie Felson stumped."

I bent down to sight my shot, lining up the cue. "I always imagined I was more of a Vincent Lauria."

"You've got a powerful imagination," she said. Then she added, "But you've got Paul Newman's eyes."

I glanced up from the baize to see her face.  I could see that was being sincere, her eyes narrowed as if I mystified her.  As if solving me posed some irresistible challenge.

I twitched a grin at her. "Thanks."

"No problem." Then she leaned forward toward the table, bracing herself on the two rails of the corner. Her corseted tank-top accentuated her generous cleavage, and she cocked an eyebrow. "Now take your shot."

My eyes flicked up to that glorious breadth of flesh, then up again to find Helen's eyes. Her grin widened. I snapped my eyes back down to the table, found my shot, willing myself to concentrate on that black sphere. I lined up on the cue, aiming into the angle where the ball met the felt.  Ignoring that constellation of freckles below Helen's collarbone that so uncannily resembled Orion.

"Corner," I called, and took the shot. Better to act than to think. The tip struck off-center. The cue ball hopped off the table and over the thirteen ball, touched down on the far side with a thick smack, bounced clear of the eight without making contact, rebounded off the rail, chipped off the eleven and sent it and the fourteen skittering to the far end of the felt. The cue ricocheted off the thirteen and drove it into the nine, which banked off the short rail and rolled halfway up the table.

The eight-ball remained untouched. I stood back from the rail, propped myself up on the cue stick, and let go of a long breath. Helen stood as well, folding her arms across her ultramarine top as she surveyed the aftermath. "Exactly how you wanted it to look?"