Too many moves. Too many homes. Not enough people who actually cared.
“Fuck it,” he said—about all of it—as he set the bottle down, missed the side of the table, and the beer spilled over the floor. “Oh, damn it.”
“Leave it,” Bob said dismissively. He tossed down another ten on the stack of money. “That’ll cover it.”
Morgan wiped his wet hand on his hip and then bent over the table again, He lined up a different shot this time. The key to a good hustle wasn’t the mechanics of it. It was being able to figure out what the other guy wanted. You could hustle some people, and they’d just enjoy the art of it. Most wanted money, but Bob wanted to humiliate someone—the waitress, his friends, a cocky, kind of dim stranger.
Hell, Morgan hadn’t even had to steal a set of keys with a fancy fob. Bob didn’t care how much the car was worth. He just cared that he could make someone crawl to get it back.
“… yeah, well you didn’t hear it from me, but they finally found Sammy’s body. Big surprise, the kid was dead. It’ll hit the news in a few days, but I get to hear about it first, like it or not. My dad’s obsessed with it,” Bob said in an aside to one of his friends as he tossed back a shot. “I mean, obviously it could have been me, and he would have prosecuted if they’d managed to make an arrest. Inside tip? The mom did it. She was a big slut, I’ve heard, and the kid cramped her style.”
Morgan clenched his jaw and then made himself relax it as he lined up the shot. Sometimes it was a pleasure to fuck people over.
Morgan exhaled, took the shot, and spun the cue ball off the last solid red left on the table. It bounced off the side of the table and hit the eight ball at just the right angle to clack the black ball satisfyingly into the corner pocket.
“Hah!” Morgan whooped as he rolled his stick onto the table. “Fuck me! Finally a bit of luck! About time.”
Applause broke out through the bar, wider spread than the halfhearted “Do it” chant that Bob’s friends were able to muster. The cash he flashed kept Bob’s ass on a seat, but that didn’t mean any of the locals actually liked him. Even one of Bob’s yes-men forgot his place enough to clap briefly until someone shoved him.
Bob’s mouth twitched at the corner as he flashed an angry glance around the bar. He tightened his hand on the cash.
“Rematch,” he said, a sick smile thin on his mouth. “Double or nothing.”
Morgan reached over the table and covered Bob’s hand with his. The contact made Bob exhale shakily, and Morgan let the sneer he’d felt all night curve his mouth.
“I don’t think so,” he said as he peeled Bob’s sweaty fingers off the stack of notes. “I’ve got better things to do tonight, and you can’t play worth shit.”
Surprised humiliation flushed a hot pink under Bob’s golf-club tan. One of the locals laughed, anonymous behind their whiskey and turned backs.
“You….” Bob licked his lips and looked around for support. “You can’t just take my money and walk. It’s only fair I have a chance to win it back.”
“That’s not how this works,” Morgan said. He folded his winnings in half and tucked them into his hip pocket. The smart thing to do was walk away, leave Bob here with enough pride to save face and come back another night to pluck him again. Problem was Morgan had been taught to play pool by some mean old bastards, and they’d taught him well. He let the last vestiges of good nature slide from his face, and he grinned. “Come on, if you’d won, I’d be blowing you for my car keys about now, right? What’s fair about that?”
Bob’s face darkened to fury.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he spluttered as he grabbed the pool cue. He tightened his fingers around the length of polished wood, knuckles white and bony. “Give me back my money, you dirty bastard.”
“Make me.”
“You think I won’t?” Bob asked. He jabbed the stick at Morgan and scored a chalked line over his shoulder. Morgan let it go as he fell back a step. The bar had security footage, and he didn’t want Captain Macintosh to be in any doubt that it was self-defense. “My dad’s a judge. You think anyone is going to care if I beat the shit out of some drifter that… that fucking tried to grab my balls?”
He looked around sharply for support. His friends shifted back, visibly sweating under the pressure, but after a second, a wave of reluctant nods stuttered through the group.
“Yeah,” one of them agreed uncomfortably. “We all saw it, all right, dude? So just give him his money back and move on.”
Behind the counter, the barman grimaced. “I’m going to call the cops,” he said loudly. “Take it outside if you want to make a mess.”
“I like it right here,” Bob said. “Where the witnesses are that this guy started it.”
Bob swung the stick this time. It whistled through the air in a short, vicious arc aimed at Morgan’s temple. Morgan threw his arm up to block, and the stick hit his forearm with enough force to crack the seasoned polished ash. The broken end of the stick gouged a long, ragged scrape in his arm that slashed diagonally from his elbow toward his wrist.
The flash of sweat-sour anger that tainted the back of Morgan’s throat caught him by surprise. He’d had worse from worse. There was no reason to feel like it would fix everything if he could just punch Bob’s perfect veneers down his throat. But maybe this rich brat’s tantrum over his pocket money was just the final straw in the shit of Morgan’s life.
Maybe it wouldn’t fix anything, but he’d feel better if Bob had to pick up his teeth off the floor.
Morgan grabbed the broken stick halfway down its length and yanked on it. Bob staggered forward, glass crushed under his rubber soles, and Morgan drove his fist into the soft dough of spoiled stomach. Bob grunted yeasty breath into Morgan’s face as he hunched over and let the stick slip from his fingers. It clattered onto the ground, and Morgan kicked it under the table before he shoved Bob away from him.
One of Bob’s coterie yelled, caught up in drunken enthusiasm, and lunged at Morgan. He swung a wild uppercut that Morgan dodged, and then the guy barreled into him. It didn’t do much, but the example was enough to drag a handful of Bob’s other friends off the sidelines to pile on.
