2024-12-14 - Crushing Victory for Ball In The Pocket

SNAP!

THUD THUD THUD THUD

Colt has his beer bottle resting on the edge of the pool table. He's just made a break shot against...himself. Despite the racket it's made, none of the balls actually sunk into any pockets. They spin around aimlessly and careen off the sides and each other. Colt sighs. He'll never be good at this game.

Harlan wanders into Lucky's after a post shift shower, wearing old jeans, a white v-neck t-shirt, and a leather jacket thrown over it. Hair still damp from a shower, the sometime sword swallower plunks down on a stool at the bar and orders up a whiskey rocks. She waits for the relatively simple drink to be poured, and her gaze wanders along to Colt at the pool table cracking balls.

"You interested in somebody to play against, baby, or you just like fiddling with your own stick?"

Colt - mid-swig of beer, eyes skyward - curves his pupils downward to point toward the voice from the bar.

A beat.

Colt chokes on his beer and quickly bends forward as he is forced to lower his bottle (mouth still on the opening to minimize spillage). He sputters a couple moments then stands back straight. With a rasped voice he nods and stammer, "Uh..Y-yeah... You play?" Then glides fingers through the side of his hair to play some shit off like he's smooth.

The smile that answers Harlan's sputtering suggests that whole thing was absolutely on purpose. She steeples her fingers over her glass on the bar, snags a napkin, and makes her way over to the pool tables. "It's a stick, it's some stripey balls, there are holes." Harlan leans against the table and offers over a napkin from between two scissored fingers. "How hard could it be?"

Colt takes his time plucking the napkin from Harlan's fingers. He's buying himself time as his male-brain processes the beginning of this conversation. Are we talking about pool? This is a tricky one to navigate...

Thus, making no comment or commitment to the hardness of sticks, or the quality of balls, he heh hehs. "Yeah, so...hey, I'm Colt."

"Harlan." Says the napkin-bringer. Since she's going to the wall to secure her own cue, seems like it might be pool she's discussing. Nothing's ever sure in a bar type situation. "You sink any, or you wanna start over?" Harl surveys the table as she lazily chalks her stick blue.

"Think I've seen you zipping around in a golf cart. That blur you?"

"Oh cool name!" 🤙

Colt grabs the triangle thingy and starts moving balls around to collect them inside. "We can start over..." he clearly has no clue what he's doing or even really how to play this game. But he laughs and nods, "Yup! That's me. Golf carts. Forklifts. Trucks. Whatever's needed to get things places. Gotta keep the supply chain moving."

There! All the balls are collected into a perfect triangle (albeit out of order). Colt takes the frame away and sets it aside. "I haven't seen you around before, though..." which isn't really that odd. There are tens of thousands employees.

"Yours too. Anyone named after a vintage gun gets at least four cool points all on that alone." Harlan leans over to roll a bunch of the balls to one end of the table, then digs around for the triangle-shaped plastic doohickey to rack them up, alternating solids and stripes. Are they even in the right order? Eh, who knows. Her hands move swiftly like she's confident about it, and then she scoots it to the center of the table and slides the rack off, tucking it away.

"Been keepin' to myself," she says, by way of answering the whys. "Had some roommate drama, left the island for a few days. Guess you could call it some local color. She said I have too many knives, I said it's my job." She shrugs. "I came back to a suite painted pink. I'm out asap."

"Oh so you're a performer!" Colt surmises! Knives as a job? Precious few options.

Colt takes a swig of beer (no choking this time) and goes ahead and sets the cue ball. He snaps off a break shot and...it is lackluster as all get out. There is a satisfying "snap" sound but then only two or three balls break away from the herd, and none of them anywhere near a pocket.

"Let's see...knives...knives..." he snaps his fingers and grins. "VC?"

"Sometimes." Harlan replies, rolling a little chalk square along the bumper of the table with a gentle flick of her wrist. "Sometimes I'm in the midway barking for other shows. People never know where to go 'till you tell 'em how great something is." She smiles a little at that. "Least I tell myself that to give meaning to my days in the park."

She picks up her drink, now slightly melty with ice, a smoked flavor of the whiskey opened up by that addition of a little bit of water. "Not bad. Next time, a little harder." And with that, she leans over the table, lines up a shot, and cracks the cue ball into the pack. Stripes and solids scatter, but two clunk down into a pocket. One solid, one stripe. "Well, there I go scoring a point for each of us. You got a preference on balls?"

"Solid.." Colt replies. "I'll take solid."

Then he stands there. Is it his turn? Doesn't she get another turn since she sunk one? Whose turn is it?

"That's cool..." like he didn't fully track with what she was saying about her job. "Yeah, I love working at the park too. Been here since just before it opened. I know they whole place around. Ins and outs. Back alleys." Swig o' beer. "If you ever need anything you can shoot me a text. Some times I'm out and about and can pick up a beverage or snack or whatever."

Seems like Harlan decided she'll try again, since she did make one. Maybe she does know the rules! Leaning over the table, she lines up a bank shot. "You been here that long and still here?" She glances up, then looks back to the shot she's taking and—

Banks it a little too hard. her stripe just missed the side pocket, ricocheting right off the corner of the bumper. Bad luck. "How are you at getting other things? Like imported stuff." She straightens up and takes a step away from the table, scooping up her drink again to let Colt shoot.

"Well yeah, this place is great!" Colt laughs. He bounces his cue stick up and moves around the table to line-up a shot.

"I don't really have anything to do with that. Or purchasing. That's Sam the Stocker's territory..." the way Colt says the name it....There's bad blood there for sure. "Excuse me a step..." he murmurs as the backend of his cue stick nudges Harlan aside so he can take his shot.

"Sobranie cigarettes. They're still made in London. The only shop I knew to get them closed its doors thanks to pressure from online retailers killing everything good about small business," Harlan says. She squints at Colt briefly, and takes the smallest step to the side she can, sipping as she goes.

"Bad luck." She walks halfway around the table to consider the lay of the land. "I'll have to find a bored concierge." That kind of tone about a stock guy isn't about to make her go talk to him.

She snaps off a shot that sends a burgundy striped ball hurtling across the table toward the pocket where Colt stands.

Despite being in the clear, it was still enough of a close call to make Colt jump a bit as the ball crushes its way to victory inside the corner pocket versus a "crushing" victory in Colt's lap!

Oh! Concierge! "Oh these are a real specialty item?" He hmms...Hmmms....Assesses Harlan for a moment, fingers playing on his stick. "I might have a hook up. Give me a couple days. See what I can do."

"Russian cigarettes made in London." A phone in the back pocket of Harlan's jeans chimes several times in a row, probably incoming texts. Whatever the text alert indicates, she's amused as hell by the chain sends. She tips her whiskey back and finishes it, ice clattering in the glass. "Sobranies."

When the door swings open and someone in a pink bathrobe steps in looking fit to be tied, Harlan puts her empty glass down on the ledge of the table and says, "Raincheck on the rest of that game, Colt. Angry girlie incoming. I'm going out the back." She ducks down behind the table with a surprising bit of agility, and the pink-clad wonder stomping into the bar does a sweep and looks right past the table, turning to face the other way just long enough for the duck-walking Harlan to book it down the back hall.

What could she possibly have done to elicit this level of animosity?