From Here to Eternity_ The Restored Edit - Jones, James [126]
“Come ahead. You play one?”
“Not enough to count. But I like to listen though. I’ll see you then,” he growled harshly, almost dislikeably, plainly not wanting any more about it, and walked away, obviously afraid he would be thanked.
Prew grinned after him and went back to scrubbing down, feeling good now, feeling really fine, feeling wonderful, with the Ferriswheel sickness coming in his belly and the heavy, pendulous, full bellying swinging maleness rising, and with Maggio waiting on him in the Dayroom to play pool.
They played straight rotation, no slop and call your shot, the same difference between this game and plain rotation slop as between three cushion billiards and straight billiards, which was a game for amateurs who could not make them any other way, and tonight Prew, feeling very happily the brother of the whole wide world, was hot. It was a pretty even match between them, the Atlantic Avenue champ versus the boy who made his spending money on the bum by taking on the local stars in strange smalltown poolrooms, but Prew had the edge, a very slight one.
Friday leaned on his elbow in one of the windows between the alcove and the Dayroom that had once been a porch and watched, interested but plainly only putting in the time until they got the guitars out. After a while, men even came in from the Dayroom to watch.
Maggio, holding his cue, perched between shots in the other window like an egotistic robin, his stiff blocked hat proudly on his head, pushed back to show curls damp with concentration, happily pointing out the peaks requiring esoteric appreciation, in case the audience had missed them.
“This character is a poolshooter,” he announced, with a thumb at Prew. “I know. I can judge. Brooklyn is the home of the original poolshooters, as well as the sharpie pingpong players. Man, what I would not give to have this character in the corner poolroom in my hometown is not worth picking up and put in your pocket. I’d dress him up in overhalls and a straw hat and put a grass in his teeth, and I would make a whole mint of ghelt off him.”
“Nine ball off the end rail and side rail in the cross corner pocket,” Prew said, and made it.
“See what I mean?” Maggio chortled to the audience.
“Maybe I’ll come home with you some day, Angelo,” Prew said, chalking up. “For a visit.”
“Oh no,” Maggio protested. “Not me, friend. My old lady would kick us both out on our can. She is prejudiced against dogfaces. Every since one of them from the Army Base laid my next biggest sister. She has no use for uniforms.”
At nine Andy came in from the Guardhouse, his bugle still down his back, and they broke it up. “Soons I blow Tattoo now I’m off till Taps,” he said, going through and out the other door. “Somebody bring the git-tars out.”
“I’ll get em,” Friday said, “I’ll get em,” coming to life now and starting for the stairs at a run.
“Can I come along and listen?” Angelo said, knowing this was a private session. “I wont say a word. Not a single request.”
“I thought you didnt like hillbilly,” Prew grinned.
“I dont,” Angelo said fervently. “But you guys dont play hillbilly. With Gene Autry its hillbilly, with you guys its music.”
“Okay, come on. I wonder what happened to our friend Bloom tonight,” Prew said, walking out to the quad. “I aint seen him.”
“I aint seen him around,” Angelo said. “He probly went to town. To see his queer. I see him all a time down to the Waikiki Tavern when I go down to see mine. He’s got himself a steady now, ony his aint got the money mine has got.”
“Maybe he dont want the money.”
“Maybe not. Maybe he’s after a shoulder to cry on. The son of a bitch.”
They met the others in the darkness of the quad, Friday eagerly dragging the two guitars, and after Andy finished Lights Out they sat on the back steps of the kitchen, playing the blues, but softly in the darkness so a crowd would not gather now when they did not want a crowd but only the privacy of their own communion. Around the quadrangle the CQs one by one flipped the lights off