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By Root 1243 0

towel and drying off with his own thick, fluffy towel. It always made him feel good to get clean, made him feel sharp and aware, and he smiled at himself in the mirror, and then, for fun, showed his teeth in a chimpanzee grin. Still naked, he brushed his teeth. They were small, well-formed, beautifully white, and he was very proud of them, as proud as he was of the small corded muscles of his arms and legs. He was skinny, bony-shouldered, yes, but it was deceptive. He watched the muscles of his forearms as he scrubbed his socks against each other and then rinsed them out; muscles he had built by doing pull-ups and the rope-climb at school; and for a moment he regretted having left school. But the feeling did not last; if he lacked the easy comfort of going to school, he had something far better—his freedom of action. That was more important than reading all those books about the white world that were such lies even he could see through them. This was much better.

Except for the thing that had wakened him from his sleep, the eye-opening, sudden awareness that he had been hustled the evening before. It had come to him with the impact of a kick in the chest: that pair of guys at the Rialto had cut him up, and done it easily. But what had made him sit up, fully awake and completely angry, was that he had let it happen. He was no mark. How had it happened? What had he been thinking about?

“Stupid!” he hissed at himself as he got dressed. Pure case of buck fever, so excited by the idea of playing there, playing the best in Portland, that he forgot all about hustling, just automatically pretended that everybody in the world was just like him and wanted to play their best, for themselves. He could just see those two guys, in the men’s toilet or someplace, splitting his money. Laughing at him. Well, they had a right to laugh; he had been a fool.

The voice of the man in the next room rose in sudden, wall-shaking anger: “But what we goin do when Cholly Chill gets heah?”

Billy made a face. Southern accent, very heavy; Billy could imitate that kind of accent easily. The guy probably came West for the easy war money, and now he was worried about what to do when winter came. Too bad for him; go back home and pick cotton and eat hog jowls, or whatever the hell they did in the South.

Do you know how lonely you are?

Billy was startled; it was not quite a voice, more than a thought. What, he thought, lonely? I been lonely all my life. You mean homesick. He laughed aloud, but it was a sick laugh, fake and unconvincing.

He had been in Ben Fenne’s an hour, practicing straight pool, when Denny and Jack Levitt came in. Looking at Denny’s bland Irish face, Billy wondered if he had been in on the hustle the day before. He did look tore-up and unshaved, as if he had spent a wild night on somebody’s money, and that was enough to make Billy suspicious of him, even though he came right over to Billy and laughed and said good morning, and introduced his friend Jack Levitt. This one was something else, too, the meanest-looking kid Billy had ever seen, with cold dead blue eyes, a head too large for his already large muscular body, blond curly hair, ruddy skin—just plain mean-looking, that was all. Billy shook his hand and felt his stubby fingers take a good hold on his own, and yet not squeeze too hard like a man trying to impress people. Billy decided he was afraid of Jack Levitt, and would do his best to have nothing to do with him.

“What’s on the fire this morning?” Denny asked him. “You want to run up to Rialto and make some gold?”

“I’ll play you, here and now,” Billy said.

“I’m broke,” Denny said. “Anyway, you’re too good for me.”

“I don’t go up to no Rialto for a while,” Billy said definitely. “You know what happened to me up there. Don’t you?”

“Sure,” Denny grinned, “you got your ass waxed. So what? There’s plenty of guys up there you can beat.”

“What’s in it for you?” Billy asked. “Why you bein so kind to me?”

“We make side bets on you, man. You win, we win.”

Billy had to laugh. “On your guts? Against your own friends?”

“Money’s