The first time Linus discovers the pool table in the basement is sometime after he stops teething and sometime before he starts stealing cookies from the cookie jar, when he’s just tall enough to reach into the pockets on tip-toe. His parents get into a fight over it, mainly because mom thinks he has swallowed one of the balls when he got about half a pound heavier.
Then they find the eight ball in his diaper.
The next day, mom puts all the balls back in the rack on the very top shelf, and dad buys him a new toy and teaches him how to hide things better.
*
The first time Linus plays pool is when he is eight, sliding from shadow to shadow in the basement, watching dad win them a cottage in Maui.
One of the guys, dark suit and a puff of cigarette smoke around his head, laughs loudly and bellows, “The day I agree to that, Caldwell, is the day your son beats me at pool.” Bobby throws chips onto the table and says, “Well, today might be your lucky day.” The man splashes wine down the front of his jacket as he laughs, “I’d like to see you try and steal a victory, you cocky bastard.”
Bobby waves Linus out from under one of the bar stools, then, and, while handing him a cue, mutters, “Don’t tell your mother. You need practice anyways.”
Linus can barely reach over the top of the table, and the guy he is playing against keeps looking at him and chuckling.
The guy is good – real good; it’s always click and thump and sink, perfect almost every time. Linus has never even played pool. He takes the cue, though, and pokes at the balls, and sometimes he is lucky and sometimes he isn’t; he breaks about fifteen rules, but he doesn’t know what those rules are and the guy doesn’t care much over the chuckling and the drinking, so Linus isn’t about to point it out.
The guy is good, but Linus is better. By the end, there are only stripes on the table – every single one that the guy swears he’s sunk already. He is drunk though, so no one pays him mind. It even takes him four and a half trips around the table to find the eight ball in a corner pocket. He doesn’t remember sinking it, so he concedes that Linus must’ve just gotten really lucky.
Dad tells mom about their new cottage over pancakes the next morning. When mom looks suspiciously between the two of them, dad just smiles and pours syrup on Linus’ plate.
*
During dad’s 45th birthday dinner, Linus switches their pieces of ice cream cake. Then he gives dad a new set of cues and five eight balls.
When dad chuckles and ruffles Linus’ hair and gets that proud gleam in his eyes, Linus thinks that it’s because dad knows he has had to steal either the cues or the money to get them.
*
“Bobby has a lot of faith in you.”
“Fathers are like that.” Linus stops fiddling with his glasses long enough to see Danny straighten in his seat. “Oh, he didn’t tell you?”
Danny just keeps looking at him. Linus shrugs a little, to himself. “He didn’t want me trading on his name.”
Danny can sell you anything, they say. “Do this job, and you’ll be trading on your own.”
Linus isn’t listening when Danny makes a comment about feeling up stockbrokers, not really. But he doesn’t miss a beat after Danny’s compliment, either. Just glances up from the tickets and says, “Las Vegas, huh.”
That night, after dinner, he plays pool with dad – and beats him, without even stealing the eight ball.
*
The first time Linus meets Rusty, he gets an itch that spreads from his fingertips, the kind that makes him switch the positions of all the balls on the pool table and then lie his way out of it without breaking a sweat.
They aren’t playing pool, though, so Linus just tugs on the cuff of his jacket, shifting from foot to foot and chewing new pieces of gum every five minutes. Rusty leans against the kitchen counter and glances at Linus every now and then.
“You scared?”
Linus looks up, and Rusty’s adjusting his collar. “No. You?”
The corner of Rusty’s lips tilts up. “I’ve done this more times than the number of gum you have in your pocket, kid.” He smirks and pushes lazily away from the table. “You need practice.”
When Rusty walks away, Linus considers telling him that at least he still has his wallet. He stops himself though, because really, two hundred dollars can buy a lot of gum.
*
The first time Linus plays pool with Rusty, everyone is in the theater watching “Ocean’s 11.” Rusty claims that he doesn’t want to waste his time, but Linus knows he's only saying that because he doesn’t want to think about what message Danny is trying to send him. But hey, if Rusty thinks getting his ass kicked over pool is better than watching a movie –
“Stop cheating, kid.”
Linus shrugs. “Who says I’m cheating?”
Rusty just arches his eyebrow, like, “because I’m good and you’re not, so how the fuck did you just beat me?” But he just asks, “Do you ever stop chewing that fucking gum?”
Linus shrugs again and leans his cue against the table. “Do you ever put your wallet anywhere but in your jacket pocket?”
Rusty smirks and shakes his head, looking at the ceiling. “A few bucks doesn’t matter to me, kid, I’m just letting you practice.”
Linus snorts. “Right. Kicking your ass at pool doesn’t matter to me, either.” He tugs on the bill of his baseball cap and pulls out a couple hundreds that Rusty had in his back pocket a second ago. “But I did. And now I also have money for more gum.”
The look on Rusty’s face is a cross between irritation and amusement as he glances up from chalking his cue. He looks at Linus for a while, then, “You up for another game?”
Linus eyes the door, then shrugs and picks up his cue. Rusty doesn’t have any more money he wants to steal, he knows, but a little more practice never hurt anyone.
*
“Okay, tell me about Benedict?”
“That guy’s a machine.”
Rusty licks his finger seven times while Linus is debriefing him.
“You really can’t pick him – the guy’s as smart as he is ruthless.” Linus can see Rusty smirking, his face turned away from the stairs. “Last guy they caught cheating in here? He not only sent him up for ten years, but he had the bank seize his house, and then he bankrupted –”
“– his brother-in-law’s tractor dealership, I heard.” Rusty gives Linus a look and licks his finger again. He looks down and then back towards the stairs. “Stop.”
Linus stops. “What?”
Rusty nods at Linus’ feet. “Shuffling.”
Linus shifts a little and puts his hand on the railing. “Why?”
“It’s annoying.”
“Hmm.” Linus licks his lips. “I will when you will.”
Rusty looks at him then, his finger poised in the air, a bit of cocktail sauce on his knuckle.
Rusty’s “will what?” is only half-way out of his mouth when Linus leans over and licks the sauce off. Rusty almost drops his dish before he realizes that there is no dish to drop anymore. Linus shoves a shrimp into his mouth, then, and turns back towards the stairs.
“Huh.” Rusty clears his throat and suppresses the urge to shuffle. “So, how good is Benedict at pool?”
Linus turns around after a second, eyes lingering over Rusty’s tie and collar before settling on his lips. “Worse than me and better than you.” He smirks, eyes flickering up to Rusty’s. “But the man needs practice.”
*
Linus likes to know where everything is when he plays a game. He knows that there’s one striped ball in each of the corner pockets at the head of the table, that there’s a solid one with it in the left pocket and none in the right, that he’s about to change that very soon, just because he likes symmetry.
What he can’t know is that Rusty will rest his elbows right next to his arm, that Rusty will lean a shoulder into his, that Rusty will run his fingers along his collar while he’s aiming.
He can’t know it, but he can predict it, so there’s still some satisfaction in switching the stripe with the eight ball right before Rusty sinks it. When Rusty arches an eyebrow at him, he just shrugs and racks up another game.
This time, when he slides the bills out of Rusty’s back pocket, he lets his fingers slip a little. Rusty doesn’t look up from aiming, but Linus knows he’s smirking.
“Don’t you have enough money for gum?”
Linus picks up his cue. “Yeah, but I need practice.”
*
The first time they play pool together with the group, Linus gets about two grand richer. During the second game, though, when Frank is breaking, Rusty grabs Linus and shoves him up against the wall.
“You don’t need that much gum money,” Rusty says, eyes flashing, like he means it.
Linus just shrugs. “I need practice.”
“Bullshit.”
The tip of the cue makes a blue smudge against Linus’ collar when Rusty presses close and mumbles “bullshit,” again, against his lips.
That’s the last time they’ve played pool together with the group. Or rather, the group has played pool with them.
*
The first time Linus doesn’t know where everything is in a game, he’s got Rusty’s hand in his hair and one of Rusty’s legs between his own, and Rusty is tonguing “stop chewing that fucking gum” into the side of his neck.
By the time they knock over the cue rack and Rusty pushes him onto the pool table, though, Linus decides he doesn’t mind. He’s got his fingers around Rusty’s wallet when Rusty bites his bottom lip, and his hand freezes. Rusty lifts his head, then, laughs and reaches behind him, grabs Linus’ wrist and pins it above his head.
When Linus gasps, Rusty smirks against his mouth, says, “This you need practice at," and bites his lip again.
It’s painful when Linus flips the two of them over and Rusty has to roll on top of five balls and a cue, but Linus settles on his waist and cocks his head, eyeing the bills in his hand. “Just not with anyone other than you, right?”
Rusty runs a hand under Linus’ shirt. “Damn straight.” The corner of his lips is tilted up when he grabs the back of Linus’ neck and pulls Linus’ head down.
When Rusty sneaks a hand into Linus’ pocket to steal back his money, Linus lets him.
*
“Will you admit that I’m better than you at this?”
Linus looks around. “No.”
Rusty arches an eyebrow. Linus shrugs. “At least I wouldn’t have picked the pool table.”
Rusty laughs. Looks around, and laughs again.
Linus smirks when Rusty traces a finger down his neck. “But I do admit I need more practice at it.”