Trick Shot Hustler

All characters in this story are over the age of 18.

*****

I blame the color of money.

No not green! I mean the movie Color of Money. Paul Newman before he became the king of salad dressing, Tom Cruise when he was still more...sane, I guess. And the still young, hot-as-hell Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, oh my god the ass on that woman. She was a fantasy of mine from the first time I saw that movie till...

As I was saying, I blame the Color of Money for my addiction to playing pool. I went out the very next day and tried to find a Balabushka pool cue only to find out it was like trying to buy a true Stradivarius violin. There out there...if you have the money.

Which I didn't.

Anyway, my shattered dreams aside, I started playing pool at the local pool hall. "Rackums,"a place that had been there since my grandfather's day and they hadn't changed anything but the ash trays in all that time. The tables might had been re-felted at some point before I was born, but I'm sure the tables themselves were played on by GIs from both World Wars.

The guy that ran the place was called Art. He had probably been there longer than the tables. Half-Indian, he looked like he was made from the same mahogany as the table legs. What that old man knew about pool and how to play it, well it could have filled volumes. I would love to say that he taught me all his secrets, but the truth is I think he was annoyed that I was even in the place. He didn't give me the time of day other than to take my money for a table.

Nope, I learned to play by watching others play and by trying to do what they did. Sometimes that worked, but not always. Then I made an amazing discovery. There were books on playing pool. Books that would show me how to do the things I couldn't figure out by watching.

Of course, I needed a place to learn to play without looking like a newbie. I didn't want to look like a complete beginner down at Rackums. That was like throwing chum in the water for sharks and jumping in to pet them when they showed up. What I really needed was a pool table of my own.

Again, back to the money issue... not the color of it, the lack of it.

So using that classic strategy, I did what everyone without funds does: I mooched off my friends, or as the case would be. a friend. His name is Greg Thompson, and we have been friends since high school. He had gone into the telecommunications business right out of school, meaning he went to work at a T-Mobile store selling cell phones, and now at the age of twenty two he was...still selling cell phones at a T-Moble store. I think he was assistant to the assistant floor manager.

But...he had a pool table in his basement. Okay, the still-living-at-home-with-his-parents guy's parents had a pool table in their basement, but that is all semantics. He had a table! And he said I could come over and play whenever I wanted to play. That was all that mattered!

So on one of my typical Saturday afternoons with nothing to do, that was where I was. In my friend's parent's basement shooting pool...by myself. If you've never played pool by yourself, it can be the most challenging game you've ever played, or it can be the most boring thing you've ever done in the world.

I had been playing for about two hours. I was getting past the challenge stage.

There was, unfortunately no one there for me to play against. My friend was off at "Cell Phone Hell" trying to teach a seventy year old lady how to program her contacts list. Not that playing him was much of a challenge anyway. He really sucks at pool. Now his dad, Jack? His dad can give me a hell of a game and doesn't mind playing for hours.

It's kind of sad that I'm almost a better friend with his dad in fact, than with him. Jack was always a good one to sit with between games,talking over a beer. I think at times he sees me as the son he wished he had. I get all choked up when I think that.

Then there is Casandra.

Greg's younger sister. At some point back when we were in high school I made a joke about his younger sister being in the idde-bitty titty-comittee... and she heard me say it.

Yeah...

She hates my guts with all the tenacity of a pit bull on a rope. She never spoke to me again, ignored me if I said hi, closed the door in my face when I came over. I can't prove it but I think she was the one that hacked my Facebook account.

I swear on a stack of Bibles ten feet high, those pictures are Photoshopped!

Anyway, since just out of high school (vengeful, sadistic, computer-genius, younger sisters aside) that pool table at the Thompson's house might as well have been mine for all the time I spent over there playing. I would practice things, trick shots, ball English, stuff like that...over there till I had them perfect. Then when I was sure I had the whatever-it-was-I-was-trying-to-learn-to-do-perfected I would go to Rackums and try to use that newly acquired skill to hustle the local players. Men who had probably seen that same shit before I was even a gleam in my daddy's eye.

I lost a lot of five dollar bills to Art's denture-grinning friends in those years.

It was in the wake of one of those educationally expensive butt-whoopings that I went to the Thompson's basement and, taking my old Brunswick Challenger in hand, proceeded to play till my eyes were blurring. I was so pissed at myself. This was no longer just a hobby, this was quickly becoming what I wanted to do for a living. I wanted to play pool for a living, and here I was getting my ass handed to me by a bunch of geriatric cases at a local dime-a-play pool hall.

With the balls being ignored for the moment, I was sitting with the edge of my butt on a wood stool, leaning my head against the side of my cue, rolling the hard wood across my eyebrows to try to relieve the growing headache between my eyes. I looked up when I heard the basement door open and a rapid fire patter of feet down the stairs.

Casandra in a towel.

Casandra in only a towel.

Casandra who, upon seeing me, jumped like a snake had bitten her and screamed at the top of her lungs!

In fact she screamed so loudly she nearly scared me.

"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING DOWN HERE!"

Moving the cue out from my cheek, I spun it in my fingers, caught it, and then made it tap the floor.

"Here is a clue," I said, trying to get the first shots in for what I could see was going to be an epic fight.

"Fucking sneaking bastard, hiding down here in the basement! I didn't know you were here! What if I had come down here naked?" She pulled her towel tighter around her body.

"I would have gotten the free floor show. Look, Cassy I'm sorry..."

"DONT CALL ME CASSY!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Okay, I wonder what that's about? Everyone in her family calls her that. All her friends call her that. I guess I'm not listed as either one so I have to go with full first names why she calls me lovely pet names like bastard. I leaned my pool cue back against my cheek and waited for her to leave so I could get back to this game of pool solitaire.

"I don't fucking like it that you get to come and go in my house like this. You're not family; you sure as hell aren't a friend of mine, yet I have to put up with you skulking around in the basement! You're probably why I keep losing panties from the laundry room, you fucking pervert!"

Alrighty then, not taking that one without something said.

"If your underwear is going missing you might want to look under your brother's bed. Panty sniffing is more his speed than mine." I absently let the end of my cue rub a circle on the floor. I just wish she would get whatever clothes she wanted to get and go her ass back upstairs. I could tell by the look my comment made that that was not likely to happen anytime soon.

"You nasty-minded shit!" She looked around for something like she was trying to find something to throw at me. "I'm going to tell Greg you said that! No! I'm going to tell my dad you said that."

"Feel free, but you still might want to go check under Greg's bed for your underwear. I know I saw something pink and lacy poking out from under there the last time I was up there. When I mentioned them, he claimed they were a gift from his girlfriend."

"He doesn't fucking have a girlfriend. He has a couple of what claim to be women that he flirts with on World of Warcraft." She stopped and then her face changed expression to one of embarrassed disgust. "Pink? With lace around the top edge?"

"Thong," I said simply.

Casandra's face turned a brilliant shade of red. I just did hear the low whisper. "I'm going to fucking murder him." In a towering-rage filled huff, she stalked to the laundry room and slammed the door. I heard a long, steady stream of cuss words begin to peel the wallpaper off the walls.

With a chuckle, I went back to my game.

"Oh Greg, you sick fucker," I muttered as I leaned forward to shoot the five-ball into the corner pocket. It was an easy shot that I managed to make look impossibly tricky. I mean, thank god I called the corner pocket at the last second.

"Shit shots don't count," I said to myself disgusted, and went to get the ball-in-hand. I looked up when Casandra opened the laundry room door. She was dressed in loose jogging shorts and a tank top. I saw the straps of her sports bra. It must have been one that matched the thong in her brother's bedroom; it was the same color. "Do they?" I asked her out the blue.

"Do they what?" she stopped and looked back at me.

"Just say yes," I told her as I chalked the end of my cue.

"The hell I will. Do they what?" she demanded.

"Do shit shots count?" I asked, no longer interested in what I was trying to get her to do. I went back to trying to get the six ball to go where I wanted it to go.

"No, they don't. If you don't call it it doesn't count," she said with assurance. "Unless you're talking about the song by the band Drive-by Truckers. Then yes they do count."

"What?"

"Shit shots count if the table is tilted." She sang a line from a song. "They're like one of my most favorite bands."

"Most... favorite? Most? Favorite? Most! Where the hell did you take English classes?" I asked leaning back from the shot I was about to miss by a mile.

"The same crappy public school you went to! Unlike you though, I graduated." She glanced down at the table then back at me. "Don't you get tired of playing with yourself?"

I coolly looked up at her smirking face.

"Do you?" I asked in a low whisper. I loved the blush that came to her face. I grinned at her embarrassment. "Don't try and dish it out if you can't take it right back."

Leaning in, I didn't break eye contact with her as I sank the six-ball into the corner.

"You're so full of shit it isn't funny, you know that?" she said, cocking her head and shifting her weight onto one foot. I noticed then that the last couple of years had been more than kind to her. She was still not much more than flat chested but she had a very nice pair of legs, and from what I could see, she was filling out those shorts she was wearing rather nicely from behind.

"How so?" I asked, looking for the seven ball. Not finding it, and remembering I had already sunk it in the break, I did find the eight. In a place I didn't like it to be at all. Hum...

"You're trying to come off like you're some kind of hot shot. You're nothing more than a four-eyed, high school drop out, trying to hustle pool to earn a living. How fucking pathetic."

Ouch...Dig to the bone while you're at it.

Looking up at her, I tried to find a quick response to that, but there weren't words. No... there were not words.

"Eight in the right side."

Bringing my cue stick up till the end was nearly touching the ceiling, I popped down on the cue ball with enough force that it jumped into the air. When it came down, it hit the eight, kissing the ball on its black ass, then rolled down the side rail and tapped the nine-ball. The nine rolled to the corner pocket and hung there. The cue stopped right where I wanted it to be. And the eight dropped.

"Nine in the corner." I watched the cue spin over and drop the nine-ball.

"Luck, as much as anything," she said dismissively.

Picking up the chalk I dressed the end of my cue.

"Can you play?" I asked as I leaned my stick against the notch in the stool. I started to rack the balls for another game of nine ball.

"Yeah. Why?"

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out my wallet. Inside was the very last of my weekend winnings. I had given the punks at another local hole a thrashing. Of course they didn't know where to hold their sticks for the most part, but they wanted to play, and they had cash. Then, feeling at the top of my game, I had gone to Rackums. Mistake. Looking at Casandra, I wondered if I was about to make another one. I had let her tone finally get to me. I pulled three twenties from the wallet and laid them on the stool.

"Lets see what you can do. Twenty a game, best of five."

She looked at the cash...just sitting there, all willing to give itself to her. I could see those new shoes she was thinking about written on her face. She moved a few feet closer to look at the money. Then she grimaced. It was not an unattractive look, given it was not far from her normal pissed-at-the-world expression.

"I don't have sixty bucks."

I eased my butt around her and hung the wooden-diamond rack back on the wall.

"Barter, then."

"Do what?" she asked turning to follow me.

"We will play for... something...the equivalent of sixty dollars." I met her eyes with mine. " You said I'm just pathetic. Surely you can't lose a game to someone who is pathetic." I let my smirk, the one I practiced to perfection in the mirror, appear. "That would be worse than pathetic."

"What you got in mind?" she gave me a disgusted look. "I'll tell you now not to get that perverted mind of yours to even thinking about sex or me showing you any part of me naked. It isn't going to happen."

I leaned the end of my cue till it touched my collarbone.

"Of course not." I slowly let my eyes drop from her face, down her body and then back up to her face. My, my, how she had developed. "That would be some seriously high stakes pool playing, there. Hell, I would have to take out a bank loan to cover that kind of bet."

She rolled her eyes at the flattery.

"What then?" she asked looking over at the wall rack of pool cues.

"Well, twice now you have called me a pervert. If you're going to name me that I might as well show you I can be one. I want the pair of panties you took off before you took your shower." I nodded my chin towards her still-damp hair.

Her jaw dropped.

"What?"

"You want to label me a pervert...well, I can be one. I promise you I can. I'll put sixty dollars against a pair of your underwear." I pointed my cue at the stool with the money, and my piece of chalk. "You get twenty dollars every game you win. If I beat you three times I get your panties."

"Are you out of your mind?" She started towards the stairs then stopped and slowly turned to look back at me. Her eyes glanced to the money. "What are you going to do with them?"

Setting my pool cue across the corner, I moved over till I was standing right in front of her. I noticed then that she had the most adorable splattering of freckles across her nose. Up close she smelled of peach shampoo and vanilla body wash.

Leaning in closer to her ear I whispered, "This pervert, is going to take them home, bury my nose into the exact spot where your sweet pussy lips rested, and breathe in the scent of you as I slowly jack myself off while thinking of you, and fantasizing about fucking you the whole time...That's what a pervert would do, right?"

To be honest, I was expecting her to run up the stairs like a frightened mouse at about that point. What I didn't expect was for her to take a deep breath, try to hide a soft moan, then lick her lips and hide her blush by looking away from me. Her eyes locked on the stool with the three bills, held down by a cube of chalk.

New shoes? Knowing a twisted pervert would be masturbating to your underwear?

I can honestly say I have never had to make a decision like that. That being said, I can give you no clue as to what was going on behind those dark amber eyes. I watched her face as she thought it over for a couple of seconds. You could have knocked me over with a feather when she walked to the wall and got down a cue stick.

"Nine-ball right?" she asked looking at the table.

"That's what I racked for." I picked up my cue. "We can play straight pool if you prefer. Makes me no difference."

She shook her head, her blond hair dancing across her bare shoulders.

"You can break," I told her when she didn't move.

"You sure?" she asked confused. "You don't want to flip a coin or something?"

"Ladies first," I told her like she should have known.

She looked at me and her face assumed that grimace-smirk again.

"Oh, you're being such an gentleman. If we weren't playing to give you the ability to satisfy a sick sex fantasy, I might believe it." She moved around to the head of the table and centered the cue.

I just leaned on my stick and watched. Her brother, Greg, had called it my Gandalf pose. My eyes drifted to the curve of Casandra's hip as she leaned a little, and then I watched her ass as she broke. I should have been paying attention to the start of the game, but those damn jogging shorts were an enjoyable distraction.

Looking at the table, I saw what she had. For me it might been a challenge, but for her I'm sure it was a nightmare. She had manged to sink the two on the break but had severely snookered herself on the three. She was frozen against the six ball. As I planned out what I would have done in that I also watched her working out what to try to do.

"Fuck it," she said softly.

Alrighty, then. The cue ball hit the six, scattered every ball on the table to the four winds, and then sunk the seven. As I watched, the cue had the luck to come to rest in the exact spot I would have chosen to place it for ball-in-hand.

"Your shot," she said softly.

I had to restrain the "no shit" look from my face, as I walked around her and settled into place.

"You do know you can move the cue to where you want it, right?" she asked, just as I was about to shoot. I stopped and looked up at her.

"I know," I told her. Leaning forward, I touched the felt where I wanted the cue to end up. Taking my shot, I watched the three drop and the cue slide back to right were I had touched.

I can't say that I ran the table easily, but she did not get a shot after that. Her "fuck it" moment cost her the first game easily. I stood there and admired, what I was coming to appreciate was a very nice ass while she racked the next game.

As she watched, I sank the eight and the four on the break then made my way all the way through to the six before I rushed a shot and missed a pocket.

"Hah! My turn now, bitch," she crowed and moved around to take the easy shot on the six I had left her. The seven gone, she dropped the eight with no trouble, then the nine ball followed to give her her first win and to tie us up. She turned to me and stuck her tongue out. "Nan, nan, stinky boo boo!"

"Seriously?"

"Oh, shut up an rackum ya pervert. You're not getting my panties at this rate, and I'm going to be high-stepping in the new stiletto heels you're going to be buying me."

As I gathered the balls I smiled. "I knew you were going to use it to buy shoes. What color?" I asked as I lifted the rack and stepped back from the table.

She game me a strange look.

"Why do you want to know that?" she asked, as she leaned forwards to break.

"So I can picture you wearing them as I'm fantasizing about fucking you of course." I smiled as that image of her naked except for a pair of high heels appeared before my mind. She gave me a fuck off look and leaned in to take her shot."You would look sexy in nothing but a pair of red shoes. Tell me, do you like anal sex?"