I'll stop waxing about people and places you all don't know after this, but having mentioned him in my last two blog posts, I thought I'd share this story I had written for my writing group about the time I met Eduardo.
***
Every ball seemed to pop out of the pocket that night. I tried to blame it on the dim lighting. I pretended I was distracted by the discolored projection of the NBA finals game splayed eight feet tall on the wall behind the table making each Black player a shade of purple and each White player a shade of green as they coursed down a red court. I had begun to profess an illogical argument that took attention away from the game of pool that I was losing and onto what race relations in Mars might be like. I think that's when my opponents thought I might have just been too drunk, it turned out might have just been too sober.
I lost my first game against Eduardo game sinking only one ball, the cue ball off the break. Even the ever-flexible canon known as "bar rules" says that's the end of the game. Luckily my friend Alex was failing in his pledge to quit cigarettes, so the NYC smoking ban worked in my favor. Skip Alex (both an addict and a sucker), it was my turn again. Alex wasn't even done with his cigarette when Eduardo, my opponent, only had two balls left against my full set. At my next turn, my leave was perfect. A 45 degree angle from the pocket, cue and 5-ball in-line, each a mere two diamonds apart and three to the pocket. This shot would be gimme for most players on any night, for me on that night, I decided that it would be the barometer of whether I should crawl into a corner commit seppuku for shaming my family with my terrible pool prowess. Eduardo had moved past being bored with the game, to feeling pity on me, the ultimate insult in barroom pool.
In his slurred speech that was a mixture of him being very drunk, and him having a accent, he declared 'IF you make this shot, I'll buy you a shot of Wild Tomurkey"
I wasn't sure if Tomurkey was a strange shooter from some country of which his accent I had been trying to decipher, so I simply stared at him as if he were an inebriated foreigner acting erratically.
"That's what we call Wild Turkey in Baltimore"
pause as I thought to myself "Baltimore?"
"Actually, that's what I call Wild Turkey in Baltimore, if you ordered a Wild Tomurky down there, the bartender will probably fuck you up."
I nod as I lean down to take the shot that would lead to so many more. I gently pushed the cue stick into the cue ball, and waited until the 5 disappeared into the pocket. You'd have thought that Eduardo just won the U.S. open of every applicable sport simultaneously, he was so excited.
"A round of Tomurkey!"
I was proud of myself, and Eduardo reinforced it. We did our shots, and then went to take my next shot. With the burn of Tomurky still choking my esophagus, I dropped the blue two ball, then the green six, the three and then the four. I missed at my first attempt at the seven. Still celebrating my comeback with eager fist pumps and exclamations in what I later learn to be Portugeuse, Eduardo hastily took his shot missing the fourteen with the cue ball landing on the far side of the table where my last was only one diamond from the end-rail. I leaned over, and then Eduardo leaned over me, his beard wet with sweat and whiskey grazing my neck as he told me where to aim the cue. I had known the man four minutes and I was already comfortable with this intimacy.
Doing exactly as my opponent has recommended, I kissed the seven on the left edge with a lightning hard shot, and stepped back as my last ball rolled where the correct application of vectors would have it. I walked around the table to where the cue was waiting for me, and finished the game by sinking the 8-ball, corner pocket.
Alex finished his cigarette as Eduardo was holding me against his chest, bobbing me up and down.
"Have you met my friend Alex?" I say with a wavering inflection caused by my crushed diaphragm.
"Nice to meet you Alex, Tomurkey for everyone."
Somehow, I haven't lost my job because of Wild Tomurkey. I will knock on wood for now, but I will be in the clear in mid-September when Eduardo moves back to England with his family, a fact that not only leaves me stunned that I am already losing one of my favorite new friends, but also, more confused about his regional identity as a British-Brazilian-Baltimorian.
"I wish we had met over a less expensive whiskey" I said the most recent time I saw him.
"I agree, but that's what fate gave us, so let's just be glad it wasn't Jameson or even some terrible Zambuca based shot or something," he aptly noted
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